Tysoe Walled Kitchen Garden

Welcome to the Tysoe Walled Kitchen Garden website! We are committed to organic gardening. Using the best practices from the Victorian days (i.e. lots of horse manure) and knowledge gleaned from the Ryton Organic Gardens we have set out to tame our Warwickshire clay. It’s all about sustainability, so as well as organic gardening, we’re always looking to better ways to work with our environment.

On this site you can find out about our history and the projects we are working on. You can come visit the garden and learn about organic gardening. Follow our blog to see what’s on our mind in the garden this month.

For the first 8 years all the work was carried out by just the two of us. Now we have help and are passing on our knowledge to students on the WRAGS (Work and Retrain As a Gardener Scheme).

We also find time to be involved with the WOT2Grow Community Orchard in Tysoe and have planted a 3 acre wood close to Tysoe, just over the border in Oxfordshire with a grant from the Woodland Trust.

Sunday, May 10, 2020

May ups and downs

What a conflicting month of weather, the coldest night so far was 2.7 degrees and the warmest night was 11.3. Daytime temperatures have been no more consistent as the coldest was 10.3 and warmest 23.8, and these just in the last 10 days. Little wonder that the plants do not know whether to grow or not.

The couple of frosty nights saw us going out at dusk to protect vulnerable plants with fleece, will have to do that again in the next few days as temperatures at night are forecast to be 0-3 degrees. Even in the greenhouse the cucumbers suffered in the cold.

The brassica cage is finished now and we have already started to plant the brussels, petit posi, an open floret variety we grew for the first time last year, much sweeter than the traditional sprout.

Brassica cage in its new place

Despite the ups and downs of the weather, May gives a glimpse of what is to come and a tantalising preview.

The first roses are out, iris are budding with a couple now in flower and the greenhouse is full of seedlings waiting to get outside. The asparagus is growing madly, I picked 1.5 kilos this morning!

What’s this? a white flower on the budleija? The iris has grown through the bottom of the budleija and is putting on a great show.

white iris pushing through the budleija

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December

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