Tysoe Walled Kitchen Garden: February 2021

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.

Friday, February 26, 2021

First signs

The days are getting longer, the air is warming (some days!) and spring bulbs are coming up.

Snowdrops have been in flower since before Christmas but the bulk of the came through from the end of January.

Clumps are bulking up nicely and by splitting them every 3 or 4 years I am now getting quite a display.

I also grow snowdrops under some of the fruit trees, giving colour and interest while the trees are still dormant.

I even have a few “Special ” snowdrops

Also coming out now are the dwarf daffodil Tete a tete and some crocus

Soon the buds will be opening on the trees, the herbaceous perennials emerging from their winter slumbers and the grass will need mowing!

Saturday, February 13, 2021

February

We are almost half way through February and it is very cold. I am sure there must be a record that this winter has been the coldest since………..

We have had some snow, although not as much as some places in the UK but it is very cold.

For many days temperature has been minus degrees all day as well as all night.

It may be freezing but we are lucky to have a heated propagator in the greenhouse and so we have been able to start sowing seeds of some plants that need that early sowing or long growing season.

A few weeks after sowing the leeks, rocket and celeriac have started to show and the sweet peas are coming through too.

Next to sow are dahlias. Grown from seed they should flower in the summer and then produce a tuber which can be saved overwinter for next year.

Tysoe Walled Kitchen Garden