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.

Saturday, December 16, 2023

December

 Is it really nearly Christmas?

Unpredictable weather over the last few months has led to strange things in the garden.

The hostas had started to grow again, apple blossom on the trees and clematis flowering again in late October. The weather was so warm for October and so wet, 74mm rain measured in October.

The trees did  start to produce their autumn colours by the end of the month, especially beautiful was the Spetchley Red vine I have been training over the patio.



November still had unseasonably warm weather but by the 24th the temperatures suddenly dropped to sub-zero at night.

We picked the kiwis and squash before these frosts turned them to mush so had a good crop.




Rain in November was just 40mm although it seemed like it would never stop.

Now by mid December the leaves have finally dropped and we have collected them up to rot down into a wonderful leaf mulch for next year. The weather is still variable up to 12 degrees some days but the majority of nights are minus and still plenty of rain (20mm by the 15th December)

Mistletoe is good this year so we have supplied the local flower shop and sold steadily from our trolley to raise funds for charities. Using some of it, along with holly, ivy and berries from the garden for our Christmas wreath.

Have a Happy Christmas and I will write again in January.


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December

 We have lots of old apple trees in the walled garden with a lot of mistletoe growing on them.  This year the mistletoe was getting too dens...