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.

Monday, September 23, 2024

September

We have been growing squash for many years and love cooking with them, especially the butternut type which have a lovely flavour.

The problems come when they trail all over the ground, some reaching great distances. The fruit first has to be found, the large leaves do a great job of hiding the fruit.

The early green colour of most fruits and indeed the mature colour of many varieties is a great disguise amongst the green leaves.

Many varieties will mature to a range of orange and red, indeed some blue too.

It is important to raise the fruits on a brick or some straw to keep them from being damaged, causing rot.

This however provides a lovely plate for the slugs to both hide under and to come onto for a nice squash dinner.

For several year we have been experimenting how to train the squash up.

No real solution until this year, success at last!

In May, with the help of friends, we constructed a frame using old fruit cage poles and attached jute netting across it.


The plants needed at bit of encouragement to climb up. tying in for  a bit. But then, up they went. The fruits hang down through the net, over the slope, keeping them clear of slugs and the sun can shine on them helping the fruits to mature.




September

We have been growing squash for many years and love cooking with them, especially the butternut type which have a lovely flavour. The proble...