Dear All

A wee update courtesy of your "gardener", Graham Scott, as we enter the second year of planting and growing in the organic vegetable part -- the recreation part is under consideration, with work ongoing behind the scenes (quantity surveyor's costing being obtained as I type these lines).

Graham writes:
"... continuing to feed soil [with] seaweed, charcoal, horse and chicken manure, rockdust, liquid bokashi as well as dalek and commercial peat-based composts.

Peas and beans sown and starting to show.
Sugar snap peas were a favourite with the local kids last year.
Tatties: pink, fir apples and Epicure – strictly earlies this year. Plant spares in ton bags.
Onions and garlic went in before the snow.
Jerusalem and globe artichokes went in last month.
Buying in grafted, 'turbo' tomatoes, pumpkins (to get kids to plant), melons – all from Suttons

Sown: nasturtium, sweet peas, sunflowers, limminaria, pansy, several wild flower mixes;
French beans, Chantenay carrots, courgettes, basil, cut-and-grow salad mix.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/gardening/digin/
Planting plugged kohlrabi, spinach, brussels sprouts – from Cakebread's

Alkanet or dyers' bugloss (Alkanna tinctoria), from the borage family.
Photo taken on 3 May 2010, next door to the Community Garden,
where a couple of big plants also grow.

Herb garden has rhubarb, Alkanet or dyers' bugloss (Alkanna tinctoria), comfrey, burnet saxifrage, mecanopsis, yellow mullein, various mints, thyme, chives.

First flower of Mecanopsis Sheldonii, a true blue "poppy" from the Himalayas;
photo taken on 6th May 2010 in our garden.

Digging up butterbur; still removing shade-inducing branches from trees; lots of tidying up to do round site before growth kicks in (plastic, glass etc.).

Top end 'amenity' (recreation) area:
I have suggested apple, pear and damson plantings, and creating an 'edible wall' – see www.agroforestry.co.uk/ [– this will need to be discussed at a later date].

Between fence and burn – in part to discourage access – planting gooseberries, blackcurrent, worcestershireberries, rosa rugosa, rosa canina, honeysuckle.