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, June 28, 2019

Good or bad?

There are many insects and bugs in the garden, some useful some not. As we garden organically we do not use chemicals to eradicate all those we do not want.

Slugs and snails are a problem for every gardener we try to keep the numbers down with the use of a garlic wash, especially on hostas, also going out and manually picking them off and moving them away from the garden. On newly planted seedlings we use the organically approved ferric phosphate slug pellets, sparingly. Once the plants are established we tolerate a few holes nibbled from the leaves.

Aphids are bad this year especially on the new shoots of the apple trees, squashing them between finger and thumb reduces some and a soap spray helps too.

Once the beneficial insects arrive it is best not to use the soap as we do not want to kill everything.

A welcome sight is this “ugly” bug:

What is this?

The few early lady birds have been busy and the sight of these larvae mean we will very soon get many more lady birds to keep eating all the aphids.

Asparagus beetle

This very pretty beetle can be devastating on the asparagus crop. They nibble the head of the asparagus. Later they lay little black eggs on the fern foliage and these hatch into tiny grey slugs which can defoliate the fern.

This is a problem because once you stop harvesting the spears, the crop is left to leaf up and nourish the roots ready for next year.

We try and reduce the effects of this bug by squashing the adults, the are very hard to catch as when they sense a shadow they drop to the soil upside down and play dead so are hard to see! We also have to squash the slugs that hatch to try and reduce the damage and prevent the crop from being completely weakened.

Asparagus beetle 

Year of the Rose

Each year in the garden is different. After a slow start, this year has been great for roses. This climber was already in the garden when we arrived (unknown variety). Over the last 2 weeks the blooms have doubled in weight 3 times with the rainfall events! Caught it in a dry period with its clematis sieboldii companion, which is enjoying having cool roots. They just look great together.

Rose and clematis on east facing wall June 2019

Tuesday, June 18, 2019

I did not plant theses but…

The garden is full of colour and most was not down to any planned design or planting.

Poppies everywhere and so many different colours and shapes.

A sea of poppies
Red ones
Really dark
Ladybird poppy?
Purple ladybird?
Frilly edged ones

They look great and most are still standing upright despite the heavy rain and wind last week.

I will however remove most the the seed pods before they fully ripen as we do not want the whole garden being overtaken by poppies next year.

Monday, June 3, 2019

Open Gardens 2019

Phew an exhausting but rewarding open gardens, which this year brought 456 lovely visitors to our garden.

Open Garden 2019

Saturday was very warm and with 10 gardens to visit our elderflower cordial was welcomed by many.

After working hard all week we were pleased with the results and the many wonderful comments made it all worthwhile.

The clematis, on an arch by the new patio, came into flower perfectly on time giving a wonderful display, Clematis Duchess of Edinburgh looking almost like a rose deceived many visitors and sunset a wonderful dark pink flower.

Duchess of Edinburgh
Sunset

Sown seeds, self sown seedlings, division, cuttings many of the ways I try and propagate plants in the garden which give me lots of new plants to sell for charity. This weekend we raised £150 for the National Garden Scheme charity.

Plants for sale
More plants for sale
Wood store much liked by many put together with OCD!!
The new Thyme clock is looking good

February 2024

 What a wet and soggy month. Very few days have been dry enough to do any work on the soil, but we have managed to prune all the fruit trees...