Tysoe Walled Kitchen Garden: December 2019

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, December 20, 2019

Christmas

Each year in December I go around the garden collecting greenery to make Christmas wreaths to go on the front door, garden gate and entrance gates.

The natural base is made of ivy, cornus and hazel sticks, reusable every year (been going for five years now) and can be composted when they do break down.

Ivy, Holly and fir cones from the garden, by the front gate

Ivy, Pyracantha and apples on the entrance gates

The only non recyclable part of these wreaths is a small amount of florists wire to attach some of the pieces. These I carefully remove, straighten and re use the next year. The base and fir cones will be saved for next year and the rest is composted.

The blackbirds love the apples so I put those on the gates.

Friday, December 6, 2019

Frost

Last week we had a few welcome frosts in the garden.

They are essential for some plants, make the garden look lovely and help keep pests and disease under control. Unfortunately they did not last long and we are back to warmer and wetter conditions.

Garlic needs the cold weather over the winter to help the bulbs separate into the individual cloves. Parsnips and celeriac are also much sweeter after the first frost as the cold converts some of the starch into sugars.

Many plants and their seed stalks look great in the winter and even better when covered in a frost or light covering of snow.

The frost has also helped the mistletoe berries to whiten, we are selling lots for charity again so hopefully people will come and buy over the next few weeks.

Tysoe Walled Kitchen Garden