In early March when the weather was still pretty cold and dreary some wonderful volunteers from The Broughton Trust with some of our regular families who volunteer with our community events came and helped out for a full day of job…. mending the fences around our bee hive apiary and clearing all the weeds and winter debris. We all planted some more Spring bulbs and shrubs following on from those planted during February. Great job guys…. Spring is round the corner!
Then April and May brought us some wonderful warm sunshine and we were quickly inundated with jobs to do so as everything began to grow – particularly the grass as mowing the ample lawns quickly becomes a weekly chore throughout the summer months as it grows so fast! Preparing our raised beds ready for sowing seeds and planting them up with veg was also the major big job of the Spring….digging over the beds and mixing in manure and liquid see-weed plant food – a natural organic fertilizer that helps to bind soil together and contains all the nutrients, trace elements and amino acids that plants need.
We welcomed some new volunteers over the Spring months and quickly had a good team working hard every week at our regular gardening sessions. Here’s some of the team in action! Aladjin, Kayleigh, Lewis, Kokilamala, Prabash, Shiymali, Scott, Mohammed and Subhan – thanks for all your hard work!
The next job was getting some vegetables planted in our organic garden which every year are enjoyed by our volunteers, parishioners and friends of The Ascension Church. This year we planted potatoes, runner (climbing) beans, tomatoes, cabbages, lettuces and chilli peppers! Here is Lewis and his runner bean bed, at only 9 years old he has been responsible for germinating the beans in ‘root-trainer books’ which he looked after at home before planting them out, watering and tending to the beans to make sure they clung to the stakes that he put in the raised bed for them to climb up – great job Lewis!
Many of the Spring Bulbs which were planted back in January and February came into bloom and our Paradise Garden was awash with colour! Bluebells, Narcissus, Daffodils and Tulips and much more to come over the summer….
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