Garden Organic Masters Conference June 21st 2014

(While I am still convalescing, a post from the weekend before The Blandford Fly incident.)



What a way to spend the Solstice :)

Up early at silly o'clock and did the chickens and watered the polytunnel, then set off to drive to Ryton to spend the day at Garden Organic HQ

 Lots of Master Composter and Master Gardener friends to catch up with

 

Laverstock Farm shop

 

excellent plants grown by a local organic community interest company - I bought several perennials.

 The fabulous gardens

My first workshop choice - a tour of the Heritage Seed Library polytunnels and gardens and a tutorial on how to save seed.

More gardens - I had a lovely wander around. This is looking one way over the perennial flower meadow

Looking the other way...

Close up of a ?Jerusalem Sage? flower

 And finally a panoramic view of the whole gigantic flower bed. Click on the photo to get the full glory of it!

 Of course, we had cake - wouldn't be a conference without cake!

After tea and cake, we had a tour of 5 Acre Farm, CSA and box scheme based at Ryton. Very interesting to see how they do it and what they were growing.

 My final workshop was about helping to attract insects into the garden and identifying them once you have attracted them. Very informative and interesting.

The conference finished at 5 pm and I arrived back home at 8 pm, hot and tired after a very long day, to sit and enjoy my own garden with a cold drink!

I recommend a trip to Garden Organic Ryton, always inspiring and full of good ideas.

Masters Conference 2013 Garden Organic Ryton.

8 am on a sunny September Saturday morning saw me heading off to Garden Organic HQ at Ryton.

Having arrived safely and refreshed myself with coffee and cake, I chatted to various friends and then the Conference proper started in a huge marquee in the grounds, with Dr Margi Lennartson welcoming  us to the Conference.

More than 215 volunteer Master Composters, Master Gardeners, Seed Stewards and other like minded volunteers attended  the Masters Conference for a day of activities organised to celebrate their achievements.

A series of organic gardening themed workshops took place across the day with subject areas including community composting, wildlife gardening, soil science, chicken keeping and fruit growing advice.

I opted to do the Hens@Home training workshops. This is a new scheme which trains Master Composters and Master Gardeners as "Hen Ambassadors"  to encourage and mentor people who want to keep chickens in their gardens. The scheme was launched at this Conference. and you can see a photo of some of us here

We took part in a series of workshops and much information was exchanged and discussed. Some of us kept hens and knew a fair bit about them while others did not know so much, so it was really enjoyable. We were given an excellent handbook on basic chicken keeping (as always anything produced by Garden Organic is excellent) and also had sessions from  a BHWT  tutor. He bought along some lovely ex commercial hens and everyone enjoyed cuddling them :)

Professor Chris Baines addressing the gathered members.

Chris Baines is a Garden Organic Ambassador and campaigner for urban nature conservation and he treated us to an informative and inspirational speech,  highlighting the actions we can take now, to protect our natural environment for the future

 Everyone was very attentive :)

After the Awards were presented, we ate cake!

Compost related, of course

I went back to the final session of the Hens@Home training

And then spent a bit of time wandering around the gorgeous gardens at Ryton

Ending with a good look around the Composting area :)

I didn't get back home until after 8 pm so it was a very long day and the driving made my back ache.
As always though I came away invigorated and recharged from talking to so many fellow Composters and Gardeners about our passion for Organic methods.

You can see more images from the day on the Garden Organic  Flickr stream

Cutting Edge Veg - Master Gardener training

On Saturday morning I got up early and set off ( in thick fog) to go to Garden Organic HQ at Ryton, for a Master Gardener Training day on the subject of Cutting Edge Veg. The course description looked really interesting and I was looking forward to the day ahead, despite the long drive through fog.

We were going to be introduced to vegetables from a wide range of cultures including India, East Asia, Africa, South America and the Caribbean. Many of these plants already have a proven track record of cultivation in the UK, having been grown by immigrant communities for decades on allotments and in gardens. The majority can be grown outside without a glasshouse.

The course would be looking at

• The range and diversity of crops that can be grown in the UK
• The best varieties and where to source growing material
• Top tips for cultivation
• Advice on preparation
• Saving seed and propagation

Many of these crops have only recently become more widely known through Garden Organic’s Sowing New Seeds project (http://www.sowingnewseeds.org.uk). This innovative venture has greatly widened people’s access to growing non-traditional crops.

I grow a fair number of more exotic herbs and veg, but am always willing to try something new and learn about new techniques.

I joined my fellow Master Gardeners ( all from Warwickshire) and we were welcomed by our co-ordinator Kate and by the co-ordinator of Sowing New Seeds, Anton Rosenfeld.  Anton is passionate about the growing, preparation and eating of food from a wide diversity of cultures. He has lived in South America, he has grown food crops for Caribbean and Indian communities, and on returning to the UK he was excited to see that people had managed to produce many of these crops successfully in our UK climate. The Sowing New Seeds project was the perfect opportunity to realise this interest.


We started with hot drinks ( very welcome as it was jolly cold outside!) and a game to see if we could identify any of the veg and herbs.

Anton with a Dudi ( apparently everyone takes a photo of him holding this veg up this - I cannot imagine why!)

The red and yellow dots meant we either did not know what this was, or were really unsure about it - only two people knew what it was.

The morning passed very quickly while we learnt about some of the background to the project, the seeds themselves, where they originated from and how they have been adapted by the growers all over the country to cope with the UK climate.

We had an excellent lunch (as always at Ryton) and then some time to ourselves -  as always I had a wander around the gardens

The wildflower meadow area in winter. I was relieved to see that even Ryton has wet, soggy soil and not much happening, at the moment - but the bare bones of the gardens are still very beautiful.

I want some more structural items in my garden  - I love this gate? pergola? whatever it is called it is beautiful.

We went back in for more interesting information on growing things like Turmeric, Ginger, Oca, and various herbs and then went outside again to plant some seeds.

We finished off the day by cleaning some Callaloo ( Amaranth) seeds from the seed heads - great fun but ow very spiky so wear gloves if you are doing this at home. These were seeds grown by Garden Organic as part of the project to distribute via the Heritage Seed Library - if you become a member you get to select six packets of seeds which are no longer commercially available and this year various "exotic" herbs and veg are included in the catalogue.

So, a very good day, I learnt lots of new things, had a good chat to some friends, made a few new ones and as always had a really good day out. I am looking forward to growing some of these plants for myself and spreading the word when I am Master Gardening

Givaway reminder

Last call to leave a comment ( it would be nice if you followed me as well ) and be entered into my 1000th post celebratory givaway!

I am at Garden Organic Ryton today,  for a Master Composter training day about growing more exotic veg.

Have fun all of you and enjoy your weekend :-)

Exotic seeds and a Homegrown Revolution

I have been sorting my seeds, thinking about seeds and pondering what else I want to grow in this new gardening year. With our changing climate one thing I am interested in growing more of, are "unusual" and "exotic" vegetable crops (although, after last year's wet weather maybe I should think about just growing rice?)

At the end of January I was supposed to be volunteering at Garden Organic’s 20th National Potato Day  I was very excited because Garden Organic Ambassador and Ethnobotanist James Wong was due to give a talk about the many exotic edible tubers that can be grown in British gardens.  You may remember he presented a very interesting BBC TV series " Grow your own Drugs" plus  he appears on BBC 1 "Countryfile".

Sadly, because of the snow on the roads around us  I could not get to Ryton for this event, but I wondered if James was going to be speaking anywhere else about growing more "exotic" seeds in the UK. So I was delighted to discover, after an wander around the Internet yesterday afternoon (Google is a wonderful invention)  that  James Wong is doing a tour of the UK speaking at various events. The next event is 16th Feb, in Bristol  followed by an event at Kew Gardens on 26th Feb. Further events are listed during the next few months.

I also discovered that Sutton Seeds   produce  James'  "Homegrown Revolution" seed range. I did not know there was a "tie- in" seed range, and was interested to see the seeds on offer. I already grow, or have grown in the past, some of them (Purslane, Borage, Asparagus pea, Chinese Chives, Quinoa, Mooli) but there are many other interesting seeds which I quite fancy trying to grow this year.

There is a special offer on the Suttons website on  his book and a selection of  6 seed packets for free, for a very good price. Yes, you could get the book and seeds from various different suppliers but it IS convenient to find them all in one place, ready to order.

Having followed the link to the Suttons Seeds website, I had a look around and was pleased to see an ever more extensive selection of organic vegetable seeds -  as you know I try to use only organically certified seeds, growing media etc here at Compost Mansions!  I buy a lot of my seeds from The Organic Gardening Catalogue but  I do buy seeds from other places including the Real Seed Co, Suttons, Franchii, Victoriana Nurseries and MoreVeg.

The website is very well laid out as well, far too tempting for a seed -a-holic like me! As well as seeds there are lot of useful pages on what to be doing at different times of year and how to grow various plants.

I have a future post in mind about my seed order and plans  for 2013 and it looks like I might be adding still yet more seeds  to my list. And maybe a hint to Compostman about an early birthday present :-)

Anyone growing any "exotic" seeds? Or going to see/have seen James Wong speak?





Disclosure  - I was paid to link to Suttons Seeds  - but as always on The Compost Bin all the words and views are entirely my own :-) 

Wordless Wednesday - (Another) trip to Garden Organic Ryton Gardens.

"Meet the Masters" event at Garden Organic, Ryton

I spent today at Ryton, the HQ and showcase gardens for Garden Organic

Throughout the spring and summer Garden Organic have been running a series of events called "Meet the Masters" where Master Composters and Gardeners are present at Ryton on a Saturday or Sunday, to answer queries and talk about composting and gardening to the public.

I had offered my services this weekend and, as Compostman and Dear Daughter have never been to Ryton, we all went, along with a friend of El's.

The journey across was a bit long as there was some terrible traffic through Worcester, but we arrived in glorious sunshine ( which lasted all day!)

My fellow Master Composter and Master Gardener had already set up our stall, in the new Home Composting area and I was very pleased to see this had a nice shelter for us to stand under - most of the summer we have been hiding from the rain but today we were sheltering from the hot sun.

The rest of the family went off to join in a garden tour with one of the volunteer guides while I got on with answering questions - lots and lots of questions - from the public!

There was an Exotic Food Fair happening as well, so we had a lot of visitors who had not been to Ryton before, and were not Garden Organic members, coming in to see what was happening. We had some really good conversations and I think we helped a lot of people with their queries about gardening.

There were all sorts of attractions going on, Alpacas being the most popular outside I think! (They were very lovely)

An Indian cookery demonstration, a talk on seed saving, demonstrations of various exotic foods which can actually be grown in the UK ( although you might not have thought so!) and tours of the new Exotic Garden at Ryton.

We had lunch in the excellent cafe and later, some very welcome tea (and scones for the two children)

I think it is a mark of what a terrific place Ryton is, that two 11 year olds were occupied and had fun for 5 hours there. They really enjoyed wandering around looking at the gardens, they LOVED The Vegetable Kingdom  and stroking the Alpacas, they thought the food was really good and the whole place was excellent. They did have electronic games with them which they played with towards the end of the afternoon for a little bit, while sitting under some trees waiting for me to tidy the stall away.)



Compostman also saw some of the things I have been talking about incorporating into our gardens here at Compost Mansion and, while he thinks most of it would cost too much/be too much work etc  - he CAN see the merit in some of what I have been saying so that is good ;-)

I had a chance to look around, with my family, during my breaks - and stroke an Alpaca :-)

Home for tea time having spoken to 45 people on the stall and handed out a lot of leaflets with advice and ideas.

A good day out - so please go, if you are in the neighbourhood - Ryton Gardens is open every day except Christmas Day, and admission is free if you are a Garden Organic member.

Next event is Apple Day on Oct 13th.