Matt and Mary's Garden Maintenance

20/02/2022

This is American advice, but it all applies equally to the UK. Happily, we have all of these elements at Rosebud Memorial Gardens, but it is always worth considering whether or not your own personal garden is butterfly friendly enough.

11/02/2022

I've been mulching the container Rhubarb with wood chip today. Rhubarb can be grown in a container if a bed is not available, but because they like lots of water it is important to mulch them heavily in order to increase moisture retention in the growing medium. This saves on water wastage by holding water in the soil and stopping it from evaporating into the atmosphere.

Rhubarb also likes plenty of nutrients, so it's important to always grow them in new compost (to be replaced every year if they are to be grown in container permanently) and to feed them regularly during the growing season. We will be experimenting with a regular chopped up seaw**d mulch this year, in order to provide a constant stream of nutrients.

29/01/2022

27/01/2022

Today we observe World Holocaust Memorial Day and we especially stand with the Jewish Community of Cornwall. Please join us in lighting a candle at 8pm...

Falmouth Jewish Congregation

The Friends of the Penzance Jewish Cemetery

17/01/2022

16/01/2022

Join the 140 people asking Penzance Council for more allotments in Newlyn & Penzance here: https://chng.it/kx4wgY8w

The diagram below illustrates a natural way of controlling aphids, an organic horticulture practice that can be used in conjunction with the cultivation of aphid predators to control aphid populations without resorting to using chemicals that harm both the pests and the the beneficial insects. As climate change advances we will need to fall back on organic horticulture as much as possible, instead of smothering our crops with chemicals that cause excess damage to the environment, on top of the damage that climate change is already causing.

We believe that poverty stricken areas such as Penzance & Newlyn will be badly impacted if climate change causes food prices to rise, as is predicted to happen by scientists at NASA. Please consider signing our petition to increase the capacity of Newlyn and Penzance to grow it's own food: https://chng.it/kx4wgY8w

14/01/2022

Each year we give £300,000 in grants based on your votes

13/01/2022

Now that we have stored the pine needles from our Christmas tree, we are planning to use them to help with our allotment during tomato growing season. We will be digging some of the needles into the ground in the polytunnel where the tomatoes will be grown and will use the rest of them as a mulch later on. The reason for doing this is because tomatoes like slightly acidic soil, something that can be cultivated by the addition of pine needles. Soil in Cornwall is often acidic anyway because of the granite. but it is usually helpful to add organic matter to any growing with situation (herbs and succulents being the obvious exception). Some gardeners also believe that they can help to keep slugs at bay, due to the sharpness of the pine needles. An additional benefit to using a pine needle mulch is that it can suppress w**d growth and help with moisture retention in the soil, provided that you have a sufficient quantity.

Here at the Rosebud Gardens & Bowjey Woods project we are committed to finding ways to adapt our horticultural practices to the coming problems with crop production that climate change will cause and we believe that smaller growing spaces such as allotments will be easier to adapt to climate change than large scale farms, by practising organic horticulture techniques such as the No Dig Method in order to create crops than can survive unpredictable weather such as droughts and an increase in pests & diseases when the Winters get wetter and milder. For this reason, we are petitioning Penzance Council to provide more allotments for Penzance & Newlyn, in order to alleviate the long waiting lists and allow the current applicants to get started on their food growing adventures.

You can sign the petition here: https://chng.it/kx4wgY8w

Photo Credit: happysimpleliving.com

06/01/2022