News from the gardens: June

Deveron Projects has cared for the Brander Community Garden for over 15 years. During this time it has been developed through lots of projects, including A Bite on the Side with Norma D Hunter giving the garden lovely apple trees, Flax Turns with Christine Borland creating distinctive wedge-shaped beds in the lower garden for growing flax, The Town is the Garden creating compost bays and raised beds, a greenhouse and shed. Most recently, the Caretakers' Garden has explored the networks of care within the garden, human and more-than-human. Led by Lindy Young, we offered workshops and events focused on biodiverse gardening and created a no-dig bed, a perennial wild meadow and food forest. Celebrating this project, we are about to launch a Garden Care Plan, written by Lindy. This blog by Lindy gives an insight into this publication, and what's happening in the garden too!

You can visit the Brander Community Garden behind the library at any time. It is accessed via a white metal gate at the top of McVeagh Street. If you would like to get involved, pop by on a Tuesday to meet Lindy and get stuck in.

June — The battle for Victoria Plum

Looking back over May it has been the most incredible month of sunshine and dry weather. It would be easy to say that us gardeners are never happy. Too much rain and we complain, no rain at all and we complain even more. The water butts are empty and the soil dry as dust. It has been a joy to be gardening in sunshine though and some plants are really well ahead. Strawberries are already beginning to ripen and blackcurrant bushes are heavily fruit laden.

Normally the biggest fight in the Brander Garden is with the snails. We have a huge population and they snap up many of our seedlings as soon as they are planted out. This year the dry weather seems to have allowed a new enemy to flourish. Our much loved Victoria plum, which had a promising crop of developing fruit, has been thoroughly decimated by greenfly.

As we are an organic garden chemical sprays are not an option. We had to take drastic action to get rid of the millions of little green pests.

First we pruned off all the affected high branches. Luckily for me a new garden volunteer started in May, Moira. Together we spent a long, but in the end enjoyable, afternoon, picking off infested leaves, whilst chatting and enjoying the sunshine. These we bagged and binned. By the time we were done the tree looked quite bare. We had a little help from a single ladybird. I left that afternoon, hoping the ladybird would tell all her friends and family so that they could finish the job for us.

Two days later and there are still more aphids. This time I try dislodging them with jets of soapy water as well as squishing any that I came across. I used plain Ecover but there are insecticidal soaps available online which are organic. The Ecover does seem to have had an effect though and, so far, things seem to be under control. We may not get such a good crop this year but hopefully the tree is going to be okay.

Elsewhere in the garden, the greenhouse was getting quite crowded with donated tomato seedlings, cucumbers and courgettes. Taking a chance that we may be in for a hot summer I have planted half the courgettes in the raised beds outside, along with pumkins planted by the ‘Numero Uno’ group. Some years they do well outside, other years they end up being snail food! We are ready with our beer traps and crushed egg shells to protect them.

It would be easy to get disheartened with organic gardening, when nature seems against you. The joy of it far exceeds the irritations however. Hopefully, with the help of our volunteers, the children from the ‘Toads’ group and the adults with disabilities from the 'Numero Uno' group, we will keep on top of the pest and have loads of lovely, chemical free, fruit and veg to enjoy through the seasons.