We are hoping to have many of the vegetables used on our menus 100% organic and sourced from our own gardens which we have planted at our home and ceramic studio both of which are in Plumstead.

The Vege Garden at home is well into the 1^st Cycle, meaning we have LOTS of baby plants popping up between the straw mulch and amazing us with their eagerness to rise up and greet the sun as the days grow warmer.

Yesterday Ben from Urban Harvest, the company who set up our home garden, Slydan and their team came for the first Edu-Maintenance visit. We decided they should pull out some more flowers and make another bed. They replaced a boarder of Irises, dotted some wooden disks around and laid more straw mulch. No planting yet. That will happen in two weeks time when the earlier plantings are nearer to harvesting in order to have a cycle of crops. Ben is very chatty and full of tips and reminders;

‘No garlic, onion, citrus or potato peels in the Worm Farm.’

‘Flush out the Farm with a bucket of water whenever you need more ‘tea.’

‘‘Tea’ can be diluted 1 to 10 and poured on to vegis 2 x per week or more, this helps put nitrogen into the soil; but not for the root crops, like carrots.’

‘When the Cumfrey is established I will be showings you how to make another ‘compost tea’.’

I have to pass on this knowledge to Henz, who will be doing a lot of the weeding and pest control. All manually done. But Henz and I don’t come close to Portia in her snail catching zeal. Portia is out there at night with her head torch, a small stick and a plastic beach bucket lifting leaves, nudging aside mulch and generally tracking down anything that leaves a slimy trail. Sometimes I have to shout into the darkened garden and remind her of bedtime or she loses track of time.

An unexpected garden pest is The Cat. Frankie, the cat, has decided that there’s nothing quite like a bed of hay mulch to loll on on a warm summer morning. I looked out of the upstairs window while brushing my teeth this morning, and there was the cat sprawled out, licking his furry belly and crushing the coriander! I think he’s decided that the little nest where the baby plant is peeping out of the straw makes a perfect hollow for him. No amount of rapping on the glass with my toothbrush or bellows of rage, once I had the window open, had the slightest impact. After a brief stare from those golden eyes he simply continued licking himself.

The home garden under construction

The finished garden