Month in the life of an urban gardener: April 2024.
The tasks, problem solving, wildlife spots, learnings and reflections from an organic food grower in a North London kitchen garden.
Welcome to this separate reflection — as part of the Food-Fibre-Fashion publication — on what it’s like to be an urban organic food grower. This started as short snappy videos to condense moments across a month, before realising that actually the narrative and context behind them could be useful, whether successes or mistakes.
As this is part of the wider Food-Fibre-Fashion publication that shares essays, articles and resource newsletters, there will be stories and musings to raise your awareness of how interconnected these systems are, even when we’re looking in small scale, such as an urban garden.
Watch reels of previous months here →
March 2024. / February 2024. / January 2024. / December 2023. / November 2023. / October 2023. / September 2023. / August 2023. / July 2023. / June 2023. / May 2023. / April 2023. / March 2023.
This is the sixth in this series of articles — A Month in the Life of an Urban Gardener. To read about the context of where I work, head to the first article.
Watch March 2024 in the form of a reel here.
Listen here or on Spotify:
Images: 1. Discombobulating weather makes for rainbows; 2. The bushy roundhouse roof with Castle building; 3. Perturbed and tired after pruning up an apple tree.
Weaving.
The weaving of the windbreak continued with volunteers and a colleague. I still was unable to fathom it as a priority, so I stayed away. This included the sorting of climbing rope lengths that had been stored outside over winter, a job I definitely didn’t feel like doing when it was cold and rainy out. Come the end of the month I became perturbed that the shed I had been using to very methodically store dry ropes — labelled by colour in crates, out of the way and stacked up — was now a mess, with crates strewn about in the cupboard so that nothing was accessible.
This is the hellish cupboard that I tidied and organised over winter, only for colleagues to stash cardboard in there in the least constructive and helpful way. Added to this now were messy ropes and crates. I really, really don’t understand when foresight isn’t considered, and this lack was especially frustrating when I came to find a useful cardboard box to catch a bee swarm, when before I could find one suitable, I needed to tidy up the cupboard in order to access anything. After this I also discovered metal clamps and a bee veil had been left on top of the first aid kit, consequently losing my rag in a scenario where I needed to be relaxed.
I guess this is my problem as a gardener (and in life in general); that I tend not to focus on the fun tasks, and focus instead on the stuff that keeps everything running. I’m currently listening to the audio version of the book The Body Keeps The Score by Bessel van der Kolk, about the effects of trauma on the body, after my massage therapist recognised in my tension an unwillingness to fully trust, to let go, and that I’m always “on”, on high alert. Gardening is seen as some calming activity that retired folk do, but if you actually listen to what farmers and commercial growers are saying, they’re burnt out.
Now that we’re coming into summer and there’s a lot more to manage, it’s even more difficult to shut off and say no actually that can wait. In fact, today, as I write this, I had planned on visiting the garden to do some additional voluntary work (to make up for time I’m supposed to give as a miniplot holder, when instead I did actual paid work because selling plants was more necessary). However, because yesterday I was suddenly called in to attend to a bee swarm so taking my focus, I needed to say no, I just can’t do that and I need to focus here. But there’ll be nagging admonishment that I didn’t do what I said I would do.
Images: Volunteers weave a windbreak from old used climbing rope to add colour and function to an empty and underused part of the garden.
Harvesting.
We’re in a tricky predicament, in that we have many crops now bolting or requiring changeover, but no profitable avenue for them to go to. And so there’s acceptance that the majority of our crops will be donated to a redistribution hub. This is obviously not a bad thing, as we’ve never really been about the sales-making. However, there are some crops that either a) we don’t have much of for it to feel worth giving or b) they’re a bit unusual. Crops such as the rocoto chillies, or the bitter chicories.
Nevertheless, when food needs to be harvested, then you’ve just got to harvest. Sometimes this can take hours, particularly if you’re taking out whole heads of lettuce that need tidying and washing for slugs and snails, or sorting through the more wild crops, including wild garlic and three-cornered leek, to select the best grade.
And if you’re clearing out a whole load of stuff, such as happens when lettuce and greens bolt, then you also then need to weed, topdress, water and replant.
Images: 1. Rosa di Treviso chicory growing tall amongst the spring onions; 2. Salad rocket going to flower in the polytunnel; 3. A golden frill mustard green with its characteristic massive stem once it starts bolting.
I did this one day whilst I was looking after my mum’s dog. Skye came to visit for a holiday whilst mum was on holiday, and this was her first time in the garden where there were many sights and sounds to uncover. She’s a nervous dog with separation anxiety, so leashing her up in the polytunnel, while I cleared crops and then replanted, helped her to stay close and somewhat chill. Apart from when she got angsty and decided to walk on the lettuce babies.
By the end of April we had taken out most of the winter lettuces and mustard greens, replacing them with babies. We’d also been harvesting tender salad leaves, wild garlic, three-cornered leek, spring onions, chillies, rhubarb and chard — some of which were sold to customers, and some sold in our on-site café.
Images: 1. Chillies naturally fell from the tree when they were ripe enough; 2. Wild garlic getting close to flowering; 3. The glasshouse was hard cut of mustard greens and replanted with babies, plus coriander as a succession crop before tomatoes go in in May.
Sowing.
I had to check the sowing schedule for what was sown in April, because I couldn’t remember, and it’s because I wasn’t even around to do it! Well, no, I did some earlier in the month for flowers and I managed to get my dye plants done, but the main April-sown crops were done by our trainees.
I did lead a session with them on their first day, taking them through what was currently going on in our staging (propagation) area, through the difference in seed and potting mixes, the kinds of decisions you’d be making when sowing, and the technique of sowing itself. They did some secondary sowings of celery, parsley, mooli radish and spring onions (I think) after first sowings either hadn’t germinated or were slow to germinate. The next week, with my colleagues, they did cucumber, courgette, squash, beans and basil.
It’s useful to get training with different varieties, and also with different growers, because everyone has a different technique. Unfortunately on this occasion, the trainees were willy nilly with their multi-sowing of the cucumber seeds, potentially after their session with me where I said it was ok to essentially empty a full packet of old celery seeds out. Cucumber seeds aren’t particularly cheap, packets sell out, and multi-sowing isn’t great as the curcubitae family don’t like their roots being disturbed and so splitting seedlings is dangerous. Unfortunately again, a colleague snipped the spare cucumber seedling to allow one of them to grow better, and of course slugs came and nibbled the remaining one.
That actually reminds me that, yes, I did sow more flowers, after my sunflowers and tagetes so nicely potted on were decimated by molluscs. At the end of April, new sunflower seedlings had germinated, and both the tagetes and cosmos had survived.
We also need to give up on sowing radish in a particular bed. Whether planting out plugs or sowing seed directly, it’s all being eaten. Think that bed is destined to be a continuous green manure cover crop.
Images: 1. Potting on tomato babies so they have more space and some nutrition; 2. The sunflower plants are got their leaves nibbled by molluscs; 3. Sowing woad seeds.
Wildlife.
Not particularly much to report in terms of wildlife, other than baby frogs have been spotted around, and the wrens have nested somewhere though we’re unable to identify exactly where their home is. They had chosen a possible spot in the apiary in the nape of a wall with such a beautiful construction akin to the works of Andy Goldsworthy, but had mostly been spotted jumping in and out of the roundhouse roof.
There were also some toads, one of which I accidentally flipped while digging a hole to plant out a lettuce.
Slugs and snails are rife. We empty a tub of maybe 200 each workday over by the river path where hopefully the ducks are feeding.
Though I’ll come on to the honeybees later, we were seeing lots of activity from the solitary and bumblebees. We have small nesting boxes for the solitary mason bees, who were hatching in quick succession. However, the younglings then need to find a new nest, and we spotted some flying in and out of a hole in the door where the screw had come out.
Images: 1. Creepy massive grub in the soil of a currant bush cutting; 2. The tiniest slug (do they grow bigger or stay like this?); 3. A collection pot of molluscs; 4. Emptying the collection pot of molluscs by the river for the ducks to eat; 5. One of the wren's possible nesting sites in the apiary; 6. Osmia (masonry) bees were spotted flying in and out of the hole in the plasterboard behind the grapevine.
Selling.
Things had started growing. We always have additional plants but tend to wait until planting out time to sell them, when, it turns out of course, that everyone else has already planted their stuff and so we can’t sell them. So, we were getting ahead of ourselves and selling surplus plants — particularly strawberries and tomatoes, and mystery currants. The writing on the label had disappeared in the elements, and so though we can identify if something is a currant, a gooseberry and perhaps a jostaberry, the variety is no longer guaranteed. Which is a shame. But anyway, plentiful currant babies created from cuttings over the last couple years, can find new homes.
We were also trying to sell bags of salad and wild garlic through our café, but frankly, it’s not worth our time to do the back and forth. No real marketing, no proper signage, no customer engagement. We want to research a stand for the garden where customers can come and pay for produce that we’ve left out. Logistically it’ll be a faff, but it’ll give us some autonomy and control, and enable us to bring in income for our now heartily dwindled budget.
Otherwise, we’re still donating to the National Food Service, yet certain crops are low in yield and high in market value, and so we really do ideally want to find other homes for them. All my other work keeps me from finishing this catalogue and outreach task, which is constantly playing on my mind. I’d anticipated finishing this in February before the season fully started, but here we are in early May with even less customers than before. Though, at least we have more insight and knowledge from the experience so far.
Images: 1. Identifying what type of currants the rooted cuttings are after the labels disintegrated (these are jostaberry I think); 2. Sorting out which currant rootings are for us and which are to sell, and stored on a shower tray filled with gravel outside the glasshouse; 3. Tomato plants for sale with handwritten chalkboard sign.
Weeding and maintenance.
With sun comes weeds. Bushy bushy weeds. Plants in the wrong places. Sneaky effective clever plants that you don’t see until it’s too late. And so weeding must be done in order to ensure human control. It’s actually really satisfying to clear a space, but is hard work when it involves pulling up grass tussocks, or flower bugs appear from the depths to nibble you.
Weeding means that there’s a lot of green material that will eventually need to go in the compost, and often it means re-woodchipping surfaces too, so it’s never a job unto itself. You also do a bit and then spot more.
The areas that have become particularly overgrown are a constant battle.
One patch of cinque foil under and around the gooseberries in the Forest Garden is a great ground cover, but it’s relentless, and can cause moisture retention around the base of the shrubs so encouraging mildew.
The area we simply call the front (which in previous years was the Fruity Wall) is very pretty when all the weeds are up, but we don’t need ragwort, bindweed, herb robert and bramble in the amount found here. It also again causes moisture retention around the currant bushes and espalier fruit trees, suppresses the growth of St.John’s Wort, and brambles can hybridise with the autumn-fruiting raspberries.
There’s a bank that we weeded and mulched in the winter of 2022 ready for a dye garden, but alas, we didn’t get to planting it up and it was used as an area to store old wood and bricks. So yet again it is being tidied, ready for mulching again, and hopefully planting later in the season (with something, if not dye plants).
And the apiary is an absolute mess. It is crowded with tall dandelions and nettles, overgrown with spiky mahonia, and chocolate vines (or goji berries, always unsure which is what) hang over the steps. It’s hazardous for us and for the bees. We also know that we need room to set up bait hives ready for swarms, which involves levelling the ground too. But, now that the families are active post-winter, it’s tricky to get in when they’re not out foraging.
The other part of the area that we call the front, where in fact we store our wood chip, was overrun with sycamores. This — plus someone dumping a load of logs — trashed the living hedge, so a massive ongoing job is tidying up and re-laying it. Because the builders tidied up the scrap metal store, we were also able to get to pruning the elaeagnus and apple tree that were hanging over onto the public footpath.
Images: 1. Nigella sneaks in right next to a camomile look very similar to the untrained eye; 2. Ragwort and a very unusual calendula officinalis sit together; 3. Pruning and tidying up the elaeagnus and apple tree around the forgotten front area.
Bees.
I’ve never committed to pulling off an April Fool’s joke before. But my colleague and I realised when tidying up our bee equipment store that the “live bee” boxes our current families were delivered in would be a perfect prank. Putting a speaker inside the box and playing bee noises while carrying it about when dressed in a bee suit wouldn’t surely be accepted as real? Well, it was. Even, on one instance, when I dropped the box in front of a volunteer, she still peeked inside to see where the bees were. On another, when I’d left the box on the staff room table to go to the bathroom and the bluetooth connection to the speaker stopped, folk just thought the bees had gone quiet because I’d left. I must be really trustworthy. It showed how little people understand about bees, or about beekeeping. With the oncoming swarm season, there’d be an opportunity to converse on this topic.
I hoped the trickery wouldn’t come back to sting me.
Though April was very very rainy, like totally soggy, the bees were ramping up their activity. Swarming occurs when the existing family in a hive decides that they want to split because they’re too big, or that they all want to move because they no longer like their home (or rather, it’s unsuitable due to wax moths, temperature, shelter etc). It’s said that it’s possible for swarming to occur once the dandelions start to show, as this means there’s more warmth. It felt very uncertain when it would start because evening temperatures were still dropping to 3˚C, even with sunny daytimes.
But on the first sunny day, late in the month on April 26th, I got the call that there was a swarm and where should it go. On arrival, I hadn’t even checked where it was and just got involved in figuring out what the bait hive looked like (uncleaned, totally not ready for them). Some 10 minutes later when I looked where my colleagues said it was on the fig tree, they’d already dissipated. We figured they’d found a hive elsewhere within their usual 3km range, but surprisingly super fast. Disappointing, but a good practice run.
Images: 1-2. Wearing a bee suit and carrying around a "live bee" box with hidden speaker, then leaving it in various places, to trick folk into thinking a swarm was inside; 3. The first swarm landed in the newly pruned fig tree just a few metres away from the hive; 4. I and a colleague (who arrived earlier and was in his bee suit) discuss the plan of action with our bait hive.
The following Tuesday, April 30th, I received a call again — just as I’d sat down to catch up with work after a week doing doggy-sitting — and went in to find a swarm on an elaeagnus in the sloping forest garden. We knew it was from the same hive as there was bearding on the outside of it (where they crowd around as if they’re spilling out).
People were also crowding round to get in on the excitement, colleagues were asking questions. I’m trying to find tools and a cardboard box, only to need to move crates of heavy rope out of the way to get to the cardboard, and equipment out of the way of the first aid kit (just in case, even though we don’t have an epi pen). The swarm was right in the middle of the tree on a chunky branch, which we would like to keep, so I got on the phone to the beekeeper who trained me, who reminded me that the branch doesn’t necessarily need to be cut and in fact the swarm can be shaken into a box; I’d gotten the box subconsciously for this. Or a sheet placed on the ground and that bundled up. Finishing thoughts on the considerations, the most swarm-trained centre manager appeared to help. He’s also tall, which was useful in this scenario. As I’m explaining the plan of action to him, a colleague is interjecting with their own tidbits, so furthering the frantic energy that this was all creating in my body. I want to be calm and clear when I do these, and I need to become confident at handling them, particularly as I’m the one called in due to my close proximity.
Images: 1. The second swarm landed in the middle of an elaeagnus on a slope in the forest garden, which called for a cardboard box being placed underneath to catch the shake; 2. My colleague and I in bee suits placing the cardboard box and getting ready to shake the swarm off the tree; 3. The swarm was shaken from the cardboard box into the hive and then stragglers left to climb out; 4. The warre hive that the swarm came from with bees still bearding on the front, with the National hive in the background at the top of the apiary; 5. The swarm now in their new hive with bees at the entrance fanning and sending out pheromones to the stragglers from the swarm.
A cardboard box was placed underneath the bee cluster, and with a few shakes most were in the box. Then, there’s a check to see if we can spot the queen in the box or on the scratty bit of sheet I’d managed to find and laid down on the ground, and then transporting the box quickly and carefully across the garden to the apiary where it was shaken into the bait hive. Another check for the queen in the hive and in the original box; can’t spot her, oh wait there she is. Another shake into the hive and then it’s closed up. The cardboard box with stragglers is placed at an angle in front so they’ll move upwards and into the hive once they receive the pheromone that the others are wafting from the hive entrance, and the stragglers on the tree are checked on over time so that we know they’re moving too. If the bees stay in the hive, and the bees outside of the hive leave, we know we got the queen. If the queen wasn’t there, the family would simply leave and go back to cluster around wherever she was.
We now had three families, while we awaited the other hive to swarm to make it four.
Doggy day care.
My mum went on holiday, and as she has a dog, I said I’d bring her — Skye — to London for her own holiday. I combined this canine collection with a running trip across the Pennines, so needing a workday off. I returned with a nervous dog that doesn’t like noises or people, and doesn’t know what other dogs are, who had suddenly been brought to many new places she’d never experienced before. She’s a sort of small German shepherd, with the same colouring and some similar features and a hearty bark, but some slenderness and attention from her Saluki side.
I’d had very little sleep due to her anxiety, on top of what was already an intense past week of travel and running, and so I became emotionally-drained when she was whining or acting out with fake biting, strangely at people wearing cargo trousers. I had to keep her close in the polytunnel on a lead, still whining and walking over the beds, while I harvested the crops and replaced with new crops. I’d never had the responsibility of keeping anything alive before (I don’t count the teenage-years hamsters or university fish), so to be dealing with that on top of work catch up was all new for me too. On returning home that first evening, she was immediately fed and while I made my own dinner, she fell asleep.
The same week on Thursday, she came back to work with me but this time a little more aware of the surroundings and so she had a good play with another dog. Less wary this time, she was let off her lead and trained to come back on call, or sometimes she even came back herself. She’d also had an additional 2 full days in the city and with me, including a trail run, so was generally more settled. Unfortunately on the Saturday workday, she was acting out too much; not coming back when called, standing by a door, following people, getting her nose up someone’s skirt, playing too hard with a little dog… there is a lot of stimulus in a busy garden, perhaps more so than a park, and here she’d eventually been given free reign. I was at the point where I was ready to return her so I could return. I’m grateful for her to have the experience though, and my mum is very pleased with how much awareness and recall Skye now has. I was pleased to be able to work without constantly needing to check on where she was.
Images: 1. Skye's first day in the garden and needing to be tied up in the polytunnel while I replaced lettuce plants, but she finally settled down; 2. Skye lying down on the grass at lunchtime with her pillow; 3. Skye in the garden unleashed and just watching everything go by; 4. Skye with little dog Gibson.
April swooshed by. Probably because a good amount of my attention was given to my trail adventure and to the dog, but also because it rained loads and the temperature dropped. It was a limbo. Usually we have showers, but it doesn’t seem like it’s always so discombobulated where days are full on sun and then suddenly full on wet. And maybe that feeling was exacerbated by a sense of twilight zone when re-sowing the re-sow of seeds due to mollusc damage, who were probably having a right party because of the weather. That’s why the bees were also so active, as they needed to swarm when they had the chance.
I revelled in the cherry blossom, the nice plantings of other gardens when I was out and about, and even managed a few days in my own garden to get on top of weeding. I harvested nettle and made it into a soup with other greens, only to not have a working blender and was then perturbed by the stringiness of it and it got composted.
We’ve hit May and celebrated Beltane in the most casual way (i.e. a campfire jacket potato on April 29th). It doesn’t feel at all that we’re hitting peak bushiness and fruit will soon come. But, signs of elderflower are there. The temperature has risen. We definitely experience longer days (forgetting that we do this every year). And we continue doing as much as we can within our capacity.
Images: 1. My home cherry tree in blossom with a bumblebee getting pollen; 2. Admiring the garden outside of Berkhamsted train station; 3. Nettles harvested from my garden were made into a soup; 4. Campfire jacket potato.