Apley Walled Garden progress

Apley Walled Garden redcurrants in Apley Farm Shop, £1.95 per punnet

Soft fruit in Apley Farm shop chiller – our loganberries got eaten before there was a chance to photo them

Apley Walled Garden produce this week includes the first of this year’s red currants (perfect for summer pudding or redcurrant jelly) & loganberries (they lasted 10 mins in our kitchen!).

We’ll be sharing the Apley Plant Centre stand at the Shrewsbury Flower Show, Friday 12 & Saturday 13 August. We will be there promoting our produce, the farm shop & walled garden tours.

In a presentation I’ve written to give to local interest groups in the winter months, I’ve included a section on how it’s all actually done. So here are just some of the tasks involved:

1. Turning out the garlic & onions
2. Weeding & digging over patches
3. Planting sweetcorn
4. Creating beds next to our new event lawn
5. Edging the lawn with Marigolds
6. Feeding & watering the tomatoes, cucumbers, aubergines, peppers, lettuce, courgettes.
7. Watering the carrots
8. Weeding the polytunnels ready for new seeds.
9. Cutting back the basil as it has begun to flower.
10. Removing all the bolted Intreo lettuce from polytunnel.
11. Removing more side shoots on tomatoes.
12. Feeding the beans on sweet pea frames, bamboo sticks, dwarfs bean & gourds frame with chicken manure.
13. Planting out young plants seedlings
14. Planting more courgettes
15. Making new beds to make it look more uniform
16. Planting the celeriac in neat rows
17. Spraying on bare ground
18. Delivering produce daily to the farm shop (Lolla Rossa lettuce & Apache new potatoes), butcher (lemon thyme, basil & rosemary) & Creamery Cafe (new potatoes for roast Sunday lunch)
19. Sending me photos, to keep me in the loop
20. Updating & emailing the crop report weekly, to 3 local restaurants
21. Planting the cardoons in place, ready for the season (cardoons are the artichoke thistle, cardone, cardoni, carduni, or cardi, is a thistle-like plant in the sunflower family)
22. Placing a small order with Kings Seeds

Fruit crop report (fruit cages only)

• Raspberries: Glen Lyon, Glen ample, Octavia, Polka, Autumn bliss
• Loganberries: Varieties Unknown
• Red currants: Ravada
• White currants: White versailles
• Gooseberries: Varieties unknown

The Calendula is now blooming. The runner bean canes have the blue lake variety & lap lap dwarf bean growing up them.

Here’s some lovely feedback from a recent tour: “On behalf of CSMA Shropshire Group, I would like to thank you all for the very enjoyable tour of the walled gardens yesterday evening.  It was fascinating to hear a little of the history of the estate and its owners, and how the walled garden had developed over the years.  It is a massive project that you are undertaking and we all wish you well with it, though I don’t envy the people doing the weeding! A few of the members visiting yesterday already use the Farm Shop and were pleased to be able to see where some of their vegetables were being grown.  Now that our awareness of the gardens has been raised, others will be using it too, I’m sure.”

We desperately need volunteers at this time of year, so if you know anyone who’s keen to improve their horticultural skills & get involved, please call Apley Estate Office on 01952 580 510 or email enquiries@apleyfarmshop.co.uk or enquiries@apleyestate.co.uk.