#vegetabes

Patio garden! The early-spring “Before” shots.

Herb table in the sun: basil, parsley, cilantro.

Patio border: not much to look at now, but in a little while the leaf litter will have finished breaking down, and this will be peachy miniature tea-roses and blooming lavender in a bed of dark green trailing ground cover, with frothy white forsythia behind it and a Japanese maple above.

Three tomato plants and A Bean that self-started after not doing much at all last year. I’m giving them a shot to see how they do. And two new blueberry bushes.

Table: a row of strawberries. A little hill of wild strawberries. Green onions, that also self-started after the winter. And a red gooseberry bush that already has a personality and wants to be loved but also to fight everything.

Last year’s patio crop was an abject failure, due to the succession of heatwaves, a jerk of a squirrel, and hardly any bees around. This year, I’m trying squirrel netting - plastic first, with plans to upgrade to wire mesh if need be. It *should* be wide enough not to give bees any trouble, but I’m afraid it does look dauntingly cobwebby. We’ll see. And then dancing birds and butterflies for a splash of colour meanwhile.

Surrey Docks Farm

The derelict landscape that was left behind in Rotherhithe after the closure of Surrey Commercial Docks in 1970s was quickly put to use by locals, who obtained permission to graze goats, keep chickens, and grow vegetables on the unused patches of land. They were soon offered a larger plot of land next to Greenland Dock, once a major part of the whale blubber and timber trade. Here, a farm quickly grew, soon producing fresh eggs, honey and goats milk, and offering play schemes and work experience to local residents. As an early experiment in urban faring in London, it also drew in visitors from further afield.

By the 1980s, the land around Greenland Dock was marked for development: the farm had to find a new home, and it moved to a larger site upriver to South Wharf, a location that was at various points in history a timber wharf, a River Ambulance Service receiving station for smallpox patients, and a Fire Service river station.

Today, Surrey Docks Farm is still rearing goats and chickens, which have since been joined by sheep, pigs, ducks, geese, turkeys, bees, donkeys, and ponies. Being a working farm, it has an objective to increase people’s awareness animal welfare, but also of farming and food production, and so some of the animals are raised for slaughter, and the meat sold in the on-site shop.

Alongside the four-legged, feathered and buzzy inhabitants of the farm, there are extensive vegetable plots, an orchard, a herb garden, and even a dye garden – again, much of the produce can be purchased by the public. There is also blacksmith’s forge, a classroom for visiting schools, and a very nice little café. Visitors should also look out for the smaller furry creatures – rabbits, guinea pigs and ferrets, plus a reasonably friendly if slightly scratchy farm cat!

Past. Present. Future.

Quick and Easy Noodle Stir Fry

So if Sakuya is a vegetable... then if he eats a vegetable, is it cannibalism??? 0.0