Castle Garden Summer 2011

This summer was our second growing season and this year we had more areas of the garden created, more produce, more flowers, more herbs and more wildlife and people!

Our resident medicinal horticulturalist Quinn, created more amazing herb gardens at the front and planted a lavender hedge. Min our terracing queen, got stuck in on the hill and terraced her way down filling it with bee and human loving herbs and flowers, which she has been maintaining and harvesting from all summer.

In August, we had our first harvest of honey. (about 33 jars which all sold out within a few days!)

Barry, our loyal garden soldier researched, designed, dug and created our pond, which within a few days attracted some of the Castle wildlife.

We had a go at growing hops. We grew 1.5 metre square of wheat and it was scythed, threshed and winnowed, and we got 1.17kg of wheat.

Our young fruit trees and shrubs started to produce a little bit of fruit, and we ate raspberries, strawberries, apricots, apples, pears, plums and figs!

The Castle Cafe team have been harvesting and using green leaf salads, tomatoes, cucumbers, squashes, peppers, onions, garlic, carrot, beetroot, chard, sweetcorn, courguettes, lots and lots of french beans (purple and yellow ones) and herbal teas. There was lots of grass mowing using austrian scythes. We had more castle staff come out to use and work in the garden, turning compost, harvesting, weeding, watering, making bunting and decorations for the garden party. We've been doing some outdoor cooking on our rocket stove and made tempura and chips from garden vegetables. We've also been busy harvesting seeds and herbs to dry for use in the cafe over winter.

All in all it has been a very productive summer and thanks to everyone who took part to make it look even more amazing this year!