Paul Rankin at Orchard Park

Michelin starred chef Paul Rankin visited Orchard Park last week in the search for good local meat which he found at the Lagan Farm Shop. It was part of ITV’s Saturday morning programme ‘10 Mile Menu’. Celebrity chefs team up with non-chef celebrities to create a menu with all the ingredients coming from within a 10 mile radius. Paul Rankin was working with Diarmuid Garvin, the garden designer, and they both visited to find what they needed. The meat in the farm shop comes from the farm just yards away, and is prepared by David Mortimer, the Lagan Farm butcher. Paul Ranking is pictured hear with Orchard Park cook Dave Warr talking menus!  Meanwhile, Diarmuid hopefully found a few gems in the plant area.

Orchard Park is on the Shaftesbury Road just outside Gillingham and was set up to provide a new home for the Lagan Farm Shop which had operated on the site for several years, and for Milton Garden Plants, the nursery and country plant centre from Milton on Stour.

4th Orchard Park Mangold Wurzel Competition

• £100 Prize Money (£75 Seniors, £25 Juniors)
• £1 Entry – Open to All, proceeds to MSAADA
• Sow your seeds now for best results
• In October, bring your best Mangolds in for the Weigh-In
• Open to all the family
• Ask for details at the till

The aim of the game:

After growing your Mangold Wurzel, bring it to Orchard Park, to take part in the competition. Your Mangold Wurzel will be weighed in.

The winner will be If you succeed in having the heaviest, you’ve won. It’s as simple as that!

Proceeds go to Msaada

Weigh in is on 27th October.

Prepare the seed bed well – dig deep and incorporate some well-rotted compost or other organic matter. You can start the seed off in small pots, peat pots or trays then transplant when big enough to handle. Find a good sunny spot in the garden to grow them, keep weed free and water regularly to get them as big as possible. The mature root will be 95% water!

Liquid feeding during the growing season is bound to help. Use a high potash feed. You can make your own from Comfrey leaves, or buy a seaweed feed such as Maxicrop, or even use Tomato Feed. If you want to grow in a pot, use a deep one to allow the roots to develop fully and keep watered regularly – don’t drown but don’t let them dry out.

held at Orchard Park on Wednesday, 24th  March 2010 

A team of true professional horticulturists fielded a string of questions from a terrific audience:

Chris Allen – Professional horticulturist
Charles Dowding – Organic veg grower
Alan Power – Stourhead Head Gardener
Richard Cumming – Orchard Park

It was all in aid of Julia’s House (The Dorset Children’s Hospice) & Cancer Research

The potato seed should be positioned so that the sprouts are uppermost and the ‘stalk’ end (where they were severed from the parent plant) is at the bottom. Sometimes this is a bit difficult to judge, but if you get it wrong, and the potatoes sprout from the bottom end, simply rub off the sprouts and turn the potato to the correct position.

As the potato seed produce sprouts, remove all but the topmost four to ensure that they receive all the goodness of the seed potato. Make sure the sprouts are green and not white coloured. White sprouts are caused by not enough light.
If the sprouts appear too early for planting the potatoes outside, simply rub them off cleanly and they will re-sprout in a couple of week’s time.

Mid March is the ideal time to plant the sprouted potatoes in the open ground. Plant main crop potatoes about 35cm/15in apart, in rows which are 75cm/2ft 6in apart. Where you are planting more than one row, the rows should (ideally) run from North to South to allow each plant its full share of sun.

Dig a trench about 10cm / 4in deep, placing the potatoes in it with the sprouts pointing upwards. Hand fill the trench over the potatoes trying to avoid damaging any sprouts. Scatter lasting fertiliser over the top soil and rake it in.

Tulips – must be planted by the end of December at the Latest

A sure sign that the seasons are changing is the mix of things on sale in the garden centres. We now have our bulbs on sale with the full range of spring flowering daffodils, narcissi, tulips hyacinths and all the less common sorts. And if you want to know the difference between daffodils and narcissi I will let you into the secret…….there is no difference at all! Narcissus [plural= narcissi] is the botanical term and daffodil is the common name. In practice we use the first for special varieties and the species and daffodils to describe the everyday garden daffs with large golden or mixed colour trumpets. Gardeners and horticulturists have their own language, not jargon, but language but it adds to the whole growing experience to know what things are really called.

The other question so often asked is why have you got bulbs in the middle of summer? It’s all in the timing. The bulbs are actually lifted when the foliage dies down in May, then they are sorted and graded and prepared for sale. We could probably have them on sale in July but that really would be too early. The planting time extends up to the end of November for daffodils and the end of December for tulips, but these are the very latest dates and I certainly recommend buying your bulbs as early as possible if you want a good choice rather than the leftovers.

This is a wonderful time in the natural year. Hedgerows and orchards are heavy with fruit and the wild creatures are busy all around us, getting ready for the harder days to come. But for now, summer’s finale is there to be enjoyed.

Now is a good time for a sort out after the lazy days of summer. Pots and baskets will be looking tired and the lawn may be patchy, so there are plenty of excuses to be in the garden. We’re also coming into prime time for planting, from bulbs to perennials, shrubs and trees.

And September means ‘back to school’… If you haven’t got children this makes it a great time to get out and about, to visit gardens or go on plant-buying trips, away from the crowds of summer holidays. If your family is still at home, make the most of after school to get them outside, blackberrying and letting off steam after being cooped up all day.