It’s artichoke season! We’ve dug up our first few and its a  good crop. There are three unrelated artichoke plants, Jerusalem, Chinese and Globe Artichoke, the one that we grow here at Martineau Gardens is the Jerusalem artichoke. Related to the sunflower family, it grows tall stems, over 4 foot in height. The part that is edible, the knobbly brown tubers, are hidden below the surface of the vegetable beds. It’s not until harvest time (usually December) that we find out how well our artichokes have done.

Call into the Gardens to buy a handful of artichokes*. If you’re wondering what to do with them, we recommend turning  them into soup or roasting them. Jamie Oliver has a tasty looking recipe here:

http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/vegetables-recipes/saut-ed-jerusalem-artichokes-with-garlic-and-bay-leaves

*if you’re making a special journey, call ahead to check supplies!

Ever wondered what the Garden Volunteers at Martineau Gardens do once the wintery weather sets in? There’s always plenty to do to keep the Gardens looking beautiful, even if the weather is becoming more challenging. Our Garden volunteers continue to come in over the winter. Pictured here are the Tuesday team in action, working hard with leaf mould. This sack of decaying leaves is nearly a couple of years old. Located close to the entrance of the woodland, leaves are added to the sack during  the  Autumn months.  The resulting leaf mould gets sieved to produce a rich, crumbly soil conditioner. Stewart and the Team bag this up throughout the year to be used around the garden as a soil improver.

Leaf mould is a really useful material to add to your homemade compost to improve it’s properties as a potting compost. If you’d like to know how to make your own leaf mould compost, the RHS have a useful article here.

Here’s a  lovely article written by Stewart Holmes and Jean Fletcher, which was published with Autumnal pictures of the Gardens, last month in GEM Magazine.

Martineau Gardens – Garden Tips GEM Magazine 2014