Last Saturday, in between squally showers, Edible Fishponds began to come to fruition. Carol Laslett has been working really hard to make this happen and it was wonderful to see all that hard work begin to pay off. The beds opposite the shops in Straits Parade belong to the shops opposite so we approached the Co-op and asked if they would let a bed be used for edibles, to which they kindly said yes. the idea behind the way we have begun to address the planting is that a lot of the plants haven’t really had the care and attention they might need, so we heavily pruned Salias that had gone over, removed a lot of weeds and even more rubbish, and then planted the plants in between the plants that were left. As time goes on more and more of the old plants will be removed or moved around, and eventually the bed will be choc full of edibles for the community in Fishponds to use.

We must really thank Sims Hill Harvest at this point as they incredibly kindly donated a huge amount of plants to the bed, including leeks, swiss chard, leef beets and kales, most of which will be ready in late autumn and winter. We also added a couple of gherkin plants which hopefully the slugs will leave alone, some parsley and some seeds of coriander and salad leaves. We have noted that also a couple of calendula plants have been added to the bed so we hope to see more community involvement in the bed very soon.

The next work day will be announced soon and we will add more to the planting then as well as removing some of the very sorry Hyssop plants that were covered in bees as they were in full flower last weekend. We will replace them with herbs and veg plants and we will be careful to ensure that we add enough pollinators into the mix for the bees that obviously use this area regularly to feed.

Before we began!

Leeks

Parsley being watered in.