Garden Bears' World - Planting Purple Sprouting

Hello again!  It's little Endon Bear with another Garden Bears' World.

We have been very busy gardening bears again, both on the allotment and in Polar and Grizzly's garden, and that has left us less time for writing than we need to keep up-to-date, so here's a look back at what we were doing early last week.

One crop that we have enjoyed through most of the spring and summer has been Swiss Chard.  Polar picks the leaves and cooks it like spinach.  Unfortunately, the stalks had got tough and it was running to seed and, as Polar wanted the ground for other vegetables it was time to pull it up.

We definitely didn't want to waste any of the nice leaves so we decided to be helpful small bears and pick the last of the tender, green ones.

'I wonder if we should leave a plant in and let it flower and set seed,' I said to Polar.  'Then we can collect the seeds to grow more next year.'

But Polar said she had some seeds left in the packet and hoped the next batch she sowed would have a bigger variety of colours, as these were mostly red and white.  'A good rainbow chard mix has yellow, orange, pink and purple-stemmed plants too,' she explained.

That would have looked lovely!

So Polar stared pulling the old chard plants out.  I carefully saved some little feverfew plants we found growing between the chard, while Hanley rolled the container of chard leaves out of the way.

Then it was time to get the ground ready for some new crops.  Sonning set to work with our little rake, and Hanley was curious to see the fertilizer Polar was planning to use.

'It will add nutrients and increase the pH of the soil,' she said.  'That means it will be more alkaline, which is what brassica plants like.  We are going to plant out some purple sprouting broccoli for next spring.'

But first we had to dig out the last few weeds and rake in the granules of calcified seaweed. While we were working, we noticed several white butterflies flying around.  'Oh no!' said Sonning.  'They are large cabbage whites.  They'll lay their eggs on Polar's broccoli plants!'

'I'll keep them away with very hard stares!' Hanley Bear insisted.  While we were sure that would help, it would have been asking a lot of Hanley to stand outdoors in the broccoli bed whenever it was dry and daylight, but luckily, he didn't have to.

Polar had a plant to keep broccoli and butterflies apart - Grizzly had found some scrap metal in his shed when he was tidying it out and Polar thought these would make good supports for some fine mesh nets.

Soon we had planted six broccoli plants where the chard had been, and Polar had stretched the net over the frame, pegging it down carefully so the birds couldn't get tangled up in it.

While we were at the bottom end of the garden, we decided to see what Grizzly had been doing in his shed.  He wasn't there, he was having his afternoon nap, but the door was open so we went in to explore.

Climbing up an old step-ladder, we found a big workbench, painted with green woodstain.  Hanley looked around to see if there was any white paint or chalk, as he thought it would be a good place for playing football and wanted to mark out the goals and centre circle.

But Sonning said it would be a nuisance to have to collect the ball from the floor everytime it went out of play and we could fall off too, unless we were very careful.  'It would be a good place for Polar to paint things, as it's well-ventilated,' he said.

There were plenty of things to climb in the shed and we saw where Grizzly stored his spare timber, and where the big logs which needed splitting for firewood were stacked.

Grizzly had made the new back of the shed out of old wardrobe doors, which is why there was lots of ventilation.  When we looked closer, we saw one of them could be opened.

We opened it, and looked down into an overgrown garden, where we thought the hedgehogs, bats and other wild creatures might live.  'Perhaps there are even wild bears?' I said.

Sonning said he didn't think so, but then we heard the sound of something much bigger than us moving about outside the shed!  We quickly closed the window and hid behing the logs.

We were very relieved when it turned out to be Grizzly, coming to tell us that our tea was ready.