Garden Bears' World - Another Day at the Allotment

Hello everyone!  Although Endon Bear is our Head Gardener, all of us take turns to help Polar and Grizzly, our human guardians, with small-bear-sized jobs, so today I am going to tell you about a gardening adventure I had a few days ago.  Endon and Hanley were busy being Bear Hunt window bears that day.

Polar said she and Grizzly were going to their allotment and one sensible bear could come with them.  She picked me, but promised the smaller bears they would both get turns one day.

Before we set off, Polar suggested we sow some cabbages and other vegetables from the same family, which are brassicas.  Polar had filled a module tray with compost and my job was to make shallow planting holes in each module, then sow two or three small seeds into each.

'If more than one seed germinates, we will thin them out so just the strongest seedling is left,' Polar explained.  'That way, we shouldn't end up with too many plants of the same variety, and we might not need to pot them up either.'

Polar put the tray of brassicas on a shady shelf in her greenhouse, then started gathering things for us to take to the allotment.  I travelled down in the trug with some important safety equipment for my humans - drinking water, sunblock and liquid soap, and set up 'base camp' outside the little allotment greenhouse.

Grizzly started digging over a plot where we planned to plant broad beans a little later this month, while Polar was going to plant potatoes.  She planned to plant them a little deeper this year and to save some soil for 'earthing up' as they grow, as last year some of the crop were spoiled, because the heavy rain washed the soil away from over them and they went all green.

I started climbing on the soil Polar had dug out of the planting holes, but it was loose and I slipped into one of the holes!

'Careful, little bear!' said Polar, lifting me out and dusting the dirt off of my trousers and tail.  'You were supposed to be being a sensible bear!  You had better sit and look after the potatoes for now.  Or you can explore the plot, but don't get in the way where Grizzly is digging.'

I was sorry for being a silly bear, and sat quietly for a few minutes, before deciding to explore - sensibly!  I found some daffodils growing in one plot and some very pretty daisies growing on one of the paths.

'I wonder if I should help Polar plant her potatoes?' I thought.  But , when I got back down to the bed she had been working on. she had planted them already!  At least I could climb the mound in the middle without falling in a big hole now.

Grizzly warned me that he was going to strim some of the paths, so I climbed Polar's big digging fork to get safely out of the way.  There is a very good view from the top of the handle!

Then I scurried up the path that had been trimmed to check on the phaecelia plants growing where Polar plans to plant more potatoes later, after these 'green manure' plants have flowered to feed the bees, and to check the compost heap, which Polar has been digging out to improve some of the other plots.

I checked Grizzly's digging too, and decided it was good enough for planting our beans.  

I will let Endon or Hanley help with that - as long as whoever gets to go promises to be a sensible bear!

Garden Bears' World - Endon plants Broad Beans

Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of Garden Bears' World with me, Endon Bear.  Before we go into the garden, I thought you might like to see some of the daffodils Polar grows specially for cut flowers.

Now that Spring is here, there are plenty of flowers in the garden, including these little bells on the dwarf, variegated comfrey and these pretty primroses.

But Spring is also a busy time in the vegetable garden.  You might remember us bears sowing some broad bean seeds in February.  Here they are now, healthy little plants and, after a couple of weeks in the coldframe, all ready for the garden.

 Polar raked over the bed where they are to go last week, covering it with wire mesh to keep the naughty cats off.  She lifted the wire, then used the paving slabs on each side to mark out a nice straight line for our beans.

We decided to give them lots of light and space, so are planting four in each row, and six rows in the bed.  I started digging the planting holes, but it was hard work for a small bear!

Polar suggested that she dig the holes with her big trowel, then I could drop a bean plant in - in its cardboard tube - and fill in some soil around it.  Soon, we had completed our first row.

Polar gave each little plant a good drink of water, before I pulled extra soil up around them, to cover the cardboard tubes completely.

 Once we had planted and watered in six rows of bean plants, Polar put some nets over the top, to make sure the pigeons didn't peck the leaves.

'I think we've earned a cup of tea and some toast and marmalade!' said Polar, and I agreed.  There's nothing like toast and marmalade for Elevenses, when you've been a busy small bear!

Being 'Bear Hunt' Bears

This is only a little blog post, to explain why you might be seeing us having adventures one bear at a time, rather than all together, over the next few weeks.

This is because our human guardians, their friends and neighbours are having to do things differently, due to this nasty Coronavirus.  Last week, we bears had a meeting to discuss what else we could do to help, on top of being good bears and not complaining about the lack of adventures.

We read that some bears had been sitting in their house windows waving to human cubs outside.  A famous writer and poet called Mr Michael Rosen once wrote a book for cubs called 'We're Going on a Bear Hunt', about a silly family who went looking for bears and found a really big one, so the idea was that the cubs could hunt for bears while out for walks.  Mr Michael has been very poorly with the nasty virus himself, so we hope he is feeling much better now.

We looked out of the window by our Bear Basket and realised that we were hidden from the road by a big hydrangea.  'We will have to go upstairs instead,' said Hanley.  

So we climbed the stairs and Endon soon scrambled up to the bigger front bedroom window sill.

'This is a much better place to see and wave to human cubs,' Endon called down to us.  I climbed up to see, while Hanley decided to see what the view was like from the smaller window.

'There are a load of potatoes here!' cried Hanley.  'Do you think Polar and Grizzly have forgotten them?'

'No,' Endon explained.  'They put them up here to chit, to start sprouting, because this room is shady and cooler than the rest of the house.  They'll take them to the allotment for planting soon.' 

Hanley joined Endon in the window that day, and I went to the allotment to help our human guardians get it ready for the potatoes.  When we set off, I waved to the smaller bears.  It was quite difficult to see them.

The next day, we all sat in the window.  Hanley suggested it might be fun to pretend we were watching a football match, so we put our Stoke City scarves on.  Hanley made up a commentary for a game where Stoke beat Bayern Munich by eight goals to two, which stopped him getting bored, but we didn't see many cubs and they didn't seem to see us.

We did see another bear in a window across the road, and lots of rainbows drawn by human cubs for the brave health workers.

We decided to make a rainbow to put up in our window.  Polar gave us a piece of card and some felt-tipped pens to use, and sketched out the arc of a rainbow for us.  We took it in turns to colour it in, being very careful not to get felt pen marks on the bed linen!

Then we made a sign on the other side of the cardboard with pictures of all of us and 'Going on a Bear Hunt' written on it.

We hope these will encourage any human cubs being taken out for walks around the village to see us and wave back when we wave to them, but we don't really mind if they stay safe playing in their gardens and read about our adventures instead, because we will still be having small adventures at home.  

We've decided that at least two bears will be on Bear Hunt window duty all day, but that means one of us can leave the window to do other things, like gardening or cooking or making things, and we all come downstairs to have tea and watch television in the evening, before it's time to snuggle up in our basket for the night.

But we will be up bright and early tomorrow, in case any human cubs are out, with their mummies and daddies, hunting for bears!

Garden Bears' World - Potting Up with Hanley Bear

Ay up, everyone!  It's Hanley Bear here, showing you how to pot up your seedlings so they grow into nice, healthy plants.  I love curry and other spicy food, so I've been growing chillies.  All but one of the seeds I planted have germinated, so I've got twenty-nine baby plants!

Human guardian Polar and I went out to the greenhouse and, while she brought in a big bag of compost, I gathered up some pots and checked they were clean.  Then I laid out some supermarket yogurt pot trays for them to stand in. 

Resting the compost carefully on her finger-tips, and careful not to squash the seedlings, Polar tipped the first tray up, so I could see how much root my seedlings had made.  They she rested a cardboard box on top and turned them back the right way up.

'We have to carefully separate the plants now,' she said.  'Try not to damage the roots and don't hold them by the stems.'

I found a piece of stiff wire I could use to ease them apart, while Polar filled some pots with compost and used her finger to make a planting hole in the middle.

I carefully lifted the first chilli plant by its seed-leaves and lowered it into the pot, them pressed the compost in snuggly around it with my paws.

The pots were too heavy for a small bear to carry to their trays, so Polar put them on the shelf for me.  Soon, we had potted up all of the first variety and could get to work on the second tray.

I had to jump down from the shelf before Polar watered them all!

Then it was Sonning's turn to pot up his sweet peppers.  You might remember that he had two packets of seed - a very old packet and a packet of fresh seeds.  If they had all grown, there would have been forty plants, but only the newer seeds germinated.

Sonning still had twenty peppers, so he and Polar got busy potting them up, putting them on a different shelf to my chillies so we don't muddle them up.

We will look after them in the greenhouse at home for now.  When they are bigger, we will take some to the allotments for our pals down there, but keep plenty for growing ourselves.  I hope I get loads of chillies, so I can give some to our friend Mrs Shug, who makes the delicious Indian food at Stoke market, but I must remember to always wash my paws after touching chillies.

Polar says us bears must wash our paws regularly to stay safe anyway, so that's what I'm off to do now.  T'ra, everyone!