Alice Park Community Garden

30/05/2026

Kohlrabi (Brassica oleracea var. gongylodes), in the mustard family, is the eccentric close relative to cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, Brussels sprouts, collard greens and Chinese broccoli. It’s a biennial vegetable, grown as an annual that produces a bulbous, enlarged stem, topped with upright thick leaves. Harvest the swollen stems when they are the size of a golf ball to a tennis ball, beyond which they can get woody. The leaves can be eaten like kale. The green varieties are sweetest, the purple are hardiest.

The purple-flushed globe has a texture similar to the sweet, crunchy heart of a broccoli stem, but has a sweeter flavour and can be eaten as a crisp raw in salads or slaws or cooked like turnip: roasted, stir-fried, steamed, pickled, grated into fritters or added to flatbreads.

Because kohlrabi grows quickly, planting seeds sequentially from March through July allows for a continuous harvest. Kohlrabi matures in about 60 days from seed, and 40 days started from transplants. Keep well watered so that it grows steadily. May and June is NOT the time to sow as plants maturing in the hot, dry weather tend to produce inedible woody bulbs. The good news is that sowings can resume from mid-July to mid-August for a winter harvest. If you want to intercrop kohlrabi with slower-growing, taller crops, opt for non-brassicas, to avoid attracting brassica pests. For example, planting kohlrabi with celery works well because kohlrabi forms its bulb above ground, avoiding direct root competition. In summer, grow with nasturtiums (which act as a "trap crop" drawing aphids away from your vegetables) and aromatic herbs like sage or thyme.

13/05/2026

Alice Park Community Garden is thrilled to have been awarded £19,000 from the National Lottery Community Fund. This represents a substantial contribution that will help us care for, and sustain, the community garden over the next few years, while continuing to share our love of food growing, nature and community action with you.
As well as keeping the garden open all year and providing opportunities for volunteering, we’ll be running new workshops focused on the skills and experiences needed to prepare our community for future challenges, covering topics such as biodiversity, conservation and food growing. Outreach events for new volunteers and younger growers will be specifically designed to focus on seasonal food production and resilient growing techniques, such as urban permaculture, cultivation for climate change, and equipping participants with hands-on experience needed for local food security. We’ll be asking for your input to help shape our programmes. What would you like us to organise? More updates and events coming soon!
Thank you to the National Lottery Community Fund for helping our garden continue to flourish — this is a win for the whole community

04/05/2026

We're delighted to be part. of the Annual Larkhall Festival this Bank Holiday! Please come visit our community garden today as part of Larkhall Festival Open Gardens Trail. Plant sale under the oak shelter. Bring and buy. Find us in Alice Park, Gloucester Road, Bath BA1 7BL What3Words ///placed.hulk.bottom. Looking forward to seeing you there!!!

03/05/2026

Here's a preview of some of the plants we will be selling on Bank Holiday Monday at the Community Garden. The garden is open all day as part of the Larkhall Festival Open Garden's scheme so please come and see us, enjoy the garden and support our sale. All proceeds go towards the upkeep of the garden, seeds and sundries. Thanks to our tireless volunteers for pulling this all together, as usual!

10/04/2026

Can you help record Bug Splats on your car number plate? As part of the annual Buglife - The Invertebrate Conservation Trust .org.uk survey up until Wednesday 30 September. Records are used to understand insect abundance and the challenges they face, as well as to map trends in populations over time.

🪰 Download the app which is available free in both IOS and Android.
🪰 Create an account to sign up.
🪰 Start surveying on any journey you make in a vehicle between 1 April to 30 September.

The more journeys you conduct the survey on, the better – and counts of zero bugs are just as important to submit.

The concept is simple:

🪰 Clean the number plate before making your journey in a vehicle;
🪰 When you reach your destination, count the number of bug splats across your entire number plate;
🪰 Use the “Virtual Splatometer” within the Bugs Matter App to get the best photograph possible;
🪰 The photo and details must then be submitted via the app;
🪰 You don’t even need to be the driver of the vehicle you are travelling in – but you do need their permission;
🪰 The app also includes a tutorial and some safety advice.

The more journeys you conduct the survey on, the better – and counts of zero bugs are just as important to submit.

10/04/2026

https://www.instagram.com/p/DTiWN-OCk0V/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
wild

10/04/2026

Maybe 8 out of 9 here in Bath.... maybe Okra is a little optimistic without a polytunnel.... here's advice from .com

That monster zucchini isn't a prize. It's the reason your plant stopped producing.

When a vegetable matures its seeds, the plant gets the signal: mission accomplished, stop flowering. Every day you delay picking, you're telling the plant to shut down. Pick daily and the plant keeps flowering, fruiting, and producing all season.

🌱 The ones that respond most:

- Zucchini — pick at six inches. The baseball bat on the vine is why you haven't gotten a new one in ten days

- Green beans — snap them off at pencil thickness. Once the seeds harden inside the pod, the plant stops flowering

- Cucumber — check daily. They go from perfect to oversized in forty-eight hours in warm weather. A yellow swollen cucumber is a seed factory and the vine's signal to quit

- Okra — the tightest window. Three inches is tender. Five inches is woody. Check every day once pods start forming

- Cherry tomato — every ripe one you pick sends a signal through the vine to open new flowers. A cluster of overripe splitting fruit signals the opposite

- Basil — every pinch above a leaf pair turns one stem into two. By midsummer a regularly pinched plant has dozens of stems. An unpinched plant is one tall stalk that flowers and dies

Pick daily. The picking is the trigger 🌿

08/04/2026

Swifts, Martins and High Fliers - The Garden Web of Life Workshop Series Sat 18 Apr 2026 2:00 PM - 4:30 PM

Join the Garden Web of Life team for the fourth workshop - focusing on high fliers like Swifts and House Martins, and the high flying insects they eat..
We're thinking about our gardens in the context of a column of life extending vertically up into the sky, with what we grow on every surface supporting the abundance of flying insects that swifts, house martins and swallows feed on. If you don't have your own garden, come and learn how you can help on a local project nearby.

https://www.tickettailor.com/events/communitynaturehaven/2098661

07/04/2026

We’re starting to sow! Climbing (Pole) beans, such as Runner beans and French beans are chosen for flavour, texture and versatility. Whilst per plant yields are greater growing Runner beans, the benefit of French beans is their versatility. They can be eaten at the pod stage as ‘green beans’, as shelled beans and can also be dried for storage, to use later in the year and for saving seed. Drying beans need a long growing season to fully mature on the plant, so are the best sown in early Summer. They also need support- vertical growing is a great space saver. Dwarf (bush) French beans provide earlier pickings but tend to crop in a short space of time. Climbing varieties take longer to pod but are more productive overall and set seed up until the first frosts. They’re dependable and delicious sources of protein, suited to our climate. Recommended varieties for dried storing are Climbing French Bean District Nurse, Czar (butter bean), Borlotti, Lazy Housewife, Black Croation and Tarbais. Some varieties withstand hot, dry conditions, some weather the cold, or frequent heavy rain, so growing more than one variety can be a way of hedging your bets for greater food security. Isolation distances between varieties should be at least 10m to avoid cross-pollination. This allows each variety to breed ‘true to type’, and carry forward in the bean, adaptations due to the individual plant’s experience of stresses like drought or cold, soil type and growing conditions. Saved from year to year, your beans become better able to cope with your conditions, more resilient, having inherited advantageous adaptive changes from their parents.