Roomtuintje Oostbos – D.I.Y. Community Garden

June is here, summer is underway (not that you’d guess) and with a threat of new building plans to develop the ‘roomtuintje oostbos’ terrain looming, (143 apartments, each of 23m2 for students who will be paying €600pm for a temporary contract) the roomtuintje gardeners have been busy.

Here’s a photo gallery of some of the growings on…

Cage of Green Peas in flower and now growing pods.

Blooming Dropplant.

Salad lettuce in the company of Strawberries.

Mini Camomile meadow

Ruccola flowers.

Tomatoes in a hot house made from recycled house salvage.

Street salvaged Evergreen Connifer.

Calendula (Goudsbloem) in flower.

Snijbonen – “Green Bean”

Basket o’Strawberries (Aardbeien).

Little bush.

Black and Red Potatoe plants.

First Kohlrabi plants.

Garden bed with Leeks and Green Peas in Harmony.

Late Tuinbonen / Broad Bean harvest from last year’s plants.

Drop…

Raspberries!!!

Young pumpkin plants

Unidentified flower growing from a bulbous root. Reportedly the root tastes spicy like radish.

Ornamental thistle.

Big strawberry plants with goudsbloem and lettuce in flower.

Last year the garden was teeming with little creatures , creeping, crawling n buzzin around. This year is no different. We thought we’d give you a closer view. Here are some of the garden creatures we see in May & June…

A Yellow 20 Spotted Ladybird larvae among the Citron Melissa.

Sint Jansvlinder / Zygaena trifolii

Red Soldier Beetle

Lapsnuit-kever / Ortiohynchus Sulcus or Vine Weevil

Unidentified bug (ID needed)

Dead bee being invaded by a mite! …a worry for bee keepers…

more to come….

So Winter 2013/14 in Amsterdam didn’t happen. The ground didn’t freeze, the snow didn’t fall and it seemed like a long autumn rolled into an even longer spring. We are just getting some summer weather now in June!

Anyway as such many of the plants survived the “winter”. The brassicas keep on flowering,  the Broad beans continued to get fat and even the Stevia began to flower.

Here follow some more pics from April 2014.

Daslook – Wild Garlic, Bear Garlic

Calendula in company with Grape Hyacinthas

Broad Beans

Lavas  – Lovage

Frambozen – Roseberry

Buckwheat sprouts

Dropplant

Leek – Prei

Flowering Pak Choi

Citroen Melissa – Lime Balm

Last years harvest wasn’t a stereotypical scene of busy villagers reaping the rewards after a long spent spring and summer toiling over the fields, no big parties to celebrate a bumper crop, nothing like that.However spend a lot of effort getting soil, sowing seeds, weeding  and debugging. We even managed to put a few things in the ground in autumn so as to be ready for springtime.

Baby Pak Choi (October 2013)

Here are some photos of the results.

Green Paprika (October 2013)

Broccoli

Boerenkool

Cauliflower (Oct 2013)

Broccoli ready for harvest (Oct 2013)

Winter Squash In Autumn (Nov 2013)

Purple Cabbages (Nov 2013)

Bees in a Courgette Flower

Butterflies on Buddlia

Dragonflies…

Ant Invasion Dapperbuurt!

Roomtuintje Oostbos is under attack, not by cops or by knokplug (thugs) but by those little creatures known as ants. The terrain is mostly covered by a thick layer of sand which the ants thrive in. We thought at first that it may be useful to have the ants nesting in or around our patches as they may aerate the soil but not so.

Populations have been on a steady increase and recently new varieties have been spotted like those larger ones with wings which seem to be very popular with the local black birds that can collect lots of them in their beaks before flying off to feed their young.

The ants have been protecting the Aphids (big green fat ones) and the black fly which are damaging certain crops like the tuinbonen (beans). The ants will hang around the Aphid groups and deter predators like the ladybird. Once a ladybird turns up they get into attack mode and the ladybird is forced to flee. The Ants are using the Aphids for their sweet secretions which they produce after sucking the life out of our lovely beans and peas.

Not only do the ants protect the Aphids but they have now begun to make nests in our vegetable and herb patches and boxes leading to damaged roots and ultimately dead plants.

We retaliated by putting a solution of sugar and yeast and some dried yeast with sugar grains next to one of the ant nests. What resulted soon after was a chaotic situation for the ants. As they brought home their trojan horse all hell broke loose. The ants nest began to explode. The ants promptly evacuated taking their precious eggs to another spot.

Beware The Ants!

      Lady Bird on Broad Bean

  Monks Cress

  Jerusalem Artichoke, Sunroot

  Young Fennel

Quick foto update since last post. More soon…

Chief gardener: