tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-82210324289377030362024-02-03T18:19:13.540+00:00NomeGrownAllotmenteering AdventuresNomehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03883852903828005065noreply@blogger.comBlogger340125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221032428937703036.post-41385599446631798282016-05-21T12:29:00.000+01:002016-05-23T23:17:42.673+01:00Fixing My Own Food Systems<div class="MsoNormal">
It's only May, but it's feeling like a tough year on the
allotment already. We made a great start, and took advantage of the mild winter
by getting everything cleared and the soil prepared in good time, so that it
was all ready for planting and sowing come March. But March and April were so
cold and windy and forbidding – and so busy for us in other ways – that we
somehow still got behind with things. Now, we're just about back on track – at least
we would be, but the slugs are eating everything in sight, and the warm spell we
had in early May means the weeds are the healthiest thing on the plot once
again. And I seem to be having trouble germinating any squashes, which is unheard of and really frustrating.</div>
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In the garden, however, I can really keep an eye on things,
and the fact I'm going to be hosting one of Transition St Albans' <a href="https://transitionstalbans.org/open-food-gardens-2016/" target="_blank">Open Food Gardens</a> later in the summer has provided extra motivation to make it great this
year. In the garden I can do a quick two minutes' weeding here and there as
soon as I see the need, and I can go out at night and pick the slugs off
things. The garden brings me pleasure every day; every time I look out the
window.</div>
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Yet there's one thing that's really bothering me in the
garden. My March-sown spinach plants are bolting and I haven't picked a single
leaf yet. My gorgeous stand of rare perennial kales has been virtually
untouched all spring. My radishes are going woody. I'm somehow far more
efficient in the garden than I am in the kitchen, and gorgeous organic
homegrown produce actually goes to waste. Can you believe it? I'm ashamed to
admit it. And it's strange because I used to have a great, great passion for
cooking, and love to spend hours in the kitchen cooking up complex dishes with
virtually any ingredients.</div>
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Since I quit my nice safe (frustrating, oppressive) full-time job five years
ago, I feel like everything about me has changed. I see the world differently
now I've learned different things about it. Some old hobbies and passions have
been replaced with new ones – others are just... gone. I've struggled to fill
my time, and then I've overfilled it. I don't think I have time, anymore, for a
passion for cooking.</div>
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I had a bit of a revelation watching <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b07cc9rt/rick-steins-long-weekends-5-bologna">Rick
Stein's Long Weekend</a> in Bologna on TV last night. It painted a picture of a
culture which still makes real, handmade food the absolute centre of their
lives; where everyone spoke of the wonderful local produce, and all those
involved in making food were real craftspeople. TV is always selective in what
it depicts, of course, and I do wonder how true a picture it was of the place,
but clearly it was different from the food culture that I know. Towards the end
of the program, Rick asked food blogger Enrica Lazzarini what she thought was
so 'particular' about the cuisine of Bologna. "The love of cooking and the
love of food is in our DNA," she said. "We grow up looking at our granny
and mother cook from the very beginning of the day, all day long". And I
thought yes, that's what it takes. Growing and harvesting and preserving and
cooking and feeding and clearing up and storing and composting... It's an
endless cycle. It's not the first time I've thought this, but it was certainly
a timely reminder. You've got to be dedicated. You've got to give time. "It's your identity,"
she finished. "Without food, who are you? No-one."</div>
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You probably already know that I believe <a href="http://nomegrown.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/you-vote-three-times-every-day.html">fixing
our food systems could fix or improve a great many of the world's problems</a>,
and that food is and must be a central focus of our lives. Yes, our
identity. </div>
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So is it a worthwhile compromise that for man to occupy himself with more
advanced things he must sacrifice his health and the world's by forgetting
where his food comes from? Do any of the 'more advanced things' really matter
anyway? <b><span style="font-weight: normal;">Advancement is eating the
world.</span></b><b><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </span></b>Industrialism
consumes itself. Automation removes the need for people. <a href="http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2016/04/quit-job-right-way/">Innovation
consumes the innovation of the generation earlier.</a> <b><span style="font-weight: normal;">'Advanced' modern factory farms are poisoning us and <b>'</b>advanced' modern crops need more chemical application than ever.</span></b><b><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </span></b>What is the great goal? Wealth,
of course, but for what? Convenience? Luxury? The freedom to sit back and get
fat and sick? The freedom to enjoy leisure activities in diminishing open
spaces and polluted air? The freedom to produce art about how dreadful
everything is?</div>
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I'm not about to quit everything and become a full-time
home-farmer and housewife – I couldn't possibly – but in the quest to fix my
own food systems I <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">need</i> to make time
for cooking again and try to get that passion back.</div>
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There are people that think I should be doing something
'better' with my time and energy; something more 'intelligent' or 'noble' or 'advanced' or
even 'useful'. To me there's nothing more noble, useful or intelligent than
feeding those around me real food that is produced in harmony with the natural
world; I'm already growing food for us and for the community but I just need to get that spark back in the kitchen. And 'advanced' can go screw itself.</div>
Nomehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03883852903828005065noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221032428937703036.post-40478313495560151402016-03-11T07:58:00.001+00:002016-03-11T14:13:12.476+00:00Looking Back: Year of Flowers!Last year I set myself <a href="http://nomegrown.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/year-of-flowers.html" target="_blank">two new challenges: to start a cut flower patch, and to grow some cauliflowers.</a> <br />
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I'm pleased to report that my late summer cauliflowers were pretty successful, although varying in size. These 'Autumn Giant' caulis from <a href="http://www.realseeds.co.uk/" target="_blank">Real Seeds</a> were sown in April and planted out in May, and by mid-August we were enjoying them. The slugs enjoyed them quite a lot as well... But I'm calling it a success and we'll hope to grow even more of them this year. I've sown them earlier this spring, to give them more time to get nice and big...<br />
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The spring cauliflowers still on the plot now (variety 'Aalsmeer') are not doing quite so well; they haven't really gotten big enough, a few have disappeared completely, and I'm not very hopeful they'll provide us much worth eating. But still, I think I'll put that down to 'probably planted out a bit late' and give them another try; anything that crops in early spring is worth striving for as it can be a lean time in the veg garden.<br />
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The cut flowers were a roaring success, brightened up the plot no end and brought more beneficial insects to our plot than ever before, and they'll certainly be a permanent feature from now on! We brought home flowers once or twice a week, most weeks from May through to October - and we won a first at the allotment show with them too!<br />
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Here are eight things I learned about growing cutting flowers:<br />
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1) Deadheading (and harvesting the flowers too for that matter) takes aaaages.<br />
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2) We didn't provide proper support for our flowers, but it turned out we didn't really need to. As it's a small patch and the flowers were grown close together, they generally supported each other. They did sprawl out across paths on the outside of the patch, but a simple bamboo-cane fence round the perimeter was enough. I'll put this in from the beginning this year.<br />
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3) I'm not very good at arranging flowers. (I'm not letting this stop me.)<br />
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4) It's hard to know where to cut the flowers sometimes; for example cornflowers are very branching - should I cut at the first branch, which doesn't leave me a very long stem? or should I cut a whole branching arm from the plant?<br />
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5) Cosmos are not actually that great in the vase, with their scrawny, twisting stems. But they're so good on the plot - attracting bees until well into the autumn - that I'll keep growing them anyway. Corncockle, with short stems and a short vase life, weren't terribly useful either, but again the bees loved them so I might grow one token plant...<br />
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5.5) Sweet peas are amazing.<br />
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6) Some others weren't so good in the vase either but I know it's because I haven't got the knack yet of conditioning them properly. Cerinthe was the worst - absolutely lovely, but always the first to wilt. Apparently you're supposed to dip the stems in boiling water, which frankly just seems wrong... But this year I'll give it a go.<br />
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7) Mixed seeds are never a good mix. My 'mixed' scabiosa were all white, my 'mixed' snapdragons were 90% pink, and my 'mixed' salvia viridis were 90% purple. Just buy the individual colours you want to grow.<br />
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8) It's SO worth it. Give up just a few square metres of your plot for some flowers and see for yourself.<br />
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Unfortunately I somehow missed out on sowing flowers last autumn for an early show this spring (except for some October-sown sweet peas), so I'm a step behind with my flowers this year, but nevertheless I've invested in a few new varieties to try and I'm looking forward to seeing them brightening up the plot again soon :-)<br />
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In addition to the annuals and biennials I plan to sow, I've got a few other flowers coming up...<br />
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Our local nursery, Aylett Nurseries, is a bit of a dahlia specialist and has a dahlia show every September. I went along for the first time last year and, though I find some dahlias a bit too much, was wowed by the bright colours and the huge variety...<br />
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So I've invested in a single 'Finchcocks' dahlia tuber (pictured above, bottom right), just to see how I go with it... Actually it's not my first dahlia; I have a compact, dark-leaved 'Mystic Illusion' in a pot. As you probably know by now, I'm really not one for fiddling about with plants with complex needs, so there was no digging up tubers when winter came; I just bunged the pot in the summer house and hoped for the best...<br />
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Anyway, today I potted up my new tuber in some compost in the summer house to start sprouting. I doubt this one will get any coddling either; I may just mulch it in winter and see how it does by itself. <br />
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I bought a verbena bonariensis 'Lollipop' plant last summer just because the butterflies and bees seem to love it so much, and I adore that deep purple glow - but this could be a good cutting flower too, and it's now planted out by the side of our pond on the allotment. I heard they self-seed easily, so I crumbled some of the seed heads over a tray of compost last autumn, stuck it at the back of the greenhouse, and whaddaya know...<br />
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I can't possibly use all of these seedlings, but I pricked some out and potted them up today so that now I can enjoy them in the garden as well as at the allotment - and so can the bees :-)<br />
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<br />Nomehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03883852903828005065noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221032428937703036.post-3101543136422228342016-02-15T15:33:00.002+00:002016-02-15T15:33:51.730+00:00And We're Off!I don't feel quite right these days when I'm not actively growing things; in winter my green fingers begin to itch, and boredom and frustration creep in, and it's a huge relief when February arrives and I can justify getting a few early seeds started. I used to wait until mid-Feb - Charles Dowding recommends this as there are ten hours of daylight or more from this time and seedlings are less likely to get leggy - but I sometimes feel that my chillies and things are a bit behind, so this year I started sowing slightly earlier; at Imbolc, which marks the halfway point between the winter solstice and the spring equinox.<br />
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So here we are; my first (slightly leggy) seedlings are tucked up in the heated propagator, the seed potatoes are <a href="http://nomegrown.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/chitting-potatoes.html" target="_blank">chitting</a>, and I've even treated myself to a nice new cloche to get some things started early outside in the raised bed.<br />
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Last year I vowed not to bother with peppers and chillies this year and concentrate on plants that would actually crop for me instead; they're a lovely idea but without a polytunnel or greenhouse they just don't seem to be worth it here, and end up a waste of space. Of course, when I actually got round to sowing it was hard to stick to that decision - I just wanted to sow as many things as I could get away with, and I had to remind myself of those past failures! But I did allow myself two varieties: 'Basket of Fire' chillies, which I'll grow under a bell cloche to see if that helps them along, and some 'Ancho' chillies which I did really well with a couple of years ago. I also started some 'Bonica F1' aubergines, and two each of three early tomato varieties; 'Latah', 'Stupice' and 'Jen's Tangerine'. I'll sow some more when I sow the other tomatoes in March, and see if the early start really made any difference... Germination has been excellent, except from the 'Ancho' chilli seeds which are a bit old. I'll set the seedlings deeper when I pot them up, to counter the legginess.<br />
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I've also started some 'Monarch' celeriac, and some 'Golden Spartan' celery - a variety we saw looking particularly impressive at Wisley last autumn. (It's no guarantee we'll be able to replicate the success of the Wisley gardeners, of course!) We've never succeeded with celeriac yet, so let's hope it's third time lucky... These seeds are in an unheated propagator indoors on a windowsill.<br />
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Potato varieties chosen this year include 'Pentland Crown' and 'King Edward' which both did well for us previously, plus 'Desiree' on the recommendation of several Twitter friends. I've always steered clear of red-skinned potatoes, mostly due to a memory of eating them weirdly soaked in vinegar at a French friend's house as a child... But they've gotta be worth a try, right? For earlies to grow at home, I really wanted 'Accent' - we grow them at <a href="http://foodsmilesstalbans.blogspot.co.uk/p/about-us.html" target="_blank">FoodSmiles</a> and they produce extremely well and taste delicious - but couldn't seem to find them except by mail order, with a £5 delivery fee of course! So I settled on 'Home Guard'. Then, at <a href="http://www.seedysunday.org/" target="_blank">Seedy Sunday</a> in Brighton last weekend, there they were; I picked up not only six 'Accent' but six 'Yukon Gold' to try too! We certainly won't be short of potatoes this summer...<br />
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My new cloche is from <a href="http://www.harrodhorticultural.com/mini-greenhouse-cloche-tunnels-pid7957.html" target="_blank">Harrod Horticultural</a>; a rigid plastic thing that slots together in sections, so I can extend it in future if I want, and it seems very sturdy indeed. It has indentations in the roof to collect rainwater and let it drip through tiny holes to water the plants, so it shouldn't dry out beneath and is easy to water, and it's so much simpler to handle than faffing about with fleece, which I detest. As soon as I've cleared space (the right space) on the raised bed, I'll get it in place, let the soil warm for a week or so, and then start sowing early carrots, spinach, lettuce, radishes, rocket and spring onions under it.<br />
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So off we go! Another growing season begins. Isn't it funny how every one is just as exciting as the last? :-)Nomehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03883852903828005065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221032428937703036.post-701096584388671742016-01-26T10:22:00.000+00:002016-01-26T14:13:27.641+00:00Conquering CompostThey say composting is easy. They say you just chuck your garden and kitchen waste in a big box and leave it a year. Then they talk about greens and browns, and layering, and mixing, and activating it if it's not going well. They talk about insulating it, ventilating it, aerating it, covering it, making sure it's not too wet, making sure it's not too dry. Then they talk about formulae; two thirds brown and one third green, or maybe it's 90% brown and 10% green (and what kind of waste do we create more of? Green!), or maybe it's half and half. Then some guy says you've gotta add ash or clay, and another says you've gotta buy worms, and another says you need a bokashi bin, and another says a hotbin is the only way, and another says you only get really good compost if your heap is three cubic yards. One guy says you have to turn it regularly and another guy says <i>never </i>turn it. Then there are the big questions: how hot does your heap get? Is that really properly-formed humus, or is it just decomposed organic matter? Let me tell you, compost is THE number one most hotly debated subject at our community veg-growing plot at <a href="http://nomegrown.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/foodsmiles.html" target="_blank">FoodSmiles</a>.<br />
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Me, I find life's too busy to worry about it very much. On our allotment, we have a two-cell bin made of pallets. We fill it up, it sinks a bit, we keep filling it up until we can't fill it any more, and then when we have to - usually every two years or so - we dig it all out and use the good stuff at the bottom and in the middle. There's always a lot of uncomposted stuff, on the top and round the edges where it's exposed to the air, so we just return it to the bottoms of the bins to keep going. It's slow going, and the compost isn't going to win any prizes and is usually still full of fibrous bits of root and twigs that didn't quite break down enough, and a few bright white bindweed roots to pick out, but it makes a satisfactory mulch, must contain plenty of nutrients, and disappears into the soil soon enough - and I certainly can't complain about the quality of my soil.<br />
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Last autumn, though, we were despairing about the size of our compost heap, which just didn't seem to be breaking down at all. It may be because we moved it into the part-shade of a tree, or because of
the big piece of cardboard we threw in without tearing it up, or maybe
we just produced more waste than usual for some reason. But we couldn't
add any more to the mountain - we even had to start a new heap in
another corner temporarily.<br />
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In November we started forking all the uncomposted matter off the top onto an empty bed. We didn't have time to finish the job and it just sat there all through December, but yesterday, at last, we got back to it. We forked out the rest of the uncomposted stuff, piled the good stuff into the right-hand bin (plus three plastic dustbins) ready for use, and piled the uncomposted stuff back into the left-hand bin. <br />
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We also wrapped black plastic sheeting round the bins and
stapled it in place. Despite the popularity of compost bins constructed
from old pallets and a lingering notion that bins should be
well-ventilated, I've noticed lately that bins without ventilation seem to be
much more effective, and by enclosing the waste you don't get a layer round
the outside that dries out and doesn't break down. We'll have to find a
lid as well, I think...<br />
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Somehow, almost everything fitted back into the bins (we did also fill three 80 litre plastic dustbins with good stuff), and despite mostly ignoring the bins for two years, one of them was 80% or more good compost and the other about 50%. The mountain is no more - hurrah!<br />
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I guess composting<i> is </i>easy...Nomehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03883852903828005065noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221032428937703036.post-87776592178801315802015-08-17T19:00:00.003+01:002015-08-17T19:05:52.043+01:00Tomato UpdateAs usual, I've grown a range of tomato varieties this year, all lined up across my patio. They're barely ripe yet - I'm still waiting on four out of the five varieties to redden - but it's looking like a pretty good crop on the way!<br />
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The first variety, nearest my door, is Skykomish, an open-pollinated variety from Real Seeds that is supposed to be blight resistant. Unfortunately it's the least vigorous of the lot, hasn't grown very tall, and has the least fruit on it (fruit set seems poor) - <i>and </i>it's always had a few sickly-looking yellowy leaves! The fruits are a real mix of sizes, but there are a few nice big ones so hopefully it will be worthwhile in the end...<br />
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The next is Indigo Rose, the black tomato bred to be very high in antioxidants (anthocyanins, like in blueberries). The dark leaves and black fruits look rather dramatic and prompted lots of questions when I had friends round for a barbecue, but the plants have always looked rather stressed, with curled leaves, no matter how I've cared for them!<br />
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Whatever the problem is, it hasn't stopped the plant producing an abundance of fruit on looong trusses. They look black from any distance, but if you peek underneath, where the sun don't shine, they have green patches, and it's these I'm watching to check for ripeness - they should turn red eventually...<br />
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In the middle is Angelle, my trusty favourite from seeds saved from hybrid supermarket toms. I used to save the seed from year to year but they got more and more susceptible to blight with each generation, so I've started again from the hybrid this year. They're performing as well as before and are the most vigorous (and tallest) of the bunch, with huge trusses of small plum-shaped toms - and they've been the first to ripen!<br />
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We have a few Angelle plants in a plastic greenhouse on the allotment too, and under cover they ripened even quicker - we've had a few harvests from them now while we're only just about to start picking the ones at home.<br />
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Next in line is heirloom Amish Paste, a great tom for cooking (though I like it sliced as well), with vigorous plants and huuuge fruits! <br />
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I've had my first-ever experience of blossom-end rot this year with these - my watering habit must have slipped! - but thankfully only lost one truss of fruits, and I've been extra careful to water well since to prevent it from happening again. Blossom-end rot is caused by a lack of calcium, but it's rarely actually a shortage of calcium in the soil; more often lack of good transport through the plant's system, due to a shortage of water.<br />
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Finally, Dr Carolyn, another Real Seeds heirloom which I love, and they're doing really well. They're not as productive as some other varieties, but they're delicious!<br />
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I had the dreaded notification from <a href="http://www.blightwatch.co.uk/content/bw-Home.asp" target="_blank">Blightwatch</a> at the weekend that my area was experiencing a '<a href="http://www.blightwatch.co.uk/content/bw-Smith.asp" target="_blank">Smith period</a>' - perfect conditions for blight to develop - so I'm watching them carefully now for any signs. I'm disappointed that we've reached this stage already and I've harvested so few ripe toms so far - I think I need to choose an early variety or two next year so I can start picking sooner. In the meantime, I've cut a lot of the leaves off these plants to try to speed ripening - really I should have started this sooner so that air circulation around the plants was better when the conditions for blight struck. I've taken off everything below the first truss and leaves which crossed over and touched each other a lot, and I've taken off leaves which shaded the fruits a lot.<br />
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It's only been a day since I did it and I'm sure I can see new tinges of colour appearing already, so hopefully it's working! But when blight does strike, I'll be ready to pick lots of the toms green and use them in <a href="http://nomegrown.blogspot.co.uk/2010/09/green-tomato-chutney.html" target="_blank">chutney</a>, <a href="http://nomegrown.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/amazing-green-tomato-chilli.html" target="_blank">green chilli</a> and whatever other green tomato recipes I can drag up!Nomehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03883852903828005065noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221032428937703036.post-38197052172651943582015-05-06T11:40:00.001+01:002015-05-06T11:40:58.214+01:00A Wildflower LawnWe don't have a very big lawn in our garden, but it still managed to be a lot of trouble - it had become infested with couchgrass and lots of weeds, and was always trying to escape its brick boundary and creep across the paths. So last year we decided to turn it into a wildflower lawn, where 'weeds' could be at home, within reason, and we wouldn't have to worry about keeping it looking tidy and even and flawless.<br />
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We covered it up with black plastic for a couple of months in the late summer, to kill off the exisitng growth. That seemed to work fine for the lawn itself but the couchgrass, dandelions and creeping buttercups still kept going, so it's been a battle since then to get rid of all the weeds, and I spent a couple of weeks in April hoeing regularly to cut down any new weed seedlings.<br />
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We bought a low-flowering seed mix from <a href="https://www.wildflowerlawnsandmeadows.com/shop/flowering-lawn-wild-flower-seed-mix/" target="_blank">Wildflower Lawns and Meadows</a> which contains 26 different flowers including buttercups, daisies, agrimony, selfheal, ragged robin, camomile, creeping thyme, cowslips, clovers, yarrow, fox and cubs, wild orchids and more, as well as a mixture of grasses. It's supposed to have a very long flowering season, to be tough enough for light traffic, and to reflower rapidly after mowing, which will only be needed around once a month. And of course it'll be wonderful for bees and butterflies!<br />
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After much weeding, hoeing and raking, I scattered the seed about two weeks ago and we've been keeping it watered to help things germinate. The first seedlings are beginning to show now - I hope they are the seed I sowed and not other things which were already in the soil! (Of course, some of the old 'weeds' were species which are also in the seed mix, so it's not all bad!)<br />
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There are some tough older weeds rearing their heads again too - obviously I missed a few - so it's going to be an ongoing task to weed out docks and couchgrass for a little while...<br />
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Though I'd really like to be using the lawn this summer, I think it's going to take quite a while to grow strongly enough to walk on. But I'm sure it's going to be worth the wait and look lovely when it's established!Nomehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03883852903828005065noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221032428937703036.post-33146250001528567172015-05-03T16:29:00.003+01:002015-05-03T16:29:58.565+01:00Tater TimeWe've had some early potatoes growing in sacks in the garden for a few weeks now - I've been gradually filling the sacks to cover the growing shoots and protect them from frost, and we should have our first new potatoes by the end of the month. I've made three successional sowings, three weeks apart, to spread the harvest out.<br />
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But we've only just planted our maincrop potatoes on the allotment. As with seed-sowing, when I was new to growing I used to be anxious to get this job done as soon as we hit March, but these days I take a more relaxed attitude; it takes about two weeks for potato shoots to appear so they'll be arriving in mid-May and I suspect they'll be safe from frost by then. <br />
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Our three chosen varieties - Pentland Crown, King Edward and Sante - have been chitting on the bathroom windowsill for a good long time now, and all have healthy chits which should get them off to a good start. They have a full bed to themselves in our crop rotation - space for about 60 plants - and had we to remove a few forgotten carrots and parsnips, as well as quite a lot of dead nettle and chickweed, to clear the area. Then we raked some home-made compost over the whole lot, divided the bed into three, laid out the seed spuds in two double rows, and used trowels to plant them all 4-5 inches deep.<br />
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I'll be sure to hoe this bed over the next couple of weeks to get rid of any new weeds, and then in a few weeks time when all the shoots are up we'll earth them up, but otherwise we'll just leave the spuds to do their thing now until they die off again in August or September. Easy-peasy - just the way I like it :-)Nomehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03883852903828005065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221032428937703036.post-63496994534139814222015-04-28T12:54:00.000+01:002015-04-28T12:54:47.420+01:00Seedlings UpdateWhen I first started growing things, March was the month of frenzied seed-sowing, but now, having had a few years experience, I've chilled out a bit and a lot more happens in April. That way I don't have so much trouble looking after young plants and protecting them from frost, and plants don't get pot-bound and unhappy in their containers. So yes, with those digging and structural tasks out of the way, April has been largely about seed-sowing and caring for baby plants.<br />
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At home I have several trays of tomato, pepper, squash and cucumber plants to look after. They live outside on sunny days and all over the kitchen table and floor overnight. It's a bit of a chore but hardens the plants off thoroughly and allows them all the light they desire, and it's only for a few weeks.<br />
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The raised bed is looking great, full of salad veg seedlings including lettuce, mustard, spinach, watercress, komatsuna, kohlrabi, carrots, radish, turnips and spring onions - it'll be a salad bar all summer, and there'll be space for pepper plants here too. Despite my fears and the poor performance last year, I'm seeing no growth problems at all so far - hooray!<br />
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The plastic greenhouse is full of seedlings too; chard and perpetual spinach, kale and cauliflowers, dill, leaf celery, achillea, cerinthe, stock, snapdragons, cosmos and marigolds.<br />
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The cerinthe seedlings are so pretty!<br />
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On the plot, parsnips, beetroots and turnips have germinated and I gave them a good hoeing between the rows yesterday to keep the weeds down. Soon I'll sow swedes and calabrese in this bed too, and plant out young celeriac, leeks and cauliflowers.<br />
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The bindweed in this bed and our perennials bed is bad, but all I can do now is keep pulling it and hope it gives up eventually! You can see below there are a few gaps among the broad beans. Not sure why... But I think I'll resow them next time I'm down there - it's not too late! I'm a bit ashamed to say I forgot to put insect-proof mesh over my carrots <i>again</i>, having failed last year too. I couldn't bear to see the carrots split and deformed from carrot fly again, and carrot fly are no doubt laying eggs by now, especially thanks to this mild spell! So I've hoed out all the seedlings and will resow them in a new location at the weekend and put the mesh in place straight away!<br />
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We've sown the flower bed with hardy annuals now too (cornflowers, vipers bugloss, ammi majus, bupleurum), though loads of tiny weed seedlings are coming up too and it's going to be a job to know which seedlings to weed out and which to keep!<br />
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April has rushed by but I'm glad it's nearly May - the month of planting-out! By the end of May the house will be seedling-free again and I should be able to stop worrying about cold nights and spring hailstorms!Nomehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03883852903828005065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221032428937703036.post-60274247469381091552015-04-01T12:54:00.001+01:002015-04-01T12:54:41.043+01:00Busy, busy!Winter and early spring are great times for gardeners to do all sorts of non-growing jobs, like developing new areas and working on paths or buildings. I had a long list of these this year, and a long session on the allotment on Monday finally allowed us to finish up all but one of them. Just in time I'd say - 'early spring' is most definitely over now we've hit April!<br />
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We finally finished digging over what was previously our strawberry bed, which will be our flower patch this year and hopefully bring looooads more beneficial insects to the plot, as well as giving us flowers to cut and give away. I planted out the corncockle, calendula and clary sage I raised at home over winter, and I'll sow lots more here in a couple of weeks...<br />
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We've also planted up the herb patch round the pond and fruit trees. The focus here isn't on culinary herbs, as they're much more useful grown at home where you can grab them easily as you need them, but on flowering perennial herbs for insects and some herbs which I'd like to try drying for tea - lemon balm, camomile and peppermint. I've also popped a few perennial and self-sowing flowers in; some poached egg plant and primroses, an oriental poppy and an echinops. Maybe I should call it my 'companion plants patch' instead of my herb patch.<br />
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There's still a bit of work to do to get rid of the last of the grass in that corner by the pond... But it's so good to have this area looking nice again after it got swamped with grass and then we mulched it with manky cardboard over winter! <br />
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When we moved our compost bins last summer, there was a lot of good compost in the bottom that we just couldn't use at the time, so it's been heaped up in the place where the compost bins were ever since - we even grew our beans late last summer on the temporary raised bed it created...<br />
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...but now we've levelled the ground and moved the pile to this year's potato bed, where it will help build the soil. Our greenhouse will go in this spot this year. I hope the people on the next plot sort out their compost pile soon - it's a bit of a battle to stop it falling onto our plot, and there are brambles growing in it which keep finding their way into this bed.<br />
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While we were on the plot I also took the opportunity to sow some more seeds: I scattered some dill and parsley seeds in some carefully-chosen corners, and sowed beetroots, turnips and parsnips in rows in our roots bed, a foot apart, and covered with sieved compost.<br />
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Do you like my new plant labels? They look a bit industrial, but I was desperate to find something that would last for years, instead of perishing in the sun or rotting in the rain or just getting kicked about and lost in the dirt, and I hope these are the answer. They're from Amazon - I tried to find another supplier but couldn't - by a company called GardenMate. The permanent marker is supposed to last all season, and I'll be able to clean it off with a solvent cleaner to reuse them. That's the theory, anyway...<br />
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I'm happy that we have some broad beans on the plot at last, after a bit of a battle against mice eating the seeds! These were actually sown at home in a big seed tray at the beginning of March, and planted out this week. There are a few more sown direct here too, and covered with the same mesh to try to keep the rodents off this time. I have half a feeling I'm going to go down there and find little holes chewed right through the netting one of these days!<br />
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At home, I've sown lots more seeds, including celery, basil, dill, perpetual spinach, pea shoots and some more flowers; sunflowers, achillea and cerinthe. After a manic March, I think I've just about caught up with myself. The only things remaining are to clear and dig over the old asparagus bed, which is small and shouldn't take too long, and plant out my poor sweet peas which are getting desperate for some space and some support! Poor things!<br />
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I'm glad it's April now and the weather <i>must </i>warm up a bit more soon. I feel like I've got a bit of a holiday coming up over the long Easter weekend, and I'll probably get stuck into some more sowing: courgettes, squashes, brassicas and beans are next, as well as the bulk of the flower patch, getting the greenhouse sorted - and it'll be time to plant potatoes before we know it!Nomehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03883852903828005065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221032428937703036.post-22484987209983046842015-03-29T16:09:00.000+01:002015-03-29T16:09:21.380+01:00The Importance of EdgesWhen I started out with an allotment, I wish someone had told me the importance of edges. I thought we could just dig the plot over and it would be dug, and grass free - I see some others doing this in pictures online, digging over neat square beds amidst grass paths, and sometimes it seems to work for them. It doesn't work for us. The grass on the paths moves in so fast and so vigorously it's a constant, time-consuming battle to keep it back. It swamps everything. Even the low raised beds we put so much time and effort into a few years ago didn't help - couchgrass roots went right through the plywood, and could easily get underneath a thin barrier like this!<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Pretty, but pretty useless.</td></tr>
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When we divided our plot up with paths that the grass couldn't penetrate we hit on something; the grass couldn't get past one of these paths. By dividing grassy areas from cleared ones, we finally kept some places grass-free. Hurrah! We also began digging small trenches along the sides of the plot, alongside the grassy paths, about six inches deep and six inches across, and this too slowed the grass down enough to concentrate on doing other things during the growing season! The trenches need some maintenance a couple of times a year (and we do occasionally fall in them!), but they do the job. Woohoo!<br />
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So we've been maintaining our borders this week - the cheap weedproof membrane we used for our paths first time round was obviously not made to last and grass was starting to creep through in places - a situation that was bound to only get worse if left.<br />
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We invested in some heavy duty woven groundcover fabric, and with the paths already in place, it was a simple enough matter to move the bricks aside, lay the new fabric over the existing woodchip, replace the bricks and top up with more woodchip. The council delivers woodchip to our site regularly for things like this, which is really handy.<br />
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One day... one day I will eradicate <i><b>all</b></i> couchgrass from our plot!Nomehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03883852903828005065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221032428937703036.post-2562942392287317362015-03-27T12:59:00.000+00:002015-03-27T13:00:15.427+00:00Sowathon!March has been a busy month for many reasons, and I've been way behind with seed-sowing for the new season, but in the last week I've squeezed in a few hours in the garden and taken the opportunity to catch up!<br />
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This time last week was the spring equinox, when the days become longer than the nights again (hurrah!), and it seemed like a good time to sow my tomato seeds. I potted up all the pepper, chilli and aubergine plants from the propagator - they're looking big and healthy and have been spending daytimes out in the plastic greenhouse (pic above) - and I sowed five varieties of tomatoes in their place: Amish Paste (a good cooking tomato, but tasty sliced as well), Dr Carolyn (delicious heritage variety!), Angelle (my favourite, from seeds saved from supermarket toms), Skykomish (a blight-resistant variety) and Indigo Rose (the 'black tomato', super-high in antioxidants). They all popped up in just four days and are growing away on the windowsill now. The electric propagator is a real help in getting warmth-loving seeds to germinate!<br />
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They look a bit leggy - I guess we've had some gloomy days lately - but they'll catch up with themselves and I'll plant them deep when I pot them up.<br />
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We spent a couple of hours topping up the big raised bed in the garden, with the last half-bag of the compost we bought for the purpose last year, plus a layer of new multi-purpose compost. I treated the bed with sulphur before sowing to try to begin lowering its high pH (see previous post), but I decided it might be overcautious to limit what I sow in it this year - after all, growth did seem to improve quite a lot during the course of last season, and the layer of fresh compost should help a bit too - so I'm trying a bigger variety of veg in it than I originally planned. It won't take long to see whether they grow well or not, and I can always resow something else later... The bed already contains some parsley, chives, garlic and perpetual spinach from last year, and I filled up the rest of the space with rows of carrots, turnips, lettuce, spring onions, komatsuna, watercress, spinach, kohlrabi, radishes and mustard.<br />
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I also sowed some more celeriac seeds. I had been hardening off my young celeriac plants, but then I read somewhere that if celeriac gets too cold in its first spring it can think it's in its second year, and go to flower rather than producing a good root. Last year's celeriac didn't actually go to flower, but it was a terrible failure and I wondered if my early-hardening-off could possibly be why... So this new set of seedlings will be coddled indoors until the temperatures are higher out there, and we'll see if it makes a difference!<br />
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The corner garden bed needed a good clear-up - it had quite a few weeds, last year's bean poles and old bean and pea plants, and some honeysuckle and snowberry invading fast. Once tidied, I sowed some peas and mangetout against the fence, and scattered mint leaves and chopped up dry mint stems over them to keep the mice away - it works a treat!<br />
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Finally, I sowed some chard, leaf celery and flowers (cerinthe and achillea) in cells in the plastic greenhouse, and planted some early 'Accent' potatoes in sacks. The potato shoots could be harmed by frost after they appear, so I'll need to keep an eye on them and keep earthing them up or throw fleece over them on cold nights. I've got six of these bags so I'll sow two more in two weeks, and two more two weeks later, to spread out my harvest a bit.<br />
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I'm nearly caught-up but there's still plenty more to do, and it'll be April in just a few days... In fact, I'd better get back out there!Nomehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03883852903828005065noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221032428937703036.post-23046172021502165062015-03-21T17:13:00.001+00:002015-03-21T17:21:01.116+00:00More Geeky Soil Stuff: My Soil Analysis Results!As I've mentioned before, I resolved to get a proper lab analysis done of my soil this year, to identify any deficiencies and attempt to bring it to - or close to - the ideal mineral balance described in <a href="http://nomegrown.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/grow-your-own-nutrition.html" target="_blank">Steve Solomon's book The Intelligent Gardener: Growing Nutrient-Dense Food</a>.<br />
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I took not just one but four soil samples. The allotment is perhaps the most important, but I also wanted to test the raised bed soil which gave poor growth last year and the soil of my garden veg bed, which did very well last year but which I suspected of a boron deficiency due to some hollow courgettes. Finally, I thought I might as well send off a sample of FoodSmiles soil as well, mostly out of curiosity.<br />
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To take a sample, you're supposed to cut regular-sized-and-shaped slices of soil, six inches deep and an inch or so across each way, from several points on the plot, to get a mix representative of the whole area. Professional soil-testers have a tube-shaped device they use to get a perfect even core of soil each time. I was just working with a spade and trowel... but I think I did good enough for a first-timer! For each sample, I put all the soil 'slices' in a bucket or bowl and let them air-dry near a radiator for a few days, then broke up any big lumps, picked out stones and twigs, mixed it all up really well and bagged up two cups of the soil for sending off.<br />
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Sending it off was a faff as well! I could only find one lab in the UK that would do the soil test described in Solomon's book - what's called a Mehlich 3 extraction along with pH, organic matter, total cation exchange capacity and base saturation - and it cost three times more than what it costs in Solomon's recommended lab in the US... So I sent my samples off to the US! I felt a bit guilty about the air miles, but I couldn't have afforded to do it any other way. Samples had to be labelled and double bagged, sealed very securely in a strong envelope with all the seams taped up, and an import permit and special label attached to the outside of the package to declare what was inside and show that I was allowed to send foreign soil to this address!<br />
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It must have made it through, because two weeks later, my results came by email, and you can see the full report <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-mxOn38g4BiNWRGREtvSk9hR2s/view?usp=sharing" target="_blank">here</a> if you like. But most of the numbers are fairly meaningless until you take a deeper look; everything swings on the TCEC, which indicates the amount of nutrition a soil can hold, so XX lbs per acre of a nutrient might be way too much for a soil with a low TCEC, but not nearly enough for a soil with a high TCEC. Solomon provides <a href="http://bionutrient.org/audio/2013_soil_nutrition_conference/6-Worksheets-from-Steve-Solomans-Book-The-Intelligent-Gardener.pdf" target="_blank">worksheets</a> to help crunch the numbers and figure out exactly what your soil has and what it needs.<br />
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<b>A Note on Organics...</b><br />
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The soil amendment 'prescriptions' mentioned here, involving measured amounts of all sorts of mineral compounds, might seem to go against the grain for someone who is concerned with gardening organically and sustainably, and have certainly given me cause to think a bit about 'organic' versus 'chemical' fertilisers. But there are plenty of mineral soil amendments approved for organic use where a need is identified, and just because it's not organic compost or manure, doesn't mean a substance is necessarily harmful in any way. Adding pure mineral supplements carefully chosen according to measured needs is a very far cry from routinely applying
synthetic, high-nitrate, petroleum-based mixes (many of which contain heavy
metals) at maximum application rates, as is much too often done in
modern agriculture; these kinds of chemical fertilisers feed the plants but diminish soil fertility. In his book Solomon spends quite a lot of time discussing the sustainability and impacts of different amendments, and before buying I will check out each one and decide individually whether I want to use it - but even though Solomon's method isn't 100% 'organic' all the time, these amendments are all designed to help the soil <i>and </i>its microlife, which is of key importance in this soil health business!<br />
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<b>Allotment</b><br />
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The allotment soil has a<b> pH of 7.1</b> - just above neutral which is what most veg-growers will aim for, with a range of 6.0-7.5 commonly recommended. 6.5 might be nearer to ideal, but since different veggies like slightly different conditions it's certainly good enough.<br />
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It contains<b> 7.6% organic matter</b>, which will supply more than enough of nitrogen through the growing season as it is digested by soil organisms. 7% is plenty - 4% is about the minimum it needs and 10% is more than a soil can efficiently use. More good news! I'm actually surprised it's this high, since I've never been good at adding organic stuff to the soil. I compost allotment waste and return it to the soil as and when it's ready, but only once in eight years have I bought in manure and compost to spread, and I know some gardeners do it religiously every year.<br />
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The <b>TCEC is 13.1</b>, which indicates a good level of nutrient-holding clay and humus in our soil. TCECs in very rich clay soils might be as high as 40 or more, but for the purposes of the analysis it only matters whether our TCEC is below or above 10, and above is a good result.<br />
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The main purpose of this exercise is to make sure the major cations - calcium, magnesium, potassium and sodium - are in balance, and a good supply of sulphur, phosphorus and trace nutrients are available. 68% of the TCEC should be calcium, 12% should be magnesium, 3 or 4% percent potassium and 1 or 2% sodium. The allotment soil has an excess of calcium and potassium and a deficiency of magnesium and sodium - a balance of 81%, 10%, 4.5% and 0.3%, so I'll take some action to adjust this balance. It also has very significant sulphur deficiency. Phosphorus is very slightly low but not enough to worry about.<br />
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Trace minerals measured are boron, iron, manganese, copper and zinc. In the allotment soil, iron, copper and zinc are plentiful (with more than twice the iron needed and more than four times the zinc!) but boron and manganese are very low, so I'll aim to add more of these.<br />
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The prescription to amend this soil is to add, per 100 square feet, 225g manganese sulphate, 120g sea salt, 110g agricultural sulphur, 60g magnesium oxide and 20g borax.<br />
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<b>Garden soil</b><br />
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It was extremely difficult to get an accurately representative sample of the garden veg bed as it comprises two very different layers: a few inches of old bagged compost and used growbags on top, and a hard clay just underneath at a depth that varies across the bed... So my confidence in the accuracy of these results is lacking slightly, but I was interested to see them anyway.<br />
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The pH is 6.8 - very slightly acid and pretty perfect for growing vegetables. The organic matter was very high - 38% - but perhaps not surprising given the thick layer of old compost. The TCEC is high too at 17.9, probably thanks to the heavy clay.<br />
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The cation balance is heavily weighted to calcium and magnesium, with potassium slightly low and sodium very low. Funny how we're told salt is terrible for soil - actually a small amount is very important, but it looks like most of our soils don't even have that much. Sulphur and phosphorus are both significantly low, as are boron, manganese, copper and zinc. The boron deficiency I suspected is shown, but actually it's only <i>very </i>slightly lower than any of the other soils I had tested.<br />
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The prescription for this soil is 760g monoammonium phosphate, 414g sea salt, 212g manganese sulphate, 110g sulphur, 40g zinc sulphate, 28g copper sulphate and 20g borax per 100 square feet. I think I might take a cautious approach to making the amendments, considering I'm not confident in the consistency of my soil sample, and just aim to fix the worst of it this time round.<br />
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<b>Raised Beds</b><br />
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Now this one was interesting. As I <a href="http://nomegrown.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/a-tale-of-three-raised-beds.html" target="_blank">described at length a few posts ago</a>, this soil, bought in to fill my new raised beds about this time last year, gave extremely poor growth last season. I suspected an overabundance of potassium and perhaps a low pH, and added calcium and nitrogen to try to counter those things and help plant growth but it didn't really help.<br />
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In fact, this is a calcareous soil with an overabundance of free lime and a high pH which makes trace nutrients unavailable to plants. If I pour vinegar onto the soil, it actually fizzes! This means the test I ordered isn't accurate, as a Mehlich 3 extraction can't test accurately where high lime is present - I should have done the vinegar test first and ordered a different soil test... Doh!<br />
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The soil shows a pH of 7.7 but this is likely to be artificially low. There does indeed appear to be a high level of potassium, but the level of lime and high pH is clearly the bigger problem and, save ordering a new soil test and a whole load more mucking about, I think the easiest way forward is to address that first by applying sulphur, which is turned into sulphuric acid by soil bacteria and neutralises the surplus calcium carbonate, turning it into highly soluble gypsum which will then easily leach from the soil. This takes time; a year or more. So in the meantime it will be important to only grow what is happy in these beds; so far garlic, brassicas, lettuces, carrots and beets; and to feed plants with a foliar spray to ensure they get the trace elements they need.<br />
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I have real trouble understanding how a soil mix that was obviously so high in manure and woody waste can be so very high in lime, but I guess it looks like my lime application last year may have only made things worse - doh again!<br />
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<b>FoodSmiles</b><br />
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The FoodSmiles soil has a pH of 7.3 - right at the high end of a good range - a TCEC of 15.2, and 7.6% organic matter. Its cation balance is not too far from the target, with small excesses of calcium, magnesium and potassium but a deficiency of sodium. Phosphorus and sulphur are both very low. Like the allotment, it has very high levels of iron and zinc, but it is low in boron, copper and manganese.<br />
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Amending this soil with mineral applications would be a whole different ball game, since it is Soil Association certified land and we'd have to show a clear need for every amendment and have it approved in advance - and we've got more than enough to do at the moment anyway! But it hasn't had a lot of organic matter added in recent years and I expect applying manure would bring a beneficial pH change. IF I was going to tackle anything else, the priority would be to amend the sulphur and phosphorus levels, but at the moment the soil is growing crops very well indeed.<br />
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<b>Some Thoughts</b><br />
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As I write this, I'm wondering about those high levels of iron and
zinc... Solomon warns that tiny flakes of rust or galvanizing from the
tool used to take the samples can inflate these levels. I didn't have a
steel tool I could do it with but I did clean my trowel thoroughly and
make sure nothing looked like it was going to come off it... If I do
this again in future I'll be sure to be prepared and use stainless steel instead just in
case!<br />
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All the soils tested require, according to this method, a significant application of sea salt, which feels a bit wrong but I'm doing my best to trust the method and go with it! <br />
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I have high hopes that if I correct the sulphur level on the allotment, I might be able to grow onions and garlic there again; sulphur protects against fungus so perhaps the lack of it allows the white rot to thrive.<br />
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My next task, then, is to read up on and source the various minerals needed to amend the allotment soil and garden bed, and sulphur for the raised beds. It's quite a bit of work, all in all, but it's absolutely fascinating and I'm really looking forward to seeing the results!Nomehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03883852903828005065noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221032428937703036.post-80172573636521503532015-03-19T17:13:00.000+00:002015-03-19T17:15:19.370+00:00Teeny Tiny TreesWhen we started out on our allotment we planted three little 'columnar' fruit trees near the pond, in what was supposed to be our herb patch. They were a red apple, a green/yellow apple, and a pear. The green apple mysteriously disappeared, but the other two have done pretty well, despite the red apple taking on a rather dangerous lean in the last couple of years, and the whole herb bed getting swamped with couchgrass... The apples are great and we get a fair few, for a small tree. But we don't really like the pears on the pear tree and we'd rather have more apples, so this year we decided it was time to change things a bit.<br />
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First the pear tree had to go, and I gave it to another allotmenteer and friend from FoodSmiles, who planted it on her allotment just a hundred metres away! Next, we had a go at righting the red apple... We loosened the roots on the side it was leaning towards, pulled it back into a <i>neeearly </i>upright position and tied it to a strong stake, and then flooded the ground with water to try to resettle the roots, working the soil back into the loosened area and stamping it down hard. Time will tell how well we did...<br />
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We cleared the rest of the bed, digging out most of the lovage and horseradish, which had both got <i>huge</i>, as well as bucketsful of couchgrass roots. And we planted two more teeny tiny columnar apple trees (<a href="http://www.jparkers.co.uk/fruits-vegetables/fruit-trees/patio-dwarf-fruit-trees" target="_blank">from J Parker's</a>). It'll be a few years before they match the height of the original one, but they should be producing fruit by next year.<br />
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It's funny seeing this area virtually bare again, since it's one of the first areas we worked on when we got the plot eight years ago! I'm a little bit nervous about planting it back up with herbs since it didn't go too well last time... But we're hoping a few years more experience and knowledge - and the fact that the plot as a whole is much lower-maintenance now - will mean that we can keep on top of weeds this time and make sure it doesn't get swamped again.Nomehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03883852903828005065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221032428937703036.post-9248182370882333182015-02-26T10:48:00.000+00:002015-03-03T17:42:38.789+00:00An Alternative Fruit PatchThe bottom end of our allotment has never been very productive - unless you count couchgrass and nettles. When we first dug it over the soil was very dry and fully of woody matter and old roots, not to mention half an ancient greenhouse, in small pieces. It's also in the shade of an elder tree and next door's little shed for part of the day. <br />
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We grew outdoor tomatoes down here and they very quickly succumbed to disease. We grew artichokes here and they all died. We grew raspberries here, and even they didn't do well! The couchgrass seems to move in here faster than anywhere else but nothing else seems to thrive.<br />
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Last year we moved our compost bins to this area - it seemed a better use of land that won't easily grow crops, and it would help to stamp out some of the grass and nettles that kept invading. But that still left our overgrown raspberry patch to deal with. Half the raspberries had died and the rest were swamped in a jungle of grass.<br />
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We took out the old raspberry plants and dug the bed over <i>three times </i>to get rid of every last grass root we could find. Then we laid a new weedproof-fabric-and-woodchip path down one side of it, dug a trench along the top where it meets the next (derelict) plot, and put a border of weedproof fabric along the end of the plot too, so it should be much harder for new roots to find their way in.<br />
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I was keen to keep the area as permanent planting, since our three main rotation beds are working nicely now and perennial planting has benefits for the soil and wildlife as well as my workload! But I wanted to try some new fruits; I do like raspberries but I'm not a fan of the other usual berries and currants people tend to grow on allotments, and I fancied trying some new things I'd been hearing about. So our new fruit patch will feature... Japanese wineberries, Chilean guavas, and Cape gooseberries!<br />
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Botanist James Wong famously promotes a number of unusual crops, and his book 'Homegrown Revolution' encourages gardeners to ditch some of the 'old-fashioned' stuff we've been growing for generations but that is actually quite tricky in our climate (aubergines and cauliflowers, for example) in favour of more exotic crops that actually grow very easily here. I have only just bought the book this week, but the above fruits all feature in it - and I'm rather tempted by one or two others he recommends too - perhaps another year!<br />
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<i>EDIT: Whoops, the Japanese wineberry</i> isn't <i>in the book - I think I heard about it in a conversation about unusual crops which centred around the book and assumed it was. </i><br />
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Japanese wineberry is similar to raspberry but with striking red stems and lime-green leaves, and the fruits are surrounded by a spiny calyx that means birds don't usually go for them. It can handle a little bit of shade, so the shed shadow shouldn't bother it. I'm not really sure what its growing habit is going to be like - I'm kind of expecting it to be like a bramble! - but I am well prepared to train it up some canes if need be...<br />
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Chilean guavas are small berries that ripen in the winter on a rather attractive evergreen bush. I bought these plants nearly a year ago when I saw them on sale and they have been waiting patiently in pots at home until now! (I have two more in large containers at home too, from which I got just a few berries last year, though I think I picked them before they were ripe!)<br />
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Cape gooseberries (or Inca berries, or golden berries) are perhaps better known, and sometimes seen served at wedding receptions and posh restaurants, usually with smoked meats. The fruits are similar to tomatilloes, but sweet and golden yellow, and come in a papery husk. They're grown as an annual in this country, so it's not exactly permanent planting, but it also means I can change my mind easily and try a <a href="http://www.suttons.co.uk/Gardening/Vegetable+Plants/All+Vegetable+Plants/Cocktail+Kiwi+Plant_239390.htm" target="_blank">cocktail kiwi</a> or something here next year instead if I like... I've sown the Cape gooseberry seeds at home (no seedlings yet...) and I'll plant them out here in June or so.<br />
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I'm not really sure how big these plants get so that's all I'm putting in for now, but I hope my alternative fruit patch will fill up some more in time. For the moment I've put in some biennial flowers too - foxgloves and wallflowers I had in pots at home - and I might just put in some perennial achillea or summer bulbs or something... The biennials should have been planted out in autumn really so I'm not sure how they'll get on, but the part-shaded spot behind the shed must be about perfect for foxgloves so I hope they will self-seed there and I'll keep a small patch of them going.<br />
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I'm very glad this troublesome corner is under control again, and I hope the trenched and covered edges will help it to stay that way!<br />
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<br />Nomehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03883852903828005065noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221032428937703036.post-26892996083861298222015-02-23T20:20:00.000+00:002015-02-23T20:22:31.952+00:00Stevia and OysterleafAfter my chillies, peppers, aubergines and leeks, next on the list to sow this month were two unusual leaf crops; stevia and oysterleaf.<br />
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stevia_rebaudiana" target="_blank"><br /></a>
Stevia (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stevia_rebaudiana" target="_blank">stevia rebaudiana</a>) is an extremely sweet-tasting leaf that can be used as a natural sweetener, 150 times sweeter than sugar. I was given some seeds last year but failed to get any to germinate - but ended up buying a small plant at a nursery later on in the summer. It didn't get very big and I didn't harvest more than a few leaves from it, but after its tiny white flowers faded I made sure to save some seeds for another attempt this year.<br />
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(Whole stevia leaf isn't approved by the Food Standards Agency as a food for human consumption - even though it's been eaten for centuries in South America and in Asia since the seventies - so it can't be marketed as food in its natural form. You can buy approved stevia extracts (you might have noticed the new Coca Cola 'Life' is part sweetened with a stevia derivative) but watch out for their purity. Truvia, the 'big brand' option marketed as a natural stevia-derived sweetener, has as its main component erythritol, a sugar alcohol similar to sorbitol, mannitol and xylitol, which is fermented from dextrose, a sugar made from corn.)<br />
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I haven't managed to find much out about how to sow the seeds, except that it's tricky and they need a lot of light. The seeds are very tiny, so I have sown some under a light sprinkling of soil and some on the surface. It's very easy for surface-sown seeds to dry out, so I've put the whole pot in a plastic bag to retain moisture, and I'm keeping them on a bright windowsill and crossing my fingers... If I have any success, I hope to experiment more with my harvest this year and find some good ways to use it! I'll also try to overwinter a plant (like I should have done last year!) to avoid the tricky germination game next year - I <i>think </i>they grow as perennials in warmer climates...<br />
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Oysterleaf (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mertensia_maritima" target="_blank">mertensia maritima</a>) or 'sea bluebells' is another edible leaf crop, with round, blueish, fleshy leaves supposed to taste like - you guessed it - oysters. It's not to be confused with salsify - a root crop sometimes known as oysterplant! It's a perennial (you know I'm a sucker for perennial edibles!) and it has really <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=oyster+leaf&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=yovrVMLnF4nXPcSfgaAO&ved=0CDcQsAQ&biw=1366&bih=631" target="_blank">pretty edible purple and blue flowers</a>, similar to borage - it's in the same family. Again, I was given some seeds last year but failed to grow them successfully (I think a snail got them!) so it's round two this year, with seeds purchased from <a href="http://www.pennardplants.com/products.php?cat=475" target="_blank">Pennard Plants</a>. There were only five seeds in the pack, so again I'm having to be careful with them! The seeds are relatively big so I've sown them a few millimetres deep and I'm keeping a close eye on them to make sure they don't dry out. They're not going in a plastic bag, as they grow wild in the Hebrides so I don't think they want to be too warm. But I will be keeping them safely indoors, away from snails, this time! (Until they're bigger, anyway.)<br />
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In other seedy news, I've also now sown some stock and snapdragon seeds for my new flower patch, and my first aubergine seedlings popped up on Thursday, just five days after sowing, closely followed by the chillies and the leeks after seven days. It's all go!<br />
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<br />Nomehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03883852903828005065noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221032428937703036.post-21808231592584388252015-02-20T12:17:00.000+00:002015-02-24T11:45:26.187+00:00Chitting PotatoesAt the beginning of the month I bought my seed potatoes, and it's that time of year again when the pretty coloured bottles and candles on the bathroom windowsill get packed away...<br />
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...to make room to chit my potatoes!<br />
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Chitting potatoes makes them develop nice strong shoots so that
they start growing faster when you stick them in the ground. Just lay them out in a bright place. Too dark and they'll grow long spindly shoots that break easily, but put them in direct sunlight and the delicate new shoots might shrivel. This north-east facing windowsill is perfect. They get damp whenever someone has a shower, but they dry out again and don't seem to mind. Here's what they look like after nearly three weeks. You can see tiny rolls of new green leaves starting to form, and the little-white-bump beginnings of new roots.<br />
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Some people like to debate whether chitting is a good thing to do or a waste of the potatoes' energy which creates a risk of shocking the spuds when you put them in the cold ground. Some major gardening organisations have run tests to see how much difference it made, and found it generally didn't. But I mainly do it because, well, they've gotta go somewhere, right? And I <i>do </i>like to buy them early, so I can get the varieties I want and I'm not left with the shrivelled up manky ones, and it <i>does </i>help to check that they're all healthy and find out which eyes are strongest (I'll plant those facing upwards), <i>and </i>it's good to feel like I'm making a start on the growing season nice and early, even if it is just putting potatoes on a windowsill... I've also read somewhere that chitting stimulates production of solanine in the spuds, which makes them less appealing to any hungry rodents that might eat them after planting, and stops them rotting in the soil. Some people like to sit their seed potatoes in the cups of egg boxes, or even buy special chitting trays, to keep them all neat and tidy with their best eyes standing straight up. I just cram them all together, eyes up-ish - they take up less room that way, they don't mind touching each other and the chits will always grow upwards...<br />
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We've grown Kestrel potatoes for a few years now - they seemed to do best on our plot and they taste delicious, especially as mash and roasties. But when we tried Pentland Crown on a quarter of our potato bed last year in the search for a better jacket potato, they did really well too, <i>and </i>suffered much less scab <i>and </i>took longer to soften and sprout in storage, so we decided it was time to branch out and see what we were missing with some more new varieties...<br />
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So our maincrop spuds this year are a third King Edward, a third Sante and a third Pentland Crown. We bought them from our local independent garden centre, <a href="http://www.aylettnurseries.co.uk/" target="_blank">Aylett Nurseries</a>, where you can select individual tubers and fill a bag for a set price. We got 60 tubers for £3.95! Much better than buying online!<br />
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We did buy some seed spuds online too, though. At <a href="http://foodsmilesstalbans.blogspot.co.uk/p/about-us.html" target="_blank">FoodSmiles</a> last year I was really impressed by a particular first early potato called Accent, which gave huge yields and tasted lovely, so I sought it out and found it at <a href="http://www.tuckers-countrystores.com/seeds/" target="_blank">Tuckers Seeds</a>. They arrived last week too, and are chitting on another windowsill. They'll be grown at home, in sacks.<br />
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I've also found some leftover seed potatoes from last year which I left in the summer house when we didn't have room for them. I can't remember what they are and I'm not sure I'll grow them, but you can see, even a year after buying them, they're still raring to go, having been kept in the right bright but cool conditions!<br />
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<br />Nomehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03883852903828005065noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221032428937703036.post-7186662437334203332015-02-14T13:42:00.000+00:002015-02-18T14:35:51.662+00:00Seed Sowing!At last! The day is here! I've been itching to get starting with this season's seeds since, ooooh, about the second of January, but there's really not much point starting that early and seedlings grown when days are short can end up leggy and weak. Instead, I've taken on board a tip from veg-growing guru <a href="http://www.charlesdowding.co.uk/february-2011/" target="_blank">Charles Dowding</a>, who advises waiting until there are ten hours of daylight each day before sowing seeds. This happens in mid February, and I've certainly noticed the evenings lengthening these last two weeks so hopefully it will make all the difference. <br />
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I like a good clear rule like this - it means no umming and aahing about whether or not it's the right time, no 'well I'll do a few now and a few later and see if there's any difference', no worrying.<br />
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Setting myself a clear day to get started - and making it a bit later than perhaps I'd like - has also meant I was far more organised than usual beforehand. I'd cleaned and tested the electric propagator in advance. I'd sorted out all my pots, and I've got a big bag of surplus ready to give away. I'd even written out my plant labels - I usually put the seeds in first then find myself writing labels with grubby fingers while trying to remember which pot's which - not clever!<br />
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I've also written up a sowing and planting plan for the whole year, which I'll use to keep records of the dates I actually sow as well. I can see at-a-glance what needs to be sown and where each month, so there'll be no forgetting things or puzzling over when to sow things for winter. I'm sure it'll get tweaked a bit along the way, but you can see it <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1EpeR4t1TNKh2B4n_k3coMF6vvZpr2r5pemnxpxIb-Jg/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank">here</a> if you like.<br />
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I sow all my seeds in peat-free compost - usually New Horizon organic peat-free. Peat-free seems to have a bad rap in the press - they'll tell you it's not suitable for seed-sowing, or that you have to sieve it and add vermiculite and water more, as if it's somehow more complex or more dangerous - but I've never, ever had any trouble with it; it's really very good stuff. And digging up peat is <a href="http://www.idontdigpeat.org.uk/campaign/" target="_blank">destructive, unsustainable, and totally unnecessary</a>.<br />
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So here they all are. Tucked up in the electric propagator are three sweet peppers (Marconi Rossa, Lipstick and Kaibi Round), three chillies (Ancho Grande, Jalapeno and Big Jim Numex), and one aubergine (Bonica F1). They all need a bit of extra warmth to germinate well, so the electric propagator is really helpful, and I hope to be able to pot them up just in time to sow my tomatoes in the same propagator sometime around mid-March. On the windowsill are cape gooseberries, two pots of leeks (Autumn Giant Porvite and Lyon 2 Prizetaker) and some celeriac (Monarch). I've sown these things first as they are all slow-growing crops that need an early start in order to crop in good time, or to reach a good size.<br />
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Hooray! Getting these seeds started is a really good feeling and makes the spring feel that much closer. There's nothing else quite like the promise of big beautiful plants and tasty harvests just from putting a seed in the soil.Nomehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03883852903828005065noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221032428937703036.post-60247739538316825592015-02-09T10:43:00.000+00:002015-02-09T10:55:07.761+00:00The Food Shortage is a LieIt's easy to be confused by the current opposing issues of world hunger and food waste. We seem to hear them everywhere now: Hundreds of millions of people are going hungry! We need to grow more food for our fast-growing population! 30-50% of food produced is not eaten! Huh?!<br />
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But this article - <a href="http://www.independentsciencenews.org/environment/how-the-great-food-war-will-be-won/" target="_blank">How the Great Food War Will Be Won</a> - clears things up thoroughly, and I'd like to urge everyone to read it.<br />
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The fact is, we produce an overabundance of food; <a href="http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/world%20hunger%20facts%202002.htm" target="_blank">the stats show it</a> and the World Bank Institute admits <a href="http://wbi.worldbank.org/wbi/Data/wbi/wbicms/files/drupal-acquia/wbi/WBI%20Global%20Dialogue%20on%20Food%20Security%20and%20Adaptation%20-%20Summary%20of%20emerging%20issues.pdf" target="_blank">we produce enough, globally, for 14 billion people</a>. This isn't exactly new news; I've <a href="http://nomegrown.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/solution-to-world-hunger.html" target="_blank">argued before</a> that we <i>could </i>already produce more than enough food for the global population. But yet industrial agriculture and its supporters - from the UK's <a href="http://www.nfuonline.com/about-us/nfu-whos-who/meurig-raymond/meurig-raymonds-blog/food-for-thought/" target="_blank">National Farmers Union</a> to <a href="https://croplife.org/global-issues/food-security/" target="_blank">CropLife International</a> to, of course, <a href="http://jobs.syngenta.com/content/about/" target="_blank">Syngenta</a>, <a href="http://www.cropscience.bayer.com/en/Company/Our-Mission.aspx" target="_blank">Bayer</a> and <a href="http://www.monsanto.com/improvingagriculture/pages/why-does-agriculture-need-to-be-improved.aspx" target="_blank">Monsanto</a> - want us to believe we do not - perhaps <i>cannot </i>- produce enough. The article points out;<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The strategic centrepiece of Monsanto’s PR, and also that of just about
every major commercial participant in the industrialised food system, is
to focus on the promotion of one single overarching idea. The big idea
that industrial producers in the food system want you to believe is that
only they can produce enough for the future population.</blockquote>
It's a lie. An industry lie, to promote industrial agriculture over small-scale agroecological growing. An industry lie to make money, at great cost to the earth.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
...in <a href="http://grist.org/article/2010-02-23-new-research-synthetic-nitrogen-destroys-soil-carbon-undermines/">every single case</a>
where industrial agriculture is implemented it leaves landscapes
progressively emptier of life. Eventually, the soil turns either <a href="http://www.monbiot.com/2014/06/05/ripping-apart-the-fabric-of-the-nation/">into mud</a> that washes into the rivers or <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_Bowl">into dust</a> that blows away on the wind. <b>Industrial agriculture has <a href="http://www.grida.no/graphicslib/detail/degraded-soils_c4c4">no long term future</a>; it is ecological suicide. </b></blockquote>
The article goes on to describe how the ecological food movement needs a new strategy; one that involves dismantling this lie and changing perception. Do give it a read:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="http://www.independentsciencenews.org/environment/how-the-great-food-war-will-be-won/" target="_blank">How the Great Food War Will Be Won</a></blockquote>
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Nomehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03883852903828005065noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221032428937703036.post-84382309684625099442015-02-06T10:53:00.000+00:002015-02-06T18:06:02.262+00:00An ExceptionI've always tried to avoid growing F1 hybrids - well, mostly. If I'm sent free seeds with an order or magazine it seems rather churlish to reject them, and a few others have slipped through the net over the years for one reason or another. It's not that there's anything 'wrong' with hybrids, but you have to support the things that you want to thrive. It's a bit like buying British or local. I want to see biodiversity and food security thriving, and hybrids undermine these by drastically reducing demand for traditional open-pollinated varieties, and because they're not genetically stable and can't reproduce to create another generation the same. I also like to think I can save the seeds of all my crops, although my seed-saving operation has a long way to go yet... And F1 seeds can be pretty expensive too!<br />
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But this year I'm making one deliberate exception, and it's this:<br />
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Aubergines are a luxury vegetable for us - something that we could easily do
without, but something I'd love to eat more. I rarely buy them, simply because I'm buying less and
less veg anyway - my priority is to eat what I grow and I'm far too busy
eating all the courgettes and French beans and tomatoes and peppers and
leafy greens coming out of the garden when they're in season. So the only way I'm gonna get to eat them is if I grow them myself! <br />
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But aubergines, lets face it, are just not really suited to the British climate - they need lots and lots of warmth and sunshine - yet I know many gardeners have moderate success with them, especially under cover. Not me; I've managed to grow just two small aubergines in five or six years of trying, and one of them went bad on the plant. There are only really two open-pollinated varieties of aubergines widely available (not counting fancy-coloured ones or mini ones, which I'm less interested in for now) and I've tried them both, without success. So when I read a recommendation for this variety, Bonica F1, on <a href="http://www.nickykylegardening.com/index.php/blog/312-what-to-sow-now-january-2015" target="_blank">Nicky Kyle's great blog</a> I thought well, why not have one last bash? Better to grow an F1 hybrid than not to grow them at all! Hybridisation brings the best traits together from other varieties to create new varieties that are (generally) more productive or earlier, more consistent and more reliable - the easier (though pricier) choice for any gardener, and in theory they will crop more readily where traditional varieties have failed. The plastic greenhouse we're putting on the allotment this
year means we'll be able to provide them with a bit more protection than
at home, too, so I'm crossing my fingers and looking forward to a
bountiful aubergine harvest for once!Nomehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03883852903828005065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221032428937703036.post-61340910073495557352015-02-01T12:23:00.000+00:002015-02-01T12:23:26.645+00:00Patience...Despite having a long list of jobs I need to get done before the growing season starts again, very little is happening on the plot at the moment; a week or two of bitterly cold and wet weather has made digging unpleasant at best and impossible at worst. I wouldn't mind so much if it would just snow properly, like it has in much of the country, and make the place look pretty for a while! But all we've had is yucky icy sleet and lots of rain.<br />
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I've also been very busy with preparations for our first <a href="http://nomegrown.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/foodsmiles.html" target="_blank">FoodSmiles</a> AGM last week, and the FoodSmiles seed order this week! If you think figuring out what to grow on your own allotment can take a while, try figuring out what you need for a giant veg plot for 25 families using strictly organic seed only!<br />
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There's still plenty to harvest from the allotment and this week we brought home these carrots, leeks, parsnips and the last two (very small!) swedes.<br />
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We have made some progress on what is to be our new 'alternative' fruit patch, shown above. It's always been a tough corner of the allotment, this, and the couchgrass has really colonised it again, so we've dug it over once and we're halfway through a second go to pick out remaining roots. I was hoping to finish it off tomorrow and start planting it up, but if the weather is as cold as forecast I won't even be able to get a fork in the ground, and we'll have to settle for a trip to the garden centre instead - I think I have <i>finally </i>sated my seed-buying urge now, but there are still seed potatoes and compost to buy. Now it's February I'll be counting down the days to sowing my first seeds in the middle of the month... Better get the propagator out and clean up some pots!Nomehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03883852903828005065noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221032428937703036.post-54027925240311147722015-01-23T11:57:00.000+00:002015-01-23T15:47:16.227+00:00Year of Flowers!Allotmenteering wouldn't be much fun if you did all the same things every year, and this year, with things on the plot really starting to settle into a pattern, part of me has obviously felt the need for a new challenge. Two, actually.<br />
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Cut flowers, and cauliflowers.<br />
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I know that I've sown cauliflower seeds before, but I don't remember what happened. I expect they met an untimely end at the beaks of pigeons or the jaws of slugs (okay, not really jaws...), or drowned in couchgrass and nettles. I've tried those perennial cauliflowers too, but never had much luck.<br />
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Cauliflowers are tricky to grow; they're fussy about their soil, they have a lot of potential pests, and they sulk if anything at all goes wrong. But we eat loads of them at home and it only makes sense to start <i>trying </i>to grow them, even if it takes me a while to master the art... They also take up a huge amount of room; just six or eight cauliflowers on the plot will use the same amount of space as four rows of parsnips, beetroots or carrots, which hardly seems economical... but I've just got to give it a try.<br />
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They can be grown all year round, so I've picked an autumn
variety to sow this spring, and a spring variety to sow later on in the
summer for next year.<br />
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Wish me luck, because I'm going to need it...<br />
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Now to cut flowers... Cut flowers! I never, ever thought I'd find myself growing cut flowers. I've grown edible flowers, and medicinal flowers, and flowers to attract predatory insects, and flowers to help pollinators, and flowers to deter soil pests - marigolds, borage, nasturtiums and sunflowers are all regulars on my plot - but never flowers for fun and frivolity. But there's a movement going on... British florists are popping up all over the place, The Big Allotment Challenge has got bouquets on my brain, more allotment-holders and home-growers seem to be embracing the benefits of growing flowers, and it's swept me right up. And as I spend more and more time out there growing and being with plants, the more all kinds of plants appeal to me. And I had to <i>buy </i>flowers a couple of times last year, and they were <i>expensive</i>, and it kind of hurt to know that they were flown in from Columbia or wherever and drenched with pesticides and treated with chemicals to keep them 'alive'. And I bet they'd bring looooads more insects to the plot. And I'm always impressed and a bit envious of the few vases of flowers on display at the allotment association summer show. And anyway, wouldn't it be really nice to have flowers in the house more and some to give away whenever the occasion arose, or just to put a few smiles on faces?<br />
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I'd sown a few foxglove and echinacea plants last year anyway, for the bees and just because I think foxgloves would love the shady spot behind my neighbours' shed. I also picked up some little wallflower plants in the autumn. For one reason and another I wasn't able to plant them out before winter came, but I'm hoping to get them in early enough this spring for them to still do okay. I also sowed some scabiosa last spring which got planted out late and are yet to flower, but overwintering well... I was obviously leaning slightly flowerwards even last spring!<br />
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I got some early seed-sowing done in October too, and now have healthy calendula, corncockle, clary sage and sweet pea seedlings safe in the plastic greenhouse at home until the weather's good enough to plant them out.<br />
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And I've bought a load more seeds to sow this spring and summer, mostly from the lovely <a href="http://higgledygarden.com/" target="_blank">Higgledy Garden</a>, whose fabulous blog and website (and <a href="https://twitter.com/higgledygarden" target="_blank">twitter feed</a>) is enough to tempt anyone to take up flower-growing!<br />
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The full list is vipers bugloss, cosmos, cerinthe, rudbeckia, calendula, corncockle, ammi majus, achillea, bupleurum, cornflower, clary sage, snapdragons, scabiosa, sweet pea, sunflower, and to summer-sow for early next year, more wallflowers, sweet Williams, and hesperis or sweet rocket. I don't think I have room for them all... The old strawberry patch is set aside for them but it's only about three metres square. The sunflowers will go among the perennials as usual, calendula will be dotted about, and I'm sure there's room for a strip of something next to where we'll put the greenhouse - and I haven't exactly decided what to do with the old asparagus patch yet, either, though I really shouldn't give up too much of the plot to non-edibles... We'll see what happens!Nomehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03883852903828005065noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221032428937703036.post-26071455489449046142015-01-18T09:31:00.000+00:002015-01-18T11:31:13.549+00:00A Tale of Three Raised BedsWhen we first moved into the 'granny annex' at Mum and Dad's house I could only grow vegetables in pots and grow bags on and around the patio - their shrubby, woodlandy garden didn't have any space for vegetables and most of it was too shady anyway. That was okay by me - we had the allotment too, after all. But plant pots have a funny way of multiplying, don't they...? And with Mum and Dad moving toward organic food more and more (100% now I believe!), last year they gave me some more space to grow food for the whole family.<br />
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We planned three new veg-growing areas; one garden bed in a rare sunny spot where the shrubs weren't thriving any more, a large raised bed just in front of the patio which was occupied by a multitude of pots and tubs, and two smaller raised beds at the shadier end of the garden, where a small lawn was becoming overrun with moss and weeds and I had already put some moveable growbeds and containers for leafy crops (pic below). We decided against growing straight into the ground mostly because the garden soil is extremely heavy clay - not much fun to work with, but it'll make an excellent nutritious subsoil!<br />
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The timing was perfect; early spring when it warm enough to work outside but I'd still be able to sow everything in time. I cleared the garden bed, re-edged it to a slightly higher level and topped it off with the previous year's growbags and tubs. I hacked back the honeysuckle and snowberry that keep moving in from under the fence and planted strawberries round the edge, and it became a nursery bed for young plants for a while, while I worked on the other areas...<br />
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The big raised bed was to go on a slated area, so my first task was to scrape back all the slate chips. <br />
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We drew up some plans and ordered half sleepers (from <a href="http://www.uksleepers.co.uk/">UK Sleepers</a>) cut from oak - a naturally long-lasting hardwood that doesn't need treating with chemicals to protect it.<br />
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I enlisted the help of my friend Dave (and his power tools!) to cut the wood to size and build the beds, using long outdoor-use 'green organic coated' timber drive screws from Wickes...<br />
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And a day and a half later all three were done and ready for filling!<br />
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I ordered the four tonnes of 'Veggie Gold' compost to fill them; a "ready-to-use" peat-free mix of compost, topsoil and manure, recommended for raised veg beds, which promised to be from sustainable sources with no added chemicals. I had to wait a while for it to arrive, which was a tad frustrating, but eventually it did...<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilhmiidPTF_sv0i-uuEuv07XPmMMXliEkshNeEwr2vLSgdJk45xx38hJkaQ-su44e1rBk2A_80wsz5W20LyI4rNOPckRXK_59Zwo4825XHF0-1iwR9pTBEXri3CsuRZEpt3u4bBU1-7k4H/s1600/2015-04-09+043.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilhmiidPTF_sv0i-uuEuv07XPmMMXliEkshNeEwr2vLSgdJk45xx38hJkaQ-su44e1rBk2A_80wsz5W20LyI4rNOPckRXK_59Zwo4825XHF0-1iwR9pTBEXri3CsuRZEpt3u4bBU1-7k4H/s1600/2015-04-09+043.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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...and the next two days were spent wheelbarrowing compost from the front of the house to the back (by myself, I'd like to add!). The larger bed has a weed membrane beneath it anyway, but in the two smaller beds I laid cardboard at the bottom to provide a barrier against weeds (until it rots, by which time they should have died from lack of light anyway).<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSt1PSrvbcdQdJq9TSVPfgC1VuQHDUVR2LIblskRLplIKMbCfwNTkFPpQvlLw97jm-DED3p16s0dVeege7VsEpH-UUzd-jRpn_f8JP31f-b41kbiF7nt95AmOkWICqERgOQdi4ffVF7hRl/s1600/2015-04-12+006.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSt1PSrvbcdQdJq9TSVPfgC1VuQHDUVR2LIblskRLplIKMbCfwNTkFPpQvlLw97jm-DED3p16s0dVeege7VsEpH-UUzd-jRpn_f8JP31f-b41kbiF7nt95AmOkWICqERgOQdi4ffVF7hRl/s1600/2015-04-12+006.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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Not a bad job, I think, and certainly a lot tidier than a jumble of containers. Hurrah! I got sowing right away, planning a row of peppers and chillies along the back of the big bed, some dwarf beans in front of them, and square-foot patches of different salad veg and small root crops along the front, with a few herbs and flowers dotted around as well. The two shady beds would take leafy greens - mostly kale and chard.<br />
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A few weeks in, I realised that all was not well... Things were growing rather strangely and inconsistently. Along a row of mustard seeds, the seedlings had grown large in patches and stalled at a tiny size in others. Some had bolted. A poached egg plant and some tiny spring onions I'd transplanted had yellowed very badly and become stunted. Spinach plants and radishes had bolted extremely prematurely, before reaching anything like a usable size.<br />
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A few weeks later still, little had changed. Those things that were growing were growing painfully slowly, or running straight to seed, while my crops on the allotment and in the garden bed in the corner were doing just fine. I began an experiment which confirmed my worst suspicions...<br />
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The two pots on the left contain the same 'Veggie Gold' compost that I filled the raised beds with; the two on the right contain old multipurpose compost out of one of the previous year's containers. The bottom two also have <a href="http://nomegrown.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/complete-organic-fertiliser.html" target="_blank">Complete Organic Fertiliser</a> added. I sowed spinach seeds in all four pots at the same time, and thinned to three seedlings per pot after germination. The results are pretty clear I'd say - wouldn't you?<br />
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The company I had bought the stuff from - Compost Direct - didn't want to know. After three emails to them they finally replied to say that they only ever had good feedback about this compost and I should just add some more nitrogen or general-purpose fertiliser. I did, in the forms of chicken manure, chicken manure 'tea', and a commercial liquid feed. Nothing helped. I sent them the picture above. They didn't care. Just keep adding extra feed, they said. My blood boiled... All that sweat and hard work and money and anticipation and I couldn't even grow anything in my raised beds!<br />
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Luckily there were a few things that did seem to grow okay in the soil; little gem lettuces were slow but getting bigger, the carrots and beetroots didn't seem to mind, and the kale and chard down the garden was not too bad.<br />
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After giving it some thought, I suspected perhaps the problem was an excess of potassium; that would explain why adding more nitrogen hadn't helped leaf growth, as potassium blocks it. Potassium also encourages fruiting (perhaps hence the early bolting), and is prevalent in woody matter and straw - there had been loads of partially-composted woody stuff and strawy manure in the compost mix. I try not to consider myself a soil mineral expert after reading just one book but I still feel this is pretty likely the problem! And how do you get too much potassium out of soil? You wait for the rain to leach it out...</div>
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Growth improved very gradually throughout the year. I did get a couple of handfuls of beans even though the plants were more dwarf than ever, and the perpetual spinach got going after a while. I took to planting lots of spare plants and more lettuces in the bed - the more plants grow in it, the more potassium they use up, right? Nothing really thrived. I even let the weeds grow! I got a few nice peppers, though again the plants were small. The lettuces, it turned out, tasted starchy and bitter. My cucumbers, which I'd planted in a large container filled with the same compost, yellowed and died. <br />
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Happily, however, my bed in the corner of the garden was doing wonderfully! Two huge courgette plants gave us more than six of us could eat from June to September, and from all around them we had strawberries, lovage, tarragon, parsley, mangetout and drying beans. Calendula filled in all the gaps and brought bees buzzing to that corner of the garden. What a delight! I haven't grown courgettes at the allotment for years since we don't go there often enough to pick them, so I've made do with small courgette plants confined to pots and sulking. To see them going crazy like this - like they're meant to - was great!<br />
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The growth in the oak beds has continued to improve slowly and I am feeling quietly confident that I'll get better results this year. At the moment the large one has that same perpetual spinach (though it's rather slug-eaten just now!), some new and healthy garlic shoots, a tangle of old carrots and beetroots and a few sorry-looking herbs. The compost level has sunk a lot - nearly 25% - which will give me an opportunity to top it up with something better (though I still have nearly a half-ton of the 'Veggie Gold' sitting around...). I also plan to get the soil lab-tested at the same time as I get the allotment soil done - that'll be interesting... The kale in the bottom bed never really got very big - though caterpillars can be blamed for some of that - but it's okay, and I'm looking forward to a bit more growing success in the months ahead...<br />
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<br />Nomehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03883852903828005065noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221032428937703036.post-61457987322343906882015-01-14T09:45:00.000+00:002015-02-20T14:39:40.184+00:00Dining in the DarkAt the weekend I got to tick off an experience that has been
on my foodie 'to-do' list for some time – 'dining in the dark'. There are a few
restaurants all around the world now that offer this unique experience, and I went to 'Dans le Noir'
in London with a party of ten for a friend's birthday.
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On arrival our orders were checked – everyone is served a
fixed surprise menu but we had pre-ordered our choice of fish, meat, vegetarian
or 'special' mixed menu – and we were instructed to leave all our belongings in
secure lockers in the bar area – no phones or cameras allowed in the dining
room! The ten of us were lined up with our hands on the shoulders of the person
in front of us, led into the dining room, and 'shown' our seats one by one.</div>
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Our waiter was blind; in fact all the waiters were – a no-brainer
when you consider the implications of training waiting staff to do everything
in pitch dark, but it added an unexpected poignancy too. And it really was
pitch dark, even after two hours at the table when some of us thought our eyes
might have adjusted enough to see just a little!</div>
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It's obviously extremely disorientating sitting in an
unfamiliar room in complete darkness with the hubbub (din!) of a dozen other
dining tables filling your ears, and without visual cues it was not at all easy to communicate with anyone except those closest to me, but it didn't take too long to get sort of
orientated; there was Eddie on my left, the end of the table on my right, my
glass of wine, cutlery, glass of water. (Pouring glasses of water from the jug
provided was a challenge!) And then the food arrived...</div>
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We all very quickly realised it was virtually impossible,
without seeing, to approach a plate of mystery food with a knife and fork, and
most of us ate with our fingers most of the time – a common choice, apparently. Again and again, conversation turned to the challenges blind people must face.</div>
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My expectations of eating in the dark had been split: on one
hand, they say that when one of your senses is taken away you experience the
others more acutely, but on the other they say you eat largely with your
eyes...</div>
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I certainly experienced the textures of the food more
acutely. As a child I was very squeamish about strange food textures, and
without any visuals to anchor my idea of what I was eating I felt perhaps even
more so. There was some sort of cold pastey stuff, firm on the plate but
squidgy and melt-in-the-mouth, and salty to taste. Paté, it must be, but is paté
always this slimy? What does it taste of? Is it really paté? What if it's
something else? I found some toast on the plate, and manoeuvred the slice of
paté-or-whatever-it-was onto it. Ah, that was better. There was some salady
stuff on the side too. A few leaves of rocket and a cherry tomato... an onion,
roasted just enough to mellow the flavour, but what a strange feeling when the
layers all slipped apart between my teeth... a baby carrot... and something
else I couldn't identify at all! It was round... firm... with the texture of a
cooked radish perhaps, but the flavour...? I couldn't tell. And what was this
left over in the corner of my plate? Oh. There I was eating chutney, on its
own, with my fingers.</div>
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The main course followed, as main courses do, and in the
spirit of a taster menu we were each served three different dishes – three small
piles on each plate – and a little taster of each told me one was fish and two
were meat. (This was the 'special' menu.) I tackled the fish first, and
texture-wise it was a real struggle, with a few lumps of firm fishy stuff – I thought
perhaps squid – in some kind of sauce or dressing, and then underneath a big
squidgy lump of something I couldn't identify at all. I told myself it was a
big piece of cooked tomato and it went down... The two meat dishes were much
more enjoyable; on the right, tender chunks of stewed meat and veg, full of
flavour. It tasted like beef, but richer... Venison perhaps. On the left, a
meat I couldn't identify, on a pile of vegetable shreddings that I also
couldn't identify. I thought at first the meat might be very well-flavoured
chicken or pork, but no, the texture wasn't right for either (though it was
very tender and soft) and it seemed rare in places. I enjoyed it though!</div>
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Dessert was easier to identify; something creamy in a
ramekin – passionfruit pannacotta, I thought – and a side of mixed berries
topped with a blob of chocolate moussey stuff. Thankfully it was much easier to
use a spoon when the food was contained in a ramekin, with no chance of inadvertently
pushing it off the plate!</div>
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Throughout the meal I was constantly shocked that I couldn't identify more flavours. I usually consider myself to have a pretty sensitive sense of taste, and I can often pick out subtle flavours that others can't. In the dark, the most prominent flavours by far were simply salt, sweet and umami, with a few notable aromatics (carrot, rocket, some of the fruits), and there seemed little complexity to any of the flavours at all. Was it just bad food? Are my tastebuds way less sensitive than I think? I think it was down to a sort of stress and overwhelm; the room felt extremely noisy (whether or not I was merely <i>more aware </i>of the noise), sensations of texture definitely overrode sensations of taste – arguably touch is the more important sense, I suppose – and the primary challenge was just getting the food eaten at all! Forced to eat clumsily, without being able to distinguish the
different components on the plate (and many of the ingredients, it
turned out, unfamiliar or less familiar) I was virtually unable to
analyse what was in my mouth properly. I was interested (and relieved) to read in <a href="http://www.bomboloni.co.uk/dining-in-the-dark/" target="_blank">another blogger's account</a> of dining in the dark (by Helen Barnard at <a href="http://www.bomboloni.co.uk/" target="_blank">Bomboloni</a>) that this was her experience too; she wrote "<i>This far out of my comfort zone, my sense of taste was not heightened,
as expected, but rather went into a kind of emergency mode whereby only
basic senses such as sweet, salty, bitter and savoury were registered,
along with vague temperature differentials.</i>" A confusing and unsettling experience!</div>
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Back in the lit bar area we retrieved our bags and coats and
were shown the menus, with photographs of what we'd just eaten. My starter –
that slimy, salty paté – had been foie gras, and apparently there had been a
fig on my plate. How had I missed a fig?? The fishy main was lobster and oyster
– both a big surprise (I love lobster, but didn't think I'd ever find myself
eating slippery, gooey oysters – ugh!) – the stewed chunks had indeed been
venison, and the mystery meat was delicious bison! The shredded vegetable I
hadn't recognised was celeriac – something I'm not very familiar with at all. The
'passionfruit pannacotta' had actually been mango and cardamom pannacotta
(Cardamom? I hadn't detected that at all!) and the chocolate mousse had been
white chocolate – I'd never have guessed!</div>
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I felt cheated! I'd eaten foie gras and not been able to
savour it properly?! I never thought I'd find myself eating foie gras at all –
I certainly wouldn't have chosen it (though I was relieved and encouraged
to find, <a href="http://www.seriouseats.com/2010/12/the-physiology-of-foie-why-foie-gras-is-not-u.html">in
this fascinating article</a>, that foie gras production may not be nearly as
bad as we think these days) – and I certainly hadn't thought it as wonderful as people say it is. I'd eaten lobster and not enjoyed it because I
hadn't been able to identify the texture? Those who chose the meat menu, incidentally, had unknowingly sampled wagyu beef – supposedly some of the finest beef in the world! I realised I probably paid more attention to the bison than anything else, because both the texture and taste were very pleasing <i>and </i>because I couldn't recognise it and wanted to figure out what it was.</div>
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I think I can safely say that food is more enjoyable when you can see it!</div>
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For £52 I'd actually eaten surprisingly little food, though £13 is for 'access to the experience' and they do obviously use some premium ingredients in the dishes! I felt the experience could have been greatly improved by reducing the sound level in the dining room, with more space between tables and perhaps booths or something to deaden the noise.</div>
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But despite my reservations, it was a thoroughly fascinating, unique and powerful experience, and something I would recommend as I'm really glad I've done it. As I left the restaurant I said I wouldn't want to do it again, but after mulling it over I think it would probably be less stressful a second time and I might be able to relax and enjoy it more.</div>
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You'll have to pardon the pictureless post, for obvious reasons, but there are lots of pictures of past menus on <a href="http://london.danslenoir.com/old-menus.en.html" target="_blank">Dans le Noir's website here</a> if you'd like to take a look!<br />
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Now, this wouldn't be a complete or honest review if I didn't tell you that 30-40 hours after our meal in the dark (and just after I'd drafted the above), four out of the five of us who chose the 'special' menu developed food poisoning. I try not to judge a place - or anyone or anything - on a single incident, and accidents will always happen occasionally, but I can't quite get over the irony that this is the one dining experience in which we <i>had</i> <i>to </i>put <i>complete trust</i> in the chefs and staff to serve us food that was acceptable in every way, and food poisoning is pretty much the ultimate betrayal of that trust. A great shame, which has dampened my recommendation for the restaurant somewhat. But let the recommendation for the experience still stand. It will remain a memorable and fascinating one.<br />
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<i>UPDATE: The restaurant refunded the cost of our meals. They said they'd had quite a few complaints that night and investigation showed it was a bad batch of oysters *shudder*. They have since decided never to serve oysters again! </i></div>
Nomehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03883852903828005065noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221032428937703036.post-74652623035169028772015-01-10T10:45:00.000+00:002015-01-10T10:47:08.863+00:00Allotment TourWe finally made it to the allotment this week, after having not managed to go at all during December, and did some much-needed catching up.<br />
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Here it is:<br />
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Of course, it doesn't look like much at the moment, but there's plenty going on, and considering what a battle we've always had with couchgrass and other perennial weeds we're pretty pleased with it. But it's been a long time since I took or shared any pictures of it, so let me give you the tour...<br />
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It's split roughly into seven sections, more by accident than design, with woodchip paths in between them, lined with bricks and some cheap weedproof fabric that isn't quite doing the job any more.<br />
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Section one, above, is where our compost bins are. We built them last spring to replace our old ones, in another spot, which were falling apart, and we relocated them here because it's under the shade of an elder tree and the soil is full of roots - everything we've grown here in the past has struggled a bit, so it's a good spot to use for something other than plants! The area covered in weedproof fabric over there has also been problematic, but we're determined to get it under control this year and plant a new fruit patch here, mulching heavily between the plants to try to beat the couchgrass!<br />
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Section two is the first of our three rotation beds. Last year we grew potatoes here - now the near half is covered in a phacelia green manure (and quite a few annual weeds) and the far half has rows of spinach and chard (again with the weeds...) There's also a row of scabiosa I planted out too late to flower, but it seems to be coming through the winter a treat! After we clear this patch in late spring we'll grow squashes and pumpkins here. <br />
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Section three (our second rotation bed) is where our root crops were grown, though it's beginning to look a little sparse now. The spring cabbages in the foreground are at a variety of stages - we picked our first this week but others are not ready yet, and one has rotted! :-( Beyond that is a small row of calabrese which should produce in the spring, some carrots, parsnips, swedes, celery and leeks. We've just finished the beetroots. When this patch is clear in early to mid spring, we'll plant our potatoes here.<br />
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Section four (our third rotation bed) was pumpkins and squashes last year, but now it's bare, which is pretty disappointing because I sowed most of it with field beans (a green manure) and broad beans in November. (The cardboard is there to protect a patch I left unsown, intending to make a second sowing in March.) I guess I left it just a little too late; they say early November is the latest you should sow but we did it near the end of the month. Still, never mind, there's plenty of time to sow more broad beans, and our root veg and leeks will go here from March onwards. <br />
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Section five is what we call our perennials bed, though it's not the only one! We planted it last year with asparagus (along the left hand side) strawberries (in the raised beds) and globe artichokes (far end, under little mounds of woodchip mulch and black plastic to protect the crowns from frost), as well as some parsley, sage, lavender and lemon balm. It's done okay so far but the plants are still getting established - hopefully they will be even better this year. I'd also like to plant some perennial kale among the sage - supposedly sage keeps cabbage white butterflies away, but we will see!<br />
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Section six is home to our pond (far end), two columnar 'spur' fruit trees, and our old strawberry patch (this end) which is now under a mulch of thick cardboard until we can dig it over. There used to be a really nice herb garden planted around the pond and the trees, but over the years it's become swamped with couchgrass and very few plants are left, so this area is up for redevelopment this year... We will replant the herb garden - perhaps through a membrane to keep the grass down - and the old strawberry bed will become a flower patch! We'll also be giving away the pear tree - we don't like the fruit! - and we need to right the very wonky apple tree before it goes over! We'll have to do this soon while the trees are still dormant - they won't like having their roots messed with.<br />
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Finally, section seven is where we keep our tools in our storage bench, and it's where our old compost bins were (on the right). That spot is now a lovely fertile patch where we'll put a plastic greenhouse this year for a few tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers. We've also got a little comfrey patch here which we use to feed the compost and make plant feed, and at the far end is a little bed which used to grow asparagus, though it's almost all been choked out by grass - another redevelopment project for this year. I think it's just big enough for a couple of bean teepees... or I might decide to grow the beans at home and grow sweet peas here instead, or some more fruit! I'd also like to narrow this path a bit to maximise the growing space in section six on the left.<br />
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You'll notice there's not much space here for summer fruiting crops like French beans, courgettes and tomatoes, nor salads or brassicas. A few years ago we decided we were better off only growing reasonably low-maintenance veg at the allotment, since we struggle to get here enough to look after them. It's working out really well, and we can still grow those things at home where we can keep an eye on them and pick them regularly! We don't grow many brassicas simply because we find them so problematic (what with flea beetles, whitefly, rootfly, slugs, three kinds of caterpillars and pigeons all wanting a share!) but we are adding them to our repertoire gradually. And we don't grow onions or shallots because we have dreadful white rot in the soil which destroys the crop, but we manage a bit of garlic and plenty of spring onions at home, and I'm sure we'll return to onion-growing at some point...<br />
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During our trip on Monday we pruned the apple and pear trees and made a good job of weeding and tidying the perennials bed, cutting down last year's asparagus ferns, herb flower spikes and sunflower stems. Here's a 'before' picture!<br />
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There's much more weeding to be done before things start growing again in spring, and we need to make a start on that digging very soon too. We're all crossing our fingers for no flooding this year, so we can keep at it!Nomehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03883852903828005065noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221032428937703036.post-3621901533744950592015-01-07T16:29:00.000+00:002015-01-07T16:29:22.219+00:00Celeriac fail!Last year we tried to grow celeriac for the first time. I raised some lovely healthy little 'Prague Giant' seedlings at home, planted them out in a row on the plot around the end of May, they produced some really healthy and vibrant plants with a delicious celery-like aroma and classy purple stems and... nothing. I watched those roots, I waited, I watered, I waited some more, and they never swelled. I'm pretty sure they can't have wanted for water (especially with mycorrhizal fungi applied) and they should have had plenty of nutrients too (and everything else in the same bed certainly did well).<br />
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I cleared the row in disgust in mid-November, and there was nothing but a tangle of roots beneath those lovely thick stems. I've read since that they do all their swelling in the late summer and autumn, so maybe, just maybe, they were about to surprise me just as I gave up on them, but c'mon... mid-November? Surely they should have shown signs of growth by then?<br />
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I'd like to try again but it seems sort of futile unless I do something differently - but I really don't know where I went wrong, and it's a popular variety that plenty of other folk succeed with. This year I will make sure to sow them early and plant out as soon as possible, and make sure they always get plenty of water, but if you have any other ideas or suggestions for better success, please do tell! Nomehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03883852903828005065noreply@blogger.com2