Born Blind

I recently noticed my Uchiki Kuri squash seedlings were not progressing equally; while one has dutifully produced a healthy first leaf and is making a start on its second and third, the other has no growing tip.

This is called a 'blind' seedling, and occurs from time to time (especially in curcubits, in my experience, but also in tomatoes, peppers, brassicas and virtually any other kind of plant), seemingly at random and for reasons unknown. It's a disorder or defect, rather than a disease. This blind seedling has no true leaves at all, but sometimes a seedling may develop just one true leaf and be left with no growing point, like the tomato seedling below, or even grow a full pair and then stop.

Sometimes, if you keep it going long enough, the blind seedling may sprout a growing tip after all, but it's much quicker and easier just to compost the plant and resow. And that is what I have done.

Five Strategies to Cope with the Hosepipe Ban

Yes, from the 5th April many of us will have to lock up our hoses and find other ways to make sure our gardens get enough water. You can find further details of who is affected and exactly what they can and can't do at hosepipeban.org.uk - in my area it means I can't use a hose attached to the mains to water any plants, fill or maintain ponds or pools, or wash cars or windows. I can, however, still use watering cans and buckets to my heart's content, and run hosepipes from my own stored rainwater or greywater (bathwater etc.). While this won't affect me at the allotment - we have to haul water in cans there anyway - it'll make watering the home garden much, much more of a chore. At home there are dozens and dozens of pots which dry out quickly, most of my fruiting veg which will need water every day, and several thirsty trees which tend to dry out the surrounding areas. At home, we regularly give the garden a long soaking with a hose during dry periods. And even now, it's been a while since we had any rain at all...

So I've been thinking a lot about how to manage things without use of a hose, and in drought conditions when we're not receiving enough rain, and here are the five main strategies which I think can help us all:

1 – Look after your soil

Soil containing lots of organic matter holds more moisture. Dig compost into your beds (or spread it on top and let the worms do the work for you). Try to avoid growing things in small pots, which dry out very fast. As well as physically holding more moisture, a larger pot (or open ground) allows a plant to spread its roots more.

2 – Grow strong plants

Tiny seedlings are much more susceptible to water shortage than larger plants as they have tiny root systems. Grow seedlings on in ideal conditions until they're strong and healthy before planting out. BUT don't let them get too big either - planting out while they're still small encourages young plants to reach down for water and develop better root systems in the long term. Create depressions around plants, to hold water near to them, and keep weeds down to reduce competition. Water deeply a couple of times a week rather than lightly every day - a light sprinkle doesn't reach deeper roots before it dries out, and encourages your plants to grow only shallow roots. Treat plants monthly with biostimulant seaweed extract, which improves their health. Spike and feed lawns now and they'll be that little bit healthier all summer long (and grass is tough stuff anyway, so if it goes brown don't worry; it'll green up again quickly after a rainy spell).

3 – Minimise evaporation

Water during cool weather, or in early mornings or evenings, to prevent evaporation in the sun. Mulches reduce evaporation drastically and a wide range of materials are effective; try woodchip or bark, straw, stones, leafmould, pine needles, grass cuttings, cardboard - anything that shades the soil. Even a thick layer of compost or manure is a good mulch until it is worked into the soil itself. Minimise evaporation on your lawn simply by letting the grass grow!

4 – Save water

Install water butts if you don’t already have them (or consider more if you do), to make the most of any rain. Think about using greywater too, such as water from your bath, shower, washing-up or cooking - just make sure you use a natural phosphate-free soap, in small amounts, and bear in mind that greywater is not recommended for use on edible crops, and should not be stored as bacteria may build up. You can run a hose from your water butts if you install a pump to provide the needed pressure, but your supply may not last long like this. Instead, consider a drip system using a perforated hosepipe buried in the soil – this radically reduces evaporation and maintains a slow, steady supply of moisture right where it’s needed. Otherwise, water economically at the base of plants, instead of wasting water on bare soil or sending it splashing over foliage. Before watering, push your finger into the soil and check for moisture – even if the surface is dry, the soil may still be damp an inch down, and this is usually enough. Bury upturned plastic bottles with their bases cut off just above soil level, to funnel water right down to plants' roots where it is needed.

5 – Use mycorrhizal fungi

Applied to the roots of a plant, this fungus forms a symbiotic relationship which effectively gives the plant a whole secondary root system, increasing root area by around 70%. The fungus reaches deep into the soil and provides the plant with water and nutrients in exchange for carbon, making the plant more vigorous and drought-resistant for the rest of its life! I haven’t tried this yet but I'm thinking about it - it sounds like an amazing benefit, and it’s all-natural, sustainable and British-grown. This article from Permaculture Magazine shows one man's experiments with using it on potatoes - the treated plant lived much longer without watering, and produced much bigger tubers!

What are you doing to cope with hosepipe bans and water shortages this year?

Proud Plant-Mom!

Yes, the bulk of the watching and waiting is over, and I am now the proud and anxious guardian of more seedlings than you can shake a spray bottle at!

We have here...
20 sunflower 'Russian Mammoth'
40 tomato 'Angelle', saved from last year's plants and the ones before - I'll give surplus away. (I was blown away by the germination rate of these. I figured I'd grow six of each generation, sowing ten of each so I'd have extras to give away, and dropped two seeds in each hole just in case... Every single one grew, and every single one has been potted up!)
4 tomato 'Amish Paste'
5 tomato 'Dr Carolyn'
2 chilli 'Ancho Grande' (poor germination from these - I'd have liked more plants)
6 chilli 'Jalapeno'
1 pepper 'Doux Tres Long Des Landes' (all other seedlings - and seeds - eaten by a nasty soil-dwelling pest)
2 pepper 'Kaibi no 2'
2 pepper 'Californian Wonder'
3 pepper 'King of the North'
3 aji pepper 'Dedo de Mocha'
2 aubergine 'Black Beauty'
6 summer savory (to plant with beans on the plot and at home - got very leggy very fast; more light next time)
8 'West Indian Gherkin' (these were tricky to germinate - must sow in the heated propagator next year)
6 'Cornichons de Paris'
3 cucumber 'Moneta' (and three spares)
2 courgette 'Black Beauty'
2 courgette 'Astia' F1
1 pumpkin 'Atlantic Giant'
2 pumpkin 'Big Max'
2 pumpkin 'Baby Bear' (poor germination last year, but they did much better in the heated propagator)
2 squash 'Thelma Sanders Sweet Potato' (and one spare)
2 squash 'Crown Prince'
2 squash 'Butternut Hunter' F1
2 squash 'Waltham Butternut'
2 squash 'Uchiki Kuri'

These are all living indoors overnight, and out on the shed roof in the sun during the day.

In the greenhouse night and day (with the door open in sunny weather) I have...
6 broccoli 'Early Purple Sprouting'
6 broccoli 'Autumn Green Calabrese'
6 kale 'Nero di Toscana'
6 celeriac 'Prague Giant' (made the mistake of sowing these outdoors and got nothing - but they soon appeared when I brought them inside for a few days)
4 brussels sprout 'Green Marble' F1
4 cabbage 'Offenham 2' (spring variety)
4 cabbage 'Primo II' (summer/autumn variety)
4 cabbage 'Langedijk 4' (winter variety)
8 kohlrabi, red, green and giant
4 swedes 'Marian'
4 swedes 'Angela'
8 Swiss chard 'Bright Lights'
8 perpetual spinach
10 celery 'Full White'
large tray peas 'Douce Provence' (for pea shoots)
medium tray leeks; 'Musselburgh', 'Malabar', 'Autumn Giant' and 'Porbello'

Outside, on and around the patio, I have...
2 pots parsley (1 flat, 1 curly)
2 pots coriander
3 short rows mangetout 'Golden Sweet' (and more on the way)
short row lettuce 'Little Gem - Pearl'
short row radish 'French Breakfast'
short row purslane, green and golden
short row mizuna
5 early potatoes 'Foremost'
3 early potatoes 'Charlotte'

Still to join the party, I await:
8 crisphead lettuces 'Balmoral' and 'Webb's Wonderful'
4 kale 'True Siberian'
4 kale 'Sutherland'
9 Jerusalem artichokes
short row carrots, mixed varieties
5 rows broad beans 'Bunyard's Exhibition' and 'Aquadulce' (on the plot)
tray of poppies 'Oriental Dwarf Allegro'
tray of petunias
trough of Chinese broccoli 'Kailan Express'
trough of beetroot 'Detroit 2'
trough of spinach; 'Bordeaux' F1, 'Matador' and 'Picasso' F1
pot of chervil
pot of catnip

Already growing...
strawberries (four varieties... ummmm...)
raspberries (three varieties)
asparagus (variety long forgotten, but I think it's 'Gijnlim')
'Red Spur' dwarf apple tree
'Lilliput' dwarf pear tree
Various herbs: marjoram (common and golden), mint, lovage, sage (common and tricolour), thyme, tarragon, rosemary, feverfew, lemon balm, chamomile, chives, garlic chives, sorrel, horseradish, lavender
basil 'Genovese' (indoors)
perennial 'Daubenton's' kale
perennial cut-and-come-again cauliflowers
Claytonia
Lamb's lettuce/corn salad
Spring onions 'Eiffel' and 'Japanese Bunching Long White Tokyo'
Onion 'Radar'
Shallot 'Yellow Moon'
Garlic 'Provence Wight'

And still to plant or sow this year...
Maincrop potatoes 'Kestrel'
Orache, mixed green, gold and red
French bean 'Delinel' and 'Cherokee Trail of Tears'
Runner bean 'Polestar'
Drying beans 'Pinto', 'Cannellini', 'Dwarf Orca' and 'Black Turtle'
Turnips 'Snowball' and 'Giant Limousin'
Parsnips 'White Gem'
Florence fennel 'Romanesco'
Sweetcorn 'Double Standard Bicolour'
Maincrop carrots 'Autumn King 2'
Flowers: borage, nasturtiums, marigolds, poached-egg plant, cornflowers and calendula

Wowsers. Am I crazy? It feels like quite a lot of pressure when I list them all like this! I think I'll have to keep better records this year and take more notice of how much produce I actually get. I'm sure a few plants - or even whole crops - will fall by the wayside somehow or othe - but I've certainly made a pretty good start! Next job: figure out where I'm going to plant them all...

Green Garlic

At the allotment recently we noticed we must have left a few garlic bulbs in the ground last summer - they were popping up again like little bunches of spring onions. With each clove in the bulb now growing separately, they wouldn't have space to form decent bulbs packed together like this. But this 'green garlic' can be lifted and used just as it is.

Green garlic has a milder, sweeter flavour than mature garlic bulbs, without the bitter edge. Apparently you can occasionally pick it up at farmers markets and posh greengrocers and it's becoming a bit of a trendy ingredient! Some gardeners plant extra garlic just so they can get some early in the season.

I'd never used it before, but wasn't going to pass up the opportunity now. With quick reference to a few online recipes, I sautéd seasoned chicken until just golden and threw in the whole bunch of green garlic, white and green parts, chopped finely, with a knob of butter and a splosh of wine. I cooked this for five minutes or so, finished it off with a splash of cream, and served with spaghetti and purple sprouting broccoli.

Deeeeelish.

If you go down to the woods today...

Well okay, it's hardly a picnic, but with everything springing back to life after winter there is a lot of free food to be had out there right now.

We went out looking for edible greens earlier this week and brought home this lovely lot - all from within a short walk of home; a mix of stinging nettles, garlic mustard, goosegrass, chickweed, hogweed, dead nettles and ground elder! I'm pretty proud of how my foraging is coming along!

Everyone who was ever a child recognises stinging nettles, the most commonly-used wild green.

Dead nettles look very similar but don't sting - they look sort of softer and less hairy, are generally smaller, and have either white or purple flowers. The leaves are best picked, I'm told, while the plant is flowering.

Goosegrass is that fuzzy stuff you used to stick all over classmates' backs in the playground, otherwise known as cleavers, and abundant around here.

Chickweed is a very common garden weed with teardrop-shaped leaves, pretty little white flowers and a low branching habit, which I am always pulling out of my pots!

Garlic mustard grows tall upright stems in the summer, but now you can already spot its first clumps of leaves appearing. Crush a leaf and it will smell subtly of garlic.

Hogweed is lauded by some as the tastiest wild green. Its large leaves are quite distinctive, and its furled new shoots are apparently delightful lightly steamed and served simply, like asparagus. Must put this on my to-try list...

While many gardeners are plenty familiar with ground elder, you do need to be sure it's ground elder, as water hemlock can look fairly similar (though it only grows in wet places) and that's not a mistake anyone wants to make! Pick the leaves before the plant flowers. (And do, of course, be sure you know what you're doing picking any wild food - not all weeds are edible and some will give you a nasty stomach upset or even kill you. If you're not already familiar with these plants, this page may not be good enough for identification purposes! Try to forage away from roads where plants might be polluted, and be careful where people walk their dogs. Eww.)

So, what to do with a bagful of greens? Like spinach and other leafy veg - kale, chard, collards - all these leaves are pretty versatile and can go in virtually anything you like. Pastas, risottos, pies, stews, egg dishes, cheese dishes, sides, soups, salads (well, don't try eating nettles raw...)

But being the sort of person for whom one challenge at a time is just not enough, I decided to attempt my first-ever souffle. Frugal meets fancy. And here it is!

It sunk a little while I was getting my camera out - it was higher than that when it first came out the oven, honest! It was light and tasty. You could serve it just with toast and/or salad, or with salty meats like sausages or bacon. We had it with sausages and a simple tomato sauce, which was lovely. For a posh starter, make it in ramekins and reduce the cooking time to 10-13 minutes.

Wild Greens Souffle
(serves 4)

• Butter a one litre souffle dish thoroughly. Preheat the oven to 200C, and in it place a large roasting dish with an inch or so of water.
• Wash 150-250g foraged greens, and place in a large saucepan with an inch of water and a pinch of salt. Steam until all the greens are well wilted, stirring occasionally to turn things over. Drain them and squeeze out as much water as you can, then chop them quite finely.

• Melt 25g butter in a pan, and stir in 2 tbsps plain flour to make a roux. Cook, stirring, for a minute or two, then gradually add 150ml milk, whisking all the time, until you get a smooth sauce, and simmer gently for a couple of minutes.
• Remove from the heat and stir in 80g mature cheddar. Then add the chopped greens, 2 or 3 teaspoons Dijon mustard, a pinch of cayenne pepper and a generous grating of nutmeg, and season well. Stir in 2 large egg yolks.
• In a separate bowl, whisk 4 large egg whites with a pinch of salt until they form stiff peaks.
• Fold the egg whites into the cheese and greens mixture, gently and a little at a time. When it's all well combined, spoon into the buttered dish.
• Place in the preheated roasting dish and water, and bake for 20-25 minutes until the souffle is golden brown and nicely risen.
• Handle gently and serve immediately!