Triffids of the Day

One of the scariest books concerning plants ever written begins along the lines of, "When a day that you are sure is Wednesday starts off sounding like a Sunday, you know that something, somewhere is seriously wrong."

A possibility that didn't perhaps occur to John Wyndham when he was writing 'The Day of the Triffids' was that you might simply be in North Staffordshire.  It's pretty quiet up here.  We do have our triffids, though.  Or rather, I have my triffids...

Sarracenia selection - there are more!

I have been gathering a collection of Sarracenias for the past three years, all bought at local flower shows (Tatton Park, Shrewsbury) either from Hampshire Carnivorous Plants or the excellent P & J Plants (formerly Marston Exotics) from Herefordshire.  I recommend P&J's website and their plants very highly and have also found them to be generous with advice and encouragement.

From P&J Plants stand at Shrewsbury Flower Show 2011

Sarracenias are the classy end of the carnivorous plant spectrum.  They are photosynthesizing femmes fatales.  None of the cheap mousetrap mechanics of the Venus Fly Trap - there is something alien and yet Art Nouveau about Sarracenias. 

While they all share the same basic trumpet snare for their prey,these can be squat and rounded or very long and tapering.  Some are rather frilly, others have crisp, clean lines.  But they are all equally deadly.

The first of the collection (see above) took up residence on the kitchen window sill in the summer of 2009, and immediately set about proving its killer credentials.  I was making jam one afternoon and a wasp decided to come in to investigate.  That proved to be a fatal error as it was lured to its doom within one of the trumpets.  I heard a faint buzzing coming from somewhere, then spotted the wasp's silhouette through the translucent plant.  It made a brief but futile attempt to chew its way out, before being overcome by whatever intoxicant Sarracenias use to drug their prey.

Dicing with death

They can be almost too successful.  I have had to cut off trumpets so stuffed with dead flies and wasps that they were putrefying.  On one very grizzly occasion I decided to do a length-wise dissection of one long trumpet while talking to the local school about carnivorous plants.  We hadn't reckoned on the maggots...

Doomed!

They are crafty plants, producing their flowers about now, before the trumpets come to maturity so they don't eat their pollinators.

Flower of Sarracenia flava

Sarracenias need to soft water and an acid growing medium.  Quite a few of my plants now need repotting or divison (they are herbaceous perennials and will propagate successfully that way).  The expert advice is to grow them in peat...

Peat.  To the ethical gardener, purchasing peat is like buying crack cocaine.  Another moral dilemma!

Crap carrots and other confessions.

I am very relieved to be able to put this photograph on the blog today, of germinated broad beans, ready for planting out on the allotment very shortly. 

I wrote a post last month entitled "Sowing the First Seeds of 2012" proudly showing off my eco-friendly recycled bean planting system and encouraging readers to adopt it themselves.  The seed packet suggested beans should start to appear within 10 days.  When, a couple of weeks ago and about a month after planting the beans, there was still no sign of growth, I thought I would have to admit a failure and print an abject apology.  But the beans have spared my blushes on this one.  Its seems they were just delayed by the cold snap in February, and are now doing fine.  Phew!

This is probably as good a time as any to own up to the fact that not all of my experiments in eco-friendly (aka "cheapskate") gardening are guaranteed to end well.  You should, for example, probably use proper tree ties to hold your fruit trees to their stakes, not laddered stockings.  Unless you fancy playing "Russian Roulette" with your seedlings and damping-off disease, do not try to re-use seed compost two or three times in succession just because "it's a bit pricy".  The seed you will waste is probably pricer.  I've been lucky so far this year, which will only encourage my bad habits.  Definitely do not re-use the string with which you tied your tomato plants to their canes; that isn't economising, it's an illness.

In short, this is not the blog of a gardening expert.  I am no Jedi Master, merely an apprentice.  And one who's trying to make a light sabre out of a fluorescent lighting tube at that.

In particular, I never have a day's luck with carrots.  I like carrots a lot, raw or cooked (but not grated for some reason probably connected with school salads).  I have tried to grow them both here in North Staffordshire and in Southampton for many years, but with no success whatsoever. 

I still persist, though increasingly it feels less like sowing carrot seed and more like making some kind of pagan spring sacrifice to the capricious gods of horticulture.  Personally, I wish I could persuade them to accept something else instead - a Wicker Slug, perhaps - but it always seems to be the carrots that the gods claim as their own.  Especially if I've got a packet of unusual or expensive seed, like 'Purple Haze'.

My carrots succumb to a variety of sad fates.  Some simply fail to germinate because it unexpectedly turns chilly or very wet immediately after the seed goes in.  Others have been killed with kindness.  Scorched to death by unforecast sunshine blazing down through the cloches set out to protect them from the predicted cold or wet.  Trapped beneath the surface crust of the seed bed which was prepared so carefully for them that it got totally overworked and became a tomb.  Pests take their toll too.  Little grassy carrot seedlings are swiftly annihilated by slugs and snails.  One day you have a row of carrots just showing through, the next there is no evidence that they ever existed. 

In the garden, and to a lesser extent on the allotment, it is also true that cats in search of somewhere to defecate like nothing so much as the fine sandy tilth of a carrot bed.  Not pleasant to clean up, and a disaster for germinating seedlings.  Sorry people, I am no fan of felines. 

Most notoriously, there is carrot root fly.  I have tried 'companion planting' with spring onions and/or garlic without success.  The carrot root fly hereabouts are not so easily deceived.  Last year I spent quite a lot (by my standards) on some fleece cloches to cover the rows of carrots on the allotment, thinking this would keep them root fly free.  For a few weeks they simply provided a cover under which slugs could go about their nefarious business unseen, picking off the carrot fly resistent cultivars first.  The cloches then got torn apart by the wind and the carrot root fly were straight in; the few roots which survived the slugs were riddled with their burrowings and unusable.

So, as the Spring Equinox approaches, it must be carrot-sowing time again.  After all, it won't do to offend the gods...

St Patrick's Day in the Garden

A very happy St Paddy's Day, one and all. 

As the last few posts have been quite wordy, I've decided it's time for some pictures, and a stroll round the back garden to see what's growing before the promised heavy showers drive us indoors for the day.

Narcissus 'Tete-a-tete'

The snowdrops and crocus are long finished, but the early narcissi are still flourishing and the first hyacinths are coming through.  I think the tulips will be early.


View down the back garden path

On the left-hand side is the small lawn and the flower borders, containing Narcissi, Alchemilla mollis, Heucheras, Aquilegias, Penstemons, Peonies, Phlox, Astrantias and Japanese Anemones.  The herb garden is on the right.

The herb garden

The 'herb garden' has been under-planted with a lot of spring bulbs.  The crocus were a bit of a 'flash in the pan' this year with the unusually warm temperatures, but the tete-a-tete narcissi now look lovely, and the herbaceous perennial herbs will start to grow up through these soon.  The woody perennials, two sage cultivars and two lavender, are still fairly small plants but will hopefully come into their own this summer. 

Double hellebore

Along the border between this and the path are some truly gorgeous hellebores.  They were bought as a mixed random selection, so I don't have individual cultivar names, but they are fabulous flowers.

Inside the greenhouse

The greenhouse is in full herb production now, with lots of young plants doing well, being kept clean of aphids by their ladybird friends.  I will be looking for opportunities to sell them in May and June.

Salad selection

 Jon's famous coldframe, which he admits is a marvel of over-engineering, has been planted up with some fresh salad seedlings alongside the last few leaves from the autumn.  I'll grub these out when the fresh stuff is ready.  There are more trays of salad leaves germinating now.

The vegetable garden

Beyond the greenhouse and the cold frame, the veg plots are also in use for propagation of some shrub cuttings and some daffodils, for selling at the gate as cut flowers.  If I can keep the slugs off them.

'Herself' digging in compost

So that's how my garden looks today.  There will be more of the usual daft stuff again soon, I'm sure.

Money and Marketing

A phrase that still turns up a lot in discussions about modern life is "Work/Life balance" and the importance of getting this right.  For many people, their job takes over too much of their life.  They put in long hours, or if their hours at work aren't too bad, they still have a nightmare commute to and from it.  Or the job itself is mentally and physically draining and leaves them with no energy to have much of a life.

My current situation is quite the reverse of this, however, with the balance tilted a little too much in favour of "Life".  One of the reasons the blog has been kept up so well over the last couple of months is that I've been busy in my own garden, but not in anyone else's.  Apart from a spot of tree pruning and potato-related advice for friends, it's been rather quiet.

So yesterday I did the rounds of the shops and post offices in the local area to get some postcard-sized adverts in place.  What was really nice was how many of the little corner shops made no charge at all for allowing me to put my notices up, and nowhere charged more than 50p per week.  So my advertising budget for the month was £5!

This month's advert - minus contact details, of course, as I don't want everyone on the net having access to my address,  'phone and email

Unfortunately a couple of large areas of relatively properous-looking private housing, where there might actually be people who can afford a gardener, seem to exist in a shop-free zone, so I will have to give some thought to the practicality of doing a limited leaflet drop to a few streets.  I don't want to spend a lot on printing, nor waste a lot of paper putting more junk-mail through doors where it is not welcome, but I'm not bad with the old Microsoft Publisher programme and think I can probably get some nice, but not too flash 1/3 A4 flyers dashed off without too much difficulty. 

There's also the question of whether you inadvertently insult someone by putting a gardening service flyer through their door.  I got one last year from a lawn care contractor and had to stop myself running after the guy who delivered shouting "It's supposed to look like that, it's a wild flower meadow, OK?!!" 

Of course the next thing I must do, having got the adverts out, is to get used to:
a) Leaving my mobile 'phone switched on, rather than off, most of the time
b) Taking my 'phone with me when I am out in the garden, on the allotment or away from home. 
c) Set up a personalised answering message for situations where I have neglected a) and b) which will probably still be a disproportionally large amount of time.

As I have just discovered, having put the adverts out, I am now even more aggravated when I answer the 'phone to some hapless soul peddling double-glazing or insulation, or one of those annoying damned recorded messages telling me that their records show I have not yet claimed compensation for mis-sold personal protection insurance.  Go away, unless you are a customer.  Or a friend.  Or both.

I've also pondered allowing advertising on this blog, which Google imply may be an easy route to a spot of filthy lucre.  You designate an area on your page for adverts to go and their programme picks up key words from what you are writing about, and slots in 'appropriate' advertising.

Sounds good in theory, though I have a whole list of unethical organisations and companies that I would grieve to give advertising space to at any price.  Imagine how livid I would be if I had a rant about the ancient oaks cut down in Solihull, just to make way for another wretched Asda store and then an advert for Asda, rotten scion of the corrupt house of Walmart,  popped up next to it.  No thanks! 

I self-moderated that last bit. 

You also have to consider just how random some of the references in this blog can be, how far I can drift from what might be called 'pure' horticulture, and what the Google ads programme would make of this.  In recent weeks there have been references in posts to the Geneva Convention, Renaissance art and history, the films of Quentin Tarrantino, Harry Potter, Stars Wars, genealogy, the Irish Potato Famine and the Emperor Caligula.  That would surely confuse the hell out of Google ads and who knows what would then turn up in the little box.  As for the comment I made on my 'Fruit and Veg' page that Pink Fir Apple potatoes can 'look like something you'd get from Ann Summers rather than Thompson and Morgan'...  Filthy lucre indeed!

In short, with my bizarre sense of humour, I think it's fair to say adverts look a very risky strategy.

Roots (Part 1)

It’s now time to plant first early potatoes up here, especially with the weather being milder than usual and the soil warmer.  I'll plant them fairly shallow, about 10cm deep and put cloches over to start with, then earth them up a little as they grow.  This year I’m trying ‘Vales Emerald’, a cultivar that I haven’t grown before, and the old “Dig for Victory” era ‘Home Guard’. 

I don’t know what it is about growing potatoes, particularly first earlies, but it always ends up having something of the scientific experiment about it.  Even though we don’t need hundreds of early spuds, I can never just grow one type.  It has to be a duel, or even a test of more than two, to see which gets closest to new potato perfection.  Last year it was a resounding victory for ‘Pentland Javelin’ over ‘Rocket’, the latter being utter slug magnets.  But I am yet to select my perfect “new potato”.

As we need reliable taters for storage, the competition element is slightly less for the second early and main crop potatoes.  The pick of the bunch, and a potato which seems as happy growing up here as it did two hundred miles south and at sea level is the indomitable ‘Kestrel’, a thoroughly good “all rounder” which bakes, mashes, roasts, boils and probably chips too (I don’t make chips, so I can’t say). 

Kestrel potatoes

The most exceptional feature of ‘Kestrel’ is that it seems to be surrounded by a slug-proof force field when growing, so a very high proportion of the tubers are lifted unscathed even if you’ve neglected to defend against marauding molluscs.  It is also stated to have moderate blight resistance, though as a second early, it’s usually ready to lift before that becomes too much of problem or at least the tubers will have developed sufficiently not to miss the top growth if it has to be cut off.  They can get to a good baking potato size, but are usually a little smaller, but of good regular kidney shape, with purple marking round the eyes.

I first discovered ‘Kestrel’ about twelve years ago at the Whitchurch Potato Fair in Hampshire, and have grown them every year since with no problems.  Except once.

One year, when we were still living in Hampshire, we had taken over a second, rather derelict allotment early in the year.  We hadn’t been able to autumn dig it, so instead decided to try an Irish potato cultivation method we had seen at the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum, known as “lazy beds”.  This involved taking off a row of spade-width turfs across the plot, and laying these, grass-down, on top of the ground to one side, then de-turfing two spits along and putting these turfs onto the ground alongside the first row, to make double rows of inverted turfs.  Potatoes were then planted at each point where four turfs met.

Being partially of Irish heritage, it seemed appropriate to give this method a try;  it might even have been employed by my Malone ancestors, I thought, even if with ultimately tragic consequences in the 1840s.  A romantic notion worthy of a "Who do you think you are?" episode, though subsequent research suggests not, as great-great-great grandfather Malone was a tailor!

I don’t doubt that in light, peaty soil with soft Irish rain falling frequently upon it, "lazy beds" work a treat, with the turf stacks breaking down to give a good rich deep bed for the potato roots to expand into and the tubers to grow.  On sticky Southampton clay during a dry summer, it is not so.  The turfs are metamorphosed into concrete paving slabs and the potato tubers have to form between them. Consequently, we lifted square potatoes that year.  Unfortunately, square crisps had not yet become trendy or we may have been on to a winner..

The Diet of Worms

There are many joyous tasks to undertake in the garden during the early spring, but in the last couple of years, emptying our wormery has not really been one of them.  This year, however, it has been altogether pleasanter.

Allow me to clarify the term “wormery”.  Keen gardeners, especially those who lean towards the organic side, will know of the elaborate stacking system wormeries, where kitchen scraps are deposited for digestion and subsequent excretion as compost by hordes of wriggly tiger worms. 

Fishermen will know these unfortunate creatures as “bait”. 

The bespoke wormery consists of a series of stacking trays with meshed bottoms and a liquid collecting tray with a tap at the base.  The worms progress up through the layers of detritus, from one tray to the next and the compost they leave behind can be collected simply by lifting out the lower trays, which can then be replaced at the top of the stack with fresh peelings, tea bags etc.  Proprietary wormeries can be round, square or even shaped to look like a traditional beehive.

Unfortunately, the good ones retail for £100 or more.  Only a complete stranger to this site will seriously expect me to have spent £100 or more on something to make compost from worm poo. 

My budget wormery

Sarah’s wormery is therefore a very cheap plastic dustbin, bought for well under £10 from what I remember.  It does have a tap fitted towards the base, under a horizontal wire mesh with an old coir doormat on top, which stops it getting clogged up with compost bits.  

One use for an ex doormat

The compost liquid can be drawn off from time to time, which is essential to prevent the worms from drowning.  The liquid is a good, nutrient-rich plant food (it needs to be well-diluted), but smells as you might imagine Gollum’s micturations to smell, evil and swampy. 

A lot of people would find the whole wormery concept totally evil and swampy, of course.  If you think that individual worms are bit creepy, you definitely won't enjoy dealing with great tangled knots of them, slithering and writhing through the rotting matter like something from the Hell panel of a medieval Doom Painting.  It's all distinctly Hieronymus Bosch!

Wormageddon!

The problem I have had in previous years is that, despite regular removal of the Smeagol pee, I have still tended to end the year with a large bin of stinking, viscous slime, rather than crumbly, fragrant compost.  Not one to waste anything needlessly, I’ve used this foul stuff in my bean trench, but have always hoped to produce something better.  Without the need to spend serious money on a fancy wormery.

 

So it was with great pride that, after carefully removing the worm-infested top layer to a trug for restocking the wormery later, I was able to scoop out a large trug-load of rather excellent compost.  I intend to grow my tomatoes in it this year.

Success at last!

The solution to the slime issue proved to be quite simple.  It’s the familiar one regarding getting the chemical balance right in compost ingredients.  Just the chucking the peelings and trimmings from fruit and veg into the bin meant it was too high in nitrogen and too low in carbon.  Putting empty paper flour bags, sugar bags and kitchen paper in as well seems to have corrected that.  I make a lot of our bread, so we get plenty of flour bags.  The sugar bags tend to be available in number after jam-making sessions, when the soft fruit surplus is being preserved.  Or after my other favourite method of saving fruit for later, namely turning it into wine.

A good tip from some literature we got at college was to put a layer of newspaper on top after each bin of scraps, as this also discourages the nasty little flies and gnats which can colonise a wormery.

Making a fresh start - worms and peelings back in the bin.

 Do enjoy your lunch!

From across the Pond

Whoever checks the customer shopping statistics for Sainsbury's must worry that the Honeysetts are not getting their "five a day", since so few items of fresh or frozen fruit or vegetables ever find their way into our trolley.  Generally, it's just mushrooms and the odd bag of carrots (one day I'll explain why we buy carrots; it's a long story...).  We'll need to start buying our apples soon too.  But that's about it.

The reason, of course, is that we grow and store so much of our own.  Right through the winter, as long as the ground isn't too frozen to get them out, we have root  and leaf vegetables we can bring in fresh from the garden or the allotment, or from our store room.  We have easily enough potatoes to last us until the first earlies are ready.  We have access to more Jerusalem artichokes that is socially or environmentally responsible, considering they can cause significant emissions of greenhouse gases, particularly methane.  

It's a matter of particular pride on my part that we have had fresh salad leaves from the garden, cold-frame and greenhouse throughout the winter.  The mild weather has helped tremendously, but I think I can fairly take a lot of the credit for this, with good planning, regular seed-sowing and good use of unheated crop protection.

Our current crop of winter salad leaves are quite a spicy, peppery-tasting mixture of rocket, mustards and mitzuna, so it might have seemed odd to find me buying a packet of watercress a couple of weeks ago.  Even though the packet in question had a yellow reduced-price sticker on it.

Everyone has their own method for doing the weekly shop.  Some make a list and stick to it.  Others systematically trek up and down every aisle, hoping to be reminded of what they need as they pass it.  Then there are those people who seem to have come to the supermarket with no clue as to what they want, and are continually taking orders from home by mobile 'phone; "Hi!  Yeah, I'm by the yogurts now - they've got low-fat organic, or pro-biotic, or there's a new one with fair trade muesli and pomengranate..." 

Apologies for offending you if you are reading this and you are that person, but if you are standing there talking and blocking my way to something with a yellow reduced-price label on it, you're closer to having your phone snatched from your ear and ground into tne supermarket floor by a size 9 1/2 than you could possibly know.

My personal food shopping style is something akin to a barn owl quartering a pasture at twilight, drifting slowly back and forth across the aisle, listening for potential quarry ("Dave, should I mark these free-range chickens down now - they're use by tomorrow?"), large, round eyes seeking out the flash of a yellow sticker.  And not one of those annoying security ones on the bigger meat joints either, which are approximately the same size and colour.  Please change those now, Sainsbury's; they're confusing me! 

I digress - back to buying watercress.  I like watercress a lot.  I had got fresh trout for dinner (more osprey than owl there, perhaps - and yes, there was a yellow sticker on the pack) and this would be perfectly complemented by a sprig or two, and a few 'Pink Fir Apple' taters.  But what really clinched it was that some of the watercress stalks clearly had little roots on them. 

What really amazed me though, as someone born in Hampshire, where watercress is still extensively cultivated in beds fed by the chalk streams from the Downs, was that the watercress in the sealed plastic bag with the yellow sticker had been grown in the USA! 

This is the bit where I get on my high horse and have a rant about sustainability and food miles.  As a crop with a relatively short shelf-life, it must have been flown across the Atlantic.  It's a light but relatively bulky crop, as it cannot be squashed without being ruined, so you're actually transporting at least as much air as watercress when you fly it over, and yet I find it impossible to believe that you couldn't grow it effeciently in the south of the UK, with little more than a polytunnel for protection, for most of the year.

Well, I'm going to have a good go at finding out.  The stalks with roots are florishing on the kitchen window sill right now (see photo) and have made good top and root growth, so I'm going to get them planted up in some soggy compost shortly, take regular cuttings for fresh plants, hopefully eat the stuff all summer and with no more protection than an unheated greenhouse find out if we can grow watercress here all year round.

Hopefully, the answer is "Yes, we can!"

Working with vegetables and children

Supposedly, there's an old Hollywood saying to the effect that you should never work with animals and children.  Having spent the past seven years helping at the local primary school allotment, I think that needs updating.

On Thursday afternoon, in bright sunshine and with it so warm I could work in a T-shirt, I worked with Year 5 to dig over one of the long beds at the school allotment.  Year 5 are 9 to 10 year-olds with seemingly boundless energy.  The challenge was to convert that energy into a force for cultivation without anyone getting disemboweled in the process.

While you can give children scissors with rounded blades to cut paper, only proper metal spades and forks with sharp blades and keen points will till soil.  Putting such things into the hands of children is fraught with potential peril.  Anyone who tells you that modern schools are hide-bound by "Health and Safety gone mad" and completely risk-averse has absolutely no idea what they are talking about.

Getting 9 to 10 year-olds to stand still and listen to a health and safety briefing isn't easy, and there is no point in being subtle.  The first difficulty is just getting them not to pick up the tools before you've explained what should, or should not, be done with them.  One or two will just grab the first thing to hand and make a dash for any bit of bare ground.   During the pre-dig talk, you have to use the word "death" several times before they start to pay attention, and describe a few potential grizzly injuries.  When it's all gone quiet, it's probably safe to start handing out the tools.

That can cause dissent in itself, as they aren't all the same and none of the boys want smaller forks or spades than any of the ones the girls are using. 

"Can I use your spade, Miss?" asked one lad, unaware of how possessive I am about my personal long-handled tools.

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because it's taller than you."

The plot we were to work on had been sown with Hungarian grazing rye in the autumn, a green manure crop, and this had grown well, covering the soil to protect it from rain, taking up and holding some of the nutrients which would otherwise leech out during the winter and adding organic matter to the soil.  Year 5's task was to dig in the grass so it could start breaking down before potato planting in a few weeks time.

I had two teams, the first of which was mixed boys and girls, the second five lively lads.  Team one listened well to their health and safety talk, paid attention to why the rye grass had been sown and set about their task enthusiastically and in a co-ordinated manner.  They even organised themselves to pose for photos, expertly taken by one of the girls.  We soon had their half of the plot turned over.  They also got to work on turning the compost heap (which seems to be rotting down quite well).  Apart from a couple of near 'Tom and Jerry' moments where forks were left on the ground, the threat level was low.

By contrast, team two were manic.  Armed with their spades and forks, they set about digging out and chopping up the rye grass plants with chants of "Kill, kill!" until urged to be less aggressive, when they switched to "Die, die!".  Further exhortation to calm down eventually took effect and the digging became less frenetic.  There was a sudden concern for the worms being unearthed, declared "hostages" for rescue, which had to be moved to the safety of the dug patch, though this meant small clumsy hands clutching at squishy invertebrates, and all while blades and prongs flew around them.  Miraculously, no fingers or hands were lost. 

One of the lads found a caterpillar.  "Another hostage, Miss!". 

"Actually, that's more of a 'hostile'.  They eat our plants."  I replied.  "But they do turn into butterflies."

"Shall I kill it, Miss!"

Against all my instincts, I resisted the temptation to authorise lethal force and urged mercy - it was to be taken to the compost heap and released onto it.  They trooped over towards the compost heap where a guilty huddle of boys and a cry of "urghh!" indicated that the prisoner had actually met with summary execution.

It seems that Year 5 are not signatories of the Geneva Convention.