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.

Battle stations

Everyone has their own idea of what constitutes the first sign of spring.  Some might note the opening of the first crocus or daffodil.  Others, the lengthening days and lighter evenings, or the songs and courtship rituals of the garden birds. 

In my case, I know that it’s spring when, following an extended Christmas truce, the ceaseless war on the slugs, aphids and other garden pests resumes.  I renounced chemical weaponry many years ago, but don’t think this makes my garden or allotment any sort of haven for the sap-suckers and slimers out there.  On the contrary, it just makes their deaths all the more gory and gruesome.

When I decided to write this post, I searched in vain for notes from a presentation I made to former work colleagues quite a few years ago, entitled “Pest Control in the Organic Garden”, delivered to show I had been paying attention and had learnt something during a training session on delivering training.  At its conclusion, colleagues present very probably changed their view of me from “mostly harmless” to “dangerous psychopath”.  From what I remember, it started something like this:

“When you tell people that you’re an organic gardener, they tend to think this means you’re a bit of an old hippy, a gentle, chilled-out being at peace with all living creatures.  This is wrong.  When you think of organic gardening, think of The Good Life.  Then imagine it remade by Quentin Tarantino.”

Picking up the movie references, the audience were introduced, via overheard projector, to a cartoon line-up of the Usual Suspects; slug, aphid, caterpillar, leatherjacket and one other I forget (that’ll be the little insignificant guy who turns out to be – spoiler alert! - the arch villain at the end). 

The remainder of the talk, for time was limited, looked at just one of these notorious criminals – the slug.  I busted the myth of the supposedly cute snail (double layer overheard projection of a snail – removing the top sheet with the shell reveals it to be merely a slug in disguise – ah-ha!), and proceeded, via the Magic Roundabout and the Tarantino reference to “Kill Brian – Part I”. 

In this I explained the workings of various slug-proof barriers, such as crushed egg-shells (fatal lacerations), wood ash (lime burning) and copper (electrocution) and of the beer trap.  Slugs have utterly failed to embrace the principles of the Temperance Movement, so it remains delightfully easy to lure scores of them to their doom in a pit of alcohol.  In addition to drunkenness, they are also prey to the sin of gluttony and, as I explained to an increasingly queasy audience, can allegedly be exploded on a diet of dry bran.

It was “Kill Brian – Part 2” that caused most disquiet, however, dealing as it did with mortal combat.  Readers of a nervous disposition may wish to look away now.  Rather than relying on the overhead projector, this part used props.  Specifically ‘Plastercine’ slugs, realistic-looking slugs loving hand-crafted by myself for the occasion, a torch (small and battery operated, not the large wood and tar flaming type, the latter being used for hunting ogres, not slugs), a sharpened stick and a pair of scissors. 

I explained, with probably more relish than someone of absolute sanity, how one could venture out into the garden on dark, damp evenings, armed with the torch and either the stick or the scissors, find slugs about their slimy business and either impale them (touché!) or cut them in half.  Like so (gave demonstration, using above-mentioned props).  No-one actually passed out, not even my colleague Samantha, who had herself delivered a fine exposition of the principles and practice of being a Drama Queen - specifically ‘the strop’ and ‘the flounce’ - but it was a close thing.

So once again, the battle-lines are drawn.  At present, I feel I  may have the advantage.  My allies are gathering.  The mild winter and my diligence in protecting them from what frost there has been means there are already battalions of ladybirds patrolling the garden in search of aphids.  I saw the first of the hoverflies (also aphid-eaters) on an open crocus yesterday.  Also, the ponds are seething with frogs, who dine on slugs (at least they do if they are actually larger than the slugs).  I shall say no more about the frogs’ current activities than I cannot post up-to-date photos of them without changing the status of this blog to one with “adult content”.  Indeed, Caligula might blush.  But as the old saying goes, all’s fair in love and war.

Post mortem

Two days on from the exams, and looking back, it's easy to think now of how much better a job I could have done of some of the questions.  In fact, even as I drove through the college gates on Monday afternoon, the word "pericarp" sprang into my mind, just as it had failed to do that morning while I was trying to sketch the cross-section of a "young dicotyledonous root".  It's a moot point whether I ought even to have been drawing this, as the question, from what I recall, had asked for a drawing to show "the internal structure of a young dicotyledon root", and at least one fellow student took this to mean a longitudinal section through the root; it's always a challenge to avoid such a drawing having the look of Pompeian graffiti about it!

I certainly shouldn't have spent the last five minutes of the final paper on propagation, drawing a sketch of rose rootstocks being "stooled" to increased their number, as the question I was answering specifically asked for details of propagating suckering shrubs by division., but by the time I'd done the basics of the sketch, that was half my page for that answer covered, and most of my time used up.  I found that the worst paper. 

With RHS exams, you have to answer all the questions, and I find the best strategy with this type of exam is just to start at the beginning and answer the questions in order as far as possible, but skip past anything awkward, and come back to it after picking the lower-hanging fruit, so to speak.  So I answered the first question, the first half of the second question, decided to revisit the second part of question 2, turned over to question 3, decided to come back to it, read question 4, decided to come back to that too, turned over to question 5, read it and moved on the question 6, which fortunately seemed to be asking about something with which I had a passing acquaintance.  Hopefully some of what I've written regarding questions 2(b) to 5 bears some relation to what the examiner was asking about.

Despite that last evil paper I'm keen to continue studying, and have to decide whether to take on the RHS level 2 practical course, or stay in the classroom and do RHS level 3.  At the moment I'm leaning towards the practical course starting in the autumn, with the option of tackling level 3 the year after that.  An in the meantime, there's the college trip to the Netherlands in May to look forward to.  And that doesn't involve exams!

Exam day

Let's see if, after an entire day of RHS exam papers, I actually have any mental energy remaining to put a blog entry together...

That'll be "no" then.

The Day After Tomorrow

The unusually mild winter has come to a sharp end, and it would appear that the weather gods have decided to put their efforts into encouraging me to get on with my revision, having turned the paths out of the house into sheet ice.  Being a tall person without great natural balance, I hate ice with a passion, so the only sensible course of action is to stay indoors with my notes, and get on with revising for my RHS exams on Monday.

It's astonishing to think that it's almost a year since I started my studies at Reaseheath, and that the exams on Monday will be the end of the course.  The last lecture sessions on Wednesday involved much contemplation of past papers and discussion of "exam technique", most of the class being mature students who probably hadn't been in an exam hall for thirty years or so.  A couple of us who started the course at the half-way stage know only too well what to expect.  The papers are quite tough and time is short, but despite this, I did well in the summer and managed to pass all of the four papers, three "with commendation".  Having a very long-standing reputation as a smart-arse to maintain, I would like to manage a similar performance again. 

The ice problem here made national news yesterday; standing at the back door there was an eerie and disturbing cracking sound coming from the big trees at the end of the garden, which were smothered with a rind of shiny ice.  The cold also drove a fieldfare into the garden to raid some of the remaining crab apples.

Today the sun has been out but the trees were still covered in ice for much of the morning and it was bitterly cold when I ventured over to the bird feeders, to find them also festooned with icicles.  The snowdrops, despite being in quite a sheltered spot haven't enjoyed the last few days at all, but inside the greenhouse it was warm, and I was pleased to see that some of the ladybirds I found sheltering in the olive tree foliage earlier in the week were alive and well, and happily snuggled up on some young mint plants. 

Hopefully they'll stay at that end of the greenhouse and away from the Sarracenias, or that'll be a pretty disasterous "friendly fire" episode on my part.

Sowing the first seeds of 2012

Today it is freezing cold up here in North Staffs, dull and overcast, and we've had snow - not huge amounts, but enough to be a shock after such a mild winter.  Putting out some bird feed this morning, I noticed clusters of ladybirds sheltering in the leaves of my small pot-grown olive tree, so gathered the little critters up and moved them into the greenhouse, where hopefully they will find somewhere warmer to spend these frosty nights.

Yesterday, in the sunshine, the greenhouse was fabulously warm despite the cold temperatures outside, and I made a start on sowing some seeds.  Although they can be direct sown, I always start my broad beans off indoors, as our soil can be too wet to work early in the spring, and have devised a good home-made, recycled "root-trainer" type system from small supermarket mushroom containers, which are precisely the right size to hold 6 cardboard toilet-roll tubes (or half kitchen-roll tubes).  The tubes stand upright in the mushroom tray, are filled with compost to within about 2cm of the top (multipurpose will do for big seeds like broad beans).  The seed beans then go in and are covered with more compost, and while germination is awaited, another mushroom tray sits over the top of the tubes to make sure the beans aren't robbed out by mice. 

When it's warm enough to open the greenhouse and take a photo of this cunning contraption, I'll add it here.

There it is - shown left, with six tubes fitted in perfectly, and right with rodent-proof lid!  Small wood-mice occasionally sneak into the greenhouse and in previous years have excavated the beans out of the tubes for winter food - starting the beans indoors solved this, but tended to produce rather leggy, soft plants which even after hardening off didn't appreciate moving out into the garden when there was still frost about. Once the beans have germinated, the mice seem not to be interested, so the lid can (indeed must) come off, though a clear plastic cover can replace it for things which need more warmth than broad beans.

This design also works for runner and French beans, or sweet peas - the cardboard tube is simply planted out with the plant when the time comes and in time rots away.  The only problems I've found are that as the tubes are both absorbent and porous, you need to ensure adequate watering, and occasionally small fungi grow on the outside of the tubes, though with no detriment to the beans in my experience.

I've also sown the first couple of batches of salad leaves, also using recycled supermarket packaging as seed trays.  I do have seed trays, but have to confess to getting a small, geeky buzz from finding a use for stuff which would otherwise go for landfill.  The mushroom trays combine really well, for example, with the deeper clear plastic trays supermarkets often sell smaller joints of meat in to make neat little propagators which are great for raising small numbers of tomato and pepper seeds, herbs (like basil) and half-hardy annuals as they fit perfectly on the window sill.

I start my spring-planted onion sets off indoors these days too, using conventional module trays.  Allowing them to make some roots before planting out seems to minimise that annoying problem of birds pulling them out of the soil (possibly mistaking the tips of the dry outer leaves for worms), as they get well fastened-in to the soil much more quickly.

This year's seed compost is New Horizon Organic and Peat Free, as I haven't been able to find the dehydrated coir blocks used last year, very successfully, for sale in any of the local garden centres so far this year, but did find this compost (which certaily feels nice and handles well - germination report to follow when it happens) for sale in the Wilkinsons store in Hanley at a very reasonable price.

So with seeds sown, although it now looks very much like winter out there, to me it feels like spring!

Back to school

For almost 7 years now, Jon and I have been involved with an allotment project at our local primary school, which began as a spin-off from the fact that Year Six children have to learn about the Second World War as part of the National Curriculum, and a "Dig for Victory" garden fitted in well with this and the concern at the time about healthy eating in schools.  It's been a great success, teaching the children about how food is grown and enabling them to mess about in dirt during lessons - planting and digging potatoes is always the best fun!

School Allotment in June 2008

We've also found the allotment is a great place for looking for "mini-beasts"; allowing the blackfly on the broad beans to thrive (temporarily) encouraged an influx of ladybirds and allowed the children (and teachers) to see what a juvenile ladybird looked like for the first time. 

Today was my first visit to the site since the Christmas holidays, to winter prune the apple and pear trees and turn the compost heaps over and into one big (hopefully hot) heap.  The little trees actually look quite good.  The pear is a real survivor ('Invincible') , having been uprooted by vandals a few years ago, but after some strong winds recently, needed re-staking.  It's supposed to be a self-fertile cultivar but although it blossoms profusely, it hasn't ever borne much fruit, and none at all for the last three years, so this year I may cheat a bit and bring down a blossoming twig or two from one of mine, and a paint-brush!   

Pear Blossom

Digging Potatoes

The apples are a 'Bramley's Seedling' - which I ought to have pruned more vigorously for shape when it was younger, as it's rather a lop-sided little tree, though looks basically healthy - and a 'Red Devil', which produces a reliable and generous crop of very glossy red fruit with pinky flesh soon after the children return from their summer holidays in September.
Not so good is the general state of the beds.  There are six of these laid out in a rectangular pattern (two long 4' x 16 ones at each end, and two pairs of 4' x 6' in between, a 4' x 10' bed for blackcurrant bushes, then the "Dig for Victory" beds around a reproduction air-raid shelter shaped like a D, 4 and V respectively, and finally a Spitfire shaped bed! 

The school shares the same sandy silt loam soil as we have in our garden and allotment, and after seven years of quite intensive cultivation and the trampling of many pairs of small (and some large) feet, it's looking really poor.  Luckily, the compost heap looks as though it should be ready by March for digging in to one of the long beds and the other has a crop of Hungarian grazing rye grass sprouting up, which we can dig in soon, but improvement is still called for.  Ideally, lots and lots of what the "hortic" fraternity refer to as FYM - farmyard manure - needs rotting down and digging in.  Luckily, I have a good source for this at a local stables where I regularly spend an hour trying not to fall off of a kindly horse.

As I dug out the compost heap onto which the children put left-over fresh fruit and veg, a novel recycling scheme occurred to me.  It grieves me a good deal to see that quite a lot of fruit - particularly apples - is thrown away with little more than a tiny bite out of it (and sometimes no bite at all), also small bags of fresh carrots, where perhaps only one or two have been eaten.  My equine friend would make short work of these treats, and recycle them far more quickly and efficiently than the worms in the heap. 

So the plan is to ask the headteacher if a separate bin for almost whole apples and carrots can be set aside which I can collect and take to the stables, returning with donations to the compost heap from grateful horses.  That's what you call a "cunning plan"!