Monthly Archives: May 2015

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Joys and pitfalls of sunny weather

Sun, rain, wind and even hail have been part of the spring season here in the UK. These last two months have offered challenges and opportunities in equal measure. Every season has the potential to be either a blessing or a ruin to the garden. It’s late May and we have been blessed by an exceptionally nice spring.

It may surprise non gardening people that most traumatic climactic event that happened for my plants this spring was  the week our temperature stayed in the high 20s. While the pasty skinned and sun starved among us reveled, I was vigilant. For myself any other gardeners, above average temperatures for extended periods are a mixed blessing. Young seedlings, if kept moist shoot up and thrive. Other plants take an entirely different route. For me the week began a constant monitoring of pots and plants, watering early and trying to keep balance. By the end of the week however, I had to admit at least partial defeat. Three of of my swiss chard pots, six plants in total, had bolted.

Bolted chard isn’t the end however. The leaves, although less abundant and smaller are still edible. It also gives me a chance to restart a fresh batch from my seedlings. Extending my harvest through a succession of plantings is something I relish. This year with so many bolted plants so early, I’ll be removing them and doing exactly that. One chard will give me more than enough seed however, it’s best to collect future seed from a plant that goes to flower and seed later in the season. To collect from a “easy bolter” would be to carry that undesirable trait on to next year. On a positive note, this gives me the opportunity to replant those pots, it’s only late May so I can expect a late season crop to produce still.

Yes, the gale force winds for three straight days was worrying, but it only meant repositioning my most delicate seedlings under quick made cloches or moving pots to shelter. Torrential rain for another three days gave me time to assess and correct drainage issues. Now, in the first days of summer, most of my garden is looking good and the first setting of fruit is well underway. It was a fantastic and surprising spring.

There is, after all, no such thing as normal weather.

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Grow some of what you eat

Just three weeks ago, my rooftop garden on narrow boat Miracle was starting to look like a winner. The garden I’d planned and planted was just beginning to show its potential and I was pleased.  In a proud moment on that sunny Saturday I snapped a photo and shared it with the world via my Instagram and Twitter accounts. (Garden and Plate now has it’s own Twitter!)

Nearly immediately after sending my “Boast Post” I saw a competition was happening on line by Saltyard Books asking people to post photos of their kitchen garden. The competition was in celebration of a new book by Mark Diacono of Otter Farm, about gardening and getting the most out of your urban kitchen garden.  I’ve never entered any competition before but, it seemed nearly serendipitous, so off went my tweet with their hashtag into the competition.

I’m exceedingly pleased to say, I won the competition and early this week my copy of The New Kitchen Garden arrived. I got to unwrap it just as a very rare UK thunderstorm began.  At just under 400 pages, I can’t pretend that I’ve read it all as yet, but so far, it’s impressive, encouraging and informative. It’s a book that I suspect, I’ll be keeping and referring to quite often. Thank you Mark for writing this!

More about the book here.

*This article was originally published on a fabulous website called EatinsCanada.

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Getting the most out of small spaces

One of my favorite things about gardening is that I can choose what I want to grow each year. I subscribe to the school of thought that  you should plant what you like to eat, however planting the same vegetables every year does get a bit predictable. Experimenting with unusual varieties gives me a kick and expands my knowledge as well as my pallet.

This year, with a view to expand what I can produce in my 1.5m potted roof garden I chose to give planting of “early” and “late” maturing crops a go.  To do this I looked for an early maturing small turnip to pair with my old faithful red onion and some French Marigold. I found a lovely sounding turnip called “Japanese Snowball” which is described as a fast growing, egg shaped globe with a mild sweet juicy flavour. The globes should be harvest size by the end of this month, leaving sufficient space for both the onion and marigold development. I’d never heard of the the Snowball variety before I began looking and was surprised to find it’s been around in western world since at least 1885.

I sewed the seeds as directed both for greens (close) and 2.5cm apart in two rows in mid-late March. I’ve already harvested a crop of young greens from one row and eaten them raw in salad along with some chard,  last week used a few of the larger leaves as a cooked spinach substitute. Obviously, because my rows are small, my harvests are only handfuls however, I can’t believe how quick they are – they’re ready again! The spaced counterparts remain untouched and are sheltering the slower growing marigold beneath their large foliage.

So far I am very pleased with this experiment. I am quite happy with the taste of the greens both raw and cooked and am awaiting the globes with much anticipation. It seems that I’ve doubled the output of my tiny space this year. Looking back, it now seems quite obvious, however I’d not considered this before my work experience on the Organic Lea farm.  I guess it just goes to show what we can learn if we’re open to it.

*This article was originally published on a fabulous website called EatinsCanada.

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Easy DIY organic fertilizer

Here in the United Kingdom, along the rivers and in marsh lands, something nearly magical grows, Symphytum officinale. In may areas it is so prolific there are actual “harvesting days” where the nature reserves encourage gardeners to come and cut what they need.

First introduced to to North America in  1954, you may know it as Quaker’s Comfrey, Knitbone or even as a weed. Regardless of what you call it, it’s indispensable.  Any gardener who wants to fertilize their garden, especially fruiting plants or seeding crops, naturally and healthily should know about and utilize this amazing plant.

It’s a powerful ally of the organic gardener.

What makes this plant exceptional are the levels of nitrogen and potassium it releases upon decomposition.

Comfrey is what you call a “dynamic accumulator.” It has a large turnip shaped tap root that mines up nutrients and minerals from deep within the soil which it brings up into it’s leaves. Because it does this much deeper than most plant roots reach, the surrounding vegetation isn’t compromised and previously unreachable nutrients are made accessible . Harvesting and composting its leaves releases the nitrogen and potassium making them accessible to other plants and the rest of your garden. Quick growing, Comfrey can be harvested boosting the minerals available to your garden organically several times per year eliminating the need to purchase chemical based tomato or plant foods.

Harvesting is easy.  Just before the plant flowers is when you’ll get the most benefit, but around that time is also quite good. Sheer stems about 15cm above ground. Keep the leaves, flowers if you wish and discard the stem. Harvests can occur safely when the plant reaches approximately 60cm,  in spring until early autumn without risk to to the plant. In autumn it’s important to leave pant to grow and rejuvenate it’s stores for overwintering.

Once you have them it’s up to you how you use them. You can choose to make a tea, like the one in our nettle article which takes 4 to 5 weeks,  add them as a two inch mulch around fruiting plants and they will break down naturally or wilt them for two to three days and simply dig it in! Unlike other high nitrogen content sources Comfrey doesn’t rob nitrogen from the soil because it’s C:N ratio is lower than well rotted compost.

If you can’t find wild Comfrey, the cultivated sterile variety Bocking 14 is often available through seed suppliers. If you purchase your own, let it grow one full year before beginning to harvest to allow it a firmly establish. Never dig up and plant a non sterile, wild plant, it will take over your garden quickly. Bocking 14 will grow quite large and is best separated and shared with other gardeners after a few years growth.

This post was originally posted on EatinsCanada

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Natural pest management

One of the biggest questions new organic gardeners ask is about pest management.  We all seem to understand the concepts of  open pollination and making fertilizers from plants but when it comes to keeping the pests away, many of us draw a blank. We work so hard to raise our plants that contemplating their decimation is frankly, terrifying. So what can we do?

I am a firm believer that healthy plants and healthy soil do much for our garden when it comes to pests. A strong, healthy plant can tolerate some pests without too much loss. Nonetheless, I also believe in giving the garden a helping hand.  One of the principles I learned at Organic Lea was to try and balance the predator / prey ratio. At first, to me at least, this was a bit of a shock. How many aphids should be in the garden? My natural response was “NONE!” But that, it turns out, is also unnatural.

The beans grown in glasshouse,  were awash with Black Aphid larvae the first week of April. It seemed a dire situation but no one else seemed concerned. When I asked the head gardener about this, he explained that the crop was nearing it’s last winter harvest and was going to be allowed to flower and go to seed. For now we’d simply run our index finger and thumbs up the most infested stocks to squish the aphid larvae, overrun bean tips were to be removed and put into the compost. Although affective for the larvae stage, this is laborious.  Later the same day, our class went out into the nettles to hunt and capture Ladybugs.

Because nettles are one of the first greens of spring, overwintered Ladybugs seek them out as a first source of food. Over two hours we caught twenty. Ladybugs, it turns out are the organic gardeners natural ally against the Aphid. We then released them into the Aphid infested bean plot. Two weeks later, I noticed many tiny cocoons along the wooden skirt boards to the bean plot, Ladybug larvae.

Since an adequate food supply was available in the glasshouse, the Ladybugs stay their whole life cycle. This provides the gardener with a natural defense against Aphid.

Since an adequate food supply was available in the glasshouse, the Ladybugs stay their whole life cycle. This provides the gardener with a natural defense against Aphid.

By introducing the Ladybugs to the Glasshouse, we are able to aid in the balance of predator / prey relationship. If we had killed all of the Aphid larvae the food source for the Ladybug wouldn’t have been available and they would not have stayed. By providing a suitable environment for the Ladybug, including food, suitable pupation and hibernation areas,  she will then in turn and aid us in the long term pest management. There are many such relationships the organic gardener can cultivate with predator insects, all of which will improve your crops survival.

An important part of organic gardening is being able to identify which insects are the “good guys” and which are the ones you want to try and limit. Most children and adults can identify a 7-Spot Ladybug, I find the link below quite useful for identifying the larvae of others.

http://www.ladybird-survey.org/downloads/ladybird_larvae.pdf

*This article was originally published on a fabulous website called EatinsCanada.

The Wocesterberry, a beautiful yet forgotten treasure of the fruit world.

Fashion in gardening

Fashion trends are inescapable. Ever present in our clothing choices and in our culinary exploits,  perhaps it was naive of me, but I for one did not anticipate that the humble garden  was also subject.

Last fall I was part of a team that pruned a long standing allotment. Over the years, various stewards of the space had planted and grown many bushes, fruits and flowers  and we were there to trim the growth back into a manageable and healthy state. It was that afternoon that I was introduced to the Worcesterberry tree. Being February, the squat little bushy tree was remarkably undistinguished. Whist pruning I found its thorns, but aside from making my task slightly more tricky, I didn’t give it much notice. Afterwards, curious about a tree I’d never encountered before, I asked around. Eventually, a vague description of “like a gooseberry crossed with a blackberry” became the consensus. I decided to plant one of the clippings to see for myself.

A year on and after much research, it seems Worcesterberry is considered it’s own species. Once prized as a valuable “guardian of the plot” owning to it’s dense thorny growth, it has fallen out of favour with the advent of easier to harvest thorn-less varieties.  While I do understand the logic, I also feel it’s a shame. To date I have only found one woman who still grew Worcesterberry in her garden and she admitted they had been her mothers doing over 40 years previous.

This year my little Worcesterberry  pruning has flowered for the first time. It’s quite remarkable and beautiful. I do not want it to be lost and forgotten because people found it “difficult”.

Losing any species be it plant or animal isn’t a good thing. Our world’s species, even the thorny ones, need guardians. I challenge you, go out find a forgotten out of favour species and become it’s champion. There are lots out there.

Perhaps, when my lovely Worcesterberry is too big for my roof I will cruise out of London and plant it in the wild.

*This article was originally published on a fabulous website called EatinsCanada.