Tag Archives: gardening

slug

Three ways to deal with slugs

It’s the time of year when our gardens are starting to really come into their own. Our delicate seedling are full of vigor and the promise of harvest is within sight, we know it and so do the slugs.

Slugs. Grotesque, slimy, and capable of completely devastating your plot. It’s enough to dishearten even the most dedicated and have them reaching for a spray bottle.  There are multiple reasons I won’t use chemicals, but I don’t want to get political.

As an organic gardener, I am always looking for ways to improve my soil. Chemical pesticides and fertilizers may offer a short period gain but ultimately leave our soil poorer.   But how do we “win” against slugs without turning to chemicals?

Pick them off. For those with small plots of vegetables and time, a daily commitment to checking each plant is an ideal solution. Taking time for a daily inspection and removal and disposal will keep slugs in check, but this may not be practical if you’re short of time or if your garden is larger than a few meters.

Mulch. A slug is a delicate creature. It has a soft underbelly and will avoid crossing any mulch that is rough and irritating. I ring of mulch of moderately abrasive material such as diatomaceous earth. I suggest 10 cm wide and at least 1cm thick as an effective barrier, or rough bark mulch. You’ll need to ensure you keep it topped up of course, but weekly inspections should suffice. Mulch should not come in contact with the plant, try to leave a good few centimeters circle empty around each stem. I like this method because along with creating a barrier it also helps keep moisture in the soil.

Provide shelter. Slugs do most of their damage at night. During the day a slug will look for refuge. By placing an piece of untreated board at both ends of your garden row, and one in the middle if the row is long, you’ll encourage the slugs to use this as a daytime refuge. This doesn’t stop them from eating your plants, but it does make collection an  disposal quite easy and quickly puts a dent in the number of slugs feasting on your patch . Simply lift the board each morning and remove the slugs below. A upside down empty grapefruit skin in the same positions also works.

Many a gardener has heard about the effective use of copper in deterring slugs. Every year I hear people talking about copper and pennies. Copper tape, if thick enough may certainly do the trick. My experience is adhering it and ensuring it doesn’t get accidentally covered over by soil, (and thus ineffective), can be laborious, it’s also quite expensive.  Pennies unfortunately, have not contained enough copper to work as cheap substitute for a very long time. My advice is to forget about copper and do two or even all three of the above for success.

Photo from http://www.allaboutslugs.com

This was originally posted on EatinsCanada

courgette in flower

Grow some of what you eat

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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.

1point5sqm

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.

predation

Natural pest management

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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

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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.

These tomatoes have a bluish tinge to their leaves indicating they've depleted the nutrients in their potting soil.

Potting on Tomatoes

A month ago myself and several volunteers helped plant hundreds of Tumbling Tom and Golden Queen tomato seeds at Organic Lea. They will be both for the summer production on site and for the annual plant sales. For anyone who has ever eaten a perfectly ripe home grown tomato, it will come as no surprise that tomatoes are by far the most popular plants for home gardens in the UK.

These tomatoes have a bluish tinge to their leaves indicating they've depleted the nutrients in their potting soil.

These tomatoes have a bluish tinge to their leaves indicating they’ve depleted the nutrients in their potting soil.

The month old seedlings have really thrived in the three week warm spell we’ve been having and it was evident by the blueish tinge on their leaves that the nutrient in the seed compost was exhausted. It’s too early to put them in the ground, so potting on, into more nutrient rich potting compost was the only option. In order to avoid “leggy plants” each seedling is planted into the soil up to the first pair of leaves.

There’s really no excuse not to grow at least one tomato plant. Perhaps more than any other, tomatoes have a wealth of varieties to suit your available space, even a height restricted roof garden like mine has more than one option.

For three years now, I’ve planted heritage dwarf variety Tiny Tim (which grows to 30cm) and had exceptional results. They’ve got some lovely attributes aside from their stature. Firstly, for a tomato they’re remarkably un- fussy. These hardy plants do well in both sun and shade which works well since I am on the move. Secondly, despite their small size they really pack a huge sweet tomato flavour punch, meaning four or five picked and thrown into any dish makes an impact.

This year, just to try something different I’m planting Tumbling Toms from the plant sales.

Regardless of which variety you choose, your plant’s fruit will have flavours that far surpass their store bought brethren. With tomatoes we’re spoilt for choice and justly rewarded.

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