As I mentioned yesterday in my digging post, for me gardening helps slow the passage of time by noticing the little differences every time you step out into the world. Today whilst chatting at the allotment I looked down to see that by my feet were the first shoots of this years rhubarb crop just poking through the soil. A reminder that it won't be long before I'll be enjoying rhubarb crumble, rhubarb bellinis, and pig's bum! (see "How to Eat" by Nigella Lawson - the one and only cookbook anyone really needs)
A welcome indicator of spring approaching if ever there was one.
I even managed to get the mower out and give the lawn a once over today - it certainly was in need of a haircut! I ended up getting three basket loads of dead thatch out of it - it looks a bit sorry at the moment but I am sure it will be looking better for it soon, and now I have lots of clippings for the compost. Just remember, if you are planning to mow the grass at this time to keep the blades set high and "just take a little off the top". Cutting too low at this time of year could seriously damage your lawn, but a little trim will be beneficial.
Sunday, 30 January 2011
Some of my favourite seed varieties
As it's that time of year again when seed orders must be placed, I thought I'd share a few of my favourite varieties. It's in no way comprehensive, and I've only included those for which I have particular favourites, rather than trying to include every type of vegetable. Please comment with your favourites too.
Carrot - Autumn King is always good eating, but for showing Sweet Candle is unbeatable.
Parsnip - Tender and True has a great flavour and the germination has been better for me than Gladiator.
Courgette - Tosca and Golden Dawn have been good, but this year I'm trying Defender as the reports are so good.
Cucumber - Carmen is good.
Onion - Kelsae for big ones (but not for storing), Red Baron for red ones.
Chilli - Cayenne is good for cooking, Prairie fire will give lots of small hot chillis from a compact plant you can grow on a windowsill .
Sweetcorn - Swift, reliable and delicious - hard to beat.
Tomato - Vanessa is a very nice one, Sungold and Suncherry are amazing cherry tomatoes.
Pea - Kelvedon Wonder seems to be the most reliable.
Broad bean - Aquadulce is reliable, very hardy and delicious, The Sutton is nearly as hardy, compact, doesn't need staking and is very productive and delicious.
Runner bean - Enorma is very reliable, delicious, and great for showing.
Potatoes - Charlotte are delicious and reliable salad potatoes, Kestrel is a superb boiling, mashing and roasting spud and is probably the best show potato there is.
What's your favourite? Vegetables, fruit, flowers, anything.
Carrot - Autumn King is always good eating, but for showing Sweet Candle is unbeatable.
Parsnip - Tender and True has a great flavour and the germination has been better for me than Gladiator.
Courgette - Tosca and Golden Dawn have been good, but this year I'm trying Defender as the reports are so good.
Cucumber - Carmen is good.
Onion - Kelsae for big ones (but not for storing), Red Baron for red ones.
Chilli - Cayenne is good for cooking, Prairie fire will give lots of small hot chillis from a compact plant you can grow on a windowsill .
Sweetcorn - Swift, reliable and delicious - hard to beat.
Tomato - Vanessa is a very nice one, Sungold and Suncherry are amazing cherry tomatoes.
Pea - Kelvedon Wonder seems to be the most reliable.
Broad bean - Aquadulce is reliable, very hardy and delicious, The Sutton is nearly as hardy, compact, doesn't need staking and is very productive and delicious.
Runner bean - Enorma is very reliable, delicious, and great for showing.
Potatoes - Charlotte are delicious and reliable salad potatoes, Kestrel is a superb boiling, mashing and roasting spud and is probably the best show potato there is.
What's your favourite? Vegetables, fruit, flowers, anything.
Digging
Spring must be upon us - I've spent the afternoon on the allotment for the first time since the Autumn. OK so it was 2 degrees and there was still ice in the chickens water, but it felt like the seasons are slowly moving forward. This is one of the main reasons I garden - the close proximity with the outside world reveals the minutiae of the changing seasons, which seems to help slow down time as every day feels a little different. The speeding up of time as you grow older was brought in to sharp focus for me recently when a girl in the playground recognised me when I was picking Alec up from school last week. She looked at me for a moment or two as if trying to recollect something and then finally remarked "I remember you, from when I used to go to that after school gardening club", clearly something from her dim and distant past. It was actually last October! Seemed like yesterday to me...
Anyway, back to the allotment. Having last week moved the chicken coup and run off of the vegetable bed that they had been weeding and manuring for me, it was time for a spot of my favourite garden activity - double digging! I hate this, it's really hard, unrewarding, cold work, but needs must. There is a serious compacted pan under the topsoil and the topsoil is in need of a bit of improvement, so I'm tackling it year by year, bed by bed. Last year I did two of the beds (8 metres long by 1.2 metres wide each) and believe me that was enough. However, as I have created long narrow beds that I don't ever have to walk on I have absolutely no intention of re-digging the beds once they are done, for at least ten years, as there should be no significant compaction. A big dressing of manure each autumn lightly forked into the surface should be all that is required to keep the soil in good condition.
Double digging involves digging down to two spades depth. To be honest I can't see the point of any other kind of digging. If you've gone to the trouble of exposing the subsoil by single digging, you may as well at least fork up the subsoil to remove any compaction and get some air into it, and preferably add a bit of organic matter at the same time. To my mind garden compost from your heap or bin is as good as any manure, and therefore an essential thing to have in your plot. Horse and chicken manure are excellent as well, I'm not so keen on bullock muck but others swear by it. Today I used a combination of compost and chicken manure - should be good!
So four hours, a broken back and a broken spirit later, another bed is finally done. Only seven more to go (sigh), I'll do one more this year and that's it for 2011. Still, it's a great feeling knowing I shouldn't have to do it again for a long, long time. Everyone should double dig their plot once at the beginning, and then through careful planning to avoid compaction never do it again.
Having finished digging I even had time to sow a broad beans in the multiple gaps where the ones I sowed in the autumn had been killed by the ice and snow. A few have survived, but most succumbed to the elements in the end. A bit of horticultural fleece laid over them during the worst of the weather would probably have saved them, but having not tried over-wintering broad beans before this is something I have learnt for next year. It will be interesting to see if the newly sown beans catch up with the surviving over-wintered crop. It's still pretty early to be sowing broad beans, these were Aquadulce - the only ones really hardy enough to be sown this early. I'll probably put some more in in another month's time for successional cropping - I love broad beans, they're one of the first early crops and hopefully I'll have enough to freeze a few as well. They also, of course, taste much better picked fresh, young and tender from your garden instead of old, stale and mealy from the shops. If you aren't a big broad bean fan try a few grown fresh from your garden - you may be surprised by the difference. The Sutton is a very good dwarf variety that won't take up much space but will give a decent yield. See my coming post on favourite varieties.
So having spent the day digging, here are a few do's and don'ts:
Do double-dig, once, and never again.
Do incorporate plenty of good organic matter
Don't mix sub-soil in with your top-soil. The sub-soil is usually lighter and of a very different consistency - it was very obvious when I had got down to the sub-soil in my beds. Fork it up or dig it over to break it up, but dont mix it in with the top-soil as it will be detremental.
Don't try to do too much in one go - take small spadefuls and do as much as you feel comfortable with, especially in cold weather as you can easily do yourself an injury.
Don't feel you have to do the whole plot at once, as I have already mentioned I am doing two beds per year, therefore it will be five years before they are all done.
Do avoid using rotovators if you can - they help to create a compacted pan that will just lead to more digging. They also chop up and spread the roots of perennial weeds, leading to more perennial weeds. If you have already double-dug there should be no need to rotovate as long as you dont walk on your beds.
Anyway, back to the allotment. Having last week moved the chicken coup and run off of the vegetable bed that they had been weeding and manuring for me, it was time for a spot of my favourite garden activity - double digging! I hate this, it's really hard, unrewarding, cold work, but needs must. There is a serious compacted pan under the topsoil and the topsoil is in need of a bit of improvement, so I'm tackling it year by year, bed by bed. Last year I did two of the beds (8 metres long by 1.2 metres wide each) and believe me that was enough. However, as I have created long narrow beds that I don't ever have to walk on I have absolutely no intention of re-digging the beds once they are done, for at least ten years, as there should be no significant compaction. A big dressing of manure each autumn lightly forked into the surface should be all that is required to keep the soil in good condition.
Double digging involves digging down to two spades depth. To be honest I can't see the point of any other kind of digging. If you've gone to the trouble of exposing the subsoil by single digging, you may as well at least fork up the subsoil to remove any compaction and get some air into it, and preferably add a bit of organic matter at the same time. To my mind garden compost from your heap or bin is as good as any manure, and therefore an essential thing to have in your plot. Horse and chicken manure are excellent as well, I'm not so keen on bullock muck but others swear by it. Today I used a combination of compost and chicken manure - should be good!
So four hours, a broken back and a broken spirit later, another bed is finally done. Only seven more to go (sigh), I'll do one more this year and that's it for 2011. Still, it's a great feeling knowing I shouldn't have to do it again for a long, long time. Everyone should double dig their plot once at the beginning, and then through careful planning to avoid compaction never do it again.
Having finished digging I even had time to sow a broad beans in the multiple gaps where the ones I sowed in the autumn had been killed by the ice and snow. A few have survived, but most succumbed to the elements in the end. A bit of horticultural fleece laid over them during the worst of the weather would probably have saved them, but having not tried over-wintering broad beans before this is something I have learnt for next year. It will be interesting to see if the newly sown beans catch up with the surviving over-wintered crop. It's still pretty early to be sowing broad beans, these were Aquadulce - the only ones really hardy enough to be sown this early. I'll probably put some more in in another month's time for successional cropping - I love broad beans, they're one of the first early crops and hopefully I'll have enough to freeze a few as well. They also, of course, taste much better picked fresh, young and tender from your garden instead of old, stale and mealy from the shops. If you aren't a big broad bean fan try a few grown fresh from your garden - you may be surprised by the difference. The Sutton is a very good dwarf variety that won't take up much space but will give a decent yield. See my coming post on favourite varieties.
So having spent the day digging, here are a few do's and don'ts:
Do double-dig, once, and never again.
Do incorporate plenty of good organic matter
Don't mix sub-soil in with your top-soil. The sub-soil is usually lighter and of a very different consistency - it was very obvious when I had got down to the sub-soil in my beds. Fork it up or dig it over to break it up, but dont mix it in with the top-soil as it will be detremental.
Don't try to do too much in one go - take small spadefuls and do as much as you feel comfortable with, especially in cold weather as you can easily do yourself an injury.
Don't feel you have to do the whole plot at once, as I have already mentioned I am doing two beds per year, therefore it will be five years before they are all done.
Do avoid using rotovators if you can - they help to create a compacted pan that will just lead to more digging. They also chop up and spread the roots of perennial weeds, leading to more perennial weeds. If you have already double-dug there should be no need to rotovate as long as you dont walk on your beds.
Saturday, 22 January 2011
What I learned today
After some serious neglect over the Christmas period, I finally decided to do something about the dying houseplants on the shelves in my office. Several of them have shed nearly all of their leaves and are looking like they are about ready for the compost bin. Due to the mess of the dried up leaves dropping everywhere I took them down from the shelves one by one and cut out all the dead bits. As I did this it became clear that some of them were very dry while others were soaking wet. The stalks on the ones in the soaking wet pots mostly just came out in my hand - rotted completely through at the base, while the foliage was still dried up. Some plants, however, were absolutely fine, and all of them had been watered the same amount at the same time. So I watered the ones that were dried up, drained the ones that were soaked, pulled out all the dead stuff, and tidied what was left. One of them had to go to the compost bin. Hopefully things will improve now and I'll have some fresh new growth soon.
So what have I learned today? Basically that just because several plants are in the same room it was a mistake to assume that they required the same amount of water. Because they were up on shelves and above eye level it was easier to just water them after dipping in a tentative finger to gauge moisture, rather than taking them down individually to do a more thorough appraisal of thier needs. In future I will make a point of taking each plant off the shelf in turn and taking a moment to assess its general condition and needs, before watering the amount required by the individual plant if necessary. Different plants require different amounts of moisture, and drainage, and this can only be assessed by proper inspection. Besides, its nice to get to know your plants personally!
So what have I learned today? Basically that just because several plants are in the same room it was a mistake to assume that they required the same amount of water. Because they were up on shelves and above eye level it was easier to just water them after dipping in a tentative finger to gauge moisture, rather than taking them down individually to do a more thorough appraisal of thier needs. In future I will make a point of taking each plant off the shelf in turn and taking a moment to assess its general condition and needs, before watering the amount required by the individual plant if necessary. Different plants require different amounts of moisture, and drainage, and this can only be assessed by proper inspection. Besides, its nice to get to know your plants personally!
First post
Hi everyone, it's been a busy week but Ready, Steady, Grow!, the beginners gardening course run by me and my co-presenters Colin and Keren for Fordham and District Garden Club is finally up and running. We had a great turn-out with nearly 30 participants, and it all went very well. I think everyone enjoyed it, they even ate my home-made cakes!
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