Supposed to be the busiest time of the year…

But although I haven’t been up to very much I haven’t found the time to say it!  Just updated the garden diary and am heading out to do a serious batch of seed sowing in a moment, and this week I will be:

catching up with some correspondence through the seed network (particularly because Scattered Gardener and Bifurcated Carrots have both been kind enough to post about seeds and hops I sent them) and the Garden Organic seed swap forum where I “owe” some donations, also I need to revisit Blotanical which is full of friendly people and far too many ideas for one as impressionable and lacking in concentration as me.

pulling myself together about the Garden Organic surveys - just need to write up my notes about the old & new experiment, and then start on the slug and snail survey.  On a late night sortie with the dog two nights ago I came across about 50 snails in and around a pile of grass cuttings.  I’m sure that counts as a rave.  What do we pay our taxes for eh?  Also in line for surveying are earthworms…my better half says you can hear them rustling in the earth at night at the moment, although I’ve yet to witness this because I’m usually too busy trying not to fall over my own feet or the other four on the other end of the lead.

throwing myself back in to the ebook project, which now has a name, and a new home – http://diggroweatblog.blogspot.com/ thanks to the hard work of Emma who is the brains (and a lot more) behind the escapade.

As well as a few extra acres I could do with a few more hours in the week.  I was amused to note today that on my shelves I have a book about procrastination, which I have never got around to reading.  You couldn’t make it up.

Garden organic old v new peas update

I think all those which are going to come through have done so by now. First off the starting blocks was Simpson’s Special, and last was Hugh’s Huge, but he soon caught up and even overtook the others, joining Clarke’s Beltony Blue for 100% germination.  6 Alderman (the “commercial” variety) and 7 Simpson’s Special (out of 8 seeds for each variety).  All up by 21st March, and most of them in fact barely a week after sowing.

Clarke’s Beltony Blue did show purple colour in the stems when it first germinated.  The most odd thing is Simpson’s Special which looks distinctly yellowish compared to the other three; the seedlings look healthy and I understand it has “green and cream” coloured pods, so it will be interesting to see how it develops.  We will start hardening them off this week, after the cold weather forecast for this weekend.

Experiments 2009 – kaffir limes, galangal, eddoes and more

Until recently I was feeling virtuous that I wasn’t really planning to do much experimenting (or messing, as my family would call it) this year. Moving some of the more decorative vegetables in to the borders, and the usual selection of new varieties from the HSL would be the extent of it. I should really have known better. It all started with Marks & Spencer and their little bags of heritage potatoes. Last year we killed Mr Little’s Yetholm Gypsy, Shetland Black and Salad Blue by not watering them enough/moving it out of the greenhouse early enough. So this year we were going to do a row or two of earlies, enough to provide some early summer goodies, not too much trouble.

Kaffir limes, ginger, galangal and eddoes (clockwise)

Unfortunately I now have half a dozen Mayan Twilight keeping the Pentland Javelin company on the windowsill. From there it all went downhill. I saved a few more seed from a tin of tomatoes, “just to see”, (I’m sure it can be done) and decided to sacrifice a long-opened packet of Gardener’s Delight to an effort to see if/how/when they would germinate in an unheated greenhouse compared to a heated indoor propagator – 15 seeds in each pot. Last night we came completely undone. On a trip to the Chinese supermarket we returned with galangal, eddoes and kaffir limes as well as enough ginger to count as an offensive weapon. The last two, we’ve grown before but the kaffir lime plants have died. The first two, we haven’t even eaten until now.

Woe is me.

By any other name…

Fluffius Muppetus and other unsuspecting bloggers have yet to think better of letting me get my muddy little mitts in to the ebook project so in the meantime, your help please, in coming up with a title.

The project is a bright idea from Emma of Fluffius Muppetus to bring together the enthusiasm (check), eagerness to share (check) and knowledge (er…um…well, the others are marvellous and they’re being very kind to me) of gardening bloggers, to create a digital format book about all things kitchen garden. As Emma says: “We’re looking for a title that will catch people’s eyes and make them want to stop and find out more about the book.”

There’s a longlist to pick your favourite(s) from – just head over to http://www.polldaddy.com/poll.aspx?p=1436184 and give your vote for the title that would most make you click and read…

Thanks!

New section for t’blog, harvests 2009

I made a blog notepad last year but failed to use quite a few of the ideas..one of them, however, has stayed in my mind, the “hungry gap” idea…even though I still consider myself to be an incompetent kitchen gardener (oh, now *there’s* the name I should have used for my blog!), in spite of the best efforts of my better half to make me organise myself and provide a garden that stuff can grow in, it’s still fun sometimes to think just how many ingredients each week we manage to provide for ourselves.  Again though I fear this is mostly of interest to me, so I’ve started another page for it, to accompany the planting diary – Harvests 2009 – and can keep my boasting/reassuring/musing out of the way unless anyone else is interested!

Litany of labels; or “ooh, I wonder what I planted here”

I’ve come on in leaps and bounds with labelling over the past few years (although someone I live with would say “could do better” as he ferries pots and trays about the place). I thought I would scribble up what I’ve learned in case it helps anyone.

What to write labels with – the very best thing I’ve got is a chinagraph pencil. I only bought it last year, but the labels I’ve just washed look like I only wrote on them this morning, and I can reuse them as they are this season.  Otherwise, for slippery plastic like milk cartons, a thick felt-tip permanent marker from Sharpie works very well. Where the plastic will take it, a pencil is fine, but not one of those fine mechanical ones, or you *will* lose an eye or three and even if you don’t, it can scratch the label.  Both chinagraph and pencil come off easily with a rubber when you want them to, but I don’t think you can get permanent marker off (ah, so that’s what permanent means).

If you use wood or soft metal labels, a ballpoint will do the job nicely. I don’t, so it doesn’t, and generally for me the worst of all is any kind of pen, ballpoint, rollerpoint, whatever.  They either won’t write, or you won’t be able to get the writing off when you want to use the label for a different plant, but if you *don’t* want it to come off, it will probably wear off or wash off in the rain.  Of course that doesn’t stop me using one occasionally and I always regret it.

Shop bought labels

Basic plastic labels may be dull and stand out rather unattractively but are pretty useful (like me then, except for the useful bit).  You can get them in different sizes and shapes, even colours, and they’re sturdy. I particularly like the T-shaped ones for rows in the ground as you can write on them the right way up which means you don’t wander round the garden doing a Madeline Bassett impression as you try to work out what you’ve planted where. Plastic labels do however get very brittle after a few years’ use and you really need to say goodbye to them at this point, or you will find yourself writing on shorter and shorter labels every time you plant something.  Some people combine these with an electronic labeller, but I haven’t managed to distract my employers to borrow theirs for long enough and I’ll be in the market for floating glass baubles for our ponds long before I’ll be likely to pay good seed money for an electric labeller for the garden.

Fancy labels – my only experience with these is some clay ones labelled “tomatoes”, “beans” etc.  I know what a tomato plant looks like.  And I know what a bean looks like. What I want my labels to remind me is which tomato and which bean.  Not surprisingly I was given these in a gift set which was an unwanted gift, I think, to one of my sisters.  The problem with these pre-printed labels is of course they have to make them fairly generic – even “Tomato Gardener’s Delight” would limit the number of customers who might buy them.

I haven’t yet seen a fancy label I would pay for, although some of the metal ones look nice, perhaps for a special, long-term plant, like a fruit tree.  You emboss these with either a ball point pen or metal punches and a hammer.

You can also buy a variety of wooden labels – some of them are a variation on ice lolly sticks (see below) and some are made of oak, or even teak. Not my cup of tea although again you could make your own for special plants – we have made labels for Christmas presents by cutting slices of wood and doing a bit of amateur pyrography with a soldering iron, although if we were to do this again I think we’d find a better method of doing the burning.

Recycled labels

Empty seed packets – I’ve been known to just fold them up and shove them in the end of the row/pot but this only works when you’ve finished the seeds up, and when you are going to recognise the adult plant enough for the details not to matter in the future (for example I do this quite often with flowers and any old basics where I’m just using up a packet and don’t need to know how a particular variety performs).  It varies, but even in a few weeks under cover, a seed packet can rot down to half of its former self and inevitably it’ll be the important information that disappears. I’ve known of people who laminate the packet, or part of it, to use as a label, but I am too poorly equipped and disorganised to have tried this.

Cut up milk bottles – Cut up yoghurt and food containers are OK, but I find them much more prone to bending in the changing temperatures and light.   Unfortunately I probably won’t be able to use any more milk bottles as our council has just started collecting them to recycle so I will probably put them in there instead (although obviously I’d rather cut up and reuse a milk bottle than buy any new plastic labels).

Ice lolly sticks and other things wooden – these aren’t bad at all but I don’t tend to get them in enough quantity. They do have a pleasing rustic look, and at least once they are worn out they will rot or burn (if you have a fire or woodburner) unlike their pesky plastic cousins.  And although I haven’t bought a Lemonade Sparkle or even a Fab (mmm…Fab) in years, I’m sure some of them still have jokes on, which you never know, might distract the slugs from eating your lettuces.  I’ve just come across a great picture of chip shop forks nabbed by Matron of Down on the Allotment – they look even better than lolly sticks as they’re more compact and give a bit more room to write.  Take a look at the links below for the picture, along with a couple of other bloggers’ views and ideas on labelling.

Making your own metal labels – so far I’ve been too scared to do this but Multiveg has a smashing clear tutorial on using drinks cans, while many people recommend old Venetian blinds.  Again, links below. I’ve just been informed that we have plans of our own, involving an old copper hot water tank and a variety of interesting tools, so watch this space.

Bloggers on plant labels:

http://veggies-only.blogspot.com/2009/02/my-affair-with-love-apple.html – Matron’s marvellous chip shop fork labels.

http://multiveg.wordpress.com/2009/02/03/label-making/ – a great idea for turning fizzy drinks cans in to embossable metal labels. Mind your fingers!

http://vegmonkey.co.uk/campaign-for-lovely-labels/ Mrs Veg Monkey puts the case for more inventiveness in ID.

http://vegplotting.blogspot.com/2009/01/tagging-my-garden.html – Veg Plotting on plotting her veg!

http://www.gardeninggonewild.com/?p=3237 – “Labelling and record-keeping wrap-up”, a medley of bloggers’ ideas from Gardening Gone Wild.

http://jimmycrackedcorn.wordpress.com/2009/02/17/garden-plant-markers-from-wire-shirt-hangers/ – when you’ve got all the Blue Peter advent calendars you could want, your remaining wire coat hangers can have a new lease of life as professional looking row markers.  This produces T-shaped labels (so no Bassett impressions) with a holder for paper/card labels so you can replace them when necessary, a really clever idea.

http://coopette.com/blog/label-tidy – Emma from Fluffius Muppetus/Alternative Kitchen Garden has invented a label tidy, which is several steps up on the flower pot I shove all my labels in and then spend ages shuffling bad-temperedly through looking for the label I’m sure I remember writing last year and inevitably won’t find until I’ve written a new one.  I shall shamelessly pilfer this idea for myself, this weekend.  I notice Emma’s labels are machine printed and look highly professional. I might have to have second thoughts on borrowing that office label printer after all…

Good, bad, and not so ugly – garden pests and friends

As I’m going to be joining in the Garden Organic slug and snail survey (“So, Mr Helix, are you happy with your wash?” Sorry…) this story caught my eye in a magazine today – the RHS top 10 garden pests in 2008. Slugs and snails took top place, thanks to a cool, wet summer, and we certainly had our fair share of them last year, with my precious Victorian Purple Podded peas bearing the brunt of a particularly savage attack by the vicious, viscous little varmints.  However we still managed to get a good harvest of seed without resorting to anything nastier than eggshells, copper tape and a pointy stick (never, ever underestimate the versatility of a pointy stick).  I recall learning from Daughter of the Soil that tall peas are a better bet where the Slimy Ones are a problem because they are more likely to get their main growing tip out of reach before the whole plant is mauled, leaving the lower leaves and shoots to hopefully act as distracting sacrifices.  (It’s convenient then that the other trial I’m doing is for tall peas!).

We’ve also suffered from No. 4 on the list, vine weevil, and are keeping a sharp eye out this year. Nematodes will come in to play again if necessary – they were effective last year, and as we have some special rhubarb and other containerised plants the £12 or so a packet of treatment would cost is worthwhile.  We’re reasonably confident that we’ve seen harlequin ladybirds and rosemary beetles (the latter extraordinarily pretty – I will dig out some photos soon) and we do have some lily beetles, although these mainly trouble the few giant Himalayan lilies we grew from seed in pots (“because we could” – they flowered for the first time last year). And we’re not great friends with the local grey squirrel population but there’s not much we can do about them except to be vigilant with the wire netting and generous with the holly tree trimmings.

On a much nicer note though, I also found this linked to on the RHS site:

OPAL soil and earthworm survey

Surprisingly little is known about earthworms and the soils they live in, so the OPAL Soil Centre is organising a survey across England to investigate. It starts in March 2009.

We’d like everyone to get involved. Together we can build a picture of soil quality and earthworm populations across the country.

It looks like there will be more information available on their site closer to the survey start date.  I do like an earthworm or two (socially, not gastronomically), to the extent of “rescuing” them from the pavement when they look too abandoned – I have no objection to them being eaten by birds and other wildlife but one of the saddest sights is a dried out worm literally doing no good to man or beast.  If I find time to take part I’ll post up about this here as well.

Garden Organic members experiments

I’m very excited by the arrival of four types of pea, all new to me but none of them, so far as I know, very new to theworld.  It’s for one of the Heritage Seed Library’s members’ experiments – comparing old and new varieties, in this case of tall peas.  This is a bit ambitious for us as our garden is quite exposed and an a hill, but we should be able to arrange some wigwams which I think will be sturdier than trying to grow rows.

The varieties are Clarke’s Beltony Blue, Hugh’s Huge, Simpson’s Special and Alderman…as far as I’m aware Alderman is actually quite an old variety and the notes do say “modern varieties of pea are increasingly bred to be small and compact”, so I suppose that HDRA/Garden Organic didn’t have a lot of choice in the matter! There is  quite a bit of information in the instructions so I’ll have plenty to occupy me until sowing them in, probably, March, as the instructions suggest. To whet my own appetite, some photos from last year of another tall Heritage Seed Library pea:

Victorian Purple Podded Peas in flower, "fruit" and drying for seed

Less thrilling in that I wish I didn’t have too much to contribute is the slug and snail survey – not interviewing gastropods, as my better half has just suggested, but observing our population of different makes and models and reporting on control methods.

We’ve just begun fillng a second pot with dried, crushed eggshells to store until the spring, when we’ll get through a lot of them. Copper tape around pots, “moats” and sharp gravel have also come in to play in the past. And you haven’t really lived life to the full until you’ve spent a damp spring evening or three strolling the not-so-extensive grounds armed with a pointy stick, to the soundtrack of seedlings tumbling to the ground as their defenceless little stalks are bitten off in their prime.

I attempted to take part in the bee survey last year but much as I like them it didn’t work out. I don’t think there’s any danger of not having much to say this time round though!

Children’s gardening books

I’m been looking for some books – both factual and fiction – as a gift for a four-year-old whose parents hope to get enthused about gardening this year. So not so much books aimed at parents, but things they can read and do with the child, and perhaps some bedtime/quiet time stories along the same lines.

I couldn’t find any good reviews so I thought I’d start by including my “longlist” here – any comments would be very welcome, particularly on whether individual books would be suitable for such a young age. Many books, understandably, seem to focus on the slightly older (6-7 plus) child and I don’t want to choose anything that might put them off by being too advanced.

Fiction

Mabel’s Magical Garden – Paula Metcalf

Rosie Plants a Radish – Kate Petty

Ben Plants a Butterfly Garden – Kate Petty

How a Seed Grows (Let’s-Read-And-Find-Out Science: Stage 1) – Helene J. Jordan

Doing the Garden – Sarah Garland

Ten Seeds – Ruth Brown

The Bad-tempered Ladybird (Picture Puffin) – Eric Carle (I’m also keen to find “let’s love the creepy-crawlies themed books!)

Eddie’s Garden: and How to Make Things Grow – Sarah Garland

The World Came to My Place Today (Eden Project Books) – Jo Readman (slightly broader but an Eden Project book that sounds nice)

The Tiny Seed (Picture Puffin) – Eric Carle

George Saves the World by Lunchtime (Eden Project Books) – Jo Readman

The Seed I Planted (Wonderwise Readers) – MANNING MANNING AND MANNING

Let’s Grow a Garden (Lets Environment Series) – Alison Reynolds

I’m inclined to add a few classic fairytales like Jack and the Beanstalk, The Enormous Turnip, Cinderella (for the pumpkin of course!) and Rapunzel here.

Factual books (these are especially difficult to gauge suitability)

Gardening with Young Children (Early Years) – Beatrys Lockie

Gardening with Kids – Martyn Cox

The Gardening Book – Jane Bull

Grow It, Eat It – Dorling Kindersley

Grow Organic, Eat Organic – Lone Morton

What Shall I Grow? (What Shall I Do Today?) – Ray Gibson

First Garden Activity Book (First Activity) – Angela Wilkes

Grow Your Own Nasturtiums (Eden Project Books) – Ley Honor Roberts (also one on sweet peas but nasturtiums are edible so they win!)

Gardening: Activities for 3-5 Year Olds (Activities for 3-5 year olds series) – Caroline Quin

Let’s Grow (Kids’ Gardening) – Parragon Book Service

With factual books I’m wary of the “garden design for children” approach; I am looking for books about growing things rather than constructing treehouses, fitting slides and the art of wedging as much brightly-coloured plastic in to your garden as possible.  Cress in eggshells, the joy of peas from the pod, and funny-shaped carrots are definitely more in the right line, so if anyone does read this and knows the perfect book along these lines please let me know!

And if I do get hold of a couple of these I’ll aim to update this page with my comments, too.

Updates to this post:

Jasper’s Beanstalk by Mick Inkpen – I found this in WHS and had a look through, although there aren’t a lot of words I could see it being a good choice for learning to read, and while I take issue with the mowing bit (!) it’s definitely one to consider. Amazon actually rates it for 4-6 year olds.

Growing Vegetables is Fun by Emma Cooper – I left it off my original list because it’s for fractionally older children, as Emma says in the comments below.  I have seen it in the shops and it looks good value, with seeds included to encourage action as well as thinking, so I thought I’d add it in here in case anyone finding this page is also after gardening books for school age children.

I will be a better blogger, honest

Last year was rubbish. This year will be better. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again (2007 for example. And 2006. And…well, you get the picture).

H’anyway, as part of this effort I’ve created two new pages which I can work on separately so that “normal” posts can be more fun to write.

First, and least interestingly, I’m going to try to keep a diary of my growings on http://fuggles.wordpress.com/about/diary-2009/ (although I may move it if I can work out a better method – a whole separate diary blog is an idea).

Second and much more fun, I’m going to finally start writing up my variety notes, and have kicked it off with two pea varieties (Kent Blue and Golden Sweet) and a chilli (Trifetti): http://fuggles.wordpress.com/interesting-edibles/. Again, I might move this may not be the best format but I thought it best to get on with the content and work out the housekeeping later.