Fantastic Fantasty Flora
Have you ever read a book (or watched a film, or played a game) that involved fictional plants, and wish you could grow them? Which ones stick in your memory?
There are plenty of novels that mention plants, and some of them even have them as integral parts of the plot (I might talk about those in the future), but the ones that tend to stick in my mind are the ones that make up an entire flora of fantastical plants with qualities so wonderful you wish they were real.
When I was younger I loved Anne McCaffrey’s books, particularly her Pern series. For those of you who haven’t read them, the Pern series is about a group of colonists who leave Earth for a new and simpler life on the pastoral planet Pern. The planet has a nasty surprise up its sleeve, though, and the colonists get cut off from Earth and have to learn to live at a much lower technology level and with an unfamiliar set of resources. The series actually starts centuries later, when the resulting population has very little memory of its past and knows nothing of the universe beyond Pern.
They are lucky enough to have found several indispensable plants in their native flora. The first is numbweed, which completely removes pain without side effects and can be used externally and internally. It’s time consuming to harvest, and processing it is smelly, but they wouldn’t be without it. Medicinally they also use the Fellis tree – juice from its berries make a lovely soporific that knocks people out. On a day-to-day level they also appreciate edible tubers (although the nicer ones seem to have been imported from Earth) and the coffee replacement made from Klah bark. If you’re starting to think I’m a bit nutty then I’m not the only one – all of the plants of Pern (native and alien) are listed in the Healer Hall wiki.
Unless you’ve buried your head in the compost bin you should be familiar with J K Rowling’s Harry Potter series, which not only has a range of fantastical plants with magical properties, but an entire school subject devoted to them – Herbology. There are many more plants mentioned in the books than appear in the films, but some firm favourites have to be the canivorous Devil’s Snare that tries to entangle people, Gillyweed that allows you to swim underwater until the effects wear off, the Mandrake that has screaming babies for roots and the Whomping Willow that is one protected species that’s perfectly capable of taking care of itself.
If you’re thinking that’s all kids stuff then you should be more interested in the beautiful and yet completely bonkers Field Guide to Surreal Botany. Beautifully laid out and illustrated, the book is written (by many different contributing authors) in the style of a series tome on botany, but you’ll have to be very luck to spot any of these plants in the wild. Some of my favourites are the CouchKelp (a seaweed with a large, overinflated bladder in the shape of a couch), the Kitty Willow (whose beautiful, fluffy catkins develop into little kitties with a life of their own, who kill pests by playing with them to death), the Wind Melon (whose fruits contain enough helium to make them float at the end of their stems) and the Library Plum (which only flowers when the local librarian population reaches critical mass and whose fruits taste slightly of old books).
And for those of you who don’t read books for whatever reason, there are two games you might like. I’ve already mentioned the first, which is Plants v Zombies, a fun romp through your back yard (and front yard, and roof) where an army of well-equipped plants try and prevent the zombies getting inside the house and eating your brains. One of the basic plants is the Peashooter, which fires peas with deadly accuracy. There’s also the Potato Mine, which is deadly to any zombie that steps on it (sadly there’s no time to harvest the resulting mash for dinner), and the Blover, a lovely clover-like plant that can blow away fog and floating zombies. At night time the fungi come out, including the Fume-Shroom, which gases zombies with its puffs of spores.
(BTW, although it’s great on a desktop I have to say that Plants v Zombies on the iPad is awesome! The multi-touch interface makes things so much more interesting.)
And lastly, although I used to play FarmVille and gave it up there is still one Facebook game that still I dabble with. On Enchanted Island you’re a trainee wizard who washes up on the shores of an island that has a history of magic. You learn to conjure various types of plants, and although you sell most of them you also use them to complete certain quests. Plants range from the mundane (the Lemongrass makes a lovely cup of herbal tea) and vaguely familiar (Exploding Cherries make lovely firework displays) to the more unusual. The Lettucefish (which looks more like the Pak Choi fish!) swims in swarms and attracks Lemonsharks and the Powerful Dragon Vine can be used to incinerate unwanted plants.
Do you have a favourite fictional plant?
Everlasting Garlic
This is a guest article by Sam that was originally written last year for the ebook project.
Garlic has been with us since Roman times – just visit any Italian restaurant to get an understanding of how central the flavour is to their dishes. At Glanbrydan (in West Wales) we love to use it in our own cooking as well as adding it to many of the fillings of the baked pasties and pies we sell.
As a child in the UK in the 1970s our home didn’t entertain garlic as an ingredient; my garlic initiation happened when we went to visit friends of my parents who were well travelled. I didn’t know it at the time but the wonderful smell that permeated their house was created by the addition of garlic to almost everything they cooked.
Garlic is also thought to help dogs keep the fleas away. We make up our dogs food so it’s easy to add a few cloves. A liver and garlic cake can also be made by gently cooking up some liver with chopped garlic and then whizzing it in the food processor. The liver should be shaped in little pots, kept in the fridge and fed to the dogs sparingly. It’s safe to say most dogs love it.
There is a great range of garlic bulbs in the gardening shops all ready to break up and pop in the ground. For any UK gardener garlic is a safe bet. We have lived in South Northamptonshire and in rural mid-Wales, both being areas where the hardy little bulbs flourish. The shop bought ones are not really suitable for growing on unless you know they have come out of the ground locally – only buy via a retailer such as a farmer’s market where they won’t have anything nasty sprayed on them to stop them deteriorating. I have tried to grow the shop bought ones over several years and always had disappointing results.
Garlic is best planted early to give it a long growing season. I like to get some in the ground in November followed by some in pots in the greenhouse in January. They don’t mind getting cold but a little shelter in a cold frame helps them to put down some early roots.
If you are starting them in little pots then yogurt tubs or 3 inch pots are a good option. Open up the bulb as you would for cooking but leave the skin on; each little clove is a potential head of garlic.
Fill the pots with good compost and sink the little heads so the tops are just visible and firm the soil gently around them. Add a bit of water and let them enjoy some protected spring sunshine in the glasshouse. Ours normally go outside about May time – it’s very wet here so they need help with keeping their roots above drowning level. We use old car tyres filled with compost, earth, stone and wood chippings topped up with wood burner ash every now and then.
When planting outdoors it’s better not to push the bulbs in the ground but sink them into loose earth allowing the roots to take hold without having to break through a hard barrier of soil. Firm up around them by pressing down with your hands and then watch and wait. I plant my bulbs just a few inches apart.
They take all summer to plump up and the best time to harvest is late August/September time. The heads need pulling out the ground on a dry day when the stalks have started to yellow. We leave the stems on and plait them together as the French do. Hang them in a dark, cool and dry cupboard to store. If you have the room you can grow enough to last all year.
Quite by accident we discovered what we call ‘ever lasting’ garlic. You need a little space that isn’t dug over every year or walked on – a shrub border is good. You also need patience as they need three years to establish themselves. Plant up a few cloves in a circle and let them be. In a couple of years the cloves will have spread out. When you have lots of stalks carefully remove a few of the outer bulbs at harvest time. The ones left should keep multiplying.
The worst garlic pests we have are our chickens. Our girls love to find neat little shoots to pull out of the ground – to them it’s almost a challenge. As ours are in tyres with brought-in earth under them it’s chickentastic soil for making great dust baths once they have removed the garlic, worms and insects. The chickens will be moving away from the vegetable beds very shortly or we will be falling out!
Sam would like to add that with all the strange weather conditions last winter, her everlasting garlic all died down and she thought she’d lost it. However it has started to regrow so she’s hopefull it will recover. She’s also found someone who ran an everlasting onion patch!
Eco Garden: Worm Composting
A DIY wormery made from recycled crates
If you’ve got a small garden then you might find it difficult to find space for a conventional compost heap. A possible solution is a worm compost bin, which takes up far less space because an army of worms does most of the composting work.
Worm compost bins come in different forms. Some look like small wheelie bins, with taps on the bottom. Other designs use stackable trays, and if you’re handy you can even make your own. The features they all have in common are that they are enclosed to keep the worms in, have air holes so that worms can breathe, and a tap to drain off liquid. A worm bin that lives outside needs a lid to keep excess rain off, but most bins have lids anyway as worms prefer to live in the dark.
The worms used for composting are sometimes called red wigglers. They are a native British species, but they’re not earthworms. They don’t build burrows in the soil, and they love eating organic waste – which is why they are ideal for worm bins. On a good day a composting worm can eat its own bodyweight in waste. It may not sound like much, but even a small packet of worms holds around 1000!
You can buy composting worms in fishing tackle shops (because they’re also used as bait), or mail order. Once you have them you need to settle them into their new home with some suitable bedding. Coir compost is often used, but shredded newspaper is fine too. Make sure the lid is on tightly, to keep the worms in as they explore, and try to avoid the temptation of lifting the lid to check on them too often.
The next day is the time to start feeding your worms. They like eating all kinds of kitchen waste – vegetable peelings, mouldy fruit, cooked fruit and vegetables, tea bags and leaves, coffee grounds and kitchen paper are all fine. Don’t add too much food in one go, as it will rot before the worms can eat it, and start to smell. Over the next few weeks your worm population will gradually increase, and you can start to add more food at a time. Try wrapping food waste in newspaper before you add it to the bin, to help prevent flies. After several months the worm population will be large enough to eat all your kitchen waste, and will then stabilize.
Don’t add meat or dairy products to your worm compost bin, as they smell as they rot down. You also need to avoid anything too acidic – too much onion waste, or citrus peel. You can add eggshells or garden lime to counter the acid and keep the worms happy – they don’t like acidic environments.
A worm compost bin creates a lot of liquid run-off, which can be used as a plant feed. It needs diluting about 10:1 with water before use, so that it’s roughly the colour of weak tea. Every six months or so you will be able to remove a small amount of finished worm compost. It’s highly nutritious stuff, so use it to feed hungry plants or as part of a potting mix for houseplants.
Handy tips:
- In summer, worm bins can get too hot – put them in the shade, or in the garage/ shed.
- In winter, worm bins can freeze – bring them inside or insulate them with a breathable material.
- Worms can drown if the tap clogs up and the liquid level rises, so check it whenever you add waste.
This article was commissioned, but not paid for, by Country Gardener Magazine. For more information on worm composting, listen to episode 26 of the Alternative Kitchen Garden show.
Eco Garden: Seed Saving
The Svalbard Global Seed Vault (also called the Doomsday vault) in Norway was officially opened in February 2008. During the 3 months prior to the grand opening, engineers pumped refrigerated air into the vault to bring its temperature down from a chilly -5°C to an arctic -18°C.
The Doomsday vault is designed to hold 4.5 million seed samples in perfect condition for centuries. It will eventually house almost every variety of each important food crop as an insurance policy against ecological disaster.
This is just the latest, and most high-tech, of numerous projects around the world that aim to protect and conserve our most valuable asset – the genetic diversity of plant life, and of our food crops in particular. Genetic diversity is important because it lets plant populations adapt to changing conditions, and species that can’t adapt risk extinction.
If this all sounds too much like science fiction, then rest assured that a lot of the important work of protecting genetic diversity is being done on a small scale in gardens. The easiest way to protect a plant variety is to grow it, save seeds and share those seeds with others.
To collect seeds from dry seedpods, let them mature as far as possible on the plant. If the weather turns wet just as your seedpods are reaching maturity, uproot the whole plant and hang it upside down somewhere dry. The easiest way to capture the seeds is to cover the seedpods with a paper bag and wait for them to burst open. If you have to open the dried seedpods by hand then you’ll have to separate the seeds from other plant debris before storing them.
For plants that grow fruits, leave the fruits on the plant until they’re completely ripe. You have to remove the fruit pulp, so crush the fruits up and rinse them through a sieve. If you have a lot of seeds to clean then try the fermentation method. Cover the seeds and pulp with water and leave them somewhere warm for a few days until mould starts to grow. Good seeds sink and are easily separated from the floating pulp. An added advantage of this method is that it kills some seed-borne diseases. Once you’ve separated your seeds, dry them well before storing.
For the best results, always store your seeds in a cool, dry place. Variations in temperature affect their viability, so don’t keep them in the greenhouse.
If you want your seeds to be ‘true’ – to develop into plants that are like their parents – then you need to consider whether the plants are likely to have cross-pollinated. This is more of an issue with vegetables, where you want to keep good varieties pure. Some plants are in-breeders, usually pollinating themselves and therefore easy to save seed from. Others cross-pollinate and need more care.
Some easy plants start with
- Basil is a cross-breeder, but if you only have one variety in flower then saving seed is easy. Properly dried, basil seed lasts up to 5 years in storage.
- French beans are self-pollinated, which makes them good for growing under cover and also for seed-savers. The only problem may be getting the seeds to dry on the plant in a wet summer – pull them up and bring them indoors before the first frosts. French bean seed stays viable for up to 3 years.
- Nasturtiums are insect-pollinated, but very easy to collect seeds from as the large seeds fall from the plant when ripe. They’ll store for up to 5 years.
- Tomato seeds need to have the fruit pulp removed, but tomatoes are largely self-pollinated and the seeds store for up to 5 years.
This article first appeared in Country Gardener in September 2008. I have collected together lots of links to more information on seed saving.
Eco Garden: Build a Wildlife Haven
A spider web maker, in the Restore Café garden
Now that the days are longer and the first flush of spring is over, gardeners all over the country have a chance to step back from frantic seed sowing, transplanting, digging and weeding and carry on gardening at a slower pace over the summer.
It’s an ideal time to look at the bigger picture, and to make room for more wildlife in your garden. It’s possible to buy an amazing array of wildlife homes. You may already have bird and even bat nesting boxes. Or a dry house for a hedgehog to hibernate in, or a dark and damp one for frogs and toads. You may even have bug boxes, insect hotels or a butterfly habitat.
But what if you don’t, and can’t afford to splash out on all that real estate? Perhaps you prefer the DIY approach, or eco-friendly recycling? Or you have a small garden that simply doesn’t have the space for all these different habitats?
A fun garden project, especially in the summer holidays when the kids can get involved, is to build your own wildlife stack. A wildlife stack has accommodation for lots of different creatures, but it’s designed and built by you out of scrap materials. It can be as big or as small as you like, and makes a really attractive garden feature that doesn’t need to be hidden away.
The first step is to collect your building materials. Keep an eye out for old pallets you can rescue, pieces of wood, old tiles and bricks – particularly the ones with holes in. If you have a pile of unused terracotta pots, then find those. Broken ones will be fine as well, but be careful of any sharp edges.
Find a flat area (or level off a space) on which to build your stack. The ‘ground floor’ is for amphibians and reptiles. Pile up pebbles, tiles, and stones from the garden to provide shady nooks and crannies they can shelter in.
For the upper floors of the stack, build a sturdy frame from pallets or pieces of wood supported by bricks or plant pots. If you have an old bookcase or set of shelves, you could use that.
Stuff gaps with handfuls of twigs and sticks, or hollow stems from garden plants. If your bamboo canes have seen better days then cut them into short lengths and add those to the stack. If you have chunks of wood, drill holes (in a variety of sizes) into the ends for insects to crawl into.
Keep building up layers until the stack is as high as you want it to be. Use anything you have to hand to provide different niches for wildlife. Drinking straws, pine cones, straw and dried grass are all useful, as is corrugated cardboard. Try rolling it up and stuffing it into a plastic bottle, or a cardboard tube.
Finish off your stack with a roof to keep the water off – roofing felt, roofing tiles or a layer of plastic are all fine. You could even install a green roof, covered in drought-tolerant plants, to attract even more wildlife!
What might move in?
Keep an eye out to see what’s living in your stack at different times of the year.
- A slow worm might make its home on the ground floor.
- Ladybirds love to hibernate in hollow stems; lacewings like corrugated cardboard.
- Solitary bees move into larger holes, as will spiders.
- Field mice can raise a litter in a nest of straw or shredded paper.
- Insects of all kinds love nooks and crannies.
This article was commissioned, but not paid for, by Country Gardener magazine. For more inspiration, check out the RSPB wildlife stack that appeared at BBC Gardeners’ World Live 2008.
Eco Garden: Recycling Plastic Bottles
Pea seedlings with plastic bottle collars, on the Organic Allotment at Garden Organic Ryton
Plastic bottles are everywhere these days, even floating around in the oceans. Fortunately for the environment, recycling facilities are improving (here in the UK at least) but a lot of plastic bottles still end up in landfill, where they just don’t break down. If you would like to give your plastic bottles a new lease of life once they’re empty, and save money too, then try recycling them into something useful for the garden.
The most obvious choice when it comes to reusing a plastic bottle is simply to refill it, and use it as a watering can or to make and store liquid plant feeds – but to avoid accidents never store something toxic in a bottle that used to hold a drinkable liquid. A plastic bottle is also a great place to store materials that need to stay dry, such as soap flakes and bran.
Cutting your plastic bottles into sections gives you far more recycling options. The bottom half can be made into a plant pot, and the top half can be put to use as a mini cloche complete with its own ventilation system – you can leave the cap on or take it off! And the top half of a bottle, pushed into the soil with the neck downwards, can be used to guide water down to the root zone and keep plants happy while reducing your watering burden.
The top half also makes a very handy impromptu funnel (as useful indoors as outside), and if you cut the bottom off a large plastic milk bottle (leaving the handle intact and the cap on) then you have a very ergonomically-friendly scoop for your compost.
Looking at the wildlife in the garden, plastic bottles can come in handy to help friendly creatures and as deterrents against pests. A bottom section can be used as a slug pub to attract these slimy creatures away from your lettuces towards a beery death, but remember to leave the rim above the soil surface to avoid creating a pit fall for helpful beetles. Bottle sections can be used as slug collars to protect vulnerable plants. And if you take a whole bottle, cut slits in the side and bend sections out to form wings then you have a bird scarer. Pop it onto a cane and the bottle will catch the wind and spin round.
To encourage beneficial lacewings, try turning a bottle into a hibernation chamber. Cut the bottom off a bottle, roll up a section of corrugated cardboard and stuff it inside. Hang the bottle outside (with the opening downwards) in the autumn and take it into the shed before the first frosts. Bring it out in spring and you’ll have a population of lacewings ready and willing to eat those early aphids.
With a little ingenuity you can also turn a bottle into a bird feeder. You could fashion a tray to hang underneath and catch the seed, and make a perch for the birds. A simpler version hangs by the neck and has a large opening cut into the side for the birds to nip in and get to the seed, but you may need to make a couple of drainage holes in the bottom as well.
Got a lot of bottles? Try these ideas too:
- Cut your bottles into strips for home made plant labels.
- Fill a set of matching bottles with water and use them as garden skittles.
- Take on a really big project and make a plastic bottle greenhouse.
This article was commissioned, but never paid for, by Country Gardener magazine. I covered more uses for a plastic bottle in the Alternative Kitchen Garden episode 20 garden uses for a plastic bottle.
Eco Garden: Allotment Chic
Natty scarecrows on the Elder Stubbs allotments
Allotments are going to be all the rage this year. The National Trust recently announced that they’re making available enough spare land for up to 1000 allotments, via the Landshare scheme. British Waterways and British Rail are in on the act, too, looking for land along canals and railway lines that could be used to grow vegetables.
With the environmental benefits of growing your own, rising food prices and the credit crunch, having a kitchen garden plot has never been so fashionable – and that means that ‘allotment chic’ is on the rise as well.
Allotment chic isn’t about wearing your wellies down to the pub or showing up for work with grass stains on your trousers. Allotments have a real style of their own, based on allotmenteers embracing DIY and using salvaged, free and recycled materials on their plots.
It may look a bit ramshackle, but there’s some real savings to be made by adding a bit of allotment chic to your garden. If you can’t afford to buy a greenhouse, have a look in classified ads – or on Freegle – to see whether anyone is selling theirs or giving one away. You may have to dismantle it yourself, and replace a few panes of glass, but you’ll have a place to grow your tomatoes at a fraction of the cost.
Net curtains make great crop protection netting – keeping the birds off your soft fruit and the caterpillars away from your cabbages. Net curtains aren’t at all trendy at the moment, so you may be able to find second-hand ones for sale in your local charity shop.
If you keep your eyes open on your travels then you may be able to find enough old windows (where people are having double-glazing installed) to build yourself a free cold frame, and the wood from discarded pallets is endlessly useful if you like DIY – try making yourself a set of compost bins, or even some greenhouse staging.
A few old tyres make a great raised bed and make it possible to grow spuds even if you don’t have a garden, because you can stand them on the patio. And I’ve heard of people taking broken concrete from building sites to use in a rockery – but perhaps that’s going too far.
Get the look
The whole point of allotment chic is to spend time, rather than money. Here are a few easy ways to add some salvage style to your garden:
- Old bricks make a lovely edging for a raised bed. Try setting them at a 45° angle to make an attractive zig-zag pattern.
- If you have trouble with birds attacking your crops, string up some old CDs where they’ll blow around and catch the sun. You may need to move them every so often, once the birds get used to them.
- A lovely project for kids is to make a scarecrow out of old clothes, some straw and a stout pole.
- Lots of food packaging can be given a second life in the garden. Plastic trays are great for sowing small amounts of seed, and if you have a matching pair then you have a mini propagator.
- Ice lolly sticks make great plant labels. If you want to make them more individual, try painting them with odds and ends of paint from the garage.
- Punch a hole in the bottom of a yoghurt pot and it’s as good as a shop-bought plant pot. But if you don’t eat yoghurt, take up the ancient art of origami and make your own plant pots out of newspaper!
This article first appeared in Country Gardener in May 2009.
Eco Garden: Wildlife gardening
One of the hottest gardening topics is how to turn your garden into a wildlife haven. Gardens are seen as a habitat of last resort for many hard-pressed species. Wildlife friendly products abound and you can buy homes suitable for any creature.
What’s not immediately obvious is how much this helps, and whether a garden that is designed principally for humans can also entice wildlife in.
Some very good research into the wildlife values of different gardens was done at the University of Sheffield – and it came up with some surprising results.
To start with, they found that every garden is teeming with wildlife. You may not have the obvious species (birds and small mammals) visiting on a regular basis, but you will have millions of creepy-crawlies. That’s a good start, because the key to successful wildlife gardening is to look at the whole ecosystem – the more different species you can cater for, the better.
If you are replacing a fence then it’s worth considering planting a mixed hedge to enhance the value of your garden to wildlife. A base of hawthorn or blackthorn will have white flowers in spring, followed by berries in autumn. Adding in other species (in a ratio of about 1:5) adds interest for humans and wildlife – try holly, dogwood, roses, oak or hazel.
A new hedge is a considerable investment, but adding new plants for their wildlife value is achievable in most gardens. Aim to have flowers blooming for as long as possible to help bees – crocuses and ivy both help to extend the season. Many plants, such as buddleia and sedum, are well known for attracting bees and butterflies, but the flowers of many herbs (e.g. mints, lemon balm, marjoram and thyme) are just as good.
Ponds open up a new range of habitats, but adding fish greatly reduces the number of species that take up residence. A good range of aquatic plants helps, as does a separate marshy area or bog garden. Shy animals appreciate some cover while they’re drinking, and a shallow edge on one side helps creatures get in and out of the water. Add some flat stones in a sunny spot, for basking, and you have the wildlife equivalent of a 5-star beach resort.
No wildlife-friendly garden is complete without a compost heap. Decomposing plant matter is a very important part of the food chain, and something most gardens lack because of our tendency to clear plant debris away. Adding it back in helps to support a whole army of decomposing organisms.
The only sort of garden that is not good for wildlife is one where pesticides are used (including slug pellets), because they kill off sections of the ecosystem. Beyond that, a garden has to be considered as part of the wider environment. There’s no need for every garden to have a pond or hedge – a variety of plants and garden types in the neighbourhood gives a wide range of habitats and hence supports a wide range of wildlife.
Tips for easy wildlife gardening
- A patch of nettles is a great wildlife resource. Nettles support early populations of aphids, which feed ladybirds when they come out of hibernation and encourage them to live and breed in your garden. Ladybirds and their larvae help to keep garden pests under control.
- A log pile in a quiet corner provides a range of wildlife habitats as the logs decompose.
- Sunflowers provide pollen and nectar for bees, followed by seeds for birds.
- A wildflower meadow isn’t a ‘must have’ – even a patch of plain, un-mowed grass is a haven for wildlife.
- Don’t mow your lawn as short in hot weather – longer grass is more drought-resistant and stays greener for longer.
- Water in the early morning, or late evening, to reduce evaporation and increase the amount of water that gets to plant roots.
- Choose drought resistant plants. Established perennials and Mediterranean plants like lavender have much lower water needs.
- When you do water, concentrate on plants that really need it – container plants, seedlings and fruiting vegetables.
- A good companion plant for attracting beneficial wildlife is Limnanthes douglasii, the poached egg plant, which is often recommended for planting around soft fruit.
- The Black walnut is a very bad companion, producing a chemical that inhibits the growth of other plants around it. The dense shade cast by the English walnut can have an equally negative effect.
- The Native American technique of planting corn, squash and beans together (known as the Three Sisters) uses corn to support climbing beans. The beans fix nitrogen in the soil for the benefit of all the crops, and the squash happily ramble across the ground in the shade of the sweetcorn.
- French marigolds can be used to keep whitefly from bothering your tomatoes, inside the greenhouse or outside. The effect only works when they’re in flower, so you need to keep up with dead heading.
- Consider sowing clover through your lawn. Clover stays green for much longer during droughts, adds nitrogen to the soil and provides nectar for bees if allowed to flower.
- Raise the height of the mower blades. Scalping a lawn weakens the grass and encourages weeds.
- Moss growth indicates that the conditions are wrong for good grass growth. You may be cutting the grass too short, or have problems with drainage. Feeding and liming at the appropriate time of year will also help.
- If you rake out moss in spring then leave some lying around – garden birds may use it for nest building.
- Slugs and snails won’t cross copper barriers. Copper rings are ideal for protecting individual plants, copper tape can be applied to the rims of containers, or you can stand pots on copper mats.
- Cloches made from clear plastic drinks bottles will shelter seedlings from bad weather and protect them from slug and snail attacks.
- Rings of coffee grounds and other gritty substances encourage slugs to look elsewhere for a meal.
- Collecting slugs by hand is not everyone’s idea of fun but can be very successful. Looks for slugs hiding under stones or leave grapefruit peel out for them to congregate underneath. Planting a row of sacrificial lettuces will ensure you know exactly where your slugs are, but you will then have to find a way to dispose of them. If your compost heap has a lid then try confining them inside, where they can help decompose your plant wastes.
This article first appeared in Country Gardener in August 2008. Ken Thompson wrote up the Sheffield University BUGS project findings in the wonderful book No Nettles Required.
Eco Garden: Water-wise gardening
According to Thames Water, only 6% of household water is normally used on the garden – but in hot weather this figure can soar to 50%. We’re all aware that clean water is a precious resource, but none of us wants to see our well-tended gardens turn brown and crispy in a summer drought.
There are some easy ways that you can improve the water efficiency of your garden, so that it looks better for longer in hot weather and survives if you go away on holiday and so that watering becomes less of a chore. You can also reduce your dependence on mains water – a definite advantage if there’s a hose-pipe ban, or if you have a water meter.
The first thing to consider is whether you can find a home for a water butt. These are usually connected to the down pipe from your guttering so that they collect water as it runs off from the roof. If you can find a space for one or more butts then you have a free source of water, and rain water is better for plants too. Many local councils and water companies offer subsidised water butts to households because of the benefits they bring. If you’re worried about aesthetics, then shop around – there are many water butts on the market that will blend into any landscape.
Next you should add as much organic matter to your soil as possible. It doesn’t matter whether it’s leaf mould, home-made compost, commercial compost or well-rotted manure, but organic matter in the soil holds water and reduces the need for watering. Leaving your organic matter on the soil as a mulch (rather than digging it in) will have an extra effect, as a mulch reduces evaporation from the soil surface.
When you do water, water at the base of plants so that the water goes to the roots where it is needed instead of evaporating off of foliage. Try to avoid watering during the heat of the day, and use a hose with a trigger gun so that you’re not wasting water on paths and uncultivated areas. Water well once or twice a week rather than little and often. Daily watering encourages many plants to grow shallow roots – leaving them more vulnerable in dry weather.
Check whether a plant needs water by pushing your finger a short way down into the soil – even when the surface is dry the soil underneath may still be damp.
Lawns, ornamental plantings and tree fruits can benefit from the use of grey water – water that has been used for washing up or bath water, for example. Grey water can’t be stored (because of the dirt and detergents it contains) and it’s not safe to use on leafy vegetables, but it can breathe new life into the garden. If you use grey water, spread it around to avoid any potential problems with the build-up of detergents in the soil.
If you have a drought-prone garden, the best thing you can do is too choose your plants with this in mind. Mature perennial plants are generally more drought-tolerant than annuals, and there are many plants that love drier conditions.
Water-wise tips
This article first appeared in Country Gardener in December 2008. For more information on water-wise gardening, listen to episode 14 of the Alternative Kitchen Garden Show.
Eco Garden: The RISC roof garden, Reading
Calendula, growing in a sunny spot in the RISC garden
Climb the cast iron steps to the roof garden at the Reading International Solidarity Centre (RISC) and you can almost forget that you’re in the heart of the city. Just 30 by 6 metres, the garden manages to fill every vista and the breeze through the trees drowns out all but the loudest city noises.
The cherry tree reaching for the sky, the mature fruit bushes and the exuberant range of groundcover plants all belie the fact that five years ago there was nothing here but a leaky roof. The garden contains more than 160 varieties of plant, and all of this has been achieved with only a foot of soil.
Each plant here was chosen either because it has multiple uses and illustrates our continuing reliance on plants, or because it has a compelling history.
In spring, the medlar tree is a magnet for insects with its large white blossoms. The fruits are left on the tree until October, then harvested and stored on straw to ‘blet’ (a more enticing word than ‘rot’!) until the softened flesh can be eaten with a spoon. There is no place in our commercial world for a fruit that needs so much processing, but the medlar was a popular tree in times gone by.
A shrub that was commercially grown in Victorian times, but has since fallen out of favour is the Chilean Guava. An excellent hedging plant with the bonus of tasty fruit in October, the Chilean Guava deserves a renaissance.
The crab apple ‘John Downie’ would also make an excellent addition to many gardens. A good pollinator for other apple species, it is useful in its own right – producing sweet crab apples that make delicious crab apple jelly.
Climbing plants cover all the vertical surfaces. The golden hop, known for its role in flavouring beer, has flowers that can be dried and used in pillows to aid restful sleep. Its vines can be used for basketry, and above all it is a feast for the senses – aesthetic values being as important here as any others.
The underplanting is an integral part of the design, with continuous groundcover preventing water loss and soil erosion. Paths wind through a carpet of plants such as strawberries, lovage and lemon balm. Splashes of colour shine out of sunlit corners as flowering plants such as pot marigolds and borage catch your eye.
Although mesmerising, the plants are not the only things here with a story to tell. Some of the stonework in the hard landscaping was originally part of Reading Abbey, brought to this spot after the dissolution of the monasteries – the disused building was seen as nothing more than a convenient source of building materials.
The hurdles edging the garden are made from locally coppiced hazel, and the decking from wind-blown oak, sawn where it fell by a mobile sawmill.
Throughout, the garden is an example of how sustainability can be achieved in an urban setting. Rainwater is stored and pumped around a drip-feed irrigation system, powered by a wind turbine and solar panels.
The centre composts vegetable waste from its café, and paper waste from the offices, in green cone composters. Scattered around the garden, these composters make composting easy – they don’t need to be emptied, and feed the bed in which they are located. Surrounded by nettles or comfrey they form fertility patches used to make liquid feeds for use elsewhere in the garden.
With the current trend for low-maintenance gardens, the forest garden concept deserves to be more widespread. Although careful thought needs to be put into the design and selection of plants, once established the garden fends for itself and requires only minimal weeding and pruning whilst providing a year round harvest and feast for the senses.
Even for those of us with regular gardens there are plenty of ideas here to take home. And you can be safe in the knowledge that when you’re following in RISC’s footsteps, you’re treading lightly on the Earth.
This article first appeared in some local editions of Country Gardener in August 2008. The RISC roof garden opens to the public under the National Gardens Scheme. For more information about the garden, visit the website.
You may also like to download an article I wrote on the RISC garden for Permaculture Magazine, in PDF format with colour photos: Roof Top Oasis Revisited.
Eco Garden: Grow Your Own Tea Pot
The Tea House at Le Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons
There’s nothing quite as British as a nice cup of tea, and sitting down for a good cuppa can certainly brighten up your day. A tea bush is unlikely to thrive in most UK gardens (although there are a couple of tea plantations) because of the climate, but there are plenty of herbs that are easy to grow and make a refreshing brew. They’ll even grow well in containers – so they make ideal plants for a windowbox or a patio. Having them close at hand means you can harvest leaves as and when you need them.
One of the first plants that springs to mind for herbal teas is also one of the easiest to grow. Mints are rampant plants, happy to grow pretty much anywhere, and are often confined to containers simply to keep them under control. There are lots of mint varieties to choose from, spearmint and peppermint being the most familiar. Both are good for tea, although if you want to try making a traditional Moroccan mint tea then spearmint is the one to go for.
To make mint tea, simply steep 4 or 5 leaves in water that has boiled and then cooled slightly, for upwards of 5 minutes. A teapot or a mug with a lid helps to keep the flavour in. Moroccan mint tea uses spearmint to add flavour to green tea. Whichever way you like it, mint teas are good for aiding digestion and settling the stomach.
If you’re feeling adventurous then try one of the fancier mints – maybe pineapple mint or even chocolate mint will tempt your tastebuds. Check the label when you buy your plant – some mints are hardier than others, and you may need to give yours some protection (or bring it indoors) during the winter.
Closely related to the mints, and just as easy to grow, is lemon balm. Again, there are several varieties, but most have the same lemony flavour. A cup of lemon balm tea is very soothing, and may help if you have a cold or flu.
Mints and lemon balm need repotting or dividing every year or so – they don’t like outgrowing their container. Repotting is simply a matter of moving the plant into a larger pot, but a mature plant can be split into pieces (in autumn, or early spring). It takes a bit of effort to chop or wrench the roots apart, but each rooted piece can then be replanted and grown on or given away. But don’t try growing mint or lemon balm in a container with other plants – they’re thugs and will quickly take over.
Three other common kitchen herbs that can be used to make herbal teas are rosemary, thyme and sage. These are all plants that came from warmer climes and enjoy sunshine and dry weather. They’re hardy, and easy to grow, and brewing them into a tea is as simple as clipping a sprig or a few leaves and steeping it in hot water. Rosemary tea is good for an uneasy stomach and said to aid memory; sage is soothing for sore throats and colds and thyme tea with a little honey can ease a tickly cough.
Whichever herbs you choose to grow for your tea pot, they will bring you an added bonus. Herb flowers are perfect for bees and other beneficial insects, and will draw them into the garden. And if you position them next to paths and seats, all you need do is pass your hands through the foliage to release their scents into the air.
This article first appeared in Country Gardener in April 2009. I’m growing several new tea plants in 2010 – listen to episode 94 of the Alternative Kitchen Garden Show to find out more. And you should also be aware of the problems with tea bags if you’re a keen composter.
Grow Your Own Peashoots
In the first episode of The Edible Garden yesterday, Alys Fowler was talking about peas and beans and one of the things she grew was peashoots.
Peashoots are an oriental delicacy, regularly grown in gardens across China, but rarely seen for sale here in the UK because they’re very expensive for their weight. But they’re cheap and easy to grow, which makes them an ideal candidate for growing in a kitchen garden because you’ll be getting a lot of value for your money and your space – even if all you have is a windowsill or a small container garden.
I covered peas and peashoots in episode 21 of the Alternative Kitchen Garden show (way back in 2007!), but I’ll cover the basics here as it’s so easy.
All you will need is a growing medium (potting compost or vermiculite), a suitable container and some pea seeds. Suitable containers are shallow – you can use a standard seed tray, or reuse some of the plastic containers supermarket produce comes in. You can use any pea seeds (Alys used a packet of cheap dried peas from the supermarket) that you have handy – this is a great way of using up any leftover pea seeds.
You can sow peas for peashoots at any time of year indoors, or from spring onwards outside (although you’ll have to be on the lookout for beasties such as slugs and snails that will graze away green seedlings and mice that may dig up seeds before they germinate).
Fill your container with a layer of compost or vermiculite a couple of centimetres deep. Add a layer of pea seeds on top – you don’t have to give them much space at all as they’re not going to grow big, so cram them in. Cover them with another centimetre of soil, water gently, and pop them somewhere where you can keep an eye on them. If you can cover them with a clear plastic lid (or put the container in a clear plastic bag) then that helps to keep the seeds moist while they’re germinating, but take it off once you can see signs of life.
Water your seedlings regularly so that they don’t wilt. Once they’re about 15 centimetres tall you’ll be able to see several pairs of leaves and they’ll start to grow thin climbing tendrils – this is the stage at which you harvest your peashoots. Simply snip or nip out the top of the plants. These ultra-fresh greens add a lovely mild pea flavour to salads or sandwiches, or you can lightly stir-fry them.
You’ll get two or three harvests from the same container before they start being past their best. But if you sow another small container every time you start to harvest one then you can easily have a continous supply. Once a container has finished cropping, simply add the remaining bits and pieces to the compost heap, wash it out and start again!
There’s no reason that you can’t harvest tender peashoots from the tops of pea plants that are growing in the garden – except that if you overdo it you may affect the size of your pea crop.
Eco Garden: Companion Planting
Companion planting is the catch-all term for exploiting the many ways in which plants interact with each other. Companion planting is often portrayed as a simple matter of which plants grow well together, but the small amount of scientific research that has been done suggests that this is not the case.
One way in which plants influence each other is by forming microclimates. We exploit this by growing hedges and windbreaks, but each plant in your garden is affecting the climate around it. Tall shrubs and trees cast shadows; ground cover plants prevent evaporation and raise the humidity close to the soil.
Plant roots have a profound effect on soil that can benefit other plants nearby. Roots form channels through which air and water can percolate, and each plant will draw a slightly different combination of nutrients from the soil.
Plants can attract or repel insects and other wildlife. They can even attract or repel the gardener – and a reasonable amount of attention from the gardener can be a big factor in plant survival!
An obvious negative influence is competition – your plants compete with weeds for sun, water and nutrients, which is why we try to keep weeds at bay.
The sheer number of influences on plant growth and the diversity of garden environments mean that companion planting – growing different species together to benefit one or both of them – is an art, rather than a science. What works in one garden may not work in another, or the following season.
However, there are some simple ways in which gardeners can maximize the positive effects their plants will have on one another. One of the easiest is to ensure that you have a wide variety of plants growing. In the kitchen garden, grow flowers and herbs among your vegetables to attract beneficial insects and repel pests and they will also help to support bees and encourage pollination. Big, open flowers rather than showy double varieties are better for attracting bees; umbellifers are good for attracting hoverflies, whose larvae feed on aphids.
There is some evidence that surrounding rows of carrots with strongly scented plants (onions are often used) prevents the carrot fly from sniffing their way to the carrots – but you need to have a high ratio of scented plants to carrots for there to be a noticeable effect.
The use of green manures can be seen as an example of companion planting, because you are making use of one plant to improve conditions for another. Green manures display many ‘good companion’ traits – they can improve the soil texture, add nutrients to the soil, prevent a build up of plant diseases and attract beneficial insects if allowed to flower.
Four examples of companion planting effects
This article first appeared in Country Gardener in May 2008. Your choice of green manure plants depends on the season – for more information read spring green manures and autumn green manures.
Eco Garden: Green lawns
The front lawn at Kingston Bagpuize House
It is one of the big ironies of gardening that the pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers we use to keep our lawns green make them one of the least ‘green’ areas of the garden. Many gardeners put a lot of effort into maintaining their lawns, and this diligence can be a real asset if you want to go green, because it requires a fair amount of work to keep your lawn in top-notch condition using organic methods. The good news is that a more relaxed approach rewards you with a beautiful, wildlife-friendly lawn.
The main lawn maintenance task in summer is mowing. For a neat lawn you need to mow twice a week throughout the summer, but don’t mow too low – 2.5 cm is low enough for a play area, 3 cm for everywhere else. If the weather is dry then raise the blades on the mower – longer grass stays greener for longer. Grass clippings can be left on the lawn as a mulch, to conserve water.
In a relaxed lawn, allow some weeds to thrive and appreciate the splashes of colour they bring. If you want to remove them, dig them out by hand, filling in the holes with potting compost and sowing some grass seed on top. Trim the edges of the lawn, and rake out moss.
In autumn, rake up falling leaves and remove them from the lawn. Consider using them as a mulch elsewhere, or starting a leaf mould heap, rather than consigning them to the dustbin. If your lawn is very compacted then autumn is a good time to aerate it – use a hollow-tined aerator for the best results, and brush sand into the holes. Aeration improves soil structure and drainage.
You may need to scarify the lawn by raking it to remove the build up of organic material on the soil surface. This encourages the grass to send out side-shoots, but any bare areas that are uncovered should be re-seeded.
Later in the season you can cut down on mowing and raise the mower blades. It is also time to apply an organic top-dressing mix, using a rake or broom, and to plant bulbs if you want a display of spring flowers.
Winter is a quiet time for lawns, as they only need to be lightly mown during mild spells to keep them tidy. This is a good time to have your mower serviced and to test the underlying soil – apply lime if the pH is below 6.0, with the aim of bringing it back to neutral. Try to avoid walking on the grass when it’s frosty.
In spring, scarify and aerate again if necessary and use a stiff broom to disperse worm casts. Feed only if grass growth is poor, using an organic general fertilizer or complete lawn feed. Bring the mower out again, but consider leaving an area of longer grass as a wildlife habitat.
Tips for organic lawns
This article first appeared in Country Gardener in June 2008. If keeping your lawn green is a chore, consider turning some of it into a vegetable bed and growing something you can eat instead.
Eco Garden: Dealing with pests
If there’s one thing that makes gardeners gnash their teeth with frustration, it’s watching their favourite plants being eaten by pests. We’ve moved on from the ‘any bug is a bad bug’ mentality, and many chemical controls are being removed from sale amid safety fears, but this doesn’t mean that we have to abandon hope of an attractive and productive garden.
The organic approach to pest control is a holistic one. It begins (as with everything in organic gardening) with the soil. Keeping your soil in good health allows an extensive ecosystem to develop, and many soil microorganisms are beneficial to plant health. Pesticides and chemical fertilizers disrupt this ecosystem and prevent it from functioning properly, which is why they have no place in an organic garden. Feed the soil with compost and manure and the ecosystem, and your plants, will thrive.
Gardens have a huge advantage over farms in terms of pest control because they don’t, as a rule, have large areas of the same plant. Mixed planting helps to prevent some pests finding a home in your garden and adding flowers to your vegetable plot will attract beneficial insects.
Making your garden more attractive to wildlife draws in birds and animals that eat garden pests. Nooks and crannies for spiders and beetles, damp places for frogs and toads and food and nesting sites for birds are all easily achievable even in small gardens. If you can add trees, a source of water and some untidy areas your garden will be a wildlife haven.
Even so, a garden is not a natural ecosystem and a balance between pests and their predators is hard to build and maintain. There will be times when the gardener needs to intervene – not to wipe out the pests, but to reduce their population and help restore the natural balance.
The simplest chemical-free option for controlling pests is removing them by hand. This is easy enough to do for large pests, such as slugs and snails, but more difficult for aphids – a jet of water from the hosepipe will dislodge larger populations without harming plants. Yellow sticky traps are ideal in greenhouses and conservatories. They may not look attractive, but they catch many flying insects and will give you advance warning of which creatures are trying to attack your plants.
Traps and barriers are more often seen in the vegetable garden than flowerbeds. Everyone is familiar with the use of ‘slug pubs’, but a ring of bran around vulnerable plants may also offer some protection. Insect netting is perfect for preventing moths and butterflies from laying eggs that develop into caterpillars, but you need to check regularly that none have found a way inside and also that birds and other wildlife haven’t become entangled.
As a last resort, there are organic products available for controlling pest attacks. Biological controls introduce more predators (usually microscopic) into your environment to help restore the balance. Biological controls are targeted to specific pests, such as red spider mite or slugs. More general insect sprays will deal with aphids and other flying insects, but need to be applied carefully to avoid killing beneficial insects at the same time. And if slugs are your nemesis then you can even buy environmentally friendly slug pellets that aren’t harmful to other wildlife, pets or children.
Chemical-free slug control
This article first appeared in Country Gardener in April 2008. See how I deal with pest problems in my garden on my blog.
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