Fantastic Fantasty Flora


Sempervivum Kramer's Spinrad

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?

Posted 20 August 2010, 08:37.
Bookmark and Share
  Comment

Everlasting Garlic


Garlic in trug

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!

Posted 12 August 2010, 09:36.
Bookmark and Share
  Comment

Eco Garden: Worm Composting


Recycled crate wormery
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:



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.

Posted 6 August 2010, 09:39.
Bookmark and Share
  Comment

Eco Garden: Seed Saving


Seed swap

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




This article first appeared in Country Gardener in September 2008. I have collected together lots of links to more information on seed saving.

Posted 23 July 2010, 09:30.
Bookmark and Share
  Comment

Eco Garden: Build a Wildlife Haven


Spider Web maker
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.




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.

Posted 9 July 2010, 09:24.
Bookmark and Share
  Comment [1]

Eco Garden: Recycling Plastic Bottles


More peas
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:




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.

Posted 25 June 2010, 09:16.
Bookmark and Share
  Comment [3]

Eco Garden: Allotment Chic


Scarecrows
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:




This article first appeared in Country Gardener in May 2009.

Posted 11 June 2010, 09:09.
Bookmark and Share
  Comment

Eco Garden: Wildlife gardening


Bee on sempervivum

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