Articles: coopette.com

Growing marigolds

Marigolds aren’t really in fashion at the moment – their simple flowers and brash colours don’t seem to fit in modern gardens. But they’re worth growing in a kitchen garden for two reasons. The first is that these simple flowers are the sort that bees and other beneficial insects love. And the second reason is that marigolds are known to be pest-repelling plants – good companions.

After an initial error with marigolds towering over the peppers they were supposed to be protecting, I stick to dwarf marigolds. I grow them in window boxes, and in amongst my tomatoes – they’re supposed to deter whitefly. It might not be scientific, but I’ve never had whitefly on my tomatoes!

Marigolds have nice big seeds that make them easy to sow. Sow them indoors early in spring for transplating outside later, or directly where you want them to flower from mid-spring onwards. They don’t need any special soil, aren’t fussy about position and don’t need much feeding, but will bloom throughout the summer.

Remove the faded blooms (dead head) to keep them flowering; towards the end of the summer you can leave some to set seed. You will get a lot of seed, and it’s easily detached from the flower heads and collected and stored. Marigolds are half-hardy annuals, so at the end of the summer you’ll need to pull them up – but you’ll never need to buy marigold seed again!

Posted 1 July 2009, 13:32. Comment

Growing Good King Henry

Good King Henry is a perennial herb in the family Chenopodiaceae – the same plant family as some familiar vegetables (including beetroot and chard), some familiar weeds (e.g. Fat Hen) and some other useful but more unusual plants – including quinoa and tree spinach.

Good King Henry forms a clump, about 12-18 inches wide (less than 50 cm), and can grow up to 2 ft tall (60 cm). It’s an easy plant to grow, fully hardy and not fussy about soil or position.

Good King Henry is grown for its edible shoots and leaves. The leaves can be used as a spinach substitute, the flowers are edible and the young shoots are known as ‘poor man’s asparagus’.

If the plant has some shelter it will provide a green crop throughout all but the harshest winter weather; in summer it will appreciate being watered in dry spells.

Seeds can be sown throughout the sprin. They’re tiny and not the easiest things to handle, but seedlings are easily thinned. Collecting seed is simply a matter of collecting ripe seed heads and shaking the seed out into a bag. Cleaning the seed up to remove other plant matter is the most tedious part. If you get a lot of seed you can grind it and add it to flour – see PFAF for more details.

Posted 30 June 2009, 12:49. Comment

Growing Nasturtiums

Nasturtiums make a great addition to a kitchen garden, for several reasons. Firstly, they come in lots of hot, bright colours, and really cheer the place up when there’s a lot of green around. Secondly, they’re edible – you can add the leaves and flowers to salads (they have a peppery flavour, best used in moderation) and if you pickle the seeds you have a good substitute for capers. Thirdly, they act as sacrificial plants, drawing blackfly and other pests away from more valuable crops. And finally, they’re really easy to grow, to the point where after the first year they’re likely to grow themselves.

Nasturtiums are hardy annuals, meaning that they’re not afraid of the cold and they complete their whole lifecycle (from seed, to plant, to flower, to seed) in one season. They come in a range of colours, and in several forms – trailing, climbing, and dwarf. If you choose the right sort they can fit in most gardens, scrambling up screens, tumbling down from hanging baskets or ranging underneath taller plants.

Nasturtiums have big seeds and grow quickly, which makes them ideal for children to try sowing. They can be sown outdoors (where you want them to flower) from early spring to around midsummer, and if you want them earlier you can start them indoors from late winter and transplant them outside in spring (they will need hardening off).

Nasturtiums aren’t fussy about soil, and don’t need to be fed – giving them fertilizer encourages more green growth than flowers. They do need to be watered in dry weather, but are pretty tolerant and self-reliant.

If you don’t eat all the flowers then seeds will start to form from summer onwards. If you want to pickle them you need to harvest the seeds when they’re fresh and green (see Garden Organic’s information on pickling the seeds). If you want to save seed to grow next year, then wait until the seeds ripen and turn brown. If they fall off the plant it doesn’t matter – their size makes them easy to collect from the ground. Store them somewhere cool and dry and you can use them for next year’s seed or swap them with your friends.

Nasturtiums have a tendency to self-seed, that is they will grow without your help if the seeds fall on the ground. If you don’t want them where they grow then the seedlings are easy to pull up and compost; otherwise you can have nastutiums in your garden every year when you only sowed them once!

Posted 29 June 2009, 11:50. Comment

Seed Saving

This is a repository for all the information on this site about seed saving. If you want to start saving your own seeds, or you’ve picked up one of my seed packets from a seed swap and need instructions on how to grow the plants, then this is the place to look.

(I am planning a seed swap at the Big Green Gathering 2009.)

Alternative Kitchen Garden episodes:
20 – Welsh Onions
28 – Seed Saving
41 – Planting Pips
50 – Seed Swaps
63 – Achocha

Articles:
Seeds – an extra harvest from your garden
Growing achocha
Growing nasturtiums
Growing Good King Henry
Growing marigolds

Useful links:
Bloggers Seed Network
The Heritage Seed Library (HSL)
Real Seeds
Seedy Sunday
The Seed Site

Posted 29 June 2009, 10:42. Comment

My Dream Farm

From Permaculture Works, the newsletter of the Permaculture Association:

“Are you setting up your own dream farm?

Channel 4 are making a brand new primetime series called My Dream Farm and they’re looking for people who have decided to leave their 9 to 5 jobs and set up a smallholding.

They want to find people who are leaving or have already left behind their former lives to start up farms in the country. The series will offer the new smallholders advice and guidance from agricultural experts. Whether your passion is pigs, chickens, carrots, fruit, goats, or even alpacas, get in touch to find out more!

chris.mclaughlin@betty.co.uk
020 79070872 (over 18s only).”

Posted 11 June 2009, 14:26. Comment

June 2009 gardening offers

Comfrey flowers

GYO have teamed up with the Heritage Seed Library to offer a year’s membership for just £18 – that’s a saving of 10% on the normal membership price. One year’s membership of the HSL will provide you with up to six heritage varieties to grow.

To take advantage of this great offer call 02476 308 210 and quote GYO09.

The current special offers from Suttons include lots of fruit – blueberries, strawberries, raspberries and goji berries – plus a half price bay tree with every order.

The Jungle Seeds Summer Sale offers a 25% discount across all seed items! This is a good time of year to sow many tropical seeds- partly for larger plants next year but also the warmth and light levels may help germination and the after care of the young tropical species seedlings. Order from JungleSeeds.co.uk. (Note: if ordering from JungleSeeds.com use the promotional code Jungle to get your 25% discount)

And save 40% on your copy of Growing Stuff: An Alternative Guide to Gardening with Mad About Herbs – to take advantage of this offer, email jess@blackdogonline.com with the subject line ‘Mad About Herbs Discount’.

Dorset Cereals are running a couple of gardening competitions for schools on their Edible Playgrounds site. The first offers the chance of winning a flip camera by entering your film of cress heads growing, which sounds like a lot of fun. The closing date for entries is 20th October, so there’s plenty of time to make your film.

You can also enter your school in a draw to win a magazine subscription for either Grow Your Own or Teach Primary.

Posted 1 June 2009, 06:34. Comment

the nef / Ecologist essay competition

“On hearing of the death while riding of one his more stubborn ideological opponents, the champion of evolutionary theory, T H Huxley, said that it was the first time that the man’s head made contact with reality, and the experience had obviously proved fatal. Gordon Brown claims that the world needs “a new paradigm that moves the environmental challenge to the centre of policy”, and yet, in spite of the fact that both the UK and the world as a whole are already in ecological debt due to overconsumption, he remains convinced that the global economy can double in size over the next twenty years.

A lot of faith is being put into carbon markets to tackle climate change. But the markets we do have, like the European Emissions Trading Scheme, are out-of-line with the carbon cuts that science tells us is necessary. In other words, without much more dramatic caps on emissions, we could end up trading ourselves over a global warming cliff. It’s the paradox of environmental economics. Sometimes in well-intentioned attempts to put a price on natural resources, we can miss the bigger picture.

So, to connect our politicians with reality before it is too late, we’ve come up with a question. And, we’d like to know what you think. nef has teamed up with the Ecologist to run an essay competition. The question is:

“How do you price the extra tonne of carbon that, once burned, tips the balance
and triggers potentially catastrophic, irreversible global warming?”

All submissions must be under 1,000 words, submitted electronically to mark@theecologist.org and andrew.simms@neweconomics.org and be received by June 30th.

The winner will receive a copy of Andrew Simms’ book, Ecological Debt: Global Warming and the Wealth of Nations, and will be considered for publication in the Ecologist.”

(from the new economics foundation)

Posted 21 May 2009, 10:21. Comment

The Crunch Bunch

If you’ve just decided to grow your own vegetables to save money, then where do you start? A visit to the garden centre, or a quick flick through the seed catalogue, can be daunting – especially if you don’t have a lot of space for your vegetable patch. What’s going to give you the most bang for your buck?

Salads

Salad leaves are one of the easiest crops to grow, don’t take up much space and can provide a big return on your initial investment. For the price of one of those bags of packed salad in the supermarket, you can buy a packet of lettuce seeds that will keep you in lettuce all summer – or even longer. And if you want a more exciting salad you can buy salad seed mixes. The best varieties to go for are the ones described as ‘cut and come again’, which means that you can harvest leaves as and when you need them over several weeks, rather than having to pull up a whole lettuce at once. Salad leaves do well in containers, too, as long as you water them regularly.

Stir-fries

Another leafy crop that’s easy to grow and does well in small spaces is leaves for stir-fries. Again, you could grow a single crop like spinach or pak choi, or a ready-made mix. If you can sow a few seeds every couple of weeks then you’ll have fresh supplies throughout the summer and right into the autumn.

Tomatoes

If summer wouldn’t be summer without juicy, ripe tomatoes, then trying growing your own. Cherry tomatoes are sweet and tasty and very easy to grow. The plants are bushy, ideal for containers and crop earlier and for longer than plants with larger fruits. They’re also bushy, which means you don’t have to worry about supporting them or pinching out the side shoots to keep them under control. A packet of seeds will last you for several years, or you could buy one or two plants – it’s a bit more expensive, but you’ll be quids in when they crop.

Strawberries

Strawberries are another summer favourite. If you buy a plant this year, it may grow a few fruits, but in late summer it will start growing runners – long stems that have baby plants growing on the end. Peg those down or pot them up and you’ll have more strawberry plants next year without spending any more money. Strawberry plants are generally most fruitful in their second and third years. Growing two or more different varieties of strawberries extends the growing season – some fruit earlier, and some later.

Herbs

A small packet of fresh herbs from the supermarket costs a couple of pounds and, at most, is enough for one or two meals. A herb plant costs about the same and will keep you in fresh herbs all year. And many herbs are perennial – which means that one plant will provide herbs for several years. Most are perfectly happy in containers, and the sun-loving herbs like rosemary and thyme don’t even need much watering.

The key points to remember are to choose things that you’re going to enjoy eating – otherwise you’re spending money rather than saving it! And don’t go too mad to start with. Try growing a few plants, or starting a small vegetable patch, and expand once you’ve got the hang of it. And don’t’ forget to start a compost heap, so that you can turn all of your kitchen and garden waste into free compost for next year’s garden.

Posted 11 May 2009, 09:24.

May 2009 gardening offers

Rhubarb flowers

Organic Gardening magazine have lots of giveaways open at the moment – you could be in with a chance of winning books, socks, slug rings and skin cream.

The current special offers from Suttons include an interesting experimental grafted vegetables collection of 5 plants – Cucumber Passandra, Pepper Plenty, Pepper Derby, Chilli Pepper Serenade and Aubergine Ritmo – for greenhouse growing. They also have collections of pot-ready plants on offer for Pumpkin Becky, Sunflower Paquito, Tomato Hundreds & Thousands and Runner Bean Yard Long – with a special deal if you buy all four collections.

And save 10% on watering products from Harrod Horticultural by using the discount code ECODE219.

Posted 3 May 2009, 07:40.

April 2009 gardening offers

The BBC are giving away free vegetable seeds (tomato, beetroot, lettuce, butternut squash and carrot).

Good Life Press are having a book sale, with up to 50% off selected products and free P&P.

Save £2 on advance tickets to Gardeners’ World Live by using the discount code GWN. Or try and win a pair of tickets.

JungleSeeds are offering 25% off new plant orders placed in April, with the aim of helping gardeners replace stock lost to the cold weather over winter. They also have a new vegetable seed online shop with some interesting varieties.

Eco-Logic Books have a special offer on their new all-colour Asian Vegetables by Sally Cunningham (read my review). If you enter the discount code DUDI in the notes section of the order form you can buy it for £9.99 – that saves you a £5 and you get it post free.

And the current Suttons special offers include blight resistant potatoes, a bumper vegetable plant collection and and olive tree at less than half price! And they’ve got a new Grow Your Own section on their website, too.

Posted 3 April 2009, 12:41.

March 2009 Gardening Offers

Times are tight for everyone, but growing your own is big news this year and there are lot of good deals and offers around for anyone who is trying to plant up a garden. As such I’m going to be keeping track of the ones I come across that you might be interested in – keep an eye on this post because I will update it with new offers as I find them and take down the ones that I know have expired. Next month there will be a new post. If you find a good offer – or are a company with a good gardening offer to promote then leave me a comment. Comments are moderated, so anything spammy isn’t going to make it through – don’t bother trying!

As I’ve already blogged, the BBC are giving away free packets of wildflower seeds to kids, to make more space for bees. There are 75,000 ‘Be Good To Bees’ packs on offer, and you can apply for yours online or by post.

Elspeth Thompson has written a good piece about growing fruit and vegetables in small spaces in The Telegraph and there’s a couple of offers at the bottom. The first is two free packets of tomato seeds if you send away for the new Plant World Gardens catalogue (although you have to supply 4 1st class stamps for P&P). The second is 10% off Crocus’ April collections of vegetable seedlings when you use the discount code 9690. Follow the link for more details on both offers.

And the Telegraph are also giving away a compost bin – closing date for entries is 24th April 2009.

Save 20% at Thompson & Morgan by accessing their site via their RHS Grow Your Own microsite.

Posted 23 March 2009, 16:41.

Build a Willdlife Stack

A bug box will encourage beneficial insects into the garden, but what about thinking a bit bigger?

If you’re one of those people who loves scavenging for useful things, or has a pile of interesting odds and ends stashed away for future projects, then you could think about recycling them into a 5 star wildlife hotel.

There are lots of products on the market to encourage wildlife into your garden – from bird and bat boxes, to bug boxes and houses for hedgehogs and frogs. You can also make your own easily enough, and encourage beneficial insects into the garden. Even a pile of logs in a shady corner will bring wildlife into your garden – as will a compost heap.

But if you want to make wildlife a big feature in your garden then it pays to think a little bit bigger – and make a multipurpose wildlife stack that caters to all kinds of creatures. They’re really attractive, and will be interesting for kids, too. All you need to do is collect a variety of materials and stack them up – it’s like a wildlife skyscraper.

If you can get your hands on a couple of pallets, then they make a great base stucture and easily define several layers. Offcuts of wood and bricks to space them out have the same effect. A layer of bricks at the bottom gives you a good solid base and makes a damp habitat for frogs and toads.

If you drill holes into the solid blocks of wood in your pallets (or into wood offcuts) then you are incorporating homes for beneficial insects (like ladybirds and solitary bees). Fill spaces with bundles of twigs, or hollow stems like bamboo to make more crevices. Straw and dry grass and air bricks are also great.

Try and think creatively – pine cones stuffed into gaps, pebbles and tiles to make a stony habitat and even rolled up corrugated carboard can all find a place. Ridge tiles and terracotta flowerpots add decorative and useful touches, and add structure.

You’ll need a waterproof layer at the top to stop everything getting drenched, but if you’ve got green fingers then you might even be able to put a green roof of sedum plants on the top

You can scale your stack to the size of the garden, and use the materials you have to hand, so it needn’t cost a penny. And you don’t have to hide it out of sight, because it can be a really attractive feature.

For inspiration, have a look at the RSPB’s wildlife stack that featured at BBC Gardeners’ World Live 2008.

Posted 12 March 2009, 09:35.

Spring has sprung

Spring has arrived, the garlic is sprouting and the rhubarb is unfurling its leaves. There should be a new crop of articles around here any day now, but in the meantime have a look at some of the perennials that have survived the winter ;)

It’s not too late to think about planting Jerusalem artichokes, and if you don’t have a lot of space or don’t want them to get out of control then think about growing them in containers.

If Slumdog Millionaire has inspired you to look to India for garden inspiration this year then find out how to grow your own curry or check out my review of Asian Vegetables.

Now is a good time to think about planting some comfrey so that you can grow your own fertilizer.

Or perhaps you’re still at the stage where you need to order your seeds and plants?

Posted 2 March 2009, 07:45.

Ooffoo Laureate Voting

Back in November I wrote an entry for the Ooffoo Laureate competition – Composting with worms.

Ooffoo are now collecting votes to short-list 10 candidates for the final judging. If you read Composting with Worms and liked it, please vote for it now! You can only vote once, but the links to all the entered articles are included on the voting form, so you can read any you missed.

Posted 2 January 2009, 15:39.

Free houseplants from your kitchen groceries

My dragon fruit plant, grown from seed around 2 years ago, flanked by passionfruit seedlings sown this summer

I’ve written a new Helium article this morning, on one of my favourite topics – Free houseplants from your kitchen groceries.

If you’re new to this topic then you might also enjoy episode 41 of the Alternative Kitchen Garden, and there’s links in the show notes to some of my other articles and blog posts as well.

View the list of all my Helium articles

Posted 6 December 2008, 08:56.

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