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Caption Competition: Comfy Cat

One of the local cats has decided my windowboxes (planted with succulents that haven’t yet grown to cover the whole box) is the best place to sunbathe. Can anyone come up with a catchy caption, before I wander out and make the trough inhospitable with some short sticks?

Scorzonera

Part of my plan for next year’s garden is to concentrate on plants that don’t have to be tended to (sown/ potted on/ planted out and so on) in spring and summer. That means more perennials, and self-seeding annuals, but it also includes sowing things outside the main sowing season. Ornamental hardy annuals are often sown in autumn to put on an earlier show in spring, and there are vegetables that can be treated the same way – one of the main ones being broad beans.

So when I read in the current edition of Grow Your Own that scorzonera can be sown now, to harvest next autumn, I dug out a packet of seeds that was kicking around in my seed box and had a go.

I sowed them into long rootrainers, and let them germinate inside. As I’m going to have more self-seeding plants, I also started a new project – photographing seedlings so that I can learn to recognise the ones I want to keep. The photo above shows scorzonera seedlings three days after germination.

As you can see, they look like grass. Nine days on, they still look like grass. I have just planted four of them out in the garden, but I think it is too soon – they don’t have substantial root systems yet. And they look so much like grass that it was hard enough for me to find them again to water them in, let alone check on them later in the week! I brought the rest back inside to get a bit bigger.

While I was outside I also trimmed the lavender (I now have a very fragrant compost heap!) and ended up brushing past the burred seeds of the wild geum weeds that crop up all over the garden. The easiest way to get rid of the seeds is to stand in the chicken run and let the chooks peck them off my trousers. This was a new thing for Chewie and Cluck, and Princess had to show them what to do :)

Zero Waste Week is coming

My Zero Waste are running National Waste Week 2010 from 6th – 12th September, and the theme this year is ‘Cooking for Victory’. According to WRAP’s “household Food and Drink Waste in the UK” report, we throw away 8.3 million tonnes of food and drink every year. Most of this is avoidable and could have been eaten if we had planned, stored and managed it better. This amount of food waste costs the average family in Britain £50 per month.

Over at My Zero Waste you can pledge to reduce your food waste during National Zero Waste Week, and be in with a chance of winning a prize! Maybe you’ll be identifying repeat leftovers and learning how to use them, focusing on your portion control or starting a new composting system.

Here in Oxfordshire they are gradually rolling out food waste collections, giving each household a caddy to collect food waste, which is then collected and used to produce green electricity. While this is great – it prevents waste from going to landfill, with all the environmental problems that entails – it does nothing to tackle food waste (unless people start to think about what they’re throwing away!) and requires energy to transport it away.

Hence the Master Composters are keen to encourage people to start, or contine, composting as much of their food waste as possible. Unavoidable kitchen waste that is easy to compost includes kitchen paper, plain cardboard packaging, egg shells, tea bags* and coffee grounds and fruit and vegetable peelings. Cooked food, meat, fish and dairy products are more difficult (unless you have a bokashi system) and it’s those things that should be sent off in food waste collections for recycling.

Composting at home is really the most environmentally friendly option – doing so for one year can save enough greenhouse gases to offset all of the times you boil your kettle, or three months of using the washing machine. And you’ll get free fertiliser as well :)

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*sadly it does depend on the tea bags you use to a certain extent.

Hindsight

Once upon a time, I wrote a book. I wanted to write the kind of gardening book that I would read – one full of interesting snippets of information and personal experience, which wasn’t preachy but inspired people to go out into their garden and plant something they could eat – and then get involved in the wider world of sustainable gardening. I didn’t want to write a comprehensive veg growing manual – there are plenty of people who do that better than me, and a wealth of titles already out there to choose from. I didn’t intend to write a primer for novice gardeners either – new versions of those are published every year, either in spring or in the run up to Christmas.

I took a lot of photos, wrote a lot of words and then passed the torch to Permanent Publications, who did a lot of editing and layout and sent it off to the printer. The Alternative Kitchen Garden: An A to Z was the result, published just over a year ago. I should also say that during the process of writing and producing the book I discovered some wonderful people who helped with proofing, a foreword and pre-publication PR quotes and were generally selfless and wonderful (including the late and lamented Elspeth Thompson).

Inevitably, sooner or later a book gets a bad review, which you’re expected to take on the chin but is quite disappointing. No book is perfect, but a lot of them (and particularly first books, I would imagine) are crafted with love. I was not hoping to write a bestseller, become a world famous author and retire to Barbados to live off gigantic royalty cheques for the rest of my days, occasionally graciously accepting a commission to write another volume. I wanted to share my vision of a gardening world, and to connect with people into the bargain – exactly as I do here, but in a handy portable format.

Which is why a recent review of my book in RALPH* magazine annoys me. For a start, the magazine is a “Review of Arts, Literature, Philosophy and the Humanities”, and I don’t think my book would qualify as any of those, so they’re clearly not my target audience.

And the reviewer has clearly missed the point of the book. With hindsight, the decision to call it ‘An A to Z’ might have misled some readers into thinking it was a comprehensive tome, perhaps more so in the US than here in the UK. But from its size, it clearly isn’t. And she also says it starts with “A is for Apple” and “B is for Beans” – it doesn’t. It starts with “A is for Achocha”, which should give you a better idea of what it’s going to be about.

The review goes on to say that the topics are apparently picked at random, that they’re aren’t enough of them and that none of them are covered in enough depth to satisfy your curiosity (score one for me then – stirring curiosity was one of my aims). The reviewer was apparently motivated to go out and buy a copy of a seed saving book after reading my seed saving section, so I get another point there.

I am taken to task for including plants that I personally don’t like very much (do you think the writers of all those kitchen garden manuals love each and every vegetable equally?) and accused of including plenty that I would “never put in my mouth”. Which isn’t true – the reviewer mentions aubergines (beautiful, ornamental plants), basil (endless varieties available) and borage (much loved by ladybirds), all of which I have eaten and would eat again. They’re just not my favourites. Apparently with “so few” plants mentioned in the book, I should have stuck to the ones I like. But although there may not be hundreds of plants that get their own section, I counted over 60 that I mentioned in a quick flip through.

The reviewer does say that there are some interesting tidbits dispersed through the book, and that the photos are lovely – but apparently they are tiny and my book would work much better as a coffee table book with a hardcover and giant photos (and a price tag that would put most people off!). Sadly I wanted something people could read in bed, on the train, or take out into the garden.

There are plenty of times that I have bought a book and it hasn’t turned out to be what I hoped it was. But these days, with so much book information on the internet, Google Books previews and lots and lots of review sites (I link to the reviews I find on my Books tab), there’s no reason to waste money on a book that isn’t what you want – you can spend as much time looking at it before you buy as you would in a bookstore.

I my case, you can even ask me. If you’d like to know what’s in my book, whether it will solve all your gardening problems (it won’t) or make you laugh (it might) and give you some ideas (it will) then you can email me and I will do my best to ascertain whether it is worth a space on your bookshelf.

And if you’re a blogger or an online book reviewer then there’s still a few days left to apply to become one of my next batch of reviewers to be given a free copy of my book. But please don’t apply if it isn’t the kind of book you will enjoy reading, because I wouldn’t want to waste your time!

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*it may be childish and petulant, but who would read a magazine called RALPH anyway? Doesn’t sound enticing….

London Permaculture Festival

Pete and I spent yesterday running a seed swap at the London Permaculture Festival. It was a long day (setting off at 8 am and not getting home until 6.30 pm and only eating a handful of grapes inbetween), but I met some great people.

I came home with some red sunflowers – nothing particularly special there, but I have used up all my sunflower seeds so now I have some new ones for next year. I also have asparagus lettuce (or celtuce) which (if I remember correctly) came from Hedvig who listens to the show and is from Get Growing. It’s always nice to meet online friends in the flesh, and apparently Hedvig’s introductory talk on permaculture was very popular, although I didn’t have a chance to attend it myself.

A lovely Greek couple gave me some wild radiki seeds, and described the plant to me as “like dandelions, only nicer”. Having looked it up this morning, it’s chicory.

Leyla Laksari from Haringey Council (and the Living Under One Sun community allotment project), left me with some intriguing seeds that she recognised from her native Iran. One is a sour cherry (A kit teh) and the other is a plant that bears orange fruits that are good for diabetes (Zul Zul-Lak). The names in brackets are what Leyla wrote on the envelopes for me, but it’s going to take a little bit of detective work to track down what they might be :)

And I met Azul from the Food in the Sky project and Rajan from Pebble Garden, and handed out seeds to people who were going to take them to Croatia, Portugal, India, Sub-Saharan Africa and Iran!

One of my favourite moments is shown in the (rather rough) photo above – a lady brought in some ornamental giant allium seeds from her garden. She didn’t know which variety they were, so packed the seedheads as they grew so people could see their size. I ended up handing out seeds on sticks, it was hilarious!

I also signed a few books and handed out a few cards, so if you have found your way here from the Festival then welcome! If I didn’t get a chance to speak to you personally then I’m very sorry, but it was such a busy day.

We packed up to come home before the start of the evening festivities, but one band played during the day and I liked what I heard, so I bought their CD – you can check out KarmaFreeLife in MySpace. Everything was live including the beat box loop they recorded at the beginning of the set :)

Forest Garden Plants: Araucaria araucana

Just over a minute into this film of Ken Fern (badly in need of digital remastering!) he talks about the monkey puzzle tree, Araucaria araucana, and about how it has the potential to be one of the most productive nut trees in our climate. If they had been planted in any number when that discovery had been made then we would be awash with nuts by now – but unfortunately they weren’t. Although they are sometimes grown as ornamental trees, they aren’t often grown as productive trees – and there are a couple of reasons why that is so. The first is that they are slow growing – this one is about 8 years old, according to its label:

Araucaria araucana, the monkey puzzle tree

It will be another couple of decades before it is reliably producing nuts. The second reason is that plants are either male or female, and you need both for nut production, and it’s impossible to sex the plants while they’re young. So if you want monkey puzzle nuts you need to grow several trees (as yet, I don’t know how many – do you?) to guarantee a harvest, even though one male tree can usually pollinate several local females.

On the plus side, as well as producing tasty nuts, the trees don’t cast too much shade – although they will eventually grow very tall:

And the ones at my local arboretum appear to be taking very good care of the local ladybird population:

I would dearly love some little monkey puzzles of my own, to give me a headstart on the forest garden I hope to have room for once we move – they’re definitely on my wish list.

Resources:
Wikipedia
PFAF
How to germinate monkey puzzle trees
Agroforestry Rsearch Trust (supplier)
Nicky’s Nursery (supplier)

London Permaculture Festival 2010 programme of events

I’m taking the Alternative Kitchen Garden Seed Swap on the road again on Sunday, to the London Permaculture Festival – so do come and say hello if you’re stopping by! This is the final programme of events:

Kennedy Hall (ground floor):
Info stalls, books and everyone else from 11am till 5-6pm

Winter salad plants of sale & growing info with OrganicLea
Southern Solar- manufacturers & installers of Solar Panels
Hackney Marshes User Group
Campaign against Climate Change
Women’s Environmental Network
Biodiversity of London book stall
John-Paul Flintoff’s Recycling table
Seed Swap – don’t forget to bring some seeds!
Natural Beekeeping Trust
Permanent Publications & Permaculture Magazine book stall
Veggie Power – waste oil to bio diesel
Permaculture Association & LAND project
Sustainable Haringey
Transition Towns Tooting, Finsbury Park & Camden
Greenpeace
Shiatsu
Project Dirt’s interactive map of London groups and events

What is Permaculture? Picture exhibition
Permaculture is more than just the design of our garden. It helps you design the flow of different energy forms = people, nutrients, sun, water, money and much more into sustainable cycles.

The exhibition seeks to celebrate the energy behind the people who practise sustainable land design and to encourage you to consider this path in life as a valid one generously awaiting you should you be drawn to it.

Video Training for Social Change
VisionOntv has created easy templates for rapid-turnaround citizen video news reports. These reports can be made by absolute beginners, or by people with skills but little time. Come to the workshop to learn how to make fast-turnaround video news reports.

Please bring the items of portable recording equipment you have – video camera, stills camera, mobile phone, laptop computer and connectors; we will use them during the workshop.

Permaculture Question Time at 2pm
Panel: Andy Goldring (CEO- Permaculture Association), Nicole Freris (Naturewise), Tomas Remiarz (Chair- Permaculture Association), Maddy Harland (Editor- Permaculture Magazine) & Graham Burnett (Spiralseed).

Sew Your Own with John-Paul Flintoff journalist for The Times and author.

Music
There’ll be space for impromptu music on the day- so bring your instruments and join in.

Karma Free – 1pm- A full band sound from just vocals and bass in conjunction with 2 loop stations.

Citizen Helene – 7pm – Beautiful, light and amusing songs from a wonderful voice and guitar.

Northern Celts – 8pm – Magical Celtic Dance Music with caller.

Bar opens at 5pm :)

Trefusis Hall (lower ground floor):
Transition Town London Meeting 11am – 1pm
An informal networking event for those interested in meeting up and sharing experiences of Transition Town groups in London.

Connecting Conversations 1pm – 6pm
Weaving a stronger London network by talking together about what really matters.

Dark Mountain Project 6.20pm – Start
Hosting ‘Things that grow in the dark’- reading from their new book and inviting conversation on the shadow side of the environmental movement.

Storrow (lower ground floor):
11:30 – Let’s Hear It From the Bees
The ‘crisis of the bees’ as a challenge to humanity. Our estrangement from nature is reflected in our damaged relationship to bees. The bees are telling us that we must change to ensure our common future. Can we open ourselves to the teachings of the colony? Heidi Herrmann from the Natural Beekeeping Trust (60mins)

12:40 – Permaculture- Inspiration around the World
Travel from Scotland to Copenhagen, East Germany to Japan, Australia to Africa without spending any carbon! Enjoy stories and pictures from permaculture communities, both urban and rural. Maddy Harland, Editor of Permaculture Magazine (60mins)

13:50 – Towards Diversity
Addressing Race, Gender and Difference in our Permaculture Communities. Places limited to 20
Nicole David & Pilar Lopez. (90mins)

15:30 – The Meadow Orchard
This new community-led permaculture project in Crouch End North London is a 1.5acre beautiful open grassland habitat that has been left untouched for several years – the project aims to set up a community garden and forest garden on part of the site as well as protect and enhance the meadow and woodland habitat of the rest of the site. We are working with local community groups, schools and the NHS to create a project that promotes health and wellbeing.
Kate Allardyce (40mins)

16:20 – Reclaim the Fields: moving towards a community food growers network.
A European movement of young people is emerging- RTF is about networking, lobbying and direct action in order to unite growers and the land, everywhere. Sean Hearn, Becca Temple & Claire Joy from Organiclea will lead a presentation of the movement in this part of the world. (60mins)

17:30 – The Work That Reconnects taster
This is a process devised by eco-philosopher and activist Joanna Macy which offers participants an opportunity to explore and address our feelings around the major changes underway for our planet at the moment, based on the belief that the sharing, expression and acknowledgement of such emotions can free us up to more playfully and effectively play our role in these challenging times. Cath Sunderland & Debbie Warreners. (90mins)

18:45 – Leytonstone Environmental Poets
Original poetry like you’ve never heard it before. After their show there’ll be an open spot for anyone to come and share poems.

Film Room (first floor):
11:20 – The Elephant in the Room
“Permaculture, and the sustainability movement as a whole, has always been based on the idea that we can avoid ecological disaster and create a sustainable society. That has been its aim. If this is no longer possible, what is our aim? Does the new situation require significant changes in the practice of permaculture?”

Video link-up with celebrated Permaculture author, teacher & designer Patrick Whitefield talking about his recent controversial article ‘The Elephant in the Room’.
Chaired by Claire White. (60mins)

12:30 – Permaculture Polyculture Research project
“Polycultures” is about growing things together – a central concept within permaculture land use. The worshop will introduce examples of polycultures on different scales, introduce the Permaculture Association’s member research project in this field and allow time for questions and discusion. Tomas Remiraz. (60mins)

13:40 – An Edible Forest Garden
The presentation will describe the structure, benefits and features of a temperate forest garden and give an account of the first five years of the Forest Garden in Homerton Road, Hackney, with types of planting and species, and illustrated with photographs. David Rees. (30mins)

14:30 – Watercourse Regeneration
A talk about new technologies for water regeneration and cycling in city landscapes, how they are being developed in cities around the world; the technologies that may find a place in the future but are not yet being used on a big scale; and the role of local water in city environments and the importance of starting to use local living water, rather than sourcing all our water through the big water companies. Marilyn Collins. (30mins)

15:30 – London Orchard Project
The London Orchard Project has been running for eighteen months. Come and hear about our successes (and challenges!) in creating successful urban orchards on a shoestring budget.
Rowena Ganguli. (30mins)

16:15- Reels of Resilience
Short archive films from the 30s & 40s covering relevant Permaculture themes including food security and community. What lessons can we learn from the past? James Taylor. (60mins)

17:20 – Under One Sun: Community Garden
Film about a community garden in Harringey. (20mins)

18:00 – Beyond the Tipping Point
A new film exploring how we imagine the future in the face of impending environmental crisis and how this affects the way we respond. (30mins)

18:40 – The Power of Community; How Cuba Survived Peak Oil
A documentary about societal changes in Cuba response to the sudden lack of oil in the 1990s (60mins)

19:50 – Ward’s Corner Film
Documentary on the local activism surrounding this proposed development in Tottenham. (60mins)

Dome (outside):
11:30 – Introduction to Permaculture
What is this ‘Permaculture’ stuff about? There’s a whole festival to celebrate it, but what is it? This is a brief taster of permaculture so you can enjoy the rest of the festival with that extra bit of info. Hedvig Murray (20m/then outside)

12:00 – NonViolent Communication: a very brief introduction NVC helps us understand what takes place when communication becomes difficult and gives us practical support in how to respond constructively. While we often respond to difficulties in relationship by blaming or judging, NVC encourages us to look for the essential needs behind our communication so that we can respond to ourselves and others with empathy. It is through responding with compassion that we can find win-win solutions in which everybody’s needs get met. Cath Burke and Millie Baker (90mins)

13:40 – Towards Inclusivity
This workshop addresses the challenge we face to ensure our movement reflects the diverse make up of our neighbourhoods. Transition Finsbury Park is taking part in the Transition Network’s Bringing Diversity Pilot Project. We will share some of what we’ve learnt (10 min presentation) and then have an open discussion to help move our planning towards the more proactive, practical steps we can all take. Jo Homan (30mins)

14:20 – Guerrilla Gardening
Gardening without boundaries delivered from the heart by the unique Chris Tomlinson (30m/then outside)

15:00 – Introduction to Permaculture
What is this ‘Permaculture’ stuff about? There’s a whole festival to celebrate it, but what is it? This is a brief taster of permaculture so you can enjoy the rest of the festival with that extra bit of info. Hedvig Murray (20m/then outside)

15:30 – Permaculture Diploma Talk
What is the Diploma in Applied Permaculture Design and how does
it work? Whether you have completed a Permaculture Design Course and are
now considering following the Diploma route to develop your permaculture
practice and studies, want to know about the latest developments with
the Diploma or just want to know what it’s all about, this workshop will
provide you with the answers you’ve been looking for! Graham Burnett (40m)

16:20 – Medicinal Herb Walk
A herbal talk and walk, to find and explain the uses of plants that grow around us in streets, gardens, parks and verges. Christopher Hedley. (20m/then outside)

Garden
Children’s Events
11.00 – Mr Potato Head: Potato printing with natural dyes (All welcome especially under 5’s) with Nathalie (40mins)

12noon -Jack & the Bean Stalk: How do plants grow?
Storytelling followed by a treasure hunt with permaculture inspired clues and magic bean planting in pots made from recycled materials. (All welcome especially 5-12 year olds) with Rosie (60mins)

2pm- Poi Dancing, balancing & juggling training. Parents are invited to explore cutting edge research into child-developmental psychology and its applications into the teaching of play, dance and sport. (Appropriate for teenagers and adults and children’s class will be aimed at children under 14s) with Charlie.

3pm-Ugly Bug ball: Come on lets crawl!- singing the song and learning about our common garden friends with a mini beast hunt and bug costume making competition, face painting and fashion show.(All welcome) with Rosie & Cecilia (60mins)

6pm-Sweet dreams- Zzzz. Preparing to journey to the land of nod! Lantern and dream catcher making with recycled materials. (All welcome). with Nathalie and Lucy (40mins)

Seed Mandala
We will be creating a Mandala space with natural products that all come from, as well as take us back to, nature. Practise awareness of the self and environment and attempt to harmonize your hand, head and heart through this beautiful yogic practise in an attempt to encourage the more intuitive practice of permaculture.

Also outside
Dr Bike
Camden Cyclists (the local branch of the London Cycling Campaign) will have a Dr Bike stall, providing safety checks, advice and minor repairs and adjustments. We will also have information on topics such as cycle storage, quieter routes, our campaigning activities and other issues of local interest.

plus: Locally sourced food from Happy Kitchen & bread from Ben E5 and the first 25 entrants to get a copy of Graham Burnett’s Earthwritings

Dobby

My new perennial – Daubenton’s Kale

As previously mentioned, my mind has turned towards more perennials for next year, so that the garden takes care of itself a bit more. My research uncovered a perennial kale – Daubenton’s Kale, or Chou Daubenton – it appears to be much more common on the continent than here in Blighty. It rarely flowers, and so can’t be grown from seed, but is easy to propagate vegetatively if you know someone who has a plant.

A little more research showed me that an online friend of mine – Alison Tindale from the Back Yard Larder – was offering plants for sale, and soon one of hers was winging its way to me. I don’t know why I didn’t blog about it sooner; it arrived at the beginning of the month. But with all new arrivals I am a little wary of announcing their presence until I’m sure I haven’t killed them. I did name my new kale, though – he’s called Dobby!

As you can see from the photo, Dobby is settling in to his new home. He’s in a pot for now, until a suitable permanent location opens up in the autumn.

Perennial brassicas are subject to the same pests and diseases as their annual relatives – pigeons, whitefly, caterpillars. Pigeons aren’t a problem in my garden (they’re too well fed!) and for the most part the cabbage whites have been kept busy elsewhere this year. Dobby has developed some whitefly, but that’s not too serious.

Scorzonera seeds

In other news, the scorzonera seeds I sowed on 13th August have started to germinate. They are such an unusual shape that I conducted a little (and thoroughly unscientific) experiment – I sowed half of them horizontally and the other half vertically. The early birds were all sown vertically, but whether they were all sown the same way up is another matter….

Sputnik

I am not well this week – Pete brought back some lurgy or other from a recent road trip and thoughtfully passed it on to me. It has been nearly a week since I was last outside, making my new herb bed. I am feeling slightly better today and might venture out to collect some of the bulbils that have formed on my Welsh onions.

I still don’t know why these plants have formed bulbils while the others formed the more familiar allium seedheads. It’s a big mystery.

The only suggestions have come from Alison Tindale, of the new perennial edibles nursery ‘Back Yard Larder’. She doesn’t have a website yet, but you can email her if you’d like to know what she’s got in stock. I bought a plant from her a couple of weeks ago, and it’s an exciting one, so I must go out and take a photo of it before I blog it.

Anyway, this is what Alison has discovered:

“I knew I’d read some strange things about the onion family but when I went searching again it turned out to be about potato onions: plant a big one and it will split, plant a small one and it will grow into a bigger one.

But then I found on Google books “Onions and other vegetable alliums“ by James L. Brewster (p147). Looks like, at least in ‘normal’ onions, Allium cepa, a period of warmth can encourage bulbils to form and the stage of flower formation that has been reached when the warm period occurs affects what form these take and whether it affects the whole flower head. Is it possible one lot of your Welsh onions have got a lot warmer than the others?

As you’re keen on perennials you might like this great article too, about growing garlic as a perennial.”

In fact, it was Alison’s email that reminded me I’d read something about growing garlic as a perennial before, and prompted me to post Sam’s lovely article about Everlasting Garlic, which is well worth a read if you’ve got a couple of minutes.

Yellow plums

These little beauties are growing on a tall tree in a neighbour’s garden. Odd ones are dropping onto the driveway, so we picked one up to investigate – they’re sweet little yellow plums (maybe an inch in diameter). We gathered a handful and I sowed the stones in pots – but what are they?

Are they Wild plums, or Cherry plums or something else? I don’t know how to tell.

Herbal Medicine

It was lovely and sunny this morning, although it didn’t last, and I felt the need for some time in the garden to enhance my sanity levels.

I went out with a fairly low-key agenda: potting on my new herbs and sowing some scorzonera seeds (having bought fresh supplies of potting compost earlier in the week).

After doing those I felt the urge to make some progress with the garden redesign – towards next year’s larger focus on perennials. Since altering the Grow Dome bed in June I have had 12 spare concrete blocks kicking around, ear-marked for a new bed. Having cleared the space where I thought it would go, I summoned Husband for a consult and he came up with a better suggestion. The result is that I Have used 6 of the blocks to make a low herb bed extension to one of the existing beds:

As you can see, it’s not level. The garden slopes there and although I could have made it level I have left it sloping by design – the idea being that the lower end will be wetter (for herbs that like wet feet) than the higher end.

My two dwarf buddlejas are temporarily holding down the black plastic that will prevent cats from crapping in the bed until it’s filled and planted up – the new bed is directly over one of their favourite toilet spots.

I have enough blocks left over to do the same to the next bed up – which will be more level! Those blocks are deceptively heavy, though, so that’s a job for another day. I did (finally) manage to pull up some of the Welsh onions that have been causing a problem for years at the front of the raised bed. One of them was home to a red ants’ nest, which made Princess Layer very happy as she loves ant eggs. Chewbucka and Cluck Skywalker were happier with the regular supplies of snails and slugs I kept fishing out of nooks and crannies for them.

The weather got steadily more grim as I was outside, and after a couple of hours decided it was going to rain properly, but by that time I was worn out and finishing up anyway, so it didn’t matter.

Blue Tits

All four of the minarette fruit trees in the chicken run have fruited this year, for the first time. Today it was time to harvest the plums (the variety is Blue Tit). That’s the entire harvest, but it is exciting none the less.

The Summer Sun cherries have long since been eaten by the starlings. The Saturn apples will be ready in late September; apparently I have to wait until early October to harvest the Concorde pears.

Also new this year are the John Downie crab apples, which should also be ready for picking in October :)

Why do we eat like this?

There seems to be a lot of focus in the media this week about what British people eat – and why it’s making them fat. This morning’s shocker is that BBQs make you fat – if you insist on chowing down on sausages, burgers and mayonnaise-laden potato salad.

Yesterday I read that you’d have a similar problem with your Chinese take-away if you ate nothing but Sweet & Sour Chicken Balls, Prawn Crackers and Crispy Duck.

In this second article, the commenter points out that the Chinese actually have a long history of a food culture that backs balanced meals and healthy eating. The fact that, when presented with a menu of tasty treats, British people will mostly pounce on the fatttiest, sweetest and most calorie-dense foods rather than anything with vegetables in it is entirely down to us.

Which got me wondering, why is that so? Why, when we are presented with information on healthy choices at every turn, are our diets so rarely balanced? Pete spent the weekend with a collection of photographers on a photography workshop, and the food choices he was faced with at their hotel made healthy eating very difficult. He noticed that for one of the group the only meals that didn’t involve chips were breakfasts. Where Western diets are introduced to countries like China, obesity rates soar – so it’s not an entirely cultural thing.

No doubt there are many factors involved. Many people blame the constant bombardment of advertisements that encourage us to eat unhealthy foods and fail to warn of us of the dangers. Others comment on the fact that, since the end of WW2, we have become increasingly distanced from our food production, to the point where there are children who don’t know that milk comes from cows and can’t recognise a potato in its natural state. There are no doubt people from other countries that sneer that British food was pretty rubbish to begin with.

I’ve seen it in action myself. In the office where I last worked, pastries and fruit were laid on for elevenses. The pastries usually disappeared first, although there were plenty of people who snaffled fruit. Eventually doughnuts were banned – not because the workforce was getting noticeably heavier (which is was) but because the jam stained the carpet. In the early days they provided Jaffa cakes as well, but gave that up because the staff ate through an entire month’s supply in a couple of days.

I have a lovely garden that produces fruit and vegetables. The courgettes shown above (Rugosa friulana) are unusual-looking, but very tasty. I have two plants; I harvested that selection on one day. Even with this bounty, Pete and I find it harder to incorporate fresh fruit and veg into our diet that carbs and meat.

It’s not that we don’t buy the stuff – we just don’t eat it. According to Love Food Hate Waste, we throw away nearly £3 billion worth of perfectly good fruit and vegetables each year.

Why are we, as a nation, so rubbish at this?

Have you read my book? Do you want to?

As you may know, my book – The Alternative Kitchen Garden: An A to Z – was published around this time last year. It’s available all over the world (although you may have to order from the UK or US), and the furthest I know it has reached is Australia.

As a kind of anniversary celebration I want to send out ten review copies to people from anywhere in the world, completely free. But there is a catch – to qualify you have to be a blogger or a regular book reviewer, because I’m hoping that once you’ve read the book you will review it for me.

Please only request a copy if you genuinely want to read the book and review it. Obviously, if you don’t end up reviewing it then I’m not going to come round and bother you, but I do have the memory of an elephant and I’m not the most forgiving person in the world, so you won’t be in line for any goodies in the future!

If you would like to receive a copy of my book then either leave me a comment or email me with your blog URL or the URL of your profile if you’re a book reviewer on a special book review site – I want to see what you’ve been up to! The closing date for requests is 31st August 2010.

After that date I will select the people who will receive a copy and mail them out. If you have any questions you can email me or leave a comment.

Gardening Bloggers have lower risk of dementia

Monkey’s reading habits, and fruity diet, stand him in good stead

There’s a piece in the Guardian this morning about how to avoid dementia, based on a new scientific report that nearly 40% of dementia cases could be avoided – by reducing the incidence of diabetes and depression (or treating these diseases quickly), increasing the amount of fruit and vegetables consumed and increasing literacy.

It’s not too much of a leap to realise that garden blogging is therefore the perfect way to reduce the risk of dementia. You spend time outside in the garden getting your hands dirty, which has been proven to reduce depression. You grow your own fruit and vegetables, which leads you to eat more of them, and a healthy diet is the best way to avoid diabetes.

If you combine that with keeping a gardening diary or writing a blog, and reading blogs or gardening books, then you’ve ticked all the boxes! Healthy body, healthy mind, healthy garden :)

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I am guest blogging for Soilman today, on Cats: How to keep their shit out of your garden. It’s a bit of a rude rant, so don’t head over there if you’re offended by strong language.

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