Garden Diary... April

Yeah, well it's a few days late, so what? The pictures were taken in April...

There was a path under here at some point... There are also now two hanging baskets, with nasturtiums and lettuces.

2m (approx) square veg plot. Row and block planting is so boring. And sensible... I don't really recommend random blobs, but one has to try these things sometimes! The upturned yoghurt pots (Yeo Valley) have lettuces and the radishes from the 'experiment' underneath. Yes, I know you can't really transplant radishes, but I didn't want to waste them. And one has to try these things sometimes. The oblong white thing is a fleece structure with lettuces and now spinach underneath. I must get or make a proper little cloche. I've just sowed some chioggia beetroot (stripey Italian ones, very yummy) and sugar-snap peas and sorrel.

It's particularly stiking to compare this view of the garden with these ones.

'The experiment' - I dismantled this after maybe 6 weeks as I wasn't getting the right results.* Generally speaking the plants in the peat seemed to germinate slightly better and the radishes were straighter, but by the time I potted them on/transplanted them the New Horizon and garden compost ones were catching up. The coir was pretty hopeless, but people swear by it so I'll try it again with some vermiculite. It's a bit frustrating as it shows up the catch-22 of peat-free compost: not enough people use it so it's not large-scale enough to be consistent... so not enough people use it.

I'd be interested in other people's thought on composts.

*Irony alert.

Community Gardens in Manchester

I've been a pretty hopeless blogger the past few weeks, just too busy. One of the busy-nesses was a long weekend in Manchester going to art galleries, wandering the city and visiting Saddleworth, where my mother's family come from. We also spent a morning going round two community gardens in Hulme, an area which has been 'regenerated' over recent years. The first was Leaf Street Community Garden, a super permaculture garden running between two terraces of low-rise flats. There's more about it here, including films about it being created. It's a remarkable space, the more so for being completely open to the public as it's an old road and people can still walk through.

View showing the flats over-looking the garden.

General view with resident picking herbs.

Probably the largest herb spiral in the world!

A great use for old public footpath signs...

and for an old canoe!

The other community garden was Hulme Community Garden Centre, a very different but equally super place only 10 minutes down the road. It's a community garden with a garden centre in front, or a garden centre with a community garden behind it? I was particularly keen to visit as I'd got a job interview later that week covering some of the sorts of things they were doing.

Garden centre with new flats behind.

Part of the community garden area.

Super containers!

Three different ways of growing potatoes.

Their new green roof. They are going to grow vegetables on the area at the back!

My photos also show that Manchester isn't always rainy...

But I didn't get the job.

T\e A/e \f St/p/d

Just been to see 'The Age of Stupid' which ironically, seeing as it's about the potential demise of technology along with culture, the human race, etc., started breaking up from about half-way through and ground to a halt completely about 10 minutes from the end. The website seems a bit problematical too, but perhaps that's just my browser, I keep defaulting to Internet Explorer instead of using Firefox... ANYWAY even with these problems and without seeing the end, which I guess isn't a happy one, it was still better than this. Please do go and see it and tell me what you think and what happens at the end.

Experiment

A few weeks back I watched a short series with Jimmy Doherty doing some of Charles Darwin's experiments again. This gave me an idea - set up a little experiment to compare how seeds fare in peat and peat-free composts. So ten days ago I finally got round to setting this up. There are four 6-module trays, one New Horizon Peat-Free multi-purpose, one peat (this was from a bag left at the allotment which we thought we might as well use), one our garden compost, and one a brick of coir from a pound-shop. All except the coir were sieved. I planted the same number of seeds in each module: lettuce, chives, radish, tomato, parsley and basil, aiming for a range of plant types and a range of seed providers.

This is how they are doing today:


The experimental modules are the four in the forground. From left: coir, peat, garden compost, New Horizon. They are all kept in the same place and treated the same. The radishes are all up, some lettuces are appearing, and some basil just germinating.


New Horizon


Garden compost


Peat



Coir

So far, slightly to my chagrin, the ones in peat have germinated slightly sooner and look slightly larger and greener. New Horizon and garden compost look about the same, and coir is catching up after seeds were slow to germinate. But this is meant to be a long-term experiment, and not all the seeds have even germinated yet. I am making records every few days and will carry on until the seedlings need to be planted out (or dispensed with in the case of the radishes).

Also, my experimental method may have been at fault. Just a couple of days later there was a Gardener's World Special, 'For Peat's Sake' which described why and how to use peat-free compost and showed gardening WHICH's much larger and better experiment. I realised that by treating all the media the same, I could have been giving peat an advantage. Coir, home-made compost and compost from wood waste and municipal waste all need mixing with sand or vermiculite to work at their best, which is how I usually use New Horizon (incidentally their best buy). So I shall have to set up a further experiment... when there is space...

Garden Diary: March

The garden this morning. It's just starting to come to life after the winter:

This was taken not much more than a month ago.

After doing lots of pruning through the early spring, it's now time to get sowing! Last week I went and bought a mini-greenhouse, which I'm very pleased with. Much warmer than the garage.

It currently contains Genovese Basil, Dill, Marjoram, Sage, Thyme, Aubretia, Helianthemum, Campanula carpatica, Arabis, mixed salad leaves, May Queen Lettuce, French Marigold, Dwarf Phlox, Nasturtiums, and Tomato 'Gardener's delight' and Leek 'De Carentan' sowed today. It occurs to me that this is a rather weird collection - it's just because they are the ones which can be sown in March of a large collection of seed packets. Many of these are old seed: I am giving them 'half a chance'. I also got a bit carried away in Lidl a couple of time as their seeds are 28p a packet. Will report back on the success of these.

In the Autumn I sowed some seeds which can over-winter. I sowed all of them a bit late, but as they were old seed thought I'd give them that 'half chance'. Lettuce 'Valdor' didn't do a thing, and the Perpetual Spinach popped up but is still not doing much. Soon I will hoof them out and plant spuds in that, my biggest pot. However the Tatsoi sat there an inch or so high throughout all the cold weather underneath a bit of old plastic sheet then a month ago started to make growth. I've tried to transplant some into the empty half of the pot where the 'Valdor' was, but they aren't keen. Will start eating them soon, and will definitely sow some next back end. The seemingly empty pot has garlic in it, sown earlier this week.

Herbs in a strawberry pot, and a collection of rescued and divided plants. The herb pot has a plastic milk bottle with holes in it sunk into the compost behind the top-most thyme. I'm hoping that this will mean that I can get water to all the plants.

I can't resist taking cuttings when I prune, even if it's the wrong time of year. Here's a tray of Hebes waiting to be potted on - when there's room for more pots! Also Rosemary, Red-, Black- and White-currants, Gooseberries and various others. I brought some of these into the garage in the coldest weather, but most seem OK. Cistus and Strawberry Sage cuttings are looking slightly peaky, but these are not very hardy shrubs.

This is where the herb and veg plants are going to go, if not into containers. It's a little plot about 2m square on our very fertile clay. I've just cleared it of perennials, which are waiting in basins to be re-sited. I realised the other day that this part of the garden is almost exactly where I had my first garden, an alpine garden, back when I was 10 or so. I loved the Latin names: Ajuga reptans 'Rainbow' (even if I thought it was Ajuga 'Reptan's Rainbow'!) and the garden did pretty well for an alpine garden on heavy clay.

There are still alpines, but in containers where we can (theoretically) maintain the correct soil conditions. I weeded this one after taking the photo, but it really needs everything taking out and new compost and grit added. When I've time.

Return of El Gordo

Back in January I blogged about 'our' squirrel, El Gordo, and my efforts to stop him eating the peanuts put out for the lickle birdies. I made three squirrel baffles from plastic bowls, and they worked pretty well. El Gordo disappeared. We actually got a little concerned, particularly as the weather changed for the worse. But then the frost split one of the baffles - enough for him to take heart and renew his attack. Over the last week or so he has been seen pulling at it, jumping on it, getting another squirrel to help and even trying to get the local fat pigeon in on the act.

This is the result:

Baffle baffled!

So we've decided that we actually quite like our squirrel, and so long as he's not eating the actual birdfeeders any more (bit expensive) we'll let him eat the peanuts when he can. But I have mended the baffle...

"Oh yeah?"

The early bird...

...caught by an Evening Post photographer catching a worm!



Seems I have found myself to be Nottingham Organic Gardeners' publicity officer!