The Scores on the (garden) Gate
Tue Oct 21 22:29:36 BST 2008
Ah, the naive enthusiasm of March! And how much the fate of fledgling vegetable experiment has foundered in the interim!
As I (partially) predicted, the single biggest challenge of the year has been the beastly slugs. I was doing fine during the relatively dry spell in the early summer, but as soon as the rains came in the slugs did too, mowing down everything green and tender within chomping range. It has proved a test of endurance: anything tough enough to take on the slugs and survive has been a winner for me this year.
Things that worked pretty well were:
- Potatoes. I went to the Potato Day at Shipley College this year and snagged a few seed potatoes from the experts there. I grew them in a tub trug of perhaps 75cm diameter. They were a bit confined, I think, but I still pulled up a good bagful of the little beasts -- and they were lovely! I'd like to give this a try again next year, but possibly in a larger container (or the ground!).
- Kale. It is more or less indestructible. I grew four plants, one of which got sacrificed to the slugs. The other three are still going strong, and I'll probably harvest from them a few more times this year! I may grow kale again, but to be honest it isn't my favourite vegetable.
- Tomatoes. I grew some Gardener's Delight in large terracotta pots of around 40 cm diameter, three plants per pot. My cunning plan for staking them was to create a pyramid of three bamboo sticks in each pot, allowing me to train a plant up each stick. This worked reasonably well, but in the end it was insufficient for the weight of the fruits. Nevertheless, I still got four or five big bowls full of nice tomatoes out of the two pots. I'll definitely try this again, but probably with one plant per pot and a better staking arrangement.
- Onions. They grew pretty well, and were very tasty. However, a few bulbs fell to the slugs, and I suspect the dark corner I had them in wasn't ideal for them to really flourish. I'd try it again, but only if I had some more space to play with.
The things that didn't work out so marvellously were:
- Salad of any kind. This was just wolfed up before it'd even sprouted.
- Radishes. I thought I'd got them hidden in a pot well off the floor, but as soon as one slug found them the rest of them piled in pretty quickly and it was all over bar the (my) shouting.
- Spring onions. Munch, munch, gone.
- Perpetual spinach and chard. Gulp, munch, burp!
All in all, it's been a mixed bag. I'm really pleased I did some growing, and I do start to understand the joy of gardening. It really is a pleasure to watch a plant grow and prosper.
At the same time, I do think the challenges of my plot make it hard for a complete amateur to get started. The poor layout, dilapidated bitmac and slug population combine to create a bit of an uphill struggle for the aspiring "21st Century Smallholder".
With this in mind, I'm very much looking forward to the opportunity to renovate our yard over winter. We're completely pulling up all the hard surfacing and redoing it with some nicer paving, in addition to redesigning the space. The Mactaguester has put her not-inconsiderable design talents to work and has come up with what I think is rather a corking design.
More on this next time, though.
The joy of composting
Thu May 15 22:54:07 BST 2008
A couple of years ago we bought one of those compost bins that Councils in the UK seem to have perpetual discount offers on: a black, truncated, plastic cone looking something like a dowdy dalek. It came with a shiny leaflet describing the basics of how to use it, complete with the kind of pictures you get on aeroplane safety cards of folk looking cheerful in the brace position as the plane performs an emergency landing into the sea. Only in this case they were looking ecstatic as they shovelled armfuls of kitchen waste into the top of the garden dalek in picture one, and practically orgasmic as they shovelled rich, environmentally friendly compost onto the roses in picture two. What could be simpler?
After having been trying to get composting working well for two years or so, I am inclined to suspect there is more than compost than meets the eye. Certainly, there is more that the leaflets from the Council should be mentioning. For example: you really need to keep a good balance of things in the heap, or you'll be overrun with flies; or: lots of beasts like eating things that are rotting, and this includes slugs of monstrous proportions. These are things that can shake the conviction of the unwary, and frankly I'd probably have given up by now were it not for my deep-rooted hippy convictions.
Hurrah, then, for the Internet, with it's joyous cacophony information on diverse topics. I've particularly enjoyed:
- Fred Pappalardo's low-work composting setup. In fact, the whole of the Fine Gardening website is cracking: check out their tomato pruning tips!
- Mary Applehof's worm composting expertise. Mary is pretty much the queen of vermicomposting. I didn't get on with worms so well myself, but if you want to try it out Mary's site is worth a look.
- The Compost Guy blog, which as the name suggests is dedicated to all manner of composting.
All quiet on the garden front
Sat Mar 29 16:21:42 GMT 2008
Possibly I'm missing something, but currently I have little to do in the garden short of turn the compost, remove cat droppings, and watch my kale sprouts grow.
Two week's growth on this bad boy
Instead, I'm having to do a bit of thinking and planning for the eventual goal of the garden as a whole. This year is going to be a bit patchy for vegetable growing as I'm hoping to replace the hard surfacing as well as build some raised beds, all of which may cause some disruption.
As well as this, I've been pondering how to put together a green-roofed bin store for my wheelie bins.
Green roof bin storage
I've had some problems in the design of this: I don't really want to have to construct something out of stone or brick, but equally I'm not sure whether wood would be up to the job. Thank goodness, then, for a little booklet produced by the London Ecology Unit called Building Green (warning: pdf), which has lots of information on the green roof, including wet and dry weights of typical growing substrates; planting suggestions; and design suggestions.
Slightly closer to home, though, is a great site the Mactaguester dug out for me which includes a grand gallery of DIY green-roof structures, including a marvellous log store constructed by a chap called Peter which looks pretty much like what I need.
Green shoots
Mon Mar 17 22:20:13 GMT 2008
I was excited this weekend to catch the first signs of the vegetables I hope to be eating later in the year. Firstly, a few of my onion sets are displaying some green tips starting to push through the papery orange skins of the seed bulbs. Secondly, the kale seeds I planted last week in modules have sprouted.
Isn't he cute?
On the whole, this was a quiet week for the garden. I don't think it's warm enough to be planting seeds into the soil yet, so I've had to be contented with turning my compost and planting some tomato seeds in a propagator we cunningly constructed from the plastic box some gingerbread men came in.
Whilst I've had little to do in terms of planting things myself, I've had more interesting times trying to prevent the local cats from planting their own contributions in my vegetable beds. Over the course of the week I was trying out a dilute vinegar solution sprayed around the beds on the basis that the cats wouldn't like the smell. This had some success, but the rains throughout the week meant I had to be pretty vigilant about refreshing the vinegar, and a few moggies slipped through the net.
This week I thought I'd try a different tack.
Tom: 1, cats: 0
So far, so good.
Strange vegetables
Mon Mar 10 22:09:58 GMT 2008
This weekend's gardening saw the very first of the season's planting, and the creation of my garden's insect hotel.
Insect hotel: the plan
The idea of the insect hotel is to create a space for insects and other wee beasties to live in. It's a little slice of nature in the garden. In my case, the patch of tree-root infested earth next to the garden wall is a great candidate. I used wood from the ash tree we chopped down last year, cunningly augmented to provide bug-friendly hiding spaces.
An insect hotel in the making
In addition to throwing bits of old wood around the space, I also added a layer of compost on the bottom of the pile along with a sprinkling of mixed flower seeds. I'm hoping that as the year progresses a few of these flowers may take root and grow up between the sticks.
The hotel: before
The hotel: after
In addition to creating the insect hotel, I also got part of my bed planted up with some onion sets.
Planted onion sets
Finally, I planted up some kale seeds which are now germinating quietly on a windowsill in the house. I'm expecting to see some shoots within a week or two, and then to plant them out six weeks or so later.
Now to the title of this piece: strange vegetables. Not only did I plant a few seeds this week, I also harvested a lot of cat poo from my vegetable beds. Unfortunately, this probably won't be the last time I do this: my area has a good supply of local cats, and my garden is one of the few spaces of open earth amongst a lot of paved yards. As such, I expect one of my challenges in the coming months will be to figure out ways to discourage the cats from using my garden as a toilet!
This week, I'll be trying two things: firstly, covering up loose ground with old compost bags. I'm sure it'll work, albeit at the expense of anything trying to grow underneath! Secondly, I'll be trying to make my garden smell nasty to the cats: I've read vinegar solution and citrus fruits both work. We'll see how it goes.
Plotting
Mon Mar 10 20:57:58 GMT 2008
This is what my garden looks like now
I did a bunch of digging and potting the other day
First things first: what kind of plot have I got?
As the pictures show, my garden is around six meters long, and three and a half wide. At some point in the past, it has contained an outside toilet, and part of the brick structure remains in the far left corner. More recently, it has been largely covered with some kind of bituminous surfacing, which is starting to break up in places.
The current growing space is limited to one long bed in front of the house measuring roughly one meter by five, and an approximate square meter of earth by the outer wall. The long bed was full of plants from previous tenants (the photo above taken during the process of clearing the space), and currently houses our compost bin. The smaller bed by the wall contained two trees: one ash, which we cut down; and one sorbus which we plan to keep.
The garden also contains the access path between my gate and front door (the photo was taken from just outside the house); the drains for the house behind mine, which we'll need to be careful to avoid disturbing when doing any digging; and two full size wheelie bins right next to the gate.
In the beds as they stand the soil is quite heavy, and rather well supplied with stone fragments, litter, and cat poo. Lots of cats live around us, and I'll need to find a solution to their mess if I'm growing food in the garden.
Over the course of the day the garden gets the most sun in the morning, facing roughly south-east as it does. Sadly our next door neighbours on the right side have a set of very tall elder trees which block out a lot of light, especially at this time of year.
Wildlife in the garden is limited, which is no surprise given the lack of habitats. However, I have found a decent array of worms in the long bed, and we did get a lot of large slugs during the wet summer in 2006. Again, this is something I'm going to have to find a solution to when growing vegetables, lest the slugs get it all!
These are humble beginnings.
Starting from scratch
Mon Mar 10 20:57:19 GMT 2008
When I turned 25 my friend Ellie bought me a book called 21st Century Smallholder, which is about raising your own food with typical contemporary resources available to average folks, from a city balcony with a planter for lettuce and herbs up to a couple of acres with space for bee hives, a pig or so, and a full blown vegetable plot.
This year Ellie got me a book on growing vegetables, which gives a simple, picture intensive overview of how to go about growing veg with handy hints for the novice.
In order to prevent her having to hunt down a book entitled "Beets, just get on with it and grow some food, you are a great hippy after all and you'd love it once you got into it" next year, I've decided to take the hint and have a crack at growing some vegetables in my front yard.
Why my front yard? Why even try to raise food from a few scratty square meters of tarmac separating my house from the road? The answer lies with Bradford council; who as of today have a four year waiting list for an allotment in my area. This is in stark contrast with Leeds, by the way, who seem to have allotments to spare: several of our friends have obtained plots simply by ringing up and asking. I don't understand why Bradford is so woefully unprovided for.
Faced with this lack of alternatives I have decided to make the best of what I have. I am confident that with a bit of effort a typical urban garden can be a productive vegetable garden. If I should turn out to be wrong on this, I'm fairly sure I can have a bit of fun finding out. More importantly, I can record the process here as a kind of hands-on guide to a contemporary reworking of The Good Life. Hope you enjoy it!