Ornamental Kitchen Garden revisited

If you didn't catch it, I urge you to watch Alys Fowler (should be Flower) and her Edible Garden series on BBC 2. The first of six episodes was on Wednesday, so you can still watch it on i-player. Alys, I think, is a modern day Geoff Hamilton and this series is at first glance is a new twist on Geoff's wonderful Ornamental Kitchen Garden series from 1990 (hmm, showing my age, or perhaps not as I do own a copy of The Geoff Hamilton BBC Collection (40th Anniversary Gardeners World DVD Box Set) which is also brilliant).

Nevertheless whatever interest you have in gardening and growing your own food, from beginner to expert, this series will be inspirational and just lovely to watch of an evening with a bowl of freshly picked beans to munch on.

If having watched the first episode you desperately want to get to work and create your own edible garden, or if you are outside the UK and can't access the BBC site, don't panic, Alys has a book out "The Edible Garden: How to Have Your Garden and Eat It". Timing eh? Brilliant :)

What's even more brilliant is that the BBC are giving away FREE seeds with instructions and stickers (don't you just love stickers). Just visit the www.bbc.co.uk/gardening/digin website, fill out the form and you will be on your way to self-sufficiency!

A Delicate Balance

This year seems to be a year for brilliant independent films. Watching “A delicate balance” by Aaron Scheibner was a life-changing event for me.

So what’s it all about, well it’s about food, nutrition and the escalating health problems we see in affluent countries – not just cancer, heart disease and obesity, but also autoimmune disorders too like diabetes, crohns disease and all the many different ways the body can attack itself.

The film is full of interesting things I hadn’t even thought to think about regarding the food that I eat. The facts are backed up by years of research by medical doctors and scientists at leading educational research institutions across the globe.

Before the film I was vegetarian (but still ate dairy in the form of cheese and eggs). So obviously, I had thought about the animal welfare aspects of my food and with the remaining food stuffs left to me I tried to eat a relatively balanced diet. My main reason for still eating dairy and eggs was so that I could get enough protein (I tried to ignore the welfare aspects of cheese, and eggs were always free-range). But this film isn’t about animal welfare (much). This film made me concentrate on the consequences of my diet on my health and it was incredibly eye opening. The result is that I am now vegan – no meat, no fish, no milk, no eggs. The good news is that I can get all the vitamins, minerals and everything I need, including protein and B12, from a vegan diet. I am about 10 days into the new diet and feeling great!

So friends and family, I will make you watch this film too, you may borrow my copy. Everyone else, I urge to either buy a copy of the film or go to a screening you can also pay to watch in online.

This film is about you and your health, if you care about yourself, you need to watch this film.

You can watch the trailer on the delicate balance website (the film is also covers meat production and climate change).

Comfrey day

Tuesday, the first day volunteering at Chris Dixon’s. We hadn’t really discussed what I’d be doing, only that it needed to be something that I could get on with on my own. Craig (Transition House) was at CAT attending a thesis module for his masters.

(Oh, the reason I was volunteering is on Craig’s blog)

It was a gorgeous sunny day, a good day for working outside. After a cup of tea, Chris explained that his comfrey needed sorting out and asked if I’d be happy to do that. Of course I was.

Chris’s comfrey bed is next to his polytunnel, in the enclosed formal productive garden (by formal I suppose I mean more allotment style garden as opposed to food forest). The gates to this area are kept shut for most of the time (as far as I could tell), which meant that I couldn't be distracted too much by Mac (the dog) and Scamp (the lamb (that kind of thought she was a dog because she’d had been reared in the house)). It also meant that because Chris’s khaki campbell duck slug patrol unit do such a good job at eating slugs outside of this area, it’s worth scooping up any slugs found within the fencing and giving them to the ducks (I didn’t find any slugs).

Chris makes a liquid feed for his vegetable and fruit garden from the comfrey plants (the feed of course needs to be diluted before it’s applied). The latest crop of comfrey plants were big enough to transfer into the comfrey barrel for fermenting into the liquid feed, but before that could be done, a few things had to be tackled first.

1. Take out the buttercups, wild raspberry and other “weeds” from the comfrey patch.


2. Trim the surrounding hedge


3. Add the “weeds” and hedge cuttings to the causeway (water slowing and filtration system, more about that later)


4. Empty the comfrey barrel of the last batch of liquid feed


5. Take the old comfrey leaves out of the barrel.


6. Add the fermented comfrey leaves to the compost


7. Straighten the barrel (it was sitting a bit on the wonk).


There are two things to know about comfrey, the first is that some people have a slight reaction to handling the plant (where it touches the skin it can bring you out in a rash), the second is that fermenting comfrey leaves smell, I mean really smell.

So on this sunny day, I kept my long-sleeved hoodie on. Which was probably a good idea anyway. And I tried my best to keep my distance from the stinky comfrey.

Thankfully when I got to step 5, Chris was on hand to help empty the barrel. Boy did those leaves smell! Probably Chris reckoned five seasons worth of plants. Blimey! – I stayed up wind as Chris pitched his fork into the barrel and heaved the soggy, stinky mass out and into the wheelbarrow. The top of the barrel was almost at shoulder height; Chris did really well not to get any of the contents on his clothing. I was really glad that he was doing this, if I was doing it, I just know I’d end up smelling of old comfrey for the rest of the day.

Lunch was great, a fried duck egg and probably the best salad I’ve ever eaten all straight from the garden, it was also a good time to chat with Chris and Lynn (I’d also taken Chris up on every tea break he had offered as I wanted to talk about permaculture design with him as much as possible).

After lunch:


8. Cut the comfrey crop and fill the barrel


9. Place cardboard along the poly-tunnel edge for extra weed protection


10. Cover cardboard with straw


11. Plant extra comfrey plants to fill in any gaps


12. Mulch the comfrey crop with horse manure


13. Tidy

Job done.

It was a good piece of work to do as it was completed in the day. Excellent job satisfaction. I know that Chris was pleased with the work, which makes it even better.

At some point during the day, I think it was as we were emptying the smelly leaves from the barrel, I commented to Chris that Craig (Transition House) would be disappointed not to be here. I think Chris thought I was joking, but I was serious, and I was right. Pretty much as soon as we got home, we made our own comfrey bed, see Craig’s blog. Fab.

Thanks Chris for all the excellent tips and for providing us with the plants to divide to make the new bed.

Chilli hot house

Craig has a penchant for chillies so this year I'm growing him several different types (some have rather concerning names like "Ring of fire" and "Fatalii"). Anyway, that combined with my desire to have a bountiful vegetable garden means that I am rapidly running out of window ledges to start my seeds off on.

I have one of those clear-plastic covered shelving units, that's full too. I could get more, but I would have no where to put it without it getting in the way of opening windows, plus they don't really have enough space for cucumbers to grow.

I've been investigating greenhouses. Our back garden is south-ish facing so should be ideal. The thing with greenhouses, well there are two things. The first is that if you get a stand alone one in order to get the most out of it during the winter it needs extra heat. The second, if you attach the green house to your house it's not a conservatory. By which I mean, if at some point you want to sell your house, people expect (or at least in this neighbourhood) attached mainly glass rooms to be sunny sitting places with blinds.

Permaculture principles and logic suggest that the lean-to type would be best. The lean-to will help heat the house during the day, and the house will help heat the greenhouse at night. The fact that if I had a conservatory I'd only fill it up with plants anyway suggests that I may aswell go for the cheaper lean-to greenhouse option.

So a lean-to greenhouse it is.

I've checked the pretty cool (for government) interactive UK planning guidance on the web and it won't need planning permisson - it's not going to be that big. If there is a door into it directly from the house though it will need safety glass. If you're thinking of getting a green house, best you check the planning site for your specific situation.

If I can find a lean-to greenhouse that suits, we'll have a chilli hot house soon. I just hope the chillies don't live up to their names.

Baby Baobabs

There are only a few things that are guaranteed to get me dancing around the kitchen on a Saturday morning like a whirling, jumping loon. This was one of those moments.

My Baobab seeds have grown!!!!!!!! well, two of them. Two out of ten ain't bad.

The Baobab (Adansonia Digitata) is native to Africa, I first found out about it from a Tree Aid leaflet. It is the most amazing tree, you know the kind of thing - the fruit has more vitamin C than 6 oranges, more calcium than milk. Plus, when it's fully grown it looks like it's been planted upside down. It's ggrrrrrreat!!

Oh, the courgettes, soya bean, peppers, chillis, goji berries, rainbow chard? They're doing fine too.

Whoohoo! Christmas again!!

My Christmas present from my mum and dad has arrived!!

FANTASTIC

and yes, I can be that excited about seeds, you see these are not just any old seeds, they are seeds for vegetables that are particularly suited for growing on a patio. Which is brilliant because my I intend my vegetable garden to overflowing this year. If I can make use of the patio as well, all the better.

The larders will be full of chutney in no time. I've got pretty much everything from aubergine to zucchini (okay so it says courgette on the packet - but that didn't have the impact I was after), including potatoes (which I've never grown before).

So thank you mum and dad, I can't wait to get sowing.

PS. There's a great programme about permaculture on BBC 2 on the 20th of Feb, watch it if you can.