Don't Aggregate Me

A few of my food growing blogs have been cut and pasted from here into other websites without my permission - word for word and omitting only those words that make up my name. The tracts have been reproduced in places where they could actually make someone some money - where the ads are plentiful and substantial.

And so the dreaded aggregator has been round to visit my blog, departing with plenty on his paste board. Where once a blogger like me might have volunteered his tracts eagerly to the aggregate man - in the post Huff Post sell-off world, the bloggers are not willing and the aggregators have resorted to the sharp practice of the pressgang.

Because this blog is a flight of whimsy I won't lose too much sleep over it. But it would have been different if they'd stolen my book - which took me a year of late nights to put together. I wrote the book to help people to learn about food growing, but also for the purpose of selling it.

Wikipedia had a blackout last week against US government regulations. Wiki and Jimmy Wales stand for free and unfettered circulation of information. It's all very well until you ask: Who will produce reliable information if we expect it all gratis?

There's a place for free info in this world and a place for "paid for" info. To get that balance right we will always have to fight for the rights of the former to exist but also to protect the financial rights to the intellectual rights of the latter. It means we have to penalise people who steal protected content.

If there is no financial reward for producing good verifiable information, and no legal protection for the intellectual rights of those who do, then in our brave new Wikiworld, who will produce that information to a standard and quality and level of verification that we have come to demand? A great big colony of altruistic info monks who live off donations and fresh air? It's a nice idea.

Would you take instructions for your bungee jump from Wiki? No? Work your way down the scale so - investment advice from Wiki? Advice on how to dye your hair? Te he. Why not?

Food growing is a sideline for me and this blog is a hobby of sorts. Otherwise by day I'm a journalist in a fast shrinking profession which is seeing more and more of its trained members leaving newspapers, tv and radio every day - all over the world -  to go over to consultancy and PR. They're moving from pasting politicians and uncovering scandals to selling you toothpaste and bookie brands. It's happening because people don't want to pay for reliable information anymore, particularly online.

Like many print journos, I studied for it in college, gained a journalism qualification and then trained in the industry, starting at the bottom. Since then I have been paid by various outlets to produce content. If I drift from the discipline on here it's because I enjoy the freedom to be sloppy and because its my blog - I can do it. If you're still reading then that's your lookout. But we both know that a blog is a flight of fancy and expect no more from it.

 But the training ensures multiple checks from multiple sources to verify everything I write for the day job. If you think newspapers write nothing but lies and get away with it, then go get yourself libeled, go sue them and see how much you'll make. Suing newspapers pays far more than writing for them.  Newspapers are liable for untruths and being properly liable for what you do in the realm of information provision costs lots of money.

 On the other hand aggregators of a certain type send kids out at 5am to buy the newspapers and then type their entire content into their web sites - stealing information and selling their own ads on the back of it. They pay the kids a pittance and tell them that they're journalists. The newspaper buyers stop buying and turn instead to the free aggregator. This is how aggregators kill industries. And when newspapers are good and dead (whether they're online or offline organs) then the aggregator will detach from the corpse and go leech off something else.

However much it likes to dress itself up, Wiki is an aggregator - albeit a not-for-profit one - for now. The Huff Post also aggregated "free" content remember?

But when jurisdictions move to protect intellectual rights online in the exact same way that they already protect it in the realms of music, movies and print -  that's when you hear the wails. That's when the aggregators cry foul, human rights abuse, censorship, skull and bones, alien abduction et al.

While many journalists have a calling,  unlike Jimmy Wales, most don't volunteer their work for free. As George W once observed, people need to put food on their families. So whether online or elsewhere, the dosh needs to come from somewhere for reliable information to continue.

Without that cash paid over, you're left with anonymous rantings, meanderings, venom, bellyaching and invective of the sort that has collapsed numerous online bulletin boards and chat rooms by rendering them worthless. This is a blog, so it too falls into the non verifiable, dreamy, floaty and farty info category.

Wiki has its place, like this blog has its place. But Wiki has also taken all the information which humanity has built up over centuries and based on paid for science, paid for exploration, paid for academia and paid for journalism - and then sprinkled the whole lot through with rumour, prank, pomposity and uncertainty. You'd be shot by an editor in a newspaper or an academic professor examining if you lifted information from a wiki piece without verifying it elsewhere. So what if you really did have absolutely nowhere else to verify from? Because that's where we're heading.

You'll get noble aims perhaps, a big pot of rumour soup most likely and lots of Wales for donations for sure.

Polytunnels and The Greenhouse Effect

With its standard apex roof and rectangular shape, my catalogue ordered greenhouse has all the aerodynamic profile of a Sherman tank. This certainly isn't helpful in the early year gales which have been causing chaos round these parts of late with120 km per hour plus blows..

But unlike said Sherman (which weights 34 tonnes and is made with three inch thick steel plates), my greenhouse comprises a light aluminium frame filled with clipped in sheets of flexible feather light plastic polycarbonate sheets. My greenhouse combo thus has all the spine of a Rolf Harris wobble board and a kite enthusiast would struggle to come up with a more suitably airborne design.

When the really big gales blow, my greenhouse shivers and shimmers to a blur. And just like said octogenarian Aussie’s preposterous musical instrument, the polycarbonate sheets also emit a disconcerting “woppa, woppa” noise. But like a WWII doodlebug, it’s when the noise stops that it's time to panic. The lack of sound means the wind has gotten inside, and popped out a panel. When this happens I have to leg it outside as fast as I can with a light hammer, a bone spanner and a gun containing heavy duty silicon sealant before a vortex builds inside and sends the rest of the sheets flying around the garden.

Woppa, Woppa .... Don't buy a catalogue sold polycarbon and  aluminium kite

Having spent a year trying to come up with varying ways to hold it together, I finally seem to have cracked it thanks to a combination of super strength industrial silicon glue that the shop guy said could hang a man from a helicopter - this I've fed into every joint. The whole lot is reinforced with strips of heavy duty waterproof duct tape which has gone on around the joins. Now it still goes woppa woppa and it trembles to a visual haze, but it holds firm.

So don't buy a light aluminium greenhouse with polycarbonate sheets, especially ones with rubbish "clip on" panel systems. Before I finally sorted it out I'd spent much of January last year chasing errant polycarbonated sprites around my garden. 

But if my greenhouse happened to be glass paneled like those owned by associates and relations of mine, then I would have certainly had different problems. The glaziers would have had to have been called around at least twice in the last year thanks to heavy snow - we’ve had two serious doses in the last fourteen months. With both glass and polycarbonate you have to spend blizzards raking snow off the roof - the only difference with poly is that the sheets don't break when they do fall out.

If I were back again I would have ditched the greenhouse idea altogether and bought a polytunnel instead.

Polytunnels are a relatively recent experience for hobby growers in Ireland. Until about five years ago they were both too expensive and impractical to be used for anything but commercial growing.  We first saw them first with a hobbyist on telly thanks to the inimitable Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall - seen naked and using his as a sauna in his River Cottage tv series - and more recently our own Richard Corrigan (clothed) - employing one on his popular City Farm tv series.

But now, after a year of weather hell, we greenhousers are starting to notice that the polytunnel pioneers still have their clingfilm tents intact. 

Allen Garrard of Polytunnels Ireland, a Galway based supplier has installed 500 poly tunnels all over Ireland through the last two years. Perhaps it's the dome-like shape and flexibility of the polytunnel form that has seen them remain resolutely standing, but Gerard claims he's only had problems with one of his customers thus far. 

Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall (pic is from his Paupered Chef website) fully clothed (this time) in his polytunnel

"This guy put his tunnel up high in the Wicklow mountains. He left it unattended over Christmas and the heavy snow over Christmas saw two and a half foot of the stuff pile on top of it. The sheer weight cracked one of the supports so we had to replace it. Otherwise all the rest appeared to have weathered the snow quite well."

Apart from it's resilient shape, a polytunnel's other main advantage is the value for money on offer  - you can have a fifty foot long version for around a grand and a half although most non commercial growers start with the 14 ft x 20 ft version (E850).Another aspect of the polytunnel’s new found popularity in Ireland is the recent ironing out of one of its two major failings.

For many years the outer skins had the reputation of perishing far too easily. It's not that it's expensive to replace, but rather a major inconvenience.

Thanks to improved skins and cut prices we don't need to be commercial growers to get the polybenefits 

The second issue is one which polytunnellers everywhere will simply have to put up with - the semi circular shape means you can only stand up in the middle portions, and growing space at the edges is limited to low ranging food plants only. But that semi circular shape also gives it a natural strength in January's crazier gales.

Nowadays however straight sided tunnels with standing room all round have been developed without losing too much stability inherent in the basic structure while the high tech skins deployed today should last you ten years if properly installed. It is these developments that have taken tunnels from the sole realm of the smallholder or commercial market gardener for which they were intended and made them so recently popular with medium to large sized urban garden owners.

Unlike a greenhouse, which takes from two days upwards to assemble, a polytunnel goes up in a few hours. A simple frame is screwed together and sunk two foot into the ground. Then a one foot deep trench is dug on both sides. You place the edge of the skin sheet into one and back fill it with soil to keep the sheet in place. Then you throw the rest of the skin over the top of the frame and stretch it. You lay the other side it in the second trench and backfill again. The weight of the soil keeps the skin stretched taut. The door at one end is a simple timber frame coated with plastic and inserted into a timber frame, also coated.

Wind proof! This one's located at Stornoway on the outer Hebrides

Because the skin is buried a foot deep on either side there's no way the wind can wheedle it's way in. The foot deep plastic also tends to stop tunneling pests dead in their tracks whereas generally, pests find it easier to find their way under or through the chinks in a greenhouse frame.

"If you lay a piece of plumber's copper pipe across the ground at the door, slugs or snails can't cross it and it's effectively pest proof," says Garrard. He also advises using opaque foggy plastic rather than the clear version. Polytunnels get really hot inside and in my view, the clear plastic can cause the crops to burn" hence HFW’s penchant to use his as a sauna.

For this reason there's no point in growing certain crops in polytunnels as many would wilt, burn or bolt too quickly. "I wouldn't grow potatoes, carrots, onions or anything like that. It's really more suited to tomatoes, chillies, courgettes and so forth.”

The growing warmth they generate and their now proven resilience to Irish weather has given Garrard a brainwave which he says will allow Irish families to sit out in tropically warm gardens in all weather conditions. Gerard, who manufactures his tunnels in Clarenbridge and hopes to expand his business to employ more people in the future, is now planning to start manufacturing geodesic domes in Galway.

Woppa! Woppa! Nnnnnghhh! Only Rolfie's board should make that music.

Anyone familiar with the Eden project in the UK will recognise the sort of space age domes which allow tropical climates in temperate conditions. He believes they will allow us to have enclosed and warm gardens from 30 feet in length. "You'll be able to sit out in warmth at this time of year."

And thankfully they don’t go “Woppa, Woppa” in a gale - in fact they go “ZZZZZZzzzt!!” as the wind ripples over the skin. But most importantly they don’t go wallaby either..

Your Top Ten List of Post Christmas Gardening Excuses

It’s after dinner on Christmas day 1991 and I'm wearing baggy cream chinos and slip on loafers. I still have all my hair and it's cut into a dodgy post new romantic era high rise. My aunt looks me in the eye and shakes her head as her children storm around the hall on a collective e-number berzerker. They are screaming, spinning, lashing at one another and leaving little explosions of Christmas decorations in their wake. - “Mark my words,” she warns. “One day it’ll all come back at you!”

The ghost of Christmases past will confirm that my then favourite pastime at the annual extended family get together was to dose my juvenile cousins with fizzy cola and brightly coloured sweets before handing out pressies of toy bows and arrows, sucker dart guns and plastic swords. 

Then I’d sit back and watch the show.

Fill em up with E numbers, hand out the plastic weaponry and ....escape!!

Later there’d be filthies from the aunts and uncles as they attemped to crowbar their still spinning offspring into the car to get them home.

Twenty years on I have three children under ten and I’m the one reaping the whirlwind. These days as I run around trying to contain my own annual pint sized post dinner Christmas frenzies, the aunts sit and smile contentedly from easy chairs as their adult children run around to fetch them a Baileys.

Which brings me to gardening.

Mark this: despite what any gardening columnist tells you, there are few reasons to go outside and start digging in. In fact there is only one real reason why people get out gardening at this time of year and it is this – cabin fever. They do it to escape from the festivity jaded holiday season household in which everyone is stuck indoors and killing one another. For certain the January garden doesn’t need you out there stomping around, compacting the ground and generally making a nuisance of yourself by disturbing its dormant perennials.

Let's Get Gardening!!! You'll need a damn good excuse to justify this one.

Gardening expeditions at the latter end of the holiday season are entirely selfish. You’ll desperately need to flee – the bored kids, Noel Edmonds Christmas jumper, omnibus soap opera depression, the tweets, whistles and brain beating electro tunes of the new electronic toys whose batteries are fading but haven't quite died.

But in your rush to get outside always remember this: You can’t possibly abandon a similarly fraught spouse to his or her fate just to go and do some gardening. Not at least without a truly plausible excuse - or a full cast iron set of them.

The problem is that many of the “ten things” list of gardening excuses for early January as provided by some gardening columns I’ve read are just not very good at all and won’t pass the muster for a handy exit. For example, one English based online gardening site I looked at had the following in it’s “ten things to do in January” list: 6. “Ask the council if they are having a Christmas tree shredding event….” (??!!!) Another advises: 8. “Polish your garden fork and spade with oil.” Ha ha ha.

Remember that the key ingredients to a good gardening pass excuse are (a) urgency - it needs to be done now and (b) there must be a tangible benefit for the household collective. So lookit. If you can’t get a pub pass and need to get outside before your head explodes, here’s a good and proper excuse list containing ten rock solid plausibles that will, with certainty, guarantee your post Crimpo fleedom to the great out back.

1.    Remember that beautiful garlic we were eating last year? Well if I don’t get the coming year’s crop planted by the end of the week, it’ll be too late.

Most say November or December is perfect for garlic planting, but early January will do at a pinch for a last minute effort.

2.   If I don’t trim back those dead climbers, they’ll start taking over the whole garden. The garden will look much tidier without them and it's best to do it when they’re dormant.

Free all trapped gnomes from dead climber webs

3.  The fence and raised bed planks are showing signs of rot, if we leave them like that through the months ahead they’ll be gone by the summer. I’ll need to clean them off and paint them up with some wood stain before I go back to work – I’ll just run out to the hardware shop and get some environmentally friendly stuff like Procol Fencecote.

4.  Did you see that scrawny sparrow just then? Those poor birds are starving God love them! I’ll need to get up to the shops to get some nuts and wood to knock together some bird tables and hangers to save the poor things.

5.   Oh no! I forgot to sprinkle some well rotted manure on the vegetable beds. It takes a few months for it to get drawn down into the soil by the earthworms. Our soil is a bit tired. Unless I get some manure sprinkled on soon, it will be too late and this year’s home grown veg won’t be as good. I’ll have to go up to the garden centre to get some.

Waiting for the table - a starving birdie yesterday

6.   I've just read in the newspaper that it’s best to get those remaining weeds out in January when their growth has been slowed and when the ground is clear of most other growth. Strangling chickweed in particular is more vulnerable at this time of year says yer man - their garden guy in the funny hat.

7.  Did you notice that the Autumn leaves have turned into a slippy guck on the paths? That’s a bit dangerous alright for the kiddies. But if I shovel it all up into a bucket and get it into the compost, it will not only makes the path much safer, but will sort us out for some great free compost.

8.  Dang! I just remembered. The greenhouse panes and panels need to be washed out inside with a mild bleach. Otherwise any mildews, mould spores or insect eggs will remain active into the new year and that could create problems for our tomatoes.

Get the disinfectant to cull those greenhouse spores

9.  That garden shed needs a bit of a spring clean. I think I’ll bring the radio down there and get that job out of the way before I go back to work.  

10 . Do you fancy some nice fresh home grown garden fruit this summer? I’m reading here in the newspaper that now’s the time to buy in and plant your apple, pear and damson trees. Why don’t I just pop up to the garden centre and get some before they’re sold out?

Time for an early Spring Clean in the shed. Now where is it exactly?

Now all you need is an excuse not to bring the kids out with you. 

Digesting Some Facts About Dalek Composters

Our Dalek can eat for Ireland. We put kitchen guck in and within a few weeks it has reduced to a fraction of its mass.  The domed scoffer has been shoved to the far end of our garden on account of his occasional propensity to embarassing odours but in fairness to his designers (Davros?), he only ever hums in exceptionally hot weather - or when he’s got a bad case of indigestion.

We feed him with all the food waste that a family with three children can produce in any given week. We keep a big picnic sized portable cooler box in the kitchen and into it goes all our fresh food kitchen waste along with eggshells, egg boxes, loo roll tubes and odd papers. At the end of the week when it’s full and weighs about five kilos, we walk to the end of the garden and sling the rotting guck into the Dalek where the worms, bugs and microbes get to work on it.

For those who aren't from Ireland or the UK, it's time to explain something. A Dalek is either (a) a warlike metal coated alien from the planet something-or-other - as featured in the popular BBC cult science fiction series Dr Who or (b) A popular nickname in gardening circles for a particular type of pepper pot shaped composter which so happens to resemble the sci fi baddie. Indeed with the with the addition of a couple of police lights on top, a sink plunger and an egg whisk to the composter, you'd have some trouble distinguishing kitchen waste digester from menacing and shrill intergalactic nemesis.




A BBC science fiction Dalek yesterday

 Our Dalek is also a big lover of newspapers. Until recently, each and every week he was a particularly big fan of the Sunday Times Culture section which he scrupulously digested each and every week. Unfortunately, they recently changed the paper from a matt to a gloss and now it gives our Dalek a bellyache. Unknown to many, news print is actually a perfect addition to a composter and is a key method of keeping the chemical balance ideal for digestion. It contains plenty of carbon which helps to neutralise the acidity of the "green" waste that comes from our kitchen.

They digest newspapers.... and biographies.....

The "Dalek" style of composter is a giant pepper pot with a removable lid on top, an open bottom which goes on the ground. Some people like to line this with chicken wire to prevent rodents burrowing in. There's also a flat sliding panel on the front bottom which allows access to the black gold that is the mature compost. The open underside allows the earthworms and other insects access which aids the digestion and breakdown process. 


Over the years, I would imagine that its innards by now contain a whole universe of assorted heebie jeebies. But this is only after a degree of trial an error. In the beginning it proved tricky in to get the balance of contents right and sometimes its innards turned to sludge and remained as unusable sludge for much of the year. So anyone who wants to get the most from a Dalek or any other composter will need a period of trial and error to get that balance right.

We must have got that right in the end because the Dalek now exterminates food waste at a remarkable rate and in so doing, saves us a packet of cash in the process. While others pay eight euros every couple of weeks to have their kitchen food waste taken away in a stinky brown bin - our Dalek vaporises the lot in jig time.

GERMINATE!! GERMINATE!! A garden Dalek invasion pic lifted from Mark's Veg Plot (check it out)

The problem is that it’s rather too good at digesting food waste. A weekly installation of five kilo of food guck and the Sunday papers disappears to the degree that the infernal thing is always half empty (not half full), a condition that persists until right until the end of the year. Where does it all go?

Until last year we were also throwing cooked meat products into the Dalek, something you’re not supposed to do because you’ll attract rats. To keep the rats away I judged that our cat Oscar (he’s wild), the biggest cat in western Europe - would scare them off whilst a double under wiring would also keep the rodents out. But this thinking both underestimated the tenacity of rats and overestimated that of fat cats. For a time we ended up with whole family of rodents in the Dalek, something I didn’t tell Her Outdoors about, because  don’t appreciate this type of thing you understand.

Newsprint is good for compost to keep up the carbon levels and balance the "greens"

Indeed many intrusive objects found in its digestive system can be attributed to Her Outdoors “autopilot” school of kitchen cleaning. Uncompostables like foil dishwasher tablet wrappers and yoghurt carton tops cause our annual compost haul to twinkle and sparkle a good deal more than anyone else’s.

It seems the trick to running a happy Dalek is (a) take the trouble to turn the contents on occasion with a gardening fork (b) in dry weather take the time to pour a watering can or two of water into it, to keep it moist and clammy in there.

You'll be richly rewarded by year's end with pure plant food once you manage to get that balance right between the two main types of waste - green waste which is high in nitrogen and includes all kinds of fresh food waste, leaves and grass cuttings, and brown waste which is high in carbons and in our case, is usually made up of degradable paper (including newsprint) and woody cuttings.

If you sling a huge big bag of grass cuttings (green waste) into your Dalek then you’re going to give him indigestion. Large amounts of grass tend to compact and the lack of oxygen inside the slab of grass prevents its break down. So you end up with a big pillow of slime in there.

Exterminated! What happens when you overload your Dalek with grass guck

There are different views on whether weeds with seed heads should be thrown into compost. I keep dandelions and docks out but the rest go in on the grounds that the heat the compost generates will kill the seeds of other plants. Other staples among the kitchen waste are coffee grounds and tea bags.

Adapting a composting regime that sticks can be a tricky process. Essentially its about routine and having a container/caddy in the kitchen which won’t stink the place out. Our picnic box cooler is ideal because the lid seals tight and the waste stays cool inside it until the end of the week. But if we leave the lid off for even a few minutes, next time we lift it, a flurry of nasty little fruit flies will spray out of it. Women in particular have an ingrained reluctance of having anything at all “dirty” in the kitchen. So if you can’t have a sealable container in the kitchen, stick it just outside the back door where dinner plates can easily be scraped into it.

They do like coffee and tea however

Finally, sometime in spring, I slide off the panel on the end and dig out the priceless black gold which should have the colour and consistency of coffee grounds. This is the best food you could ever give your plants. Unfortunately there’s only enough to apply a light dressing on the raised beds in the garden and never enough left over to take up to the allotments. It’s also vital in the greenhouse where it helps our seeds to sprout. Spring is when our Dalek makes most impact and its keyword is: Germinate! Germinate!

Super Spuds, Sophia and The Sex Pistols

Last year a tabloid newspaper revealed that Debbie Taylor, a 30 year old hotel chambermaid from Essex had been eating nothing but crisps for ten years. Previously 22 year old Gina Gough was also reported to have been living on crisps - this time for three years (in her case it became an issue when she was hospitalised for gall stone issues). Before that again, another newspaper revealed that Faye Campbell of Stowmarket had spent fifteen years eating just chips.

Stranger still is that the accompanying pictures of these ladies didn’t reveal the spotty heffalumps we might come to expect from an exclusive diet of spuds and saturated fat, but mostly rather svelte and attractive types.

Giz a crip! Living off nothing but crisps doesn't create the expected heffalumps

We Irish have been here before - albeit without the saturates. Before the potato famine of 1847, a quarter of us (more than two million people) ate nothing but potatoes - usually boiled in their skins, salted and consumed with milk and sometimes mixed with wild greens. In all, around 60% of the populace used it as their main food staple before the potato blight and the resulting famine kicked the habit for us.

By the middle of the 19th century, Irish adults ate between 3.5 and 7 kilos of spuds a day. This happened not because we love potatoes, but because the land was held by the perfidious British invaders and they exported all the other crops from the country. All that was left for the disenfranchised Irish peasant was what he could grow himself on tiny slivers of land rented from the same British landlord. The spud was by far the most productive grown food available. A half acre could thus feed a family of nine or ten for a year.

Seven kilos of potatoes yesterday - 19th Century daily Irish diet

Generations of families could also do this because the humble spud is the nearest thing this planet has to being a “complete” food - lacking only calcium, which we supplemented in those days with milk and greens, the latter often derived from foraged plants like nettles or dandelions. Our famine, which saw a million starve to death and the remaining population reduced by half through emigration, was unique in history in that it was an artificially formed one. The country grew many types of grains and other foods and farmed beef. But these were exported to Britain. Only the potato failed in those years.

Giz a Crip! Statues in Dublin commemorating the Great Famine of the 1840's

An average serving of potatoes contains 21% of the daily recommended amount of potassium, 12% of fibre, 45% of Vitamin C, 10% of Vitamin B6, and 4 grams of protein; while only containing 100 calories per 148g (1 serving size potato). Back in the eighties, National Geographic magazine report explained how the spud was a “miracle food” with an extensive report/study entitled “The Incredible Potato.”

The report notes that by the early 19th century, our spud fueled peasantry were noted as being among europe’s tallest, healthiest and fastest growing. Elswhere in Europe bread and cheese based diets made people shorter and more prone to diseases like rickets emanating from vitamin C shortages.

So its quite easy to see how, that even despite the Famine, we Irish haven’t learned our lesson. Most of us still eat spuds three or four times a week. An unnatural percentage of the population profess to outright adoration and indeed when it comes to answering those “desert island” questions we’ve all been asked at some point in our lives, my own standard replies are: The Grapes of Wrath, Sophia Loren, cold milk, Never Mind the Bollocks and mashed potato with butter and salt.

And the sheer productiveness of the spud means it's easy to buy into the spud miracle when you have an allotment and you’re dealing with a plant that produces more food per square foot than any other. When it comes to world staples it produces four times more food than wheat or rice from the same ground which is why the potato’s usage is increasing in China and India in particular.

Peas from one bed: a pudding bowl full (after two hour’s podding); carrots from one bed - nothing again because of carrot fly; cabbage from one bed - ten or twelve heads, spuds from one bed - four stones - the weight of a child.

Sophia and mash equals paradise island

This illustrates just how ridiculously easy it is: In May I took one third of a bag of shop bought rooster potatoes (they cost a fiver) that had gone all sprouty in our kitchen and rather than chuck them in the compost, I took them up to Plot 34.There I took five minutes to plant them in a prepared bed which had been made up for celeriac, but was now empty on account of this year’s celeriac seeds failing to go all sprouty.

Last week, a tentantive pitchfork rummage yielded more than twenty perfect middle sized potatoes from just over one square foot of ground - enough for two dinners for two adults and two children in our house. At forty square feet of ground in that bed, that’s roughly eighty family meals for doing sweet F.A. And boiled in their skins with butter and salt they tasted absolutely supreme.

In what has been generally a bad year for produce, this year I played spud roulette and won - blight means you always take a gamble. This year in addition to the sprouty supermarket roosters, I planted a similar sized bed King Edward seed potatoes, another of Maris Pipers and a smaller bed of Lumpers, a heritage strain and the very spud that failed in the Great Famine - the one we’d all been living on. Back at home I’ve got spuds arrayed here and there through my raised rockery.

In my first year on our virgin allotment complex, most growers went heavy on spuds as they are known to “break up” new ground making it easier for planting other crops in subsequent years. The blight hit and most lost everything. Dithane, the typical copper based blight spray is not good for anyone or anything and in any case, the rain washes it off. And rain is plentiful in blight weather.

 I planted at least two middling sized beds of spuds the following year and ever since. Despite  getting blight about 50% of the time, I’ve been lucky to catch it early and cut the stalks back to the ground early in every infestation, thus preventing it getting into the tubers. This left me with small to middle sized spuds in those years but a crop nonetheless.

Potato Clamping for badly drawn types (see below)

This year for the first time I’ll be looking into “clamping” spuds to store them, if I can a hold of some straw. Leaving them in the ground until you need them is fine but I find that over winter about 40% get hit by pests including tunnelling slugs (how to they do that?) which seem to enter the spud via a tiny hole, eat themselves large and then they can’t get out again. These can produce a nasty surprise so always weigh your spuds in your hands and throw away the unfeasibly lighter ones or those that “rattle.”

Clamping involves digging a hole, bedding it with straw, heaping up your spuds on it, covering them over with straw and then covering the whole lot with earth. Because if you’re hell bent on eating nothing but spuds - you’ll need them to last the distance and store well. Otherwise it’s down to the chipper for you.

Magic Growth Formula - The Secret of True Record Holders

There really is a magic formula for growing giant sized food plants. But you'll have to read through the boring crap below to find out what it is. Te he.


Looking back on the year with the benefit of the harvest, I'd estimate that July has always been the month for speediest growth for my garden and allotment. It's a month where the plants grow so quickly that you can almost see it happening.  So this July just gone, I tied a marker onto a bean pole just to measure how fast my beans were sprouting at the time of their optimum growth. Twenty four hours later, it had added four inches - that’s an inch every six hours. Incredible! 

July as it happens is also the month when I start brewing compost tea - a magic formula which not only increases the speed of growth but also increases the health of plants and the size and quality of the produce. And now as we push toward the end of September, I'm still using compost tea in order to help me squeeze every last ounce of growth from the 2011 season.

I was first introduced to compost tea by John Evans, a Waterford born gardener who has used it to clock up nine giant veg Guinness world records as well making it the subject of an international business venture.

John Evans (right) the nine time Guinness World Record Veg man

Compost tea making is a bit like making yoghurt, where a base culture is "amplified."

In the same way as bringing on a yoghurt culture, compost tea brewing involves taking a sample of good soil microbes and increasing their numbers a thousandfold by artificial means - in this case by injecting oxygen through them.To make compost tea you need a couple of things. First a five gallon bucket. I use catering mayonnaise containers. Next you'll need an air pump of the sort commonly used in aquariums. You'll get a basic model at the pet shop for under twenty quid. Next purchase a length of plastic tubing to go with it - this costs about twenty cents a foot. Get a length of about six foot. After that you need an airstone. This is the heavy air distributor through which the air is blown to dissipate it into hundreds of little bubbles rather than the large single bubbles you'll get from the end of the tube on its own.

An aquarium airstone for the bubbles

All these can be acquired at a pet shop.Fill up your five gallon bucket with water. Set the airstone with the tube attached right to the bottom of the bucket and turn on the pump. Leave it to bubble for about three to four hours. This is vital for two reasons. First it aerates the water to a level which is perfect for microbe production. Secondly - and this is hugely important - the bubbling will help remove the chlorine from "city" water which would otherwise kill the microbes. It also removes heavy metals which can also impede the tiny animals. Next we need the "culture." This is simply a sample of matter which already has a microbe population in it. Microbes exist in a range of materials and the most commonly used for brewing compost tea include compost (obviously), dry farmyard manure, chicken manure, top soil, worm casts from a wormery and fish waste from an aquarium.

Let the water bubble for at least three hours before adding anything - especially if it has been chlorinated

I like to mix up a range of different matters on the grounds that it should also vary the microbe content of the tea so I take two trowels full of compost from our compost bin, two trowels of topsoil from the garden and one trowel of shop bought manure.These are spilled into the bubbling water and stirred in with a stick. The aeration of the water enables the microbes to multiply in the water at a phenomenal rate.

One expert suggested that the population of "good" microbes in the mix doubles every seven minutes thanks to the aeration pumped bubbles and the "food" they're given. Next you'll need to find something to feed that microbe population explosion. Evans preferred microbe nosh is molasses. Last year I used a few good squirts of squeezy bottle honey per batch, this year I'm using a few ounces of ordinary white sugar.

John uses molasses, I use sugar to feed the microbes

You leave the mixture to bubble away, stirring it every so often to agitate the culture from the bottom and prompt it to release microbes - enabling them reproduce even faster. It's important to stop the process after 24 hours. Don't let the brew bubble for any more than 30. Once this point has passed the microbe population begins to change and the aerobic or beneficial microbes which initially manifest themselves start to get replaced by "bad" anerobic microbes.

 If anerobic microbes have taken over you'll know because the mix will stink. A mix dominated by beneficial microbes should smell slightly sweet with no nasty odour.The next important factor is to ensure that you use the mixture straight away because once the bubbling stops the microbes start to die and once again anerobic microbes which are damaging to plants (and people) begin to take over. So valuable is my compost tea that I use a soup ladle to dole it out to my plants. Wear gloves or else wash your hands directly after doling out the mixture because it's superrich in bacteria.The earth's soil has been historically rich in beneficial microbes which work with plants in a mutually beneficial way.

In with the compost to help provide the "starter" microbes

They break down soil nutrients into a form which plants can digest easily. They also protect the plant from fungi and strengthen it against attacks from pests.Tilling land has killed off these beneficial microbes and the use of artificial fertilisers has finished off what populations remained in many commercial soils. This in turn has weakened food plants and taken flavour from the resulting produce. Compost tea is fast becoming recognised as an organic and environmentally friendly way, of returning these beneficial microbe populations to the soil in an instant.To see these microbes up close, go online and scour youtube for compost tea samples shown under a microscope. Microbes are tiny animals and the samples shown are manic soups of thriving and quivering biodiversity.

Great lads! There they are, the soil microbes all going mad for a decent brew of tea.

When John Evans took me on a tour around his garden in Cork some years ago he showed me how firm and waxy the foliage was on his food plants - he described this as a protective "biofilm" provided by the microbes in the tea. This he induced by spraying or drizzling the mixture directly onto the foliage as well as treating the soil around the base of the plant.I ladle two or more measures of tea to the base of the plant and then I try to drench the foliage as well with a few more. Some people like to filter the tea and then spray it on the foliage - both above and under.

For his part, Evans believes the microbes not only stimulate the roots of the plants but that large numbers of dead microbes (their life cycle is short by our standards) also provides additional ideal food for the plants.Deployed in the rapid growth month of July, the effects of my first batch of compost tea are immediate. Some late cauliflower plants put in at the end of the garden have been struggling to establish themselves in the corner of the garden which gets the least sunlight. Within two days they have noticeably perked up and expanded.

The two chilli plants in the greenhouse which have weakened and drooped because a colony of ants nested under them and undermined their roots, are suddenly perky and solid again and have burst into flowers. My four aubergine plants in the greenhouse which have also been slow to put on size have noticeably surged. Outside in the garden, the tea-ed up beans have gone interstellar and those corn plants in the "Indian garden" which have lagged behind their brothers in sunnier positions are now catching up thanks to selective tea application. Meantime the blueberry bushes in planters are suddenly producing double sized fruits.

Make a magic beanstalk with compost tea

Properly made compost tea is truly a magic formula for gardeners and anyone can avail of it in the peak growing season at minimal cost. It's not just a good fertiliser, it's a complete beneficial bio system. The exact opposite of biological warfare for plants.Downsides? Well it's the courgettes you see. They need to be picked when they're young and tender. But these are fast customers to begin with and it's been said that a courgette can go from flower to full grown fruit in 24 hours. My problem is that they're now going further - turning into full blown marrows a foot long and four inches wide - before I can catch them for the table. Every time I look there's another inedible artillery shell hidden in the foliage which will have to be chopped up and thrown back into the compost.Just an example of a turbo charged garden in the fast lane when it's been fully tea-ed up in our fastest growing month.

Whoah!!! There go the beans after a cuppa.

My Big Old Annual Moan About the Council

Rabbit! rabbit! rabbit! But this time I have an excuse. There's been a massacre. The victims were butchered in their beds. The main suspect - let's call him Peter, Brer or Bugs - has just wiped out three plantings of juvenile cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower plants, about ninety in all. Yes I'm blaming a rabbit. Or a whole rabbitude of them. Proof? (a) Little roundy pellets in the vicinity (b) Buck toothed incisor patterns left in the deceased and critically wounded brassicas (c) I nearly caught one of the fat little gets a few weeks ago. He was so full he seemed to be having trouble hoppiting off and if the grab I’d made had been a successful one, he’d have ended up in a stew - one way at least of getting those filched nutrients back into my account.

No use hiding behind that stick!

Meantime, down the hill, raiding sheep long ago caused one harassed grower to turn his beloved plot into a chicken wire origami of Fort Appache. Think "Troubles" era RUC station. My rabbited plants might have recovered somewhat in this fantastic growing weather had I actually been able to water them. But on my last visit - perhaps the hottest of the year so far, the water was turned off - yet again and always in the heat.

Despite the recent rains, our windswept hillside site was bone dry and the bunny stripped plants would have fluffed up with a bit of water.The lack of water for me is the for-all-for-the-want-of-a horse-shoe-nail difference between thirty cabbages and none, thirty heads of broccoli and none, thirty heads of cauliflower and none. And I’m looking at bare blackcurrant bushes whose failure is also directly linked to the taps being dry during the hot period just before easter when these bushes went thirsty and raggedy because the water was also turned off. Meantime my competitive relations are boasting about blackcurrants the size of their heads.

Then there’s the bull with a face like Jordan's ex. I'd caught him hoovering my raspberry plant stems backwards through the fence on which they were supported, extricating the berries from the thorny branches with the oral finesse of a Jim Rose Circus veteran. However its attitude was more pre deregulation Dublin taximan. As it slewed off the last of my ripening raspberries and spat the bare stems right back through the fence, it looked at me as if to ask: "Alright bud?" Unlike the rabbit, I didn't attempt a wrestle.The infernal thing continued to hoover my raspberries even despite me ranting my tonsils raw and throwing half a pebble path at it whilst simulaneously holding back as many raspberry stems from the supporting fence as my tally of remaining fingers would permit.

Bad moos around an allotment. And it's no use hiding behind that stick!

I didn't have a bigger-than-the- bull, bull-barred jeep with the huge wheels and a great big blaring bull-horn which the farmer blares as he reverses and thrusts about in a motorised bull fight every evening in order to get Butthead and his accompanying herd of bovine raspberry blowers back to base - after they’ve chowed on our permimeter crops.

So the thing is this: Myself and a goodly number of my comrades in farms at our complex have now had quite enough of the bull. And the rabbits, and the sheep and the feral accountants. Because we pay the council handsomely (they increased our rents from E44 to E120 this year - 172% up that is) to keep the water on the land and to keep the local farm fauna from treating our complex like the salad snack counter at Fresh.

Because rabbit and livestock proof perimeter fencing is part of the deal on an allotment complex.Neglectful mother council has also banned us from having sheds to shelter in when it rains (we have dark shipping containers in the car park), and it seems to cut off our water when the rain stops. For more than a hundred people we have been provided with the single toilet bowl from Trainspotting located in the outhouse from the Texas Chainswaw Massacre. Previously used by thirty years of Dublin binmen (ours is a former tip head site) and without a window or electric light last time I was there - we have had to find the seatless and stained bowl in the dark with outstretched hands.

A gang of short shrifts yesterday.

The same council gives our representative - the one appointed to speak for hundreds of paid up allotment holders, short shrift each time we raise views on these issues. Their attitude: “we've a massive waiting list of people just dying to take over your plots. And did you know private plots cost E350?” Already some of us are murmuring about clubbing together to buy our own land.Based on figures they provide on their web site, it seems that our council earns roughly E17,000 per annum from our five acre site.

According to a recent survey by the Farmer’s journal, the average price of agricultural land in Ireland has fallen by 57% in four years. In Dublin the average is now E13,000 per acre.Thus our council earns E3,400 per acre per annum in rents - enough for them to reap the entire value of their land within four years. This is not providing an “amenity” - this a business.On the other hand it would take 32 of us paying E416 each to buy an acre of our own land which would allow us an average allotment each (120 square metres) and common land for parking and other facilities. Of course we’d have to pay for fencing, wc facilities, insurance and the sinking of a few wells. But a one of payment of E1,000 each would likely take care of the lot.

The alternative is that increasing council allotment fees combined with an increase in the cost of the hobby as compost and seed prices increase, are now turning allotment keeping into a paid-for fashion hobby akin to golf.In the same week as my robbing rabbit, a hardy old grower who disappeared from our complex some time back was finally replaced with one one who blocked off vehicle access to perhaps 20 allotments with a brand new sixty grand car. Wearing brand new designer wellies of the sort normally found at the backstage area in Glastonbury, he unloaded expensive trays of garden centre grown lettuces.

Soon it’ll be hired help to do the digging fchrissakes!!