Putin, Stalin, Hitler, Vavilov

Nikolai Vavilov, the Russian food plant seed scientist who was starved to death by Stalin (see blog entry "From Russia With Love") and whose genius caused Hitler to send an SS squad to attempt to steal his work for Nazi Germany during World War II - may yet see his legacy destroyed by current Russian boss Vladamir Putin.

Vavilov, the world renowned bio diversity scientist, whose work will play a huge part in feeding the planet in decades ahead, invested his life into a seed bank (the world's largest) contained at the Pavlovsk Experimental Station in St Petersburg - currently the world's largest bio diversity plant depository.

Vladimir Putin however, is believed to be behind efforts to sell off the huge farm for property development wealth and thus destroy the world's largest source of biodiversity and thus most of our protection against future food crop issues. Putin has power of appeal over the closure but the land from the Vavilov centre's farm spans vast acres on the edge of St Petersburg and thus provides vast real estate wealth to whomever can cash it in.

Online information in the english language about the Vavilov Institute's future ceased around about the time Putin's efforts to close it were eminent. If you don't know what this is about, educate yourself...find out online. It is vitally important. One man saw what was coming and made plans, now another is destroying the legacy of this true world hero.

Find out about the impending destruction of the Vavilov seed bank - more than one third of the world's saved seeds - and make a proper protest to your country's Russian embassy.

Protect the work of Nikolai Vavilov - who starved to death so future humanity might eat.

Make Sure Your Basil Ain't Faulty

The second part in this series deals with herbs that like a wet soil.


Basil
Basil is dead easy to sprout from seeds and it likes plenty of water but it also likes plenty of sunshine. Temperate conditions outdoors in an Irish or British climate swarm the slugs and promote disease - fungus and mould - so keep the plants on indoor window sills in full sun or in greenhouses and give them plenty of water. When you're starting off your seeds on windowsills or under glass, make sure they're sown widely apart or they'll cluster tight together and come down with a fungal disease. it can do well outdoors in a temperate climate in well watered and fed containers and beds from May onwards. You will need to take account of the pests who will wipe it out this tender juicy verdant without adequate protection.


Basil will eventually stretch skyward and flower. Prolong its useful life by pinching off those rangy long stalks and flowers as they appear. Once they get too stretchy and stick like, it's time to chuck them. Sow a load of basil every three weeks or so to keep tender plants coming on. Resist the urge to eat them fresh. The smell is fantastic! When in containers they're prone to mites (a whitish web) or aphids. Kill this problem by spraying with lightly soapy water - leaving the plant sit for half an hour and then rinsing it's foliage. Pick the leaves, tear them up fresh and throw them on pasta. Mmm!

Watch out for some of those runner herbs going native...

Fennell and Dill
A doddle to grow anywhere. Great for fish and these look really good in summer, attracting plenty of bees with their flowers. Be warned though, they grow high - in the case of fennell up to four or five feet. They need a good sunny spot. The seeds, which taste of aniseed, can also be harvested, dried and stored. We use it for fish. Cut back hard at the end of every year. And try and keep it controlled or corral it in or else you’ll find yourself picking bits of fennel out of everywhere for years to come. It produces thousands of seeds and spreads them well.

Mint/Lemon Balm
We’ve grown both regular mint and lemon balm. We’ve made our own mint sauce and icecream. Our own mint laiden Mohitos. Crush a handful and bring it to your nostrills…mmmm!  It likes rich damp soils and should be cut back hard to keep the fresh green leaves coming. Be warned though - and do take this very seriously - this plant is a thug which will take over your whole garden without adequate control. Never, but never plant it freely in the ground. Put it, not only in a planter on a patio, but also if you can, in a planter with no drainage holes. This plant has to be seen to be believed. It sends out runners through the bottom of pots and over dry pavement to reach soil. Once it gets "free range" in open soil, Frgeddaboudit!

Herbal Remedies - Sage, Rosemary and Thyme

Food gardening has lost thousands of enthusiastic newbies to the pungent temptation and false promise of a "herb garden." 


For some reason, many of those who decide to try the hobby will consider herbs to be an easier option to carrots or beans. To the newbie, herbs are a toe dipped in the water of grow-your-own without properly being immersed. A herb garden is something they've seen in glossy magazines and on lifestyle television and to the amateur, it's a patch where their wishlist of useful culinary ingredients will live harmoniously together and thrive - thus providing myriad fragrances and flavours within a handy grab of the kitchen stove.


What a load of Horseradish!

Years ago and in this very frame of mind, my first herb garden went something like this: The rosemary and sage died because the ground was too wet. The spearmint, which loves wet soil, took over, shooting up everywhere with its underground runners and became almost impossible to control. The parsley and thyme got crowded out by the mint and the coriander bolted. The fennel shot up and free seeded all over the place causing me to end up pulling unwanted fennel twiglets out of every corner of the garden for the next five years. The basil didn't ever have a chance to get faulty - it was massacred on day one by the slugs.

A load of horseradish yesterday.

Contrary to popular belief, a successful herb garden - that is, with all the herbs sharing one bed - is an almost impossible feat to manage. The plants we commonly lump together as “herbs” are in fact a thoroughly diverse bunch of characters who hail from many different parts of the globe. As a result, they require a thoroughly diverse set of growing conditions.

Forcing these alien bedfellows together in the same garden bed, sets you on a hiding to nowhere. Setting the newbie on this particular road to nowhere are those plants from hot housed supermarket stock which are pre-programmed to die of shock a few seconds after you bring them home.

And so, weeks later, finding themselves dazed and in possession of a thick rampant rug of spearmint digesting the remains of a half a dozen former herb bedfellows, the newbie says: "Sod this grow-your-own thing, I’ll stick with watching Strictly Come Dancing.” 


And gardening loses them forever.

Some disillusioned newbies walking away from gardening forever yesteday

Herbs are actually not so difficult to grow once you get them from the right source, treat them as individuals and provide each one for their different whims and needs. They may be lumped together in the "herb" family by the cookbook, but out in the garden the're a mixed bunch - some are tough evergreen shrubs, some are tender annuals. Some will die without copious amounts of water while others will die because of it.

So to help readers understand what’s what, today I’m kicking off a three part series which should enable you to get the very best from herbs. I'm starting with what I call the "dry" herbs - Rosemary, thyme and sage.

Roasting Rosemary

Rosemary is perfect for roasting with vegetables and meats, in particular for lamb and chicken. It originates in the Mediterranean where it is often used as boundary hedging. Its pungent oil has antiseptic qualities and can be used for many purposes other than cooking. Boiling it in water, straining the mix and allowing it to cool for example, makes an antiseptic mouth wash while and boiling it in water with the addition of some soybean oil makes a perfect hot oil treatment for dry hair.


Med born rosemary hates Irish weather and soils. So it often languishes and dies because its sparse needs are not understood. Rosemary likes a fine dry soil with a preference for lime - a higher ph which can be achieved by lacing the soil with lime granules. Wet soil rots it to death from the roots up. I find that it does best in well drained situations like raised beds or better still, in containers where its conditions can be more easily regulated.


Usually I don't use terracotta planters because in the summer months they act like ovens - warming up the soil inside and causing it to dry out super fast. But for this very reason, I keep my two rosemary plants in big terracotta planters where they stay dry and raised. They like to be sheltered from winds and they also require the sunniest position you can get in the garden otherwise they get spindly and weak. Full sun is an ingredient necessary for them to produce that essential oil that we want for our cooking. For the same reason, don't let your rosemary get crowded by other plants.

Rosemary baby!

Cut it back hard in mid summer to keep the tender shoots coming and to prevent it becoming leggy and woody - a state in which it produces less shoots. You can dry out sprigs of it by hanging them upside down in the kitchen for two weeks. Pull off the dried leaves and grind them to powder with a pestle and mortar and you have a powder to flavour up any roast.


You can grow rosemary from seeds but it's probably easier to buy a plant at a garden centre. Buy a bushy example with lots of shoots. You can propagate them through cuttings by trimming off a tender sprig about half way down. Remove the leaves leaving only a "tuft" on the very top of the cutting plant it into damp soil to help it root. 


I dug up a mature rosemary still clinging to its root ball and then sliced it in two right down the middle with a sharp spade. The two parts separated and transplanted perfectly. Once damp and frost is avoided, rosemary is a tough customer.  One of the more versatile aspects of rosemary is its ability to be uprooted and transplanted at any time of year.Though do move it to a greenhouse to protect it through the winter months in a temperate climate.


Stuffed With Sage
 
There's no stuffing without sage, another sunshine and lime loving perennial which gets by Irish conditions. Used for seasoning fatty meats for the most part, it's also long known for its healing qualities and has anti fungal qualities. Sage comes in broad and narrow leaf varieties, the former for drying and the latter for cooking with fresh. It grows around two foot in height and needs full sun. Crowd it out and it fades fast. But when it does catch on it will need regularly cutting back. You can pull out clumps of it and move them elsewhere. When my sage (located in a raised bed which I use for salads) spreads too far I pull out the excess and try to plant it on in protected public places.

Get wise to sage

Sage is easily grown from seed in a greenhouse or sunny windowsill where it requires humid conditions (cover it in clingfilm) to germinate. Second year plants are the highest in oil and generally produce a better harvest of foliage.
It can be propagated using cuttings and should be cut back hard in mid summer and again a month later to prevent it from becoming woody. It will require a spread of about two feet. Frost will scorch the leaves black but usually the plant will come back again. Constantly soggy soil however will kill the plant so it's best kept in a raised bed or in a container.


Bunch of Thyme

Also a lover of dryer soils is the spriggy sweet smelling herb thyme which can be quite tricky to establish but does well once it does. Great with pork and in stews, thyme is also a great flavour to combine with eggs, pasta, tomatoes, olives and garlic. Thyme can survive happily through droughts and freezing conditions but like the above herbs, hates boggy or wet conditions.


Thyme should be planted in containers or raised beds and because of its low slung gait (about six inches high) you need to watch out for it being crowded and overshadowed by other plants and weeds. It’s perfect place is at the very front of a rockery or raised bed.

Thyme you got growin...

Trim it back hard in early spring and again after it flowers to prevent it becoming woody. Now and again it will establish itself in cracks in paving or in stray containers. Thyme is best left alone so apart from its above needs, don’t fuss over it.  Cut your sprigs for the table halfway down, leaving three inches or so remaining on the plant. It will become more productive this way.

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!