Seed bed Preparation – for sowing outdoors

Developing a proper seed bed can be quite physical work. You need to dig the bed thoroughly in the winter. Probably double digging is best, but the reality is that often only single dig. This may include an application of lime, or manure, if at the appropriate stage of your crop rotation. Either way, you leave the bed to break down over winter, and come to it again in the following spring when the ground has dried out. You shouldn’t work on really sodden ground since it will damage the soil by making it too compact.

You will need to dig the bed over, removing any perennial weeds, and once you have dug it over you need to do something that will make you look like a bit of an idiot.

You need to get your fork, and whack the surface of the earth like a madman. Some people try to level it out with a rake, but a rake is really for getting the stones up on the top of the soil. Bashing the soil with a fork will make it nice and level, breaking any clumps up.

The resulting soil will be a perfect seed bed.

In order to  get the best results when sowing, I generally suggest making a furrow with the handle of a hoe, and then sowing the seeds. Rather than pushing the soil back onto the seedlings, I think using compost is a better idea. Because the compost looks different to soil, you get a firm mark of where you have sown. This makes weeding a doddle.

The problem with sowing seeds outdoors is that even if you have a perfect seedbed, there will probably be seeds that are in the soil, so unless you mark the rows properly you won’t know which of the seedling are weeds, and which are plants. With a compost marker, you will be able to use your hand hoe to decapitate the weeds leaves before the plants have a chance to establish. This helps you maintain the perfect seed bed with much less effort.

On top of that, one thing you always need to do is mark the variety and time of planting on a label. While there are labels for pots, these can become lost. There are better options in garden centers, or you can cut up a plank from a garden center into small sticks. Write on the sticks with a permanent market, and just paint over the writing every year. 

One final thing... it is often better to water the soil before you sow rather than after. You don’t want to wash any of your seeds away.

This is coming up to the perfect time of year to sow plants outside... we haven’t had a frost here for weeks, and we don’t expect any more. So have fun J

Preventing rabbits in your garden

One problem you can get if you live in a rural region is the ever present rabbits. They despoil your vegetables and make a mess of your lawn. And they are getting much more common. Although in the 80’s they were well under control, they have been multiplying like – well - rabbits and they can be real trouble in the garden..

The traditional approach to a rabbit problem was decidedly deadly. People used to snare them, or trap them, or shoot them. In the old days people used to go out at twilight, with night scopes, and then stun them with a bright headlight. The Rabbits would stand still making an easy target.

Other approaches were to use ferrets to drive them into nets (this is no longer legal in many parts of the United States).

Of course, you can’t take many of these approaches these days. It is illegal to use snares, and if you do trap them you are legally responsible for killing them instantly, and in a humane way. When you trap them you need to use an approved trap.

Personally, my preferred approach is to try to prevent the rabbits getting into the garden.

There are two main ways you can do this. The first is to get a dog. The smell of a dog will frighten the rabbits away from your garden. This method is more successful than you would think. And you don’t have to kill anything!

The second approach that works is rabbit netting. Now, you can get this commercially. But one thing they don’t always make clear is that you need to dig the netting deeply into the ground. Rabbits, after all, burrow.

This makes putting the rabbit netting up quite an unpleasant experience.

There are other ideas, such as trying to use something like lions poo to frighten them off, or a sonic device, but I think in practice they are more quackery than effective. And so, from a practical perspective, you may end up having to trap the rabbits.

There are no really great solutions to the problem. Unfortunately if not dealt with you will slowly get overrun with rabbits.

I guess the upside is rabbit pie. 

I’m thinking about trying the recipe on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLlMQ3o-Z7g although I think that this post has certainly alienated the vegetarian readers of my blog. Ah well. I hope they will forgive me J   

How to Grow Tomatoes

Growing tomatoes is great fun. I remember when as a kid my father used to start tomatoes off in the spring, and we’d watch them greedily for months. Then he’d start picking them but they’d barely get to the kitchen before we ate the lot. 

They are delicious, whether raw or cooked. I particularly like cherry tomatoes, eating them is like eating sweats.

The first job in spring is deciding which variety is right for you. The choice is confusing. There are two things you need to consider... whether it is an early or late variety of tomato, and what type of tomato it is.

In Britain Blight can be a big problem, and so many gardeners decide to go for an early tomato. Because blight is spread in the air by spores over a wide area it is possible you are in a blight zone. In which case, choosing a variety that ripens as quickly as possible, growing the tomato in compost rather than the soil, and keeping the tomato in a greenhouse or polytunnel all help.

A main crop tomato can take around 90 days from sowing to the first harvest. Early tomatoes are a little faster, and can be planted out a little earlier since they are hardier. So they are more likely to ripen before blight season starts.

The other main decision is on what type of plant you select.

Cherry Tomatoes

Cherry tomatoes are the most delicious tomato variety in my opinion. They are around 1 inch wide, and ripen quickly. You can eat a tomato in one. The taste is really strong, concentrated compared to other tomatoes.

Plum Tomatoes

Plum tomatoes are named after their shape. They do look a little like a plum, have a decent size about them, but are not as large as beefsteak tomatoes. They are great in salads, and are easy to look after.

Beefsteak tomatoes

This variety of tomato is often very large. They are nice to eat, although they often don’t have the same flavour as Cherry Tomatoes.

Steps for Tomato Growing

1.       Select seed

In general I think it is best to buy tomato seed every year. Many varieties of tomatoes available in the shops do not come true. So although you could in theory save the seed, you are not likely to get the same result every year.

2.       Fill pot with compost

I think it is best to choose seedling compost. Some people intentionally put a handful of solid from their garden into the compost a week before. The theory is that the natural bacteria and mitochondria in the garden will develop in the compost, so preventing a shock when you plant it out. I don’t really believe the theory, but it is interesting. I would avoid this technique if you are in a blight area.

3.       Dampen potting compost from below

Use a tray, and warm water. It is best not to get the pot swimming in water. If you use warm water – about the same temperature as a baby’s bottle – you will find that it speeds up germination.

4.       Sow seed – be careful.

It is quite a fine seed. Some people fold a piece of card, and put a few seeds on the card at a time, tapping the card so only one seed drops on the soil at a time. Of course, some people just do it by hand.

5.       Place in dark until see shoot

This is often recommended, although I don’t really find it necessary... I have planted them before and they do pretty well wherever, as long as they are kept at a comfortable temperature.

6.       Put on window, or in cold frame or heated greenhouse

Once they have germinated, they need warmth, water and light to grow. A heated greenhouse, cold frame, or your window is great. In fact, if it doesn’t get below 5 degrees centigrade at night, an unheated greenhouse is fine too.

7.       Make sure to regularly turn the seedling

If you keep the seed indoors, make sure you turn the seedling regularly to prevent it bending towards the light. Make sure there is a reasonable amount of light too. If the plant doesn’t get enough light it will try to grow towards the sun too much, and may become leggy.

8.       Harden off when the seedling gets larger

Once you have a decent sized seedling, start putting it outside for the daylight hours. After a week or so, it should be used to it, so you can then plant it out.

9.       Water a little but often

Make sure you don’t let the plant get thirsty, and don’t swamp it with water either. This is particularly important when the plant has fruit on it, since they can split if not watered regularly.

10.   Plant outside, or in grow bags or containers in greenhouse

The choice of whether to plant outside or in a container is simple in a blight area – you grow it in a container.  Otherwise, growing it outside in the ground tends to make for a really delicious tomato but at the risk that it will suffer from pests. Tomatoes in a greenhouse are less likely to suffer from early frosts.

11.   Feed

Use a tomato feed as recommended on the label. Tomatoe plants are very hungry.

12.   Prune

How to prune a tomato is an entire new article in its own right, so I will discuss it latter!

13.   Harvest

It often takes 90 days from sowing before you get the first harvest. When the tomato is full sized you can either pick individual ripe fruit. Or simply cut an entire vine away and store that. People often worry about ripening the green fruits. It is easy, put them on a sunny windowsill in a open shoe box with an banana and some apples.

The banana lets off a gas that makes the fruit ripen quickly.

When you prune, water or harvest the tomato make sure to wear gloves, as the tomato plant has hairs that can irritate some people’s skin.

14.   Compost the plant

Unless the plant is infected with a disease, composting the plant is the last stage of the growing life cycle.

I hope this article helps you when you decide to grow tomato plants for yourself. It is exciting and fun to watch them ripen... although you often don’t get as far as the kitchen with them!

Lifting Raspberry Suckers

We inherited our Raspberry plants from the people who owned our house. Since then we have done very little to them. Now, after a few years, there are a lot of suckers and the raspberry patch is very overcrowded. As a hardy perennial shrub, they produce fruit every year without too many problems.

Despite being relatively neglected, this patch produces more Raspberries we can eat for around a month, and we freeze and make jam, so we enjoy the produce almost all year round.

But it is probably wise to clear out the raspberry patch to make it easier to net. Luckily for us this time of year is the perfect time for lifting raspberry suckers. 

Raspberries can be propagated in a number of ways, but probably the easiest is they produce suckers near the base of each plant. By carefully lifting them up with a fork or hand fork, making sure you don’t damage the roots, you can get an entire plant for free.

What I do then is put it in a large container of compost, making sure to water it. You can transplant them to empty ground as well. I just prefer the luxury of giving it a bit of care in the polytunnel.

It is generally best to transplant them now, just before the sap starts to rise in spring. The odds are that if you leave it a couple more weeks the raspberry leaves will start to open. And that is a big problem; you don’t want to move them once they have woken up for spring.

So... what if you don’t have any suckers but want even more raspberry plants? Well, you can stimulate the plant to make them. The technique you use to do this is called...

Layering a Raspberry bush.

If you don’t have any suckers you can make them yourself. Like a lot of stemmy shrubs, raspberries will start to root if their stem touches the soil.  In order to hasten this process, I roughly dig over the soil where I want the sucker to start, add a little grit if it is very clay, and then the hard work begins.

You’ve got to slightly wound the stem. Don’t go too mad about it. Just a scrape or two.

Then you bury the stem maybe 6 inches deep. And that is it, for a while. You can use a forked stick to make sure it doesn’t come too loose. Or a heavy stone, although you should be careful not to break the stem.

 You’d do that at this time of year for best effect – early spring. 

By autumn, the new plant should be ready. If not you just leave it for another year. You can tell when it is ready because the plant will seem to be growing... with quite a strong upsurge of growth.

You just cut the stem to the parent plant, and you now have a sucker which you can carefully lift. Basically, at this point you have created your sucker.

Some people like to do the same process but with a pot full of compost... that is possible, but is not the best thing you can do. The reason for this is that the pot can dry out. And it does take some time for the raspberry to take.

One thing to consider when using both these techniques is you should move the raspberries to virgin ground... the land you plant the new suckers in shouldn’t have had raspberries on for some time. Otherwise you might find that they get disease build up in the soil.

Raspberries like sandy soil, and do well in bright conditions. 

Of course, there are several types of raspberries which require slightly different pruning regimes, so I will probably talk about their care in another post.

Uses for the fruit.

A lot of people use Raspberry fruit fresh, in fruit salads, summer puddings or as a topping for cakes and puddings of all sorts. It works really well with simple vanilla ice cream. We also use a meringue nest, raspberries, and whipped cream for a delicious but naughty treat.

How to build a cold compost heap

Garden composting is an important topic; there are basically three types of compost heap:

•    Hot compost heaps
•    Cold compost heaps
•    Slimy compost heaps.

In this garden, we tend to prefer the cold compost heap. There are lots of articles on the internet about how to do it properly. The basic process is to try to get layers of different materials, together, such as grass, leaves, household waste, and anything other than perennial weed roots or seed heads that comes out of the garden. You are of course supposed to turn them.

If you do everything properly, you get a compost heat that starts to warm up enough so that it generates enough heat to kill of any seeds. This is a hot compost heap. In fact, some large compost heaps are so hot you can see steam coming off them in the winter.

There are a lot of instructions on how to make a hot compost heap on the web. So I won’t go into any detail.

There are far fewer to how to make a cold compost heap, because they are not common in back gardens.

A cold compost heap is similar to the hot compost heap, in that it will slowly start to rot down. Compost will eventually be produced. It just isn’t hot enough to kill seeds. A hot compost heap can compost waste within weeks. A cold one may take six months to two years. Now, most people say not to use cold compost heaps. And it is true that if you have waste matter with seeds in, or a small garden, a cold compost heap is a waste of space. When you have as much room as we do, a cold compost heap can be great. You leave it for a couple of years, slowly build it up, and go on to the next one.

It is much less hassle as you are less dependent on getting the mix right, and if you don’t mind it taking a year or two to rot down, you don’t have to turn it either.

A slimy compost heap is one where you have got the balance completely wrong. I would say most grass piles come into this category. If you pile grass up, it forms very thick layers that will bead down, and will rot very slowly. The resulting mess turns into a slimy pile. It is disgusting. It does still rot down eventually, but is not at all pleasant in the short term.

Trying to get the balance right so you don’t go from a cold compost heap to a slimy one involves two things:

•    Making sure the mix is right

•    Keeping it from getting too wet

How do you make sure the mix is right? Use only thin layers of grass, and for each layer of grass, make sure you put another layer of leaves, twigs or stems. Intersperse with vegetable waste from your garden. If you have roughly equal amounts of grass and other garden waste, each in a thin layer, you are much less likely to get a slimy compost heap.

The second requirement is that the compost heap should be a little bit damp, but not too damp. The traditional allotment solution is to cover most of the heap with an old carpet. But you can use cardboard boxes or even plastic bags as long as you make sure there are some holes so the heap can breathe. You don’t want to cover it entirely. It does need some water and air.

Cold compost heaps are largely rotted down by a mixture of some bacteria, but especially worms. While a hot compost heap works well even if it is not touching the soil, you really want to have a cold compost heap directly on the ground.

Now... there are also some extreme old fashioned things you can do to this heap. If you are a bloke, saving your pee is a traditional way to add nutrients. Just dilute it a bit, and chuck it on the heap. Make sure the heap is far away from neighbours. In the UK this is not legal, and is just a historical piece of advice.
People interested in permaculture often invest in a composting toilet too.

If you are not so environmentally friendly you can use just what the garden produces, plus household vegetable waste.  That’s what we do. It is easy, and we get great compost after a few years.

Growing Vegetables and Fruit Indoors

While a lot of the time you need a vegetable plot in order to grow your own vegetables, there are some plants that cope very well indoors. These range from tomatoes, to lettuce and a mixed salad, and even radishes and chillies.

In some ways the most decorative choices are lettuces, if you choose a mixed leaf seed packet. The different leave shapes can be very nice to look at. Of course, you can grow them almost all year round – there might be a little bit of a problem during the darkest winter months with light when they will grow very slowly though.

If you fancy going for something a little different, chillies are actually very successful when sown from seed and kept indoors during the spring. First you get some really beautiful white flowers, and then latter on the chillies start growing. These start off green, and progress to red. When they have ripened you can even use them – so you save money and get a really great house plant. 

So, you get months of an unusual decorative houseplant followed by great food. What a winner!

Tomatoes are more challenging, and should only be grown in a conservatory. But you can have the odd plant. Just prune them so they don’t get really hard to maintain.

Beyond that, you can grow baby carrots, radishes and even spring onions in a window box.

Probems with growing indoors

The process for sowing and taking care of them couldn’t be simpler: get a container with a hole in the bottom and a tray, fill it with seed compost, and sow like normal. When growing vegetables in your home it is important to turn them. You do that just like you would turn a flower... literally making sure that a couple of times a day you turn them round so they don’t lean towards the sun.

This will prevent them getting leggy.

The second main problem people get is they fail to water them enough or water them too much. Plants in containers need a lot of regular water. It’s not exactly too hard though... just make sure you water a little, but regularly... so that the plants don’t get too dry buy also doesn’t get soaking wet. A little experience goes a long way on this.

Maybe these plants are too difficult for you?

In which case, If you want something really basic, parsley and cress comes to mind... cress especially is something that will grow almost anywhere. As a kid, we were given a head... and we grew the cress like crazy green hair. But of course you can grow it in soil, it is very forgiving. And probably the best choice for someone with no experience.

Decorative fruit and vegetables for indoors

On the other hand some people may not want to feature the veg... In which case, the alpine strawberry is a great choice. You can add it into the mix in a normal flower container, and it is low growing, with small but delicious ripe fruit. I would say the alpine strawberry is more a decorative plant than something that will feed the family... but on the other hand we planted some in the paths here, and it supplies us a hassle free strawberry crop whenever we walk past.

I guess the other side of the coin is people with greenhouses and conservatories that can go really wild. It is possible to get a lemon or orange crop if you have a greenhouse. In fact, I know a few people who make their own traditional lemonade with home grown lemons. Although of course you need to keep your conservatory quite warm if you are going to produce enough to compete with the supermarket – so it is not exactly a moneysaving idea!

While these ideas won’t feed a family of five... they do mean that you will get more experience of vegetable gardening, and you will be able to produce home grown vegetables throughout most of the year.

Vegetable gardening is fun, whether you do it inside or out, and the basic process is much the same either way. Of course you won’t want to grow rhubarb indoors, or large crops like peas or beans... but don’t forget you can get a lot out of a pot by the back door... we used to eat beans for months with just two posts of runner beans made into a tripod we used to place by the front door. Beautiful flowers and delicious crops.

Plus by growing them indoors you are much less likely to experience pests.

Brassica Protection and considering crops to sow

This year, I want to eat some brassica’s. After the last year when el butterfly decided to strike with evil intentions and a family of thousands to feed, I decided it was time to get tough. The brassica’s need to be protected.

My technique with netting so far has been to make a wigwam with beanpoles, and try to use this as a temporary fruit cage. It hasn’t worked so well. Just not practical. Whatever solution I chose has to have two main uses:

• It has to carry fleece during the first through weeks of spring... while they are seedlings
• It has to carry netting during butterfly season

And I want to also have something that doesn’t cost too much but at the same time is practical for watering too. So far in my research I have come across http://kgarden.wordpress.com/2009/05/04/brassica-netting-against-cabbage-white-butterfly/ which seems to be the most practical solution.

I like how simple it looks... that will make it easy to make, and I don’t have great DIY skills.

Why am I planting Brassicas?

Well, I admit for a long while I didn’t. But due to health complaints with her eyes, the doctor said my mother should eat a lot more green leafy vegetables. So, rather than buy them from the shops, where they tend to be a tough and quite expensive proposition, I thought I’d grow my own.

Brassicas are also useful in crop rotation... it isn’t good to keep on planting the same species of veg in the same places.

The downside is that they can be slightly more difficult to grow, they do have a lot of pests, and to be honest – personally I don’t like the taste of most brassicas. I have come to the conclusion I can live with kale, so that will be an experiment this year... trying out chard and kale to try to improve our health.

When will I dig out the brassica bed?

It is coming to that point in the year where, even if the soil is not quite workable yet, I am pondering... I need to redesign the veg plot a little, the original design has been swamped with Rhubarb and Raspberries, and other perennial soft fruit, which we love... but which makes digging a little difficult.

It is the downside of our approach to gardening, which is more or less haphazard, while we understand the theory of design... it is our private space, and we often do things that are wrong simply because it is our.

Deciding which brassica’s to plant.

I am thinking cabbage, kale, and maybe a few other brassica’s... I wonder which ones you recommend?

Keeping Cats out of the Veg Garden

One of the worst problems with gardening near a town is the cats. Now, don’t get me wrong, delightful creatures which I loved when I was growing up. But they are terrible nuisances in the garden. They eat wild birds (which we like because of the singing), they poop in the most inappropriate places, and they dig up your garden.

Over the years we have tried multiple methods... the screaming incoherently with rage, the native dance, and our favourite...  the lion poop. Yes, we actually bought lion poop, on the theory that the smell would put them off.

It worked.

Of course, the smell also put US off, and although we grew quite a large crop of roses that year, for some reason we failed to smell them as regularly as normal. Plus the neighbours complained to the council, because they thought that a sewage main had burst.

Maybe the lion poop pellets are a better idea, rather than fresh lion poop from the Zoo? I always consider the money saving way better though.

One way that defiantly does work is large wire fences... but you end up looking like something the allies used to escape from in world war II.

We also invested in some kind of sonar device that was supposed to keep the cats away from the veg garden, which did not appear to stop the cats. Surprise, surprise, they just kept on going back. So, eventually our final solution has been a mixture of an old fashioned technique...

First, I have netted the plot. This prevents the cats from getting into the vegetable beds. And the second approach is to use the water hose. I made a nice empty bed for the cats... and they can use that bed. If they don’t they get the water hose pointed at them. I don’t actually drench them, just put it near enough that they can sense my displeasure.

 Although, the neighbours don’t like me so much any more.

Now, I am going to make a diversion... cat owners, it would be really nice if at this time of year you were to invest in a cat collar with a bell. All the younglings are going to be hatched soon. It would be nice if papa bird and momma bird didn’t get eaten by yopur cat. It also has a few other benefits too. 

Like, for example, the fact that there will be less dead mice left to you as a gift.

The weather report today... a little more windy than normal. It is starting to be a bit more cloudy, but I’ve been enjoying tidying up the winter bed... this bed has flowers like hellebores and winter flowering pansies which produce a bit of color at this time of year. It also has a huge number of pinks that have a delicious smell later on in the year. But, months of not really weeding enough makes it a little less tidy than you would hope.

Anyway, I’ve just been watching magpies having a play fight out from the window of the study I am writing from... noisy, unfashionable birds, that I still like.