It is always worth keeping an eye on the experienced gardeners. Our 90 year old gardener has just phoned to say he has visited the garden center today to buy his first lot of tomatoes. Three different cordon (Indeterminate) varieties:
* Shirley - an early maturing, heavy cropping variety for cold or slightly heated greenhouses with excellent quality fruit.
* Moneymaker - produces heavy crops of large trusses of nicely flavoured, smooth-skinned, bright scarlet fruits.
* Ailsa Craig – bright red tomatoes with a good flavour.
He will buy a second batch of plants in two weeks time, which will keep cropping until October.
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The 7th International Compost Awareness Week takes place 6-12 May 2007.
The aims are to encourage more people to:
* compost their own garden and kitchen organic waste
* use compost to improve their gardens & grow better vegetables
* promote sustainable gardening
* understand the value of recycling organic waste
Compost Awareness Week is happening all over the world, and local events
are promoting the importance of composting. In the UK some local
councils are giving away compost, and others are offering compost bins
at reduced prices. Details can be found on the Compost Awareness Week
website.
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A gentle reminder to keep weeding the vegetable garden. Remove the
weeds as soon as they emerge. Tiny seedlings are much easier to
remove. Pulling roots of tiny seedlings out of the ground does not
disturb the roots of the vegetable plants left behind.
If weeds are allowed to grow and develop a strong root system, they take
a lot of water out of the soil.The roots of the vegetables will probably
be dislodged & spoilt when the well-grown weed root is pulled out.
Shallow hoeing will remove small weeds. Shallow hoeing breaks up the
soil surface, which keeps the soil user friendly!
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Parsnip Canker is the most serious problem with parsnips.
Latin name – Itersonilia pastinaceae
Brown or black patches appear on the shoulder of the root which then
become soft and rotten. The secondary rotting which follows the initial
discolouration is caused by fungi or bacteria.
The Cause of Parsnip Canker seems to be root damage, which allows
the canker to enter the broken skin and cause rotting.
The initial damage can be caused by:
* careless hoeing
* cracking caused by heavy rain after a drought
* carrot fly
The remedy is
* use of canker resistant varieties
* better cultivation
* later sown crops, as these are more resistant
Snails do eat vegetables but they are rarely a problem in the kitchen
garden.
More information about the garden snail can be found on Farming Friends
If the number of snails does build up, it is quite easy to control them
down to an acceptable level. There are many natural methods which should
be used together:
Natural methods of snail control:
* Reduce the preferred habitat of snails, which like moist, shady
areas for resting and laying eggs. So keep the garden tidy!
* Add lime to the vegetable plot to prevent acidity
* Plant herbs between rows of susceptible vegetables as snails
dislike spiky or aromatic plants.
* Thin out plants to allow air to circulate around the remainder &
so reduce moist conditions within beds which are favourable to
snails. Weed regularly to keep the vegetation down to essentials!
* Add a thick layer of mulch unattractive to snails such as
materials with rough and jagged edges, like broken eggshells or
loose chippings.
* Create a barrier of vegetation favoured by snails, such as wilted
comfrey leaves, which can be placed around vulnerable vegetation
as a decoy.
* Hand pick snails from the plants in the garden. A good job for
children!
* Collect snails in traps such as under upturned flower pots, wooden
boards, upturned empty grapefruit halves and beer. Beer traps are
ideally made from plastic pots with tight fitting lids, they
should have slots cut into the sides near the rim and buried to
the level of the opening. Lids prevent evaporation, beneficial
organisms falling into the pot and also larger animals (e.g. the
family dog) from drinking the beer. If dead animals are left in
the traps they are more attractive to newcomers. Once collected
the most humane way of destroying snails is by crushing but they
can also be dropped into salty water.
* Deter snails with a barrier of wood ash, coal soot,or dry sawdust.
* Use biological control by encouraging animals that feed on snails
into the garden. These include thrushes, hedgehogs, ducks,
chickens, guinea fowl, frogs and toads.
Chemical methods of snail control:
* Various molluscicides are sold, but they should all be used with
extreme caution. Most are poisonous to cats and dogs & lead to a
horrid death. The pets do not often have a problem when these
products are applied to the garden, the danger comes when they eat
the whole packet before it is used. This often happens when they
are shut in a shed where a packet is stored. Try a combination of
natural methods before resorting to the chemicals.
There are a variety of ways to control snails in the vegetable garden.
Growing your own vegetables is rewarding, on any scale. But how big should the vegetable garden be? A row of radish, a tub of beans or a trough of lettuce will produce a thrill at any meal. But what size garden is needed for total self-sufficiency?
In the old days a working man needed a 20 pole (a pole is 25 sq meters)
plot to grow all the fruit and vegetables needed for his family. This is
probably a larger area than we would use today. A ‘working man’s
family’ was larger in those days. Also, he did not have the benefit of
our modern vegetable varieties, which are disease resistant and heavier
croppers.
The TopVeg patch keeps a couple supplied with vegetables every day of
the year, with some left over to give away. In July, August & September
it also supplies ample veg for 4 hungry, working men.
The TopVeg kitchen garden is divided into 7 beds. Each bed is 1.8m wide
by 15 m long, giving an area of 27 sq meters – just over 1 pole. So,
with 7 beds we have in excess of 7 poles.
These figures would suggest that 10 poles is an adequate area to grow
enough vegetables for a family of four to be self sufficient. But
this area has to be fully productive, using netting etc to keep insects
off carrots and brassicas, so that they crop to their full potential.
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Prunus cerasus L. – The Sour Cherry or Morello Cherry
Prunus cerasus caproniana – Kentish Red Cherry
Research in America has shown that a slice of cherry pie a day may cut
the chances of heart disease.
Sour dark cherries, eaten fresh or in jams and juices, are thought to
be beneficial to the heart due to some property in the pigment that
gives the fruit its red colour.
Sweet desert cherries do not have the same benefits.
Dr Steven Bolling, from the University of Michigan, found that eating
cherries cut the risk of heart disease, and also strokes and
diabetes. As well as possessing anti-inflammatory properties,
cherries are rich in antioxidants and contain a compound known as
anthocyanins, which give them their deep, rich red colour.
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