Gardening Imps is a website offering products specially for children.

Children are becoming more involved in gardening.� Allowing them to have a go develops a growing interest!�

It is important for young ones to have tools that they find easy to use.� Struggling with an oversized, uncomfortable fork will soon dampen their enthusiasm.

http://www.gardening-imps.co.uk/� has high quality products� specially selected to encourage children to develop a passion for the garden environment and a love of growing. There are lots of fun items and it is worth a look.

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When sprouting broccoli is past its best, yellow flowers emerge from the shoots. These plants should be removed from the vegetable plot and put on the compost heap.

The disadvantages of leaving the old plants in the vegetable garden to flower are:

• they take up space
• they harbour pests and diseases, eg. clubroot
• they may not breed true (give plants with exactly the same characteristics as the parent.)

If the plants are left to flower, the flowers will be fertilised by visiting insects, and then seeds are produced. The characteristics of the seed depends on whether the parent is an open pollinated variety or an F1 hybrid.

Open pollinated plants are varieties that grow true from seed. This means they are capable of producing seeds from this seasons plants, which will produce seedlings that will be just like the parent plant.

F1 hybrids - are the product of a careful and deliberate cross of two different ’strains’ and will produce plants that are uniform and have particular charateristics, eg very big sprouts, or bright green sprouts. F1 means first filial generation.

Brussel sprouts are another brassica which goes to seed like broccoli. Bedfordshire farmers were once famous for the sprouts they grew and distributed to vegetable markets all over the country everyday of the winter. Each farmer had his own distinctive sprouts, which he had developed over the years by breeding his own seed.

Each spring he would:

• select his best plants, with the traits he wanted in future generations
• these plants would be allowed to flower
• flowering plants were anxiously watched to prevent cross pollination (pollen from other plants not selected by the farmer, being brought onto these plants)
• no other brassicas were allowed to flower in the vicinity
• neighbours with flowering brassicas were asked to remove them
• bees were closely watched to make sure that they had not found a hidden patch over the hill - it was a tense time
• the seeds were harvested and stored in a cool, dry, safe place to be planted the following year.
• safe storage was essential, to prevent loosing the excellent strain to competing farmers ( in our case, these valuable seeds were stored under my parent’s bed - we had a cold house!)

Today we are still harvesting purple sprouting broccoli, and at the same time planting seeds for next year’s crop. In fact we are planting lots of brassica seeds including brussel sprouts and cabbage.

• It is most important to prepare a seed bed to give the best growing conditions for the seeds. Click this link to read about preparing the seed bed.
• Place markers in position at either end of the row, using a tape measure to give the correct row width.
• Gently firm the soil down as shown in preparing the seed bed.
• Use a walk-board, which is not resting on the soil, but supported at either end of the bed. Line the board up with the row markers.
• Draw a seeding groove with a spade. Use the walking board to produce a straight line, & work carefully to get the correct depth.

Sowing Vegetable Seed

• only place a few seeds in the hand
• pinch a few seeds between finger and thumb and work them out
• try to get them dropping singly, not in a bunch
• take plenty of time, as it is worth the result
• make a mark in the row, before taking another pinch of seeds from the hand, as you loose sight of the last seed
• avoid sowing doubles

Cover the seed with fine soil. Then put a few small cobbly bits on top & gently firm in. These lumps help to keep the soil open and prevent capping.

Water the vegetable seeds in.

Today is St George’s Day, an ideal time to try a traditional english recipe.

Peas pudding can be served chilled on toast with salad, or heated up with roast beef and gravy!

Ingredients

• 1 pack of bacon
• 475gm split peas
• salt & pepper to taste

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Method

• place split peas in a large oven proof dish
• cover with water
• add salt and pepper to taste
• leave soaking overnight
• chop the bacon and add to the mixture
• place in an oven heated to 150C until just set
• cool and then put in the fridge

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Runner beans form long, flat pods which have to be eaten when young. Picking every other day is essential to ensure a continual supply. They stop producing flowers if any beans are not picked. They are a highly productive vegetable and the flowers are decorative.

Stick beans is another name for runner beans because they climb up sticks or poles.

The poles should be 80cm x 80cm apart.
Hazel is the preferred pole, but they are hard to get hold of. It is possible to buy plastic poles, or bamboo canes can be used. These must be firmly supported, as the foliage becomes very heavy, and strong winds will blow them over. The usual method is to have a double line of inwardly facing and crossed poles with a horizontal holding bar tied along the ridge. Wigwams are becoming more popular, with a cone of poles tied at the top into a wigwam shape.

Sow 2-3 seeds per pole or cane, when the danger of frost has passed.

Runner beans require a well-dug fertile soil with good drainage.

Varieties

• Painted Lady - long beans, red&white flowers, high yields
• Desiree - long, stringless pods . White flowers, heavy cropper, good flavour
• Enorma - excellent cropper with slender beans
• Scarlet Emperor - very long beans, delicious and tender

Rhubarb produces a large crop from a small space. Now is the time to harvest the long tender shoots.

Any surplus is very easy to freeze, by chopping it up, placing it in a labelled bag and freezing it immediatley.

The first rhubarb is always best stewed. Follow these instructions from FarmingFriends.

Click here for information of forcing rhubarb.

Traditionally potatoes (latin name - Solanum tuberosum) are grown in a ridge so that the new potatoes formed at the end of the underground stems do not become exposed to the light. If potatoes are in the light they turn green. Green potatoes are poisonous and must not be eaten.

As the young potato plant grows and produces stems, soil is gently pulled towards the stems so that the soil forms a ridge either side of the stems. The best time to do this is when the stems are 6 or 8 inches high. As the stems elongate, the process is repeated using more soil.

It is important not to disturb the soil around the roots because the tiny potatoes at the end of the stolons will be developing. Read More »

Moles (latin name - Talpa europaea)
are a pest when they come into the vegetable garden and disturb the roots of the vegetables by tunnelling underneath them. They push up heaps of soil at intervals, and if this is in a row of seeds, the seeds will be pushed all over the place.

The mole hills are made up of soil with a beautiful texture. It has very small crumbs and is often collected to put in pots to grow seeds. The mole hills are produced when the mole pushes the soil out of its tunnel, or run. Under the mole hill is the hole leading to the run. A long metal object, like a scewer, can be used to push into the surrounding soil to look for the run. If the scewer goes in easily, it will be entering the tunnel. The soil can be removed to expose the run. Mole control items can be left in the run, before covering it up again, to exclude all the light.

Moles eat earthworms and other small animals. A healthy garden will have a lot of earthworms, which help improve the soil and keep it in good condition. The vegetable gardener needs to encourage earthworms, but the worms attract the moles. Moles just appear out of the blue, and the trick is to send them off to another feeding ground as soon as they arrive, by making your patch unattractive to moles.

Mole Control

• Bad smells - will send the moles off to fresh places! Place smelly objects in the run, such as moth balls, pickled onions, Read More »
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It is worth doing a good job of fixing� posts, as it is such a nuisance if they fall down.� Posts are needed in the kitchen garden to fix the wires along which fruit canes can be trained.� When in full leaf the canes� are quite a weight, and if in a windy spot, a lot of pressure is put on the post.

To hold the post up, a long� end needs to be firmly fixed in the ground as an anchor.

At least� 2′6″ of the post, preferably 3′ , should be in the ground, depending on the soil type.

Dig the hole 3′ deep, shove the post in & back fill with a little soil at a time - 4 or 5″, then thump it down. Thumpers were made in the old days but they are hard to find now.

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Use the blunt end of� a� stake to thump� the soil� down around the post, but it must be thumped evenly, or the post will keep moving. Let the thumper fall straight, & watch your hands - wear gloves.� Put another 4″ of soil in & thump again.� Check the post is straight as you go, with a spirit level. If not, thump a bit more on one side than the other, to straighten it up.�

You can back fill with 1″ chalk or brick rubble (particularly at the bottom of the hole) instead of soil, but make sure it is small enough and that it breaks down as you thump, so that it goes tight.

To fix a post in firmly, there should be a third more soil in the hole with the post, than you took out - if you have thumped it down well enough!