Lovage and Tony Blair (a tenuous connection, I know)

Tony Blair has just gone for lunch. (I'm following the Chilcott inquiry - see my newsblog). So I've popped into the courtyard for a little sunshine and to check a few plants:

I wonder if Tony tends a Kitchen Garden...With the size of the pension he'll be getting - and his lucrative lecture tours - somehow I don't think he'll be tending spuds anytime soon. No matter fellow Kitchen Gardeners - he just doesn't know what he's missing...LOVAGE for example...

Yes, I know at the moment it doesn't look like anything much. That's because it's only January and the poor thing has been covered in snow for weeks. Come March and it will spring into life. Purchased from Victoriana Nursery. Good with chicken. In soups and salads too. Here is a link with recipes How to cook Lovage

BBC City Food Lecture

Listen to Chief Scientist David King at the City Food Lecture on BBC Radio 4 at this link:

"It's predicted that the world population will reach nine billion in 2050. Simon Parkes reports from the City Food Lecture, where former Chief Scientist Sir David King spells out his vision for how we can meet that challenge".

Food shortages. Weather. Oil, gas. Cabin fever and the way forward...

Photo: Giant Winter Spinach in our courtyard under snow...

A friend of mine came to lunch last Monday. She ended up staying three days. The roads just weren't safe enough for her to travel back. In our city (and the surrounding villages) we are hardly ever visited by such extreme weather conditions.

All of us are suddenly reminded of existential matters. Have we got enough food in? Enough fuel? Is the heating working alright? Can we afford the extra money we have to spend heating our houses?

We've spent time and money in the last few years making sure our insulation is up to standard. We continue to reduce our carbon emissions. Warm Front loft insulation. No double-glazing yet. Due to the age of our house, the damp course had broken down so we had to prioritise spending on an air-brick damp-proofing system. It takes at least six months to kick in and until it does, we're limited in what we can do in the house.

We investigated solar power to replace our boiler, but we don't have a water tank in the loft so a system like Solar Twin is not feasible for us at the moment. We installed an A-rated energy efficient Worcester boiler five years ago. Our chimney is not big enough for a wood-burner so we still have our coal fire too. A great comfort in this weather - it is helping the house to dry out - but as far as carbon emissions are concerned, of course we're going to have to get rid of it at some point. Not this year though, we've missed our (finance and tolerance level) window to get the work done. I'm secretly glad as it is so cheery right now. But coal deliveries are to say the least, uncertain at the moment. I'm comforted that we have several possible sources of of heating.

The houses on one side of our street have a good covering of snow on the roofs. (Showing that they are well-insulated). On the other side of the street there is no snow on the roofs at all. The heat loss must be considerable and the insulation poor.

A journey to the local shops has been difficult here. The pavements were frozen for a long time and even in Doc Martens you're risking a broken arm or wrist if you fall. (And I did - thankfully not serious). These issues are particularly critical if you have a disability. Buses in to town were never very reliable but at least the main roads to town are cleared and you see buses now.

When you go to local shops you face the problem of shortages. Particularly fresh fruit and vegetables. Bread deliveries to local shops are also an issue. I've started using the bread maker again.

Then there are the schools closures. Our school was only closed for a day, but most of the schools in Cheshire are still affected by the weather. I understand there is worse to come. I'm thinking that the shock waves of this cold snap will continue long after the snow and ice is gone. Deliveries will be behind. Businesses losing money.

I can only guess at the havoc all this has brought to some people's lives. At the school gate I talked to a mother-to-be. She's booked in for a Cesarean section next week. From a neighbour I heard that all non-essential operations have been cancelled at the hospital.

We don't run a car but all this still makes a difference to our daily routine. The school-walk (or bike) used to take me half an hour maximum. At the moment I'll be lucky if I get away with two hours per day. I'm self-employed but I dread to think how people are managing if their employers refuse to pay them. We go outdoors when we can, but I'm sure like me, many parents find it difficult to keep children amused in such adverse weather conditions.

So what's the good news? Last year an Anglo-Saxon peasant instinct had prompted me to set aside a storage area in a cool room of our tiny house. Here's the link to the blog post and the picture. We'd bought most essentials in bulk and stored them. Our 'pantry' is coming in to it's own now...

The chutneys I'd made the year before last (!) have stood us in good stead for snacks and to spice up some meals. We'd bought a sack of potatoes back in November which is still going strong and we have some 'Golden Wonder' home-grown stores still from last year's harvest. We also have plenty of home grown garlic. Home grown onions were used up last November.

We have plenty of leeks too, but I can't harvest them as the ground is frozen solid. The Giant Winter Spinach is ready to go and will start growing again in February or March. We're going to start raising seedlings again in late February. These can stay in the small greenhouses in our courtyard until the weather is good enough to plant them out. We'll be able to start harvesting Rhubarb and Asparagus for the first time this year.

I'm really looking forward to the spring. In Year Four of our allotment the soil is improving all the time and I'm getting more confident as a no-dig gardener. Looking forward to sharing some of my plans with you all...

Onions, garlic and parsnip soup

Finished planting onion and garlic sets yesterday. I'm hopeless at labelling when I'm out on the plot. If it's cold and wet, you really don't want to be hanging about trying to get your pens to work...I'm hoping to record details of plantings here on the blog so that I can review how well they perform. I decided I wanted to try a new garlic variety so this years plantings were:


Pulled parsnips to make some space (and beautiful parsnip soup).

I'm spending an average of three hours a week at the allotment right now. At this time of year it's enough to keep things ticking over.

The Gardening Year. The journey.

Just to cheer you all up after that bout of global number-crunching - here's some sanity: the latest picture of our plot. Year Four and the Avalon Pride peach tree is flourishing as you can see.

We're much further on with winter vegetable production - with leeks in various sizes which usually last until January.

The poached egg plant (Limanthes Douglasii) was still flowering yesterday - it has self-seeded - that's the THIRD time this year. Beautiful.

The Gardening Year (and this blog's first birthday)

It's nearly a year since I started this blog. (3rd. November, 2008 to be exact).

In gardening terms - reflecting on past successes (and failures) is an important process. So if it's alright with you readers - that's what I'm going to do for the next two weeks until this blog's first anniversary.

The picture opposite was taken on 18th. April, 2008. In the next few posts I'm going to include more recent photographs - you'll be able to track our progress that way.

We'd taken on our plot in early summer 2006 and it had been completely derelict then. I wish I'd taken a photograph at the very beginning - to prove it, but my little one had not long been born, and taking pics was the last thing on my mind...

Notable features at the start included brambles as thick as your thigh which I had to dig out, dozens of sacks full of broken glass... The lot. I mention this because I've met a few new plot holders recently who are starting in a similar place. Although at least they had their plots cleared, whereas I did mine by hand with a scythe. So don't lose heart new plotters - it is possible. Whatever you do, though don't rotovate. You'll only chop the weeds up and compact the ground - get some advice from Garden Organic about 'Starting an Organic Allotment' instead.

So, what can we see in this picture? Starting in the foreground: A weedy and still bramble stricken strip of ground covered in mulch fabric, newly planted gooseberries, newly planted rye grass and clover lawn underneath the apple trees I inherited (the one in the picture is the old variety - called Newton Wonder), inherited daffodils, newly planted asparagus bed on the left - a few raised beds and a few sack fulls of rubbish.


In 2007 when I took on the plot - most of the areas surrounding it were uncultivated. Now we have neighbours. By year four - our heavy clay soil has been much improved due to the almost constant addition of various mulches and manures. These included: rabbit manure (from a local rabbit breeder), cardboard and wood chip mulch for the paths (delivered to the site by local tree surgeons), home-made compost (since I cleared the plot from derelict there was a great deal of green waste to deal with), cocoa shells (an organic and fairly expensive product which I used sparingly on the asparagus patch and around the peach tree), 'Strulch' (also a fairly expensive product used on raspberries, it lasts a long time and is made of mineralised straw so it also feeds the soil), comfrey leaves and last but not least: kitchen waste treated with Bokashi Bran and buried in trenches.

The improvement in the soil means it is generally much easier to work - and direct seed sowing will finally become a possibility this coming Spring. The clearance of neighbouring plots has generally been a positive thing, but the clearances of vegetation mean that strong winds have been a difficulty too - and so I've planted appropriate wind breaks. Photographs to appear in the next few blog posts.

At the beginning I toyed with the idea of making a static design for the plot and then following it. I'm glad I didn't now. The lay-out of the plot evolved gradually. Some features (like the apple trees) - were fixed - but in general I observed soil, sun and shade and made decisions as I went along. The plastic raised beds worked out quite well as I moved them round quite a bit. They have a five year guarantee so whilst they're not indestructible they're fairly sturdy.

The cardboard and wood chip mulch I've used for the paths has lasted a season which means it is extra work to replace it - but because this adds organic matter to the soil, I feel this has been worth it. I'd advise new gardeners to keep an eye on the principles of permaculture whilst they are designing their layout. Think about putting your shed in the middle of your plot instead of at the end and use several compost heaps and water butts dotted around instead of just one - it really does make the work easier.

My blogging skills have improved over the past year. I'm currently without a camera as my compact and fairly simple Samsung L700 has finally packed up. Good news in some ways as this means I can finally upgrade to an entry-level digital SLR. Another fast learning curve...watch this space...

Guerilla Gardening. Urban Food Production.

Just received this great film from a friend about the Abundance Project featuring Guerilla Gardening and Urban Food production. Watch it at this link.