Veg Plotting

  Regular readers know I'm a bit partial to taking part in citizen science initiatives such as the annual Garden Birdwatch and Butterfly counts, as well as one-offs such as Flying Ant Day. These are a great way of gathering huge datasets over a wide area that are simple to do and repeatable. This year I've upped the ante by becoming a monthly  Riverfly monitor for my local stream, Hardenhuish Brook. This scheme is designed to survey the key freshwater invertebrates which are more sensitive to pollution and also taps into my Masters degree. The wider the variety and number of these found each month gives an idea of the water's quality. In the photo you can see me assessing the stream for those invertebrates usually found in the more urban locations by kick sampling the stream bed for 3 minutes and then having a look at what I've caught. March's net had a bullhead fish as well as plenty of little wriggly things to identify! It's been great to use the skills I ac...

  I've run a couple of tomato trials this year. The first is a revisit of the biochar trial with Oxford University I attempted some years ago (with a different organisation this time), and the second is a trial of a water gadget called Plantsurge which I was given to try at Malvern Spring Show earlier this year. Most of you have probably heard of biochar already and the claim that this inert, carbon-rich material can help soil fertility and plant health. The RHS information in the above link says results can be mixed, with reduced effects found in alkaline soils. This may help to explain the lack of difference I found in my previous trial as VP Gardens is on a lime-rich soil. Plantsurge is a different beast altogether. It's a strong magnet which is attached to a hosepipe as shown in the photo above. It's claimed that it softens water, with the result more like watering with rainwater. The higher nitrogen found in rainwater is thought to be beneficial to plants. Gardener...

The snowdrops are finally coming to the fore this week, does anyone else think they're later this year? Of course I could be comparing them to years when they've been early 😉 Early, late or on time, they're still most welcome. The photo above shows some of the snowdrops I planted over twenty years ago - the first time I'd tried my hand at guerrilla gardening. They form a welcome to the shared space on our part of the estate and it gives me a warm feeling when I hear local walkers saying how pretty they are. Last year I was gifted two huge carrier bags full of snowdrops in the green, so I've taken the opportunity for some experimental planting in gravel having seen some of mine have self seeded themselves there elsewhere in the garden. We have two narrow strips of gravel which border our front drive and the path which leads through to the back. I planted lots of small clumps there and I'm thrilled they've come back this year to welcome us home. The rest I ad...

It's citizen science week here at VP Gardens as I've signed up to take part in The Big Plastic Count which starts today. The aim of the count is to gather data from as many households as possible on how much and the kinds of plastic we throw away as part of our everyday lives. Around 150,000 households are said to be taking part, including myself and at least one of my friends. Once the results are in, the organisations involved will have a better picture of the scale of the problem we face here in the UK. They also will have better facts to take to government (both local and national) and the organisations who create or use the plastic - such as food companies - to lobby for alternative packaging solutions. Like with any project of this kind I'm sure the results will lead to further questions and the potential need to drill down further in the data. Whilst there are 19 categories of plastic in the survey, many of them are quite broad and only give an idea of numbers not ...

I harvested last year's olive crop from my patio allotment over the weekend. As you can see the olive growers of Spain, Italy and Greece can rest easy 🤣  Inspired by Andrew's recent post on Facebook and being a curious, experimental soul, I'm having a go at turning them from completely inedible* into something that might just**, grace one of the Greek salads we have on a weekly basis. I've have some of those teeny tiny jam jars -  saved from tea shop forays just in case they come in handy - and after discarding the wrinkly ones and the stems into the compost bin, I have just** enough olives to fill 2 of them. I found the instructions for dry salt-cured olives Andrew mentioned in his post, which in turn has a link to how to pit olives when they're ready to eat in around three weeks time. Wish me luck. Next up is olive tree pruning***, once we've got rid of this spell of cold weather. * = reader, I tried one 😬 ** = only just mind *** = I'm going for a loo...

It's National Gardening Week and it's timely the RHS have published the results of a recent study they conducted with Sheffield University on gardening and wellbeing. The results and the infographic above speak for themselves. To quote one of the researchers - the RHS's Alistair Griffiths - on Twitter: "The more 'doses' of gardening you get, the better your wellbeing :) " I hope those who discovered gardening as a great stress buster during Lockdown are motivated to continue - I've always said 'Gardening is the answer'. You can read the full published paper here . Happy gardening!

Regular readers know how much I love the cowslips at the entrance to our estate. They usually bloom around now and I'm delighted they've increased in numbers consistently over the years. Here you can see the original roadside bank from which they've spread into the meadow below, and now they've also leapt across the road to the opposite verge. An estate setting like this is more unusual as they're more of a wildflower meadow favourite. I think we're seeing the results of some seed spreading which took place over 20 years ago when the road builders established this mini-meadow and wetland to cope with runoff from the A350 nearby.  Last week I learned the sight I love is becoming increasingly rare owing to habitat loss and the remaining populations may not be as healthy as they could be. As a result, Plantlife is asking for anyone who knows of a local patch of cowslips to conduct a short survey . I've just discovered cowslip plants have two different types; o...

This must be the gardening equivalent of receiving a box of chocolates; an exciting tasting box of tomatoes courtesy of Burpee Europe , who've given me a sneak peek of their latest varieties, two of which have blight resistance in their breeding. All varieties are F1, which means fresh seed will be required each season. From left to right we have: 'Nagina', a blight resistant medium plum tomato 'Honeycomb', an orange cherry tomato bred in Yorkshire 'Cocktail Crush', a blight resistant medium salad tomato 'Veranda Red', a dwarf tomato suitable for growing in small containers or hanging baskets All varieties are suitable for growing outdoors here in the south-west, though northern based gardeners may fare better if they're grown in a greenhouse. I'm delighted to have the possibility of more blight resistant, outdoor varieties to try as I only have a sunny patio on which to grow my tomato fix - and we eat a lot of them! Our abs...

I ate my last home-grown tomato for breakfast this morning, so I thought I'd have a look back today on how this year's crop fared. It's been my best tomato season ever, partly helped by the weather and then boosted much further with the gifted 'Crimson Crush' seeds via Dalefoot Compost , who invited me to trial their new tomato compost this year. A few years ago I almost gave up growing tomatoes, because I can only grow them outdoors where they're at their most susceptible to blight. However, recent success from Simon Crawford's tomato breeding programme has resulted in not only strong blight resistance in his tomatoes, they're full of flavour* too. 'Crimson Crush' is one of his and were supplied for this trial by Pennard Plants , yay. I almost despaired this year too. June was unseasonably cold and my tomato plants took on an alarming purple hue. Luckily the weather soon turned warm and when my friend from Oz came to stay in early J...

I've walked around the garden with more of a purpose than usual lately because I'm on the lookout for any plants with spittle, commonly known as ' cuckoo spit '. It's a sign a froghopper nymph (aka spittlebug) has taken up residence within the protective froth just like you can see in the photo above. Until recently I'd thought these sap-suckers were relatively harmless, but now I see they're of concern as they're a chief carrier of the bacterium  Xylella fastidiosa , which results in the disease and death of many popular garden plants. It hasn't reached the UK yet and the RHS would like it to stay that way. They've teamed up with the University of Sussex and Forest Research, who need thousands of volunteers - like you and me - to help map the distribution of spittlebugs found in gardens, meadows, grasslands and woodlands from April to late June. We're being asked to report sightings of spittle, in our gardens or on plants elsewhere,...

I cut a small posy of flowers for our kitchen on Sunday courtesy of the back lawn and keeping NAH away from it so we could have a #NoMowMay. I've talked about my Wild and Woolly Lawn before, and since then it's gone from strength to strength. I've enjoyed watching the large numbers of insects zooming around our garden this year* which I'm sure is the result of my relaxed attitude to the need for lawn perfection. As well as the flowers on the windowsill, there are plenty more where they came from outside, and so I took part in Plantlife's Every Flower Counts lawn survey yesterday. With the decrease in wildlife habitats, there is an increasing recognition our gardens can provide much needed havens for wild flowers, which in turn support a wide variety of insects and other fauna. Plantlife's survey aims to put a baseline figure on one aspect of this concept, by estimating how much our lawns can support honey bees when the grass is left to grow longer and t...

Last year I joined a creative writing group. Unlike my friends, writing fiction at first was way outside my comfort zone. Listening to the birdsong from my bed one morning, led to this piece of longform nature writing instead. It seems fitting to offer it to you in celebration of this year's Big Garden Birdwatch  which takes place this weekend. The links below will take you to the RSPB's information and birdsong audio file of each bird mentioned, so you can listen along as well as read. One day - possibly in January and definitely by February - there's a sense that spring is beginning to win its fight with winter. At last there's a hint of warmth behind the sunshine and the air seems washed clean, leaving a sky of benign blue. The clincher for me is the first song of the year from the great tit . You may know it; the loud call which sounds like a squeaky gate or a wonky wheelbarrow. It sounds clear and true in the trees at the side of our garden, and someti...

Veg Plotting 's Blooms Day would be incomplete without the occasional foray into Grow Your Own flowers, so I'm pleased to bring you my 'Just Add Cream' strawberry plants for this month's floral focus. This is a relatively new variety from Thompson & Morgan 's own breeding programme, who also provided me with a few plants to try in 2017. Naturally I've given them a tough time by forgetting them entirely  deliberately growing them on in the smallest of trays for a year before I finally planted them out. I'm pleased to say they've passed this test with flying colours. I'm growing these at home instead of on the allotment where VP Gardens demands food plants look attractive as well as being productive. Apparently pink flowered strawberries have proved rather bland and unproductive in the past, but this variety is bucking those particular trends. It's an everbearer strawberry which means the crop is spread over many months in the su...

It's major catch up time this week, with seed sowing underway at last*. Quite a few have been sown at home, and the others are set to be dealt with at the allotment this weekend, once I've cleared the raised beds of all the naughty weeds that have sprung up. I'm particularly looking forward to trialling the new Optigrow seeds I've been given (at the bottom centre of the picture) as they might just help me make up for lost time. So far I'm particularly impressed with the cucumber seeds I'm trialling courtesy of Mr Fothergill as they all germinated within 4 days. These come with their own mini greenhouse and coir based compost; the latter was great to watch grow from its 1cm high starter disc to an impressive 5cms when I added the water**. Our curries have been transformed this year by the use of fresh turmeric, which in turn gives a wonderfully fresh flavour. I was delighted to find there's lots of information about growing and the use of this i...

I'm delighted to offer a different kind of cuppa for #nationalteaday as I'm allergic to the usual stuff*. Instead I'm exploring a different kind of tea via those found in Henriette Kress's Practical Herbs 1 . For those in the know, Kress's double volume has been available in a pdf format for a number of years and it's clear from the interweb she's a well regarded herbalist in her field. Now it's available in book form and for me, the first volume I received to review for today's tea blog tour has the clearest and most detailed explanation I've found of the preservation of herbs and their use as herbal oils, salves, syrups, vinegars, tinctures and teas. There's the added bonus of what to do when it all goes wrong - which is often omitted in all kinds of reference books - and here we have the voice of experience to help make things better, in the herbal world at least. We're quite early in the foraging season which combined with ou...

It's official! And yes, that IS a spider at the window - it caught a wasp just after I took this selfie I entered a new world at the weekend, courtesy of my friend Sally who invited me to judge the flower classes at Foxham Horse Show . After I said I'd love to, a little bit of jiggery-pokery ensued and I swiftly achieved promotion to fruit, veg AND flower classes. I was totally unaware this event existed until Sally volunteered as show secretary this year. Not only does it exist, it celebrated its 30th birthday on Saturday. The horse show is the main  raison d'etre with around 300 horses attending this year's competitions of all kinds. The produce classes were added a couple of years ago as a fun way of involving more people. Foxham is a small village around 5 miles north of Chippenham. It's a pleasant drive which follows Maud Heath's Causeway  for quite a way and goes through the hamlet of Kellaways. This is the source for the naming of the Kellaways F...