Question Time: Summer Edition


It's a while since we've had an edition of Question Time, so here's what I've found is on the mind of Veg Plotting's readers* over the past few days, courtesy of my blog statistics:

Empty plant pot

Here's an ideal opportunity to fill it with a plant you've just purchased, or if you don't have a suitable plant to hand, then it's great timing to buy something you like! Alternatively, if the pot is rather large and interesting, you could place it au naturel in your garden to make a focal point just like the one pictured above which I saw at Bolehyde Manor yesterday. However, if your pot is like this one, then it's best to use it as drainage crocks to line other pots. NB this search originally returned my response to Shirl's Plastic Pot Challenge, so you may like to look here for lots of ideas for reusing and recycling if your empty pot's a plastic one.

Should my elderflower cordial be dark brown?

Err no, it should be clear or a very pale yellow. It could be because you didn't fully submerge the elderflowers at the start of their infusion period. If the cordial already looked brown at that early stage, it could be because you overboiled the starter syrup when you made it so it began to caramelise. It's worth having a teeny tiny taste to see if the cordial tastes OK. Otherwise there's just about time to make another batch, especially if you have the later flowering elder, Sambucus canadensis in your neighbourhood.

What makes good bird scarers on vegetable plots?

The sparrowhawk we've had in the neighbourhood recently does a pretty effective job. If you don't have one of those to hand, then using old CDs scares the living daylights out of me whenever I'm up the plot as their roving shadows remind me of The Mysterons. My allotment's on a relatively windy site so the rattling made from old plastic bottles placed over canes is also pretty effective. However, I wouldn't recommend using old Christmas decorations like one of my allotment neighbours did one year. I can see why he did it: they were all shiny and sparkly in the wind. Sadly, they soon disintegrated and now his soil's full of bits of old tinsel.

How to dispose of parsnips gone to seed

On your compost heap as usual.

If you soak lots of fag-ends in water will it work as weedkiller?

Depends what you mean by lots and it'll be more effective if used as a pesticide, which is how tobacco has been traditionally used in the garden. Beware, many of the recipes on the interweb say this is an organic pesticide: it isn't as it'll kill beneficial insects as well as the nasties. It'll also harm plants from the Solanaceae aka nightshade family, such as tomatoes, aubergines, potatoes and Solanus. Therefore I don't really recommend it, so I'm not including a link to how you can make your own.

If you have lots of weeds to clear, then using the fag-end [aka cigarette butt - Ed] to start a fire would probably be more effective, though you'll probably annoy your neighbours at the same time. This also assumes fires aren't totally banned by your local council anyway and you haven't set fire to anything you'd like to keep in the process.

* = apart from how to make Rhubarb and Ginger jam, which has been my top post for 14 months now and is currently over 50% of my search engine hits.

Comments

  1. Helen28 June 2010 at 12:55

    Great As to some Qs I didn't even realized I'd had till now. I'll try the bird-scare tricks at my allotment. I was complaining of low germination rates for my seeds, but perhaps there's a finer, feathered reason...

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous28 June 2010 at 20:24

    I love these sessions, VP, more please! The old CD's idea seems cheap and easy, prettier than old pie tins which are hard to come by unless one makes a lot of pies using store bought crust. How nice that it is a recipe that brings the readers to you, our number one post at the moment is Lamb's Ear Love, a perennial champion except when it is Muhly grass season. :-)
    xxxooo,
    Frances

    ReplyDelete
  3. Joanne28 June 2010 at 21:41

    Thanks VP an interesting and informative post.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Tony Wildish29 June 2010 at 11:37

    personally, I'm happy to encourage birds into my garden. I've only got a terrace with a few large pots, but encouraging the birds there this year has made a big difference to the number of caterpillars I have to deal with!

    ReplyDelete
  5. VP30 June 2010 at 11:42

    Helen - the link also has lots more bird scaring ideas if my suggestions don't do the trick.

    Frances - I can send you some spare CDs I have loads! xxx

    Joanne - you're welcome and good to see you again :)

    Tony - I love birds in my garden too, but the pigeons at the allotment are a trial for everyone. I spent a delightful time in the garden yesterday watching a thrush using our shed as its anvil to get at the snails it had found.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

I love hearing from you and welcome thoughtful conversations :)

Comments aiming to link back and give credence to commercial websites will be composted!

Your essential reads

That blue flower: A spring spotter's guide

Image
Spring is a prime time for blue flowers and my daily walks currently have several from the same plant family* lining the local footpaths. As I walked past the Donkey Field the other day, I overheard some children ask their parents** what the pictured blue flower was. It reminded me it's often mistaken for those other familial blues and this time was no different, as they said it was forget-me-not, instead of the green alkanet it actually is. As well as similar flowers, most of these plants are hairy in their nature, flower around the same time, and favour damp, shady places. Many of them are great for pollinators too, especially bees and this week's warm weather has certainly drawn them to these flowers. This makes it even more likely for these plants to be mistaken for each other and it's a great opportunity for me to put together a spotter's guide in case you find the same flowers on your outings. Staying with green alkanet, the key features which set it
Read more

Jack Go To Bed At Noon

Image
Last year this rather exotic looking flower appeared on mine and several other allotments for the first time. Having been stumped (again) by Mr Allotment Warden as to its identity, I rushed home to find out what it was. It's salsify, aka the marvellous Jack Go To Bed At Noon - named as such because its flowers always close by midday. Here you can see both open and closed flowers - making it seem even more exotic and alien than in the first picture. I think this must be the cultivated version because the flower in my Francis Rose Wild Flower Key looks exactly the same in form, but is bright yellow in colour and called meadow salsify . Its other common name is Goatsbeard, which must be a nod to the fantastic dandelion-like clock which forms the seed head. With 'parachutes' like those shown above, who knows how far our plotted plants came from. I rather like the photographic dissection of the seedhead found in this link . Salsify is edible: its lateral shoots and fl
Read more

Red Nose Day - Gardening Jokes Anyone?

Image
The nation goes ever so slightly bonkers on Red Nose Day - hurrah! Previously, it's been very easy to join in - usually via a dress down day at work plus lots of people up to mad things at the station and in the office. Everyone smiling for once - it's a real feel good day and all in a good cause. This year's different - every day's a dress down day for me now - my friend L suggested yesterday that perhaps I could have a dress up day instead and whilst that's a good idea, I confess that ballgowns and tiaras don't really feature in my wardrobe: scruffy student's always been my favourite look. So my Red Nose Day contribution for this year is to compile a list of gardening related jokes. For each one (clean ones only please) you leave in the comments below, I'll make a donation of 50p to the cause. Here's a few for starters just to get you warmed up: Q Why do potatoes make good detectives? A Because they keep their eyes peeled. Q What did the grape
Read more

Salad Days: Mastering Lettuce

Image
I've decided one of my salad challenges for this year is to grow as many lettuce varieties as I can, ready for the publication of my planned Factsheet* later on. The idea is to grow as many of the Tried and Trusted lettuce varieties last year's Salad Challengers helped compile, then provide a visual guide and as many lettuce facts as I can muster. So far I've found around half of those listed**. Then naturally whilst I was out searching - because such is the way with seeds - a number of other varieties found their way home too ;) A couple of weeks ago I sowed 22 varieties***. Just the simple act of sowing them has me intrigued. Why are some lettuce seeds black and others white****? They split into about half white to half black in my sample and as far as I can tell it's nothing to do with whether they're a type of cos, iceberg, or whatever. I sowed them indoors and popped them into a propagator on the windowsill. The soil's too cold outside for sowing
Read more

VPs VIPs: Derry Watkins of Special Plants

Image
Last week I had the pleasure of visiting Derry Watkins at her home, garden and nursery - the acclaimed Special Plants - just a few miles along the road from me. I first met Derry at one of her open garden days last year and was keen to find out more about her wonderful garden and running an independent nursery. She specialises in tender perennials and regularly goes on plant hunting trips to find new treasures, particularly in South Africa. As well as running Special Plants and opening her garden under the NGS scheme , Derry holds day courses at her nursery, hosts Special Tuesdays from April until September, lectures and has written a couple of books. How did you find your way from Connecticut to the UK? I'd started a biodynamic vegetable garden in Connecticut and we used to have people come along at weekends to help out. A particular young man turned up: he returned many times and at the end of the summer I married him. So it was all down to love? Isn't that the
Read more

#mygardenrightnow: heading into summer with the Chelsea Fringe

Image
Ahhhhhh, that's better! I love walking through dewy grass in bare feet, not that there's much in the way of grass on my back lawn this weekend. My wild and woolly lawn has morphed into meadow of sorts this month, which even NAH admits looks attractive*. It's also proved a great source for my Flowers for mum project so far, yielding self-sown perennial cornflowers, lamb's ears, and lemon balm in addition to the blooms you can see. These originated from elsewhere in the garden, the ox-eye daisies must have blown in from the A350 nearby. * = he got very stroppy about the weeds aka self-sown foxgloves in the lawn one year, so he's come along a bit since then. Skimble's demanding to say hello to you too. He does enjoy the patio when it warms up. If the embedded video doesn't work try this link instead. The Nectaroscordum are a revelation. I planted the bulbs around 2 years ago, but it's only this year they've bloomed properly. The bee
Read more

The Resilient Garden

Image
  Part of Tom Massey's Resilient Garden at RHS Hampton Court I've been pondering VP Gardens a lot lately. Last year's drought conditions set me off initially, then our harsher than usual winter combined with this summer's flip and flop weather means the thinking continues. It's a huge topic which I freely admit I'm struggling to get my head around. Tom Massey's Resilient Garden  at Hampton Court recently  tackled this topic brilliantly and was a timely interlude which gave me much food for thought. There he encapsulated the detailed research he'd found which informed both his show garden and book of the same name. I think it's one of the most important show gardens I've ever seen. It's clear the way I garden needs to change so that I have my own resilient garden. I haven't worked out the exact details yet, but Tom's book plus a couple of others (see below), alongside the rainwater management handout from the show garden's  sponso
Read more

Testing Times: Tomatoes

Image
  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
Read more

Chelsea Fringe 2014: Shows of Hands - Episode I

Image
The gloves NAH used to build the raised bed . The effects are L to R, top to bottom:  Original photo, Warhol, HDR, Green tint, B&W, Posterize, Boost, Cross process and Sepia Welcome to Shows of Hands - my Chelsea Fringe project for 2014! As you can see I've been having a bit of a play around in Pic Monkey for my first contribution. You're welcome to join in between now and 8th June 2014. The idea behind this year's project is to highlight the tool most precious to a gardener: their hands. How do I take part? It's simple. All you need to do is take a photo of hand(s) in a gardening context and then share it via your blog or other social media (such as Twitter or Facebook), then make sure I know you've done so. I've set up Mr Linky below for your blog contributions. The Chelsea Fringe photo on the right sidebar links to this post, so you can easily find it again when you're ready to add your contribution. If you share your photo on Twitter,
Read more

Make Use of Mildew

Image
On my garden patrol this morning I spotted some powdery mildew on a couple of my new Verbena bonariensis plants. I suppose it was almost inevitable as I prefer to grow my plants hard - this means no water for them unless they look absolutely desperate. This approach means plants root themselves more deeply and have a better chance of survival during spells of dry weather like we've had lately. However, it also means I run the risk of problems like today's, especially with any garden newbies planted late in the season. We've had a good drop of rain overnight, so this should help my plants survive. I'll mulch them later today to help lock in the moisture as it's water stress which encourages the mildew to take hold. I've also removed the infected leaves and sprayed the rest with a milky drink.* I'm also pleased to find there's a use for my infected leaves. Oliver Ellingham at Reading University has started a PhD - sponsored by the RHS - researchi
Read more