Veg Plotting

Lacock Abbey has a fabulous event on at the moment to celebrate the photograph's 175th birthday. It's called Illuminating Lacock Abbey  and I liked how the lights were also placed outside the Abbey's grounds to greet and guide visitors. It's great to have a local event which helps to brighten up a gloomy winter's evening. We're not that far away from the Abbey's forthcoming snowdrop weekends, so I was also on a recce to see how these were faring. There are quite a few just beginning to peep through, with the promise of more to come. Eranthis were also brightening up the gloom and some of the trees on the drive up to the Abbey were helping to light the way. Some of the deeper shades are reserved for the cloisters. Both inside... ... and out. One side of the cloisters also gave a view towards a projection of a leaf image. I liked its juxtaposition with the tree forming an arch over the doorway. The original image was created by ...

Congratulations to CJ who's the lucky winner of Charles Dowding's Veg Journal . I'm looking forward to seeing the results over at her fine blog :) If you'd like your own copy, don't forget there's a special offer available from the publisher at the discounted price of £12.00 including p&p* (RRP: £14.99). Telephone 01903 828503, or email them and quote the offer code APG69. OR, send a cheque made payable to: Littlehampton Book Services Mail Order Department, and send it to: Littlehampton Book Services, PO Box 4264, Worthing, West Sussex, BN13 3RB. Please quote the offer code APG69 and include your name and address details. * = UK ONLY - Please add £2.50 if ordering from overseas.

Winter's continued to be mild here at VP Gardens , so technically setting up my new seed sprouter (courtesy of Victoria ) hasn't really been necessary as we have plenty of fresh salad leaves to hand already. Force of habit from 2 years of salad challenging has kept me doing this; besides you never know when the weather might take a turn for the worst and turn the outdoor stuff to mush. I was also keen to try out a sprouter with dividers. It means I can easily sprout 4 different seeds at a time in the same space, so the flavours available are doubled :) It's also meant I'm able to get up close and personal with the seeds' roots. I love how growing differently at this time of the year adds a new perspective to what we do. I usually line the trays with kitchen paper, so I'm glad I forgot this time. The instructions which came with this sprouter advised rinsing the seeds with a 1% bleach solution first. I've only come across this when preparing tomat...

Here's the solution to the Gardener's Word Grid I published I last week. How did you do? The link takes you to the original cryptic puzzle, if you missed it the first time round and fancy having a go. There are more puzzles to come, once I've devised them!

This is quick reminder about this weekend's RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch from the unlikeliest of spots: the ladies loo at Bridgewater Services on the M5. I spotted this advert above the hand dryers at the end of January last year and I saved it especially for today! Forget the dates you see in the picture, the ones for this year are the 25th and 26th January. Here's to finding an hour this weekend with plenty of birds :) The ladies loo at Bridgewater Services seems to do a nice line in odd juxtapositions: here's another one I took for Sign of the Times .

Last year, we learnt a little about Incredible Edible Todmorden and the crowdfunded book which Joanna Dobson and her partner are writing to help spread the word. I'm delighted that with your help, the fundraising target was met and work has commenced on the final stages of publishing. Joanna has kindly kept her promise to return to Veg Plotting as my guest to tell us more about the project and how it's grown ('scuse pun) into more than just one town... A few of the "vegetable tourists" who've made their way to Todmorden. Picture credit: Estelle Brown of Incredible Edible Todmorden When the founders of Incredible Edible Todmorden began sneaking vegetable plants into public spaces six years ago, they had no idea that they would attract attention from all over the world. But when word got out that a town in west Yorkshire was growing food for everyone to share, the interest began to snowball. The Incredible Edible pioneers wanted to crea...

An early morning bird walk at Camley Street Natural Park with London Wildlife Trust's Helen Burton. It's hard to believe this is a stone's throw from St Pancras station.  Last year I received an intriguing invitation to Camley Street Natural Park for the launch of Birds and Bees , an "ethical bird feed company". My initial thought was "hmmm, all bird feed is ethical, right?" If ethical means providing the right kind of food to ensure our garden birds survive the winter, then perhaps all suppliers fit this term. However, there are a few companies out there who are prepared to take things further. Birds and Bees is one of those. The key difference is the company is working with wildlife friendly farmers to source the bird feed's cereals component from them. This means the farmers have a guaranteed buyer, which in turn encourages them to continue to farm in this way. As the grants paid to wildlife friendly farmers via the recently reformed ...

This is the latest offering from no-dig gardening guru Charles Dowding and is essentially an updated reprise of his earlier Veg Course in bite-size monthly chunks. Seeing part of Charles's philosophy is to do 'little and often', his Veg Journal sits well with this premise. After a very brief introduction, we're straight into January and setting up for the coming growing season. February sets out the argument for the no-dig approach and March deals with the types of beds, plus their pros and cons. April sees the creation of our no-dig beds. We're also into the growing season proper at this point, with the growing of each crop introduced at the appropriate sowing time. Woven into the mix are various general information articles on weeds, pest control, crop rotation etc. Each month is completed with a list of jobs, plus there are blank pages inserted at various points for the reader to keep their own notes and for the book to be in keeping with its title. As wit...

Click on the picture to enlarge to a readable size and to print off for your own use :) The bumper Radio Times  cryptic crossword is a Christmas favourite here at VP Gardens , so perhaps it was no surprise my brain started devising some garden-related clues of its own. I then had a lot of fun trying to arrange them into some kind of grid, falling just short of the classic symmetry of a full-blown crossword. I hope you enjoy completing this as much as I did devising it. I'll publish the solution next week . A few days after putting this together, I learnt it's the crossword's centenary. This knowledge, combined with my endeavours meant I simply had to buy a copy of John Halpern's The Centenary of the Crossword . It's perfect reading for puzzle lovers :) Further puzzles will appear on Veg Plotting from time to time. In the meantime, there's my Garden Finder Wordsearch and Garden Scramble to have a go at, if you missed them previously.

Here's a quick extra post for the week because I love this discovery from yesterday's Guardian . I'm particularly delighted to see Denmark's translation of  "garden" is haven and the potential for us to drink sodas in Lithuania. You can take the link to the original article see how the word 'cat' translates across Europe and to have a play with the map yourself. There are also some FYI links on there which my Print Screen version hasn't captured.