Veg Plotting

It's a while since I kicked off Out on the Streets in August , so it's high time I thanked you for your contributions and summarised the findings of this edition. Once again there's a lot of variety to report :) Helen was surprised to find good quality planting on an industrial estate in Toronto whilst Monica once again showed us why Chicago is regarded world-wide as a leader in public planting. Anna found an example of the common British style whilst on her travels in Portsmouth . I wrote about Love Parks Week , which prompted Helen to revisit and share the Rosetta McClain Gardens with us. She also found some fantastic living moss walls whilst on holiday in Iceland. We had several streetwise wildlife gardening examples: Mr McGregor's Daughter showed us the planting in parking spaces can be wildlife friendly and I responded with a UK example showcased by Garden Organic . The Constant Gardener found some sedum rooves gracing her local supermarket's trolley p...

I've just opened the latest edition of my local garden centre's Garden Club newsletter to find: Whitehall are proud to announce the recent acquisition of Highfield Nurseries, mail order business of Gloucestershire. I'm intrigued: the announcement has been made to Garden Club members but not as a news item via their website or the horticulture industry's news machine. It's not in the local paper either. I'd have thought they'd want to shout this good news from the roof tops! It's not clear if it's just the mail order business that's been purchased or whether it also includes Highfield's garden centre . If it is, then the Whitehall group of garden centres is becoming quite large in this area. Highfield's nursery business specialises in the supply of trees (fruit and ornamentals) plus soft fruit. It'll be interesting to see how this fits with supplies to my local garden centre and I'd love to know whether this purch...

You ought to know that October is the first spring month Karel Capek (1890 - 1938) For once my bulb planting is in agreement ;) Garden Bloggers' Muse Day is hosted by Carolyn Choi at Sweet Home and Garden Chicago .

I know, I know: this campaign's been run by Morrison's for the past two years already, so I should be used to a lifesize Diarmuid Gavin cutout popping up at my local supermarket at this time of the year by now. Thing is, I'm not used to it at all. Especially seeing as the telly's showing him shivering his socks off in the Arctic at the moment...

I suppose it was inevitable we'd hire a narrowboat whilst on holiday: memories of long past holidays where we'd gone on an annual 'booze cruise' with friends were reactivated by looking out over the Llangollen canal from our holiday cottage and waving madly to all the narrowboats passing by. Then we found there were several boating festivals being held and a trip to the first one at Maesbury sealed our fate. That and our proximity to one of the seven wonders of the UK canal system: the famed Pontcysyllte Aqueduct , a prospect so tantalisingly close that we knew in our hearts that just a trip to see it would be nowhere near enough. A few enquiries at the boat festival revealed that a trip to Trevor (or Trefor in Welsh) was the best place to go and hiring a boat for the day would be easy peasy so long as we chose to go midweek. This wouldn't be a problem, so then we kept a close watch on the forecast to see which day looked the most promising weatherwise. We...

Just before we went on holiday, I spotted that one of my Digitalis purpurea (foxglove) was in flower again. It flowered in June just like it's supposed to, but I was rather surprised not only to see a second flush had started at the top of the plant, but also that it's flowering at this time of the year at all. Closer inspection revealed that things are even stranger than I first thought as it's an example of fasciation , a disorder where the plant shows distorted stems and flowers, usually at it's head or other strongly growing tip. Here you can see that the stem resembles a cheesestring rather than its usual smoothness and there's some distortion to the flowers too. Mind you, it didn't seem to put the bees off their stride, they were busy shoving themselves up the flowers as usual :) Fasciation's not a common disorder, but Digitalis is one of the species it more commonly appears on. It can occur due to a number of reasons: genetic; bacterial, viral ...

Saturday morning dawned bright and fair which was just as well because I was due to drive up to the Malvern Autumn Show , not only to see the pictured Mark Diacono and Joe Swift exchange their top tips re chillis, but also to meet up with a number of blogging and tweeting pals (see here for a full rollcall). A further treat after reading Mark's book ( A Taste of the Unexpected which I reviewed last Friday ) was the opportunity to find out more about some of the foods he talks about and to see about sourcing some of them. That and the added attraction of cider and perry tasting plus the whole harvest festival atmosphere of the show to sample ;) The Good Life Pavilion not only turned out to be a good place for us all to meet up, it was also the venue for Mark and Joe to strut their stuff. Their morning session was all about the alternatives out there for us to grow tasty, useful but unusual foods. First up was Szechuan Pepper, suitably modelled here by Michelle . It's the pin...

I was a little miffed whilst listening to Gardeners' Question Time (GQT) today as Pippa Greenwood had a little dig at the quality of advice handed out by bloggers. The implication was that other media sources are much more reliable, so the following must never have happened: When I asked a question on GQT a few years ago, one expert advised me not to bother training a wisteria into a tree whilst the other two were most encouraging Me shouting no that's wrong , or you need to tell them about x whilst listening to GQT A certain allotmenteer rotovating all that couch grass on the telly Growers in places such as Scotland saying the RHS' plant trials aren't relevant to them because the conditions at Wisley are so different to theirs (I referred to that debate here , but unfortunately I can't find a relevant online link for you) My plants growing much taller than it says on the label Some of my plants thriving in conditions the book says are the kiss of death Of cours...

A few weeks ago when I asked the publisher for a review copy of Mark Diacono's new book , I was worried that knowing him would cloud my objectivity. I spent ages telling myself I'd have to be, because compromising my honesty would mean this blog is dead in the water. I needn't have worried, it's simply a work of genius. Mark's crafted a rare thing: a non-fiction book about food, growing and cooking that's a cracking page turner. I returned home on Wednesday evening after my loooong day at the Palmstead seminar to find at last it had finally arrived. It was like opening a present: I was instantly hooked and I finished reading it in the early hours of yesterday morning. Mark's turned his attention away from last year's standard grow your own fayre to his major love, the growing of the more unusual fruit and vegetables he does at Otter Farm and writes so well about on his blog . His philosophy is simple: why waste so much time and effort on growing the u...

Once again Palmstead Nurseries put on a fantastic workshop yesterday and I've come back brimming with inspiration concerning how we can get the public planting we deserve. However, there's one big issue poised to put a major spanner in the works which I've only touched upon lightly so far. This is the result of the spending review due next month which will significantly affect all of our public services, including those parks, gardens, allotments and other open spaces managed by our local councils. Paul Bramhill of GreenSpace (an organisation whose activities I introduced to you here ) stepped up to the plate to tackle this thorny topic. Public open space is one of the few non-statutory provisions made by local authorities and thus is ripe for deep spending cuts. The fact that it's a tiny percentage of a local authority's budget ( less than 1% ) and so won't actually go that far in finding the massive savings needed just won't wash with them. Just like othe...