Veg Plotting

Tweeted salads have been a welcome surprise from issuing the 52 Week Salad Challenge this year. I've been favoriting them madly so I could bring you a selection of the most recent ones. Many of the tweets also have pictures showing off the final results, so Twitter has been a great source of ideas :) lambs lettuce Pulsar from Rick Zwaan is superb at the moment, looks lovely with Red Frills mustard and peeled chicory hearts — Charles Dowding (@charlesdowding) November 22, 2012 Raw kale salad with crispy Cajun tofu, avocado, chilli & sunflower seeds. #vegan #lunch instagr.am/p/SNlNcNI1s-/ — Monica Shaw (@monicashaw) November 19, 2012 Today's salad: green lentils, sundried toms, sorrel, Egyptian walking onion, olive oil, white wine vinegar, parsley, salad burnet #saladchat — Jane Perrone (@janeperrone) November 16, 2012 Pomegranate & persimmon salad with barley, chickpeas, avocado, basil & mint. #vegan #lunch would make an eq instagr.am/p/R7hPjUo1n8/...

My ' step sitting ' to consider what to replace the sentinel conifers with, includes looking at a number of books for inspiration. A nice offer from Timber Press to make a selection from their catalogue means I now have three extra volumes on the subject of perennials. It's these I'm reviewing here today :) I visited Bressingham Gardens - and bumped into Adrian Bloom :) - whilst on holiday in Norfolk a few years ago. I have a number of Bressigham introductions ( Crocosmia 'Lucifer' and Heuchera 'Bressingham Hybrids' to name but two) in my garden. The garden itself is home to two of our most well-known plant design innovations from the past 50 years - island beds and the currently deeply unfashionable conifers (often combined with heathers). When I was at Bressingham it was clear grasses were being interwoven much more strongly into the mix to provide longer seasons of interest in the garden. Also large drifts of these plus lots of free standi...

I've been surprised how well my beetroot 'Bull's Blood' has kept on growing throughout November despite its lack of protection. We've sampled a few leaves already and as you can see there are a few more ready for picking. It's got me wondering whether a windowsill crop can be grown over the winter, just like I successfully managed with pea shoots at the start of the year. I did grow some beet for microgreens back then too, but baby leaves would be much better and more substantial. In theory the lack of light over the next few months should make that a 'no', but they're already growing better than expected this month... ...Alys Fowler did an online Q and A session for The Guardian last week , so I posed my question there (scroll down and you'll see I'm there as 'Veep'). Her response was: You could start them off indoors, harden off and plant out but don't expect to eat anything before March at the earliest. If you ha...

Further to my post lamenting the potential loss of the ash trees at the side of my garden, here's a recap of  the useful links I've found, so we can all do our bit to provide identification of potential outbreaks ASAP. Ash tag apps  to help with dieback identification and location. Their website says it's better to look out for lesions as this time of the year. NB DEFRA's recent action plan recommendations includes 'citizen science' as an important factor in helping to identify outbreaks and to trace Chalara 's spread across the UK Forestry Commission information re Chalara Pictorial identification guide  (pdf for download) Identification video And here's some hope for the future - a recent  study in Sweden suggests some trees have resistance to infection.

Some  Christmas gift ideas from 'the trug of plenty' ;) Windowsill chilli growing kit A pocket money gift idea Suitable for medium-hot spicy food lovers or those with little GYO space Contains everything needed - just add water The container and lid form the growing pot and drip tray, though you might want to add a nicer pot for a more stylish gift Dribber A new idea from Hen and Hammock Made in Shropshire from oak Ideal for gardeners who do a lot of potting on, or marking out rows for sowing e.g salad leaves The back of  the dribber can be used for tamping down compost Plant families card game A fun game derived from Happy Families Also teaches the binomial naming system devised by Linnaeus A total of 36 plants from 9 different plant families are illustrated The beautiful drawings are also suitable for framing I found these when visiting Chelsea Physic Garden last year and couldn't resist! Bosch Keo cordless multisaw Ideal gift for the gadge...

I picked the last of this year's 'Autumn Bliss' raspberries at the weekend and instead of scoffing them as usual, I decided to try making some raspberry vinegar. I eventually plumped for Nigel Slater's recipe via The Guardian . His version uses much less sugar than the others I found and is strained, so it has no pips :) I substituted cider vinegar for the recipe's white wine vinegar and I steeped the raspberries for 5 days instead of the minimum two. The recipe also calls for a stainless steel saucepan for the cooking stage because the acid from the vinegar will react with aluminium ones. I don't have one, but I found the ceramic pan from my slow cooker was a good substitute. I only had 250g of raspberries instead of the 450g given in the recipe, so I've adjusted the rest of the ingredients accordingly. Ingredients 250g  raspberries (good ones - I found I had to sort through mine to pick out the best) 250 ml white wine vinegar (cider vinegar f...

I'm really enjoying these warm, pinky red Cyclamen outside the back door this month. I have a couple of pots of them at eye level, so I can't miss them when I step outside into the garden and they're about the only flower on top form. Whilst there's still quite a bit of colour elsewhere, most of it's in terminal decline. I don't mind really as all is at it should be and whilst I have the Cyclamen to greet me, all is well. I tried to photograph some of the Cyclamen hederifolium which are naturalising themselves under the birch tree in the front garden. I planted 3 a few years ago and they're slowly spreading themselves outwards. However, sugar pink flowers and gloomy undergrowth does not make for good photography and despite lying on my tummy on damp leaves to take their picture, the resultant photo revealed some overexposed pinprick blobs :( When they've stopped flowering, I'll push their seed heads down into the damp earth to help them sprea...

I've been trialling various biochar products since the spring, courtesy of Carbon Gold and now it's time to make some sense of the results. The trials I set up were: Seed germination rates with rocket seed - biochar seed compost vs John Innes seed compost. Plants were raised  indoors and each tray given the same amount of water (via a spray mister) Seed germination rates and salad leaf productivity using the seed mats I showed you in March (plus an update picture here ) - biochar vs New Horizon peat free compost. Plants were raised outdoors and no supplementary watering was required owing to the weather! Salad leaf productivity in my new growing area - biochar vs New Horizon peat free compost and no supplementary watering was needed Tomatoes grown in pots - biochar vs New Horizon peat free compost Allotment cucumber and courgette growing - biochar vs home-made compost in allotment soil and no supplementary watering needed Owing to the poor summer the tomat...

An ambient glow - these candles are from 3 to around 6 inches high What do the cold, dark nights need now we're heading towards the shortest day? Somewhere warm to curl up, a good book and hot chocolate are high on my list, as well as the reassuring flicker of candlelight. But what if - like us - you have curious pets (or children) hell bent on exploring everything happening in their world? We've had a couple of near misses with toppling candles and flying fur, which means we've put ours away for the foreseeable future :( So I recently opted to try out a set of remote control candles courtesy of ParamountZone via Fuel My Blog . My first surprise was they're actually made of wax, hollowed out and with a small light about the size of a small candle flame in the bottom. They come with a small remote control to switch them on/off plus options to swap between steady and flickering flames; a dimmer switch (2 settings - dim and dimmer); plus a 4 or 8 hour timer. ...

My salad reference library. For some reason Food for Free was missing (presumed foraging) when I lined them up for their photograph this morning During the 52 Week Salad Challenge I've built up a small reference library which I've found very useful for both my salad growing and writing my salad related posts. Some I had already and others I've been pleased to buy in order to plug gaps. Here's a brief summary to whet your appetite: A Taste of the Unexpected -  Marc Diacono - good sections on microgreens and daylilies Food for Free - Richard Mabey - a foraging classic which has stood the test of time Homegrown Revolution - James Wong - has lots of ideas for unusual salad ingredients and how to grow them. Suttons have a seed and plant range tie-in Salad Leaves for All Seasons - Charles Dowding - the book mentioned spontaneously as a good ‘un by most salad challengers . See also my interview with him . The Edible Balcony - Alex Mitchell - not just f...

A couple of months ago NAH and I spent a pleasant Sunday afternoon in Gloucester. We like the colourful canal barges plus the industrial heritage and old buildings found along the wharves. I've already featured the planted walkways by the moored barges as part of my occasional Unusual Front Gardens strand. We strolled into the nearby indoor shopping centre.  How nice , I thought,  they're using real trees for their public planting inside .  That's not a flowering variety I've seen before . So I went a little closer to have a good look...and what did I find? Plastic flowers had been attached to the main branches of the trees. And the 'trees' themselves were really just lumps of wood placed in the planters. Here you can see how it's been done. Trunks and larger branches have been placed in the planters with smaller branches of plastic flowers bolted onto them :( It's a shame because only a few hundred yards away there's a commemo...

My blogaversary always finds me pondering the blog. As a result I've been tweaking away under the 'bonnet' - fixing broken links, tidying up the sidebars and correcting out of date content in the Pages. I have quite a long list of that kind of thing left to do, which will get worked on gradually over the winter months. As you can see from the above picture I'm also pondering some larger, more obvious changes too. It's a while (2-3 years) since I had a major think about the blog's template and because I'm pondering some major changes, for once that merits trying things out on my test blog first. That in itself was a salutary lesson because I exported Veg Plotting as of October 10th and then imported it into the test blog. Not everything arrived, so my  To Do list now includes fixing my blog backup process. If you have a blog, you might like to have a go too and see how you get on. Having almost lost the Meet @ Malvern blog on one memorable occasio...

Whilst we can look up practically everything on the internet these days, sometimes you just can't beat a good book to find out what's needed. Today, I'm going to review two books I've received this year which come firmly under the practical heading. First up is Jim Gardiner's Encyclopedia of Flowering Shrubs . If you're looking to add some shrubbery to your garden, or to simply decipher what you've inherited there, this is the book for you. There's over 1,500 shrubs described and clearly pictured, so it's one of the most comprehensive guides available. It's arranged in alphabetical latin name order with each shrub having a short description, a good photograph of it in flower, plus a guide to eventual height, ideal growing conditions and cultural notes. There's an indication if the shrub has been awarded the RHS AGM plus the USA's hardiness zone. The short  Table of Selected Shrubs by Key Design and Cultural Characteristics  towards...

Meeting Michael Jamieson, our top Olympic swimmer from London 2012 Veg Plotting reached the grand age of 5 yesterday. I usually mark the day itself, but instead I left the 52 Week Salad Challenge to trundle along in its usual Friday slot and went out to party. For almost a year now I've been looking after Smiths News' Dispatches blog, which is all about the company's charity fundraising events. Yesterday also marked my 200th post for them and it has been an absolute pleasure to write and bask in their glow of raising over £100,000 for good causes. They'd also decided November 2nd is a day of celebration by holding their 2012 Community Week Awards and I got invited along. It was great to meet so many people whose stories I'd blogged about. They were already familiar faces and were most welcoming once I'd explained I was the mysterious smithsnews from Dispatches . Smiths News also supported Michael Jamieson this year in his quest to become an Olymp...

I had quite a pile of salad leaves after the final clearance of the summer salads beds, so after I'd washed them and put the best ones in a bag in the fridge*, I still had quite a few lesser quality leaves left over. I also discovered a cucumber which had hidden itself in the coldframe and needed eating up quickly. With Saturday's colder weather, the answer came in the form of soup. This is a very flexible recipe, adjust according to whatever you've cleared from your plot which needs eating up now. Ingredients - serves 4-6 150g (approx) mixed, washed lettuce leaves or a large head of lettuce, washed and pulled apart 300g cucumber, cubed 4 leeks - the top green cylindrical part, about 4 inches in length for each one (I used the lower white part for our Sunday dinner veg) 1 litre vegetable or chicken stock - whichever is preferred or available ½ teaspoon lovage seed (or about 10 leaves if you're growing some) Salt and ground black pepper to taste To gar...

'Go out of doors on a dull November day and sniff the breeze. Brown leaves lie about you, the garden beds are almost bare, yet the air is full of strange perfumes, stimulating and full of vitality. The tang of bitter-sweet Chrysanthemums is there, the acrid fumes of wood smoke, the rich pungence of trodden Walnut leaves, and now and then, one catches a whiff of pure spring, perhaps caught by the breeze from the thready blossoms of the Witch Hazel.' Louise Beebe Wilder - The Fragrant Path 1932 (via The Gardener's Perpetual Almanack ) I usually feel miserable in November. If I take the advice of today's Muse Day , perhaps things will seem much better :)