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Sally Nex

~ Sustainable food growing

Sally Nex

Category Archives: education

The September veg garden

01 Tuesday Sep 2020

Posted by sallynex in education, exotic edibles, greenhouse, kitchen garden, my garden, self sufficiency, this month in the garden

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Tags

harvesting, mentoring, mice, perennial crops, pests, sowing, tomatoes

Harvesting this month: French beans, courgettes, patty pan summer squash, sweetcorn, potatoes (the last of the second earlies to eat, plus maincrops to store), apples and raspberries, plus cucumbers and tomatoes from the greenhouse, and baby-leaf salads from pots outside the back door.

Sowing this month: Autumn-sown (Japanese) onions and lots of salads, for outside (under cloches) and in pots to refill the greenhouse borders once the toms are out, including winter lettuce, mizuna, mibuna, American land cress, corn salad, chard, beetroot (for leaves), turnips (for leaves), spring onions, and round-rooted carrots.

This month I will be:

  • Clearing summer brassicas
  • Planting autumn-sown onion sets
  • Mulching empty beds
  • Saving seeds
  • Taking cuttings of herbs and borderline-tender plants like salvias and pelargoniums
  • Planting herbs and perennial vegetables
  • Cooking apples (and tomatoes) to freeze for winter

New perennial crops for this year

Perennial vegetables are so much more sustainable than annual as you don’t have to continually disturb the soil (so no carbon release) and they require much less input in the way of resources compared to raising seeds and using lots of water, warmth, feed and compost.

There aren’t many of them, though, and some are very unfamiliar. So one of my projects this season has been to start a perennial vegetable garden. No soil disturbance, a fraction of the inputs (feed, water, fertiliser, compost) of annual vegetables, and you lock up more carbon with permanent planting too. And a fraction of the effort of regular vegetable gardening. But the trick is to find perennial vegetables you actually want to eat: here’s what I’ve started with.

Daubenton’s (perennial) kale is growing well: it’s under a little tent of mesh to keep the butterflies off but I’ll remove that once they go away at the end of the season.

The skirret was a total failure: sowed direct in May as instructed, absolutely no seedlings. No idea if the slugs got them or if it was too dry or if they just didn’t fancy it this year. It may have been the seeds themselves so will order from a different supplier next year just in case. And I will be sowing them into pots where I can keep an eye on them.

Salsify were more successful: several good leafy rosettes now from direct sowing in May. I am leaving them to establish for a year or two before I try to pull a few roots.

American ground nut (Apios americana): I planted these odd little tubers (they are actually beans but are more like small, floury potatoes to eat) at the foot of canes by the low wall. Not all survived, but enough did for me to think this will be an interesting taste test next year!

Chinese artichokes: Easy as anything to grow – they’re related to deadnettle. I’ve got them in an old sink in the back garden: I will wait until they die back before harvesting some of the knobbly roots to try (probably next month: watch this space).

And a new addition: Turkish rocket (Bunias orientalis). It’s not the most spectacular plant, being a clump of fuzzy-felt leaves and not much else. But it is bone hardy and a useful spicy salad ingredient. And when I say spicy, I mean spicy: I had a little taste and like most things Turkish it’s ten times stronger than anything you’ve ever tasted before. I am not sure if I like it yet, but I will persevere.

New mentoring service

Well actually it’s not entirely new: I’ve been mentoring several students recently and have found it works so well I am offering it more widely.

The idea is that you have me “on tap” for advice and help about organic and sustainable methods of food growing, over email (no complicated technology to master!) and when you need it. Arrange an hour whenever it suits you and I can answer questions, give you loads of ideas and inspiration, guide you in starting up a new veg garden or help you develop an existing one. It’s entirely up to you what we talk about and it’s completely tailored to you and your garden. Book a one-off session, or a regular time each week. It’s up to you!

A lovely comment from one regular student recently: “I’m SO glad you’re there!”

For more details contact me at sally(dot)nex(at)btinternet(dot)com.

This year’s tomatoes: the verdict

I haven’t a lot of room in the garden to grow dozens of different types of tomatoes but I do like to try one or two new ones each year (there are about 7,500 varieties to choose from so there’s always one you haven’t grown before)

It has not been a vintage year. I’ve had lots of tomatoes: but only one of the three I grew came up to scratch.

Ailsa Craig Good old Ailsa. What would we do without her? There are relatively few straightforward medium-sized salad toms around nowadays – we all seem to be growing fancy cherries, black tomatoes and beefsteaks instead. But sometimes all you need is a straightforward slicing tom and this one is fantastic: reliable, prolific and great flavour too.

Coeur de Bue To be honest this is my own fault as I was being a cheapskate. I grew Coeur de Boeuf a year or two ago and loved it: all the flavour and size of a beefsteak without the difficulty (or low yields). This one came as a freebie and I thought, Bue? Boeuf? Not much in it… how wrong can you be. Insipid taste, pinkish red (so hard to tell when it’s ripe) and a sort of dry texture: a pale shadow of the original. Won’t be growing again.

Reisentomate Another freebie I should have turned down. It’s an interesting idea: a tomato that grows in segments, so you can pick off a segment at a time to eat rather than having the whole tomato. But beyond the novelty value, you’ve got to ask yourself….. why? Flavour insipid, texture dry, fruits small. Just no.

Mouse attack!

Mice got into the greenhouse and ate my low-hanging tomatoes…
… and then they nobbled my newly-emerged beetroot seedlings. The giveaway that this is not slug damage is that nipped-off leaf: a slug would have eaten them down to the ground.

I have been battling the mice. You may think this would be something of an unequal fight, being as I’m several gazillion times their size but they are obviously far cleverer than me.

It started with them taking munchies out of my low-hanging tomatoes: I have never had this happen before in all my 25+ years of growing veg but it was definitely mice as they climbed on top of one fruit and left a lot of poo as a calling card. Yum #not.

Now they’re after my beetroot seedlings. I sowed them direct and they came up within days. Yet along came my whiskery friends and… no more beetroot seedlings.

I do have a feral cat but she is getting old nowadays and spends most of her time on the boiler. I am also starting to think a cat brings too much in the way of collateral damage: don’t mind the baby rabbits so much, but the robins are heartbreaking. So Sooty is to be my last cat and I will have to think of other ways to keep the little blighters off my food in future.

I could trap them, but I always prefer a live and let live policy so for now I am trying an alternative approach. Come back next month for news of its success (or not).

We are all scientists

26 Thursday Nov 2015

Posted by sallynex in education, wildlife gardening

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Tags

citizen science, hedgerows, natural history museum, OPAL, wildlife

OVER-18s-GENERAL-WILDLIFE_Paul-Steven_dormouse-on-forsythia-taken-in-St-Ives-Cornwall

‘Dormouse on Forsythia’ by Paul Steven, St. Ives, Cornwall: winner, over 18s ‘General Wildlife’ category, OPAL Devon & Cornwall wildlife photography competition

Recently I found myself sitting cross-legged staring into my hedge.

I have particularly fine hedges. Good thing too as there are rather a lot of them: half a mile, to be exact.

They are ancient Somerset hedgerows and were old before I was even born. As is the way in these parts they’re built up on banks of churt flint and are mainly hazel: some are laid, but most are not, relying on the density of the species which grow in them to keep animals in and people out.

They are wildlife superhighways (as I know to my cost, having lost more just-sown broad bean seeds to the field mice in my hedgerows than I care to remember). You can tell how healthy your hedge is by counting the number of different species of plant in a three metre stretch, plus noting down evidence of animal activity (holes) and food (berries, nuts) as well as actual animals themselves (in my case, mainly snails, woodlice and centipedes).

My hedges got a silver award for structure (they’re getting a bit gappy here and there) and a gold for animal diversity and wildlife value. I felt quite proud.

In case you’re wondering what I’m on about, I was doing a biodiversity survey for OPAL (Open Air Laboratories), the citizen science project run by Imperial College London, the Natural History Museum, the Met Office, half a dozen other universities, and oh, loads of august institutions.

Its surveys have collected over 55,000 records of evidence collected by ordinary people like you and me, involving us in investigating the effects of everything from soil activity (worm-hunting) to water quality (ponds) and air quality (lichen – that was another one which had me peering at bits of my garden, this time the apple trees). There are now nearly 10 separate surveys, and anyone can join in: take a look and choose one you’d like to have a go at here.

They’re great fun, they get you looking at your garden in a whole different light, and what’s more you’re contributing to some really important research, feeding in to the great sea of knowledge from which ground-breaking insights occasionally pop up to influence governments, formulate solutions and generally change the way we think.

Citizen science is a fantastic way for scientists to gather huge quantities of information. The RSPB now has decades of detail about garden birds thanks to the Big Garden Birdwatch in January; the Big Butterfly Count in mid-summer is doing the same thing for butterflies; and the Ladybird Survey is keeping tabs on invasive alien harlequins via records of insects visiting people’s houses, sheds and gardens.

Isn’t it interesting that so many are garden-based? I’m sure it’s partly because that’s the outside space most of us have access to; but I suspect it’s also because gardeners are closet scientists by nature.

I don’t think of myself as much of a scientist; far too woolly of thought. But when it comes to plants and gardening I’ve taken science on board almost without realising it. I test my soil and know all about pH and geology; I can tell you the difference between xylem and phloem and wax lyrical on the ultra-violet patterns on foxglove flowers.

And I think that’s why I like doing OPAL surveys. I’ve become a scientist without noticing. Surprisingly, in the light of my almost overwhelmingly negative memories of science from school, it’s really interesting, too. Citizen science is taking off the lab coats, stripping out the inexplicable jargon and taking down the barriers dividing us into ‘artists’ or ‘scientists’. Turns out you don’t have to choose: it’s just about finding out about the world around you, after all. And it gives you a really good excuse to look at your garden for absolutely ages.

A gardening gift for Christmas

22 Sunday Nov 2015

Posted by sallynex in education, self sufficiency

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Tags

christmas gifts, gardening gift vouchers, My Garden School, special offers

MGS-Ad-300x250-xmasStuck for something to buy a green-fingered loved one this Christmas?

Well – My Garden School are now offering gift vouchers.

I hear the Advanced Veg Growing & Self-Sufficiency course is good….. 😀

(we’re currently having lots of lively discussion about the mystery ailment afflicting one student’s leeks, plus gardening in Idaho and Florida… my students do get about a bit!)

Gift Vouchers cost £145 and are available to buy here (you could always treat yourself if you can’t persuade anyone else to!)

Happy Christmas!

Things ain’t what they ought to be

03 Tuesday Nov 2015

Posted by sallynex in education, kitchen garden, seeds

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Tags

hybrids, hydrangeas, patty pan, seed, squash

pattypansquashThese are this year’s patty pan squash

They’re a little bit odd. I’ve grown yellow patty pans before: and they were like miniature flying saucers, about 8-10″ across and beautifully scalloped at the edges.

These are not.

They reach this size – about 4″ across – make a half-hearted attempt at the scallop thing and then go rotten.

I shouldn’t complain really: they’re very prolific as you can see, so make up for lack of size with quantity. They’re nice and firm (before they go soft) and tasty: I cut them up skins and all and use them just like courgettes.

But yellow patty pans they aren’t. I now think I got a duff batch of seed.

pattypansquash2

This happens more often than you’d think. One year I bought three plug plants which were meant to be melons: two of them were, the third turned out to be a pumpkin. You can’t actually tell the difference just by looking at the seedlings: it was when the flowers appeared that the truth was out, but by then it was a massive behemoth bidding for a greenhouse takeover.

I planted three hydrangeas this spring in a client’s garden which were meant to be ‘Mariesii Perfecta’ – a seductive smokey-grey-blue lacecap so beautiful you can’t quite believe it’s real.

What has flowered is a horrid candy-pink half-mophead, half-lacecap which looks like a reject from a failed hydrangea breeding experiment. It’s dreadful and rather embarrassing since I had talked the owner into getting ‘Mariesii Perfecta’ instead of the ‘Annabelle’ she had originally suggested.

The list goes on: limp ‘Lollo Rossa’ lettuces in a washed-out half-green instead of the crisply ruffled burgundy purple they’re meant to be; winter super-hardy supposedly January King cabbages which are not properly savoyed and worse, mature and over by September; ‘Electric’ onions more pink than red.

I don’t know whether seed companies are getting complacent: perhaps they’re assuming we don’t know enough about our varieties (or care, perhaps) to be able to tell the difference.

Or maybe it’s us: I haven’t yet complained about the hydrangeas, though I know I should have my money back or perhaps three Annabelles to replace them. And if I did complain at least the plant producers would know I actually noticed and cared.

Something is undeniably a little amiss with the supply chain here, and it worries me: if you don’t get the right thing in your seed packet (or plug plant tray) and you don’t know, then you’ll always have a skewed idea of what home-grown vegetables (or plants in general) should be like. It matters for future breeding, as muddied gene pools are not good for predictable results. And it matters just because when I buy a certain type of lettuce I have chosen it for the properties it’s supposed to have – not some diluted hybrid mishmash.

Back to school!

13 Thursday Aug 2015

Posted by sallynex in education

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Tags

course enrolment, Garden School

MGS-Ad-728x90-1

Just popping up to say…  there’s a 15% discount on course enrolment prices at MyGardenSchool right now, so make this the year you learn something new and take your gardening to even greater heights!

Hurry on over and book yourself on to any course, but may I recommend my Advanced Veg Growing and Self-Sufficiency course 😀 It’s a great environment for discussing all things veg-related – and you can pick my brains as much as you want to about your own plot, any problems you’ve been having, design and planning for your best-ever year of veg growing.

Click here, or on the banner above to take advantage of the offer. Go on – you know you want to!

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