An afternoon of sowing and potting on

Posted by louisa on Thursday 14 April 2011 in growing | 3 comments

Just so I’ve got a record of what has been planted/potted on and when — and what I have to do on Sunday.

Sown:

• Achocha – weee, I’ve been super-excited about these since I heard about them from The Cottage Smallholder
• Borage – for my mini forest garden bed
• Broccoli – misc cheap variety
• Broccoli Rabb/Rapini – only heard about this at the weekend but very excited about them
• Carrots – just a misc variety I picked up for 75% off late last year
• Courgettes – two hybrid varieties (Cavali F1 and Parthenon F1)
• Dwarf beans – some from the packet, some from saved seed
• Marigolds – I don’t normally do flowers but a good companion plant. Winning of the weirdest seeds of the day award – they looked like baby octopus tentacles.
• Oregano – winning the tiniest seeds of the day award
• Perpetual spinach – leftover from last year, not sure how they’ll do
• Sweet peas – the only other flower generally allowed here

Potted on:

• Butternut squash
• Cucumbers batch #2

To sow at the weekend:

• Lettuce – more tom thumbs for when the current batch are harvested
• Mixed CCA salad leaves – ditto
• All sorts of wildflowers
• Cat grass & cat nip
• The rest of the potatoes
• Greens for the chickens if I make a feeder like Kate from Living the Frugal Life

To be potted on/transplanted at the weekend:

• Tomatoes – first batch big ones and the smaller second batch ones
• Swiss chard
• Beetroot
• Potatoes – well, not transplanted on but the very earlies need levelling up

Poll: what seeds have you started so far this year?

Posted by louisa on Thursday 14 April 2011 in growing | 0 comments

I’ve been seeing lots of people blogging and tweeting about their greenhouse contents recently – what’s been sown and when. It’s interesting that some people nearby are planting some of their things much later than me – but other things earlier. I guess we all find our sweet spots between ours schedules and our plants’ demands.

Anyway, I thought it would be fun to see what people have sown up until now so I made a poll – feel free to tick all that apply. Sorry some things have been grouped together and other things have been missed out entirely — the only way to avoid the list getting super-super long!

I’ve put my answers in now but I’m hoping to add to it by the end of the day – I’ve got a whole load of “to plant in April” things just begging to jump into soil!

Tomatoes: determinate or indeterminate, that is the question

Posted by louisa on Wednesday 13 April 2011 in growing | 2 comments

I think I’ve just about reached the stage where my first set of tomatoes needs potting on.

These are the ones that survived the Great Damping Off Disaster of 2011 and they seem to be doing quite well. I have some later ones that are still in modules – they’ll need moving up a stage in a week or so but I think this first batch could use moving on ASAP as I think they’re a little cramped now and starting to suffer as a result.

Up until now, I’ve been more interested in the resulting type of tomato than the actual growing process – I’m a naughty gardener, naughty naughty – and I suspect my crops have suffered as a result.

Now that I’m trying to be more efficient though, I want to do things right. This “potting on” stage now will potentially be to the plants’ final destinations so I’ve been reading about determinates/indeterminates and that sort of thing to make sure the right tomatoes end up in the right pot. According to the wonderful Wikipedia,

Determinate, or bush, types bear a full crop all at once and top off at a specific height; they are often good choices for container growing. Determinate types are preferred by commercial growers who wish to harvest a whole field at one time, or home growers interested in canning. Indeterminate cultivars develop into vines that never top off and continue producing until killed by frost. They are preferred by home growers who wish ripe fruit throughout the season.

I have planted three main types of tomatoes this year: some rich Roma plums for sauces, some sweet cherry tomatoes (Sweet Million F1 – I sowed some yellow cherry Golden Nuggets as well but they all died in the aforementioned Damping Off Tragedy), and some “standard size” Moneymakers. Nothing too exciting but some variety – some for now, some for sauces, some for whatever.

According to a bit of Googling around, I’ve found Roma tomatoes are a determinate bush, Sweet Million an indeterminate vine and Moneymaker is another indeterminate vine, albeit with slightly bigger fruit.

I had hoped to grow some in the greenhouse (in big pots and growbags) but had thought I’d take advantage of some vertical height in the garden by growing some in hanging baskets/upside down containers too. (Although I’d keep said baskets/containers in the greenhouse for at least another few weeks until it gets a bit warmer.)

eHow (which I admittedly always read with a slightly sceptical eye) tells me:

For baskets, you will want to use determinate tomato plants because they will not continue to grow bigger than the basket can hold, while indeterminate ones will.

But equally, I have to consider tomato size:

The size of the tomato plays an important role in whether or not it is going to be best for growing in baskets. Traditionally, there is less room in hanging baskets for a plant to reach full maturity. Therefore, cherry tomatoes, grape tomatoes and other dwarf tomatoes will work best in hanging baskets.

Ok… The “standard size” indeterminate Moneymakers seem destined to grow as cordons from pots/bags in the greenhouse – easy peasy. But what about the Roma & cherry tomatoes? The determinate Roma may be suitable for a hanging basket as they won’t sprawl, but perhaps the plum size fruit will be too big/thirsty for in a basket? The cherry tomatoes are the perfect size for a basket but my variety’s indeterminate nature may cause problems there…

Any experienced tomato growers care to weigh in? Do you prefer all determinate or all indeterminate or a combination of the two?

Using our homemade olive oil soap

Posted by louisa on Tuesday 12 April 2011 in making, soap | 9 comments

Last week, we started using our homemade olive oil soap.

You might remember I spent A MILLION HOURS waiting for the damn thing to trace back in February but didn’t think it would work because it was sloppy in the moulds for a few days. Then it started to solidify and I did a happy dance.

So, anyway, after a few more weeks of curing/drying, we started using it last week. I went with one of the 100% olive oil ones, not the one-third olive oil, two-thirds other veg oils (more on those later when we try them).

I was really paranoid at first – worried it would be too caustic or something – so made sure to scrap off the bits of white powder (soda ash) from the edges, rather than just washing it off. Cavitch’s troubleshooting guide says to beware of “excessive” white powder as that can indicate too much lye or hard water has been used – but I don’t think my white powder was “excessive”, just some.

The soap is very pale – almost pure white. Apparently the better quality of olive oil, the paler the resulting soap. My olive oil (which came from Netto) claimed to be extra virgin so this fits. It has quite a neutral smell – slightly olive oil-ish but nowhere near as strong as the olive oil I started with. It’s pretty hard now and doesn’t lather much at all – but that’s expected with pure olive oil soap and the latter isn’t a huge problem as it’s not like we’ll be using it as shaving soap or anything like that.

So anyway, the verdict. It feels nice to use – smooth and silky, and no alkaline burns at all – always a good thing in a soap ;). Because of the play and stuff last week, I haven’t actually got my hands that dirty since we started using the soap so can’t comment on the actual cleaning properties but it leaves my skin feeling clean – and … not “squeaky”. I don’t know how to describe it but whenever I usually use normal bar soap, my skin feels “squeaky” afterwards – presumably either dryness or some sort of residue. That isn’t a problem with our olive oil soap – even when I washed them five times in a row to double-triple-quintiple check that it wasn’t too caustic (yes, really overly paranoid).

As I said explained in my last soap post, we’re not interested in pretty or pleasantly perfumed soaps – we want them to clean us, be long lasting, to have an inoffensive smell, create minimal waste and be frugal. The hardness of this soap means it doesn’t turn to mush in the soap dish and the only waste produced were two plastic bottles (which can be recycled – but one of which was actually reused as a soap mould first).

As for the frugalness, I had used this recipe and method which called for 1 litre of olive oil, 126g of caustic soda and 300g of water. I paid £2.52 for the olive oil from Netto, about £1.50 (I’ve lost the receipt!) for 500g of caustic soda from Wilkinsons (so about 38p for the amount I used) and tap water (which is effectively free), so the consumables cost around £2.90 for the batch. (I did buy a pan and steel dish to use too – but they’ll be used again for soap making and other non-foody pursuits (such as dyeing) so I considered them a general craft supply costs rather than including them in these figures.)

Weighing it just now, I’ve got around 1050g of dried, ready-to-use soap – or 35p per 125g bar — my bars differ in sizes (from about 50g, for the ones from the fruit tray mould – as seen in the pictures – to about 125g for ones shaped in an old mini roaster tray) but that’s the size of a bar of Oliva soap, which is the 100% olive oil soap we’d used previously, so is a good comparison. Oliva usually costs about £1 a bar.

All in all, I’m glad I tried it and I’m very happy with the result – but it was a bit of a faff. I think I did the right thing by processing two loads of soap on the same day so made economies of scale re: faffiness. Hopefully the soap we’ve got now will last us about a year – I’d happily do it once every six months or a year but I couldn’t be bothered doing it much more frequently than that.

This week’s meal plan: returning to normal

Posted by louisa on Tuesday 12 April 2011 in weekly meal plans | 2 comments

So last week was pretty chaotic – but by and large, I did avoid resorting to junk food — by missing dinner just about every night. I underestimated how long I’d be at the theatre each night and was rarely home before midnight – so I was grateful that I’d planned decent sized lunches! The show went surprisingly well – after three less than promising dress/tech rehearsals, we and the kids were all really thrown when they did a stellar job on opening night. We had lots of good audience feedback too, hurrah. :)

Anyway, this week, we’re back to normal – actually better than normal since my classes are cancelled over Easter – so hopefully we’ll stick to our plan!

Monday lunch: toast & cheese
Monday dinner: pasta carbonara

Tuesday lunch: bread & hummus, and pickles
Tuesday dinner: sweet chilli turkey & veg stirfry with noodles

Wednesday lunch: sandwiches
Wednesday dinner: homemade pizza

Thursday lunch: leftovers from either lunch or dinner on Tuesday
Thursday dinner: roast lamb with green beans & carrots

Friday lunch: egg mayo ploughman’s salad thing
Friday dinner: chicken enchiladas with salad

Creating miniature forest gardens?

Posted by louisa on Friday 8 April 2011 in growing | 9 comments

On Wednesday Linda pointed out that my sawing wood avoidance isn’t lazy but “efficient”. Yes, *cough*, efficient, I concur.

I’m trying to be as efficient as possible in the garden this year – both according to that meaning and the conventional one — and from that and some recent reading, I’m thinking of creating two small forest gardens spots in my garden.

For those not familiar with the idea, forest gardening is a way to multicrop one area – growing (usually) edible plants, shrubs and trees at up to seven different levels, from the treetop canopy levels to ground cover and even root veg. You can create them at a forest scale or even just in small container. It’s efficient in terms of space – a variety of potential food from one area – and can be efficient in the not-sawing-really-lazy sense too if most/all of the layers are perennials or self-seeders.

Both spots I’ve thinking about are in raised beds underneath trees – the first underneath a super tall 100 year old silver birch, then second under a recently planted (currently 2 years old) morello cherry. The silver birch would be canopy layer-plus-plus as it’s miles away from anything else. The cherry, which is on semi-dwarf rootstock, will grow to no more than 2.5m-3m tall so is more at the second layer, the “low tree layer”.

The idea is to have a wedge shape if at all possible – the tall things at the back, the short things at the front, so everything gets sufficient light. The trees are, usefully, in just about the right position for this – towards the back of the space (or at least with ample space to the front) and positioned so that they won’t block the sun. (The back of the house, and thus the garden, is east-facing but the southern facing aspect is completely open too so the silver birch bed gets full sun from about 10am until 4pm-5pm in the summer, and the cherry space from dawn until 2pm.)

Both spots are small and both trees will be pretty thirsty, so I probably won’t be able to plant a full set of layers of demanding fruit & veg but I think there is potential for some stuff. Even if I’m not growing huge amounts of anything in particular, as long as it’s not taking me a lot of effort, it seems to be a good use of space – especially as they’re underused/used as a dumping ground as the birch bed (at the top) is used now.

I’ve already started to plant some shrub-layer fruit bushes under the silver birch – some raspberries that’ll hopefully grow to 3ft-4ft tall. I don’t think the bed is deep enough towards the front for root veg but it’ll certainly be fine for herbaceous things — it would make sense to put borage in there (which grew to between 2-3ft last year) because it’s near the chickens who love borage and I’ve got some chard just starting off, which could go in front of that. Finally, I’m not sure I’ll have any spare plants this year but hopefully once my strawberries start multiplying, I could plant some runners as ground cover/to topple over the edge. Borage self-seeds, chard can (can’t it?) and strawberry runners will last a few years before needing swapping out – so that, in theory, sounds like it could be a lazy efficient bed.

There is only about half that space around the cherry tree so I can’t pack it out. I think big berry bushes would overwhelm the space and clash with the lower tree branches but might get away with some shorter fruit bushes – possibly a small blueberry bush (I’ve seen some that are only about 2ft tall), and when I can propagate children from my cranberry & lingonberry bushes, I could include their offspring there too (the cranberry “strands” could flop over the side of the raised bed). I guess I wouldn’t be adding either of those things this year – which would probably be good as it would let the cherry tree get established in the meantime. I wonder if there is anything not resource crazy that I could put in there now… possibly some not-moisture-crazy herbs? Rosemary? Lavender? I have some little lavender plants in the nearby herb bed which could be transplanted without too much disruption and some other rosemary plantlets nearly ready to be planted out too.

One layer I’ve not talked about is climber/vines – which is the seventh layer. If I thought kiwis or grapes would grow well enough this far up north, I’d possibly consider them for climbing up around the silver birch. Is there anything else in that category that would work? I guess I could leave some space for annual vines – “climbing” squash or something but they are very resource intensive. I’m going to make sure the beds are well enhanced with organic matter before I start but it seems silly to overload them straight afterwards.

Has anyone else created any really small scale “forest gardens”? Is there anything to watch for or need to consider? Any suggestions/advice about my initial plant choices?

Things I’m getting unduly over-excited about this week

Posted by louisa on Thursday 7 April 2011 in growing | 6 comments

1. The sunny weather
It’s just glorious out there.

2. The sunny-yet-windy weather meaning clothes line dry super quickly
I put out a load yesterday morning and another this morning – and both lots were dry by about lunchtime. Smashing!

3. All the green halos appearing on the trees
The sycamores started last week but the silver birches just yesterday – the leaf buds are at the ends of such spindly little branches that the buds look just like a green haze.

4. The elderflower buds are thinking about taking shape
I noticed this while having a cup of tea on the balcony earlier – the tree next to the house is budding up. Elderflowers fritters in a couple of weeks, yay!

5. That cup of tea on the balcony in the aforementioned glorious sunny weather
We generally have good tea but then perhaps, say, one in 20 cups of tea are just perfect. Perfect temperature, strength & sweetness. The sunshine & animals accompanying me at that time just added to it.

6. My previously floppy-leaved lettuces are pulling themselves into heads
I mentioned this on Twitter and ViksterBean said: “Isn’t it great when veg suddenly starts to look like veg, if you know what I mean?!” I do know what she means and it’s just jolly marvellous!

7. My first batch of tomato seedlings
I lost loads of baby tomatoes to the Great Damping Off Crisis of 2011 so I’m feeling very protective of the ones that made it through – and my babies are doing well.

8. The first early potatoes are starting to peek their heads through the first level of soil
Nearly time to level up! (Oh and to plant out the rest too.)

9. The fact we just had toasties for lunch
John and I both get over excited about toastie-maker toasties considering it’s just beans, cheese & crappy white bread (well, and peanut butter for him, and tabasco sauce for me). I think it’s a residual thing from childhood when we weren’t allowed them often because our mums considered it too much faff to clean the toastie maker afterwards (and cleaning it ourselves would be unthinkable). Today’s toasties were especially exciting as I had a nutella one as a lunch dessert. Mmm, vegetable oil.

10. Anticipation for 10pm on Saturday night
When our last performance comes to an end. Last year, my fellow tutor Karen and I were dancing/singing along backstage due to hysteria/relief on the last night of the show; this year, the hysterical/nervous dancing started last night, the final dress rehearsal. It’s the first performance tonight. I’m not on stage but I’m the stage manager so that means I have to make sure all 43 hyper teenagers are where they’re supposed to be when they’re supposed to be there. 10pm on Saturday night will be sweeeeeet.

Are you unduly excited about anything this week? What’s got you embarrassingly giddy?