Weeding the Web

The Gardener - a ghost story

E F Benson is best known for his Mapp and Lucia novels, 1920s' social satire which was beautifully enacted in the TV series by Geraldine McEwan, Prunella Scales and Nigel Hawthorne.  However, he also holds the distinction of being one of that small band (possibly of one, as I can't yet think of anyone else) of authors who have placed a gardener at the heart of a ghost story.  So, in honour of the day, why not print out the following, light the fire, draw the curtains and settle down for a mild thrill?

Preserving Your Pumpkin (and making cheesecake)

Just thought I’d slip in a quick one about Halloween as so many of you will be choosing your pumpkin and lovingly carving a masterpiece into it this week. You can make your carved pumpkin last longer by following the instructions at Pumpkin Patches and More. You’ll need bleach and Vaseline. 

And, instead of making the ubiquitous pumpkin soup with the innards, how about trying this recipe for Pumpkin Cheesecake?

For anyone confused by the use of American cups in the recipe, 1 cup = approx 8 fluid ounces, which = 125mL (for more measurement conversions, don't forget OnlineConversion. If you try the recipe, let us know how it turns out.

 

Growing peppers over winter

If overwintering this year’s pepper plants doesn’t appeal, you might instead like to consider Emma Cooper’s approach.

When she last posted on the subject, Emma had sprouted pepper seedlings earlier in October. Given that the difference between a good gardener and a not-so-good is about a fortnight, why not give it a go now? Although it's rather late, if you have good light and a heated propagator, you should get something started.  Regard it as an experiment and let us know how it goes!

Emma transplanted them, repotted as needed, and gathered her first fruit the following June. Given that mine have only finally ripened in the last month, that seems darn early to me!

Incidentally, I managed to buy a pepper plant last spring. If anyone has the remotest idea what it was that I bought (see picture), do let me know.

Cinderella - coaching a star at Halloween

One of the most popular pages on Weeding the Web at the moment is Cinderella’s Pumpkin Coach. I doubt it if it’s all down to the Bishops' Conference's call to shun the excesses of Halloween, but a glance at America makes me wonder if the desire for sweeter things hasn’t to do with people, there and in this country, tiring of the ghoulish emphasis of 31st October.

Nothing seems to represent Halloween better than the pumpkin and personally I enjoy carving a gap-toothed grimace into something that will otherwise just go for soup. But websites offer all sorts of unexpected, non-harrowing alternatives.

Overwintering peppers and chillies

If you grew peppers this year, chances are that you’ve still got a tired-looking plant hanging around with the odd fruit still clinging to it. You could chuck it on the compost, but how about the alternative?

The Chile Man, with a database of 3729 peppers and chillies, is chock full of information, including how to overwinter your peppers. It could be worth it, as peppers, it seems, nearly always produce more fruit in their second year.

Greenprints - Twenty Years of Garden Writing

This year has seen the twentieth anniversary of Greenprints, a delightful quarterly magazine, the autumn edition of which has just dropped through my letterbox.

Subtitled The Weeder’s Digest, and dedicated to the “human, not the how-to” side of gardening, it eschews information articles (so nothing on how to grow your cabbages or new blooms this season) and, instead, offers thoughtful, humorous and poignant essays inspired by gardens and gardening; it’s very personal writing.

Pat Stone, the editor, gives it a very warm touch. He himself is held in great affection by his readers, who like to be kept up to date with his family, so the mag usually includes a brief update on what’s been happening and, while Pat is editing, Becky his wife is i/c subscriptions.

It's a real mom-and-pop enterprise (as they say in the States), published from their home office in North Carolina, but that doesn't stop it being thoroughly professional. Pat was Garden Editor at Mother Earth News back in the 1980s, and has also co-edited Chicken Soup for the Gardener’s Soul, one of the hugely successful Chicken Soup series.

Greenprints is a feel-good publication, featuring poetry, quotations and charming illustrations, as well as around fifteen stories per issue. One of the regular contributing editors, with a humorous outlook on life, is Mike McGrath, the erstwhile Editor-in-Chief of Organic Gardening Magazine (the US one, not the defunct UK mag) who is known over the Pond for You Bet Your Garden! a long-running syndicated Public Radio show. 

If you wonder if Greenprints is for you, then have a dig round past issues, where you get a rundown of contents and good flavour of what's inside. CD selections are also available.

And, given that I’ve just visited two garden centres, both of which were putting up their Christmas grottoes, I’ll just whisper very quietly that a subscription might make a jolly nice present for a garden enthusiast.