Weeding the Web

Halloween pumpkins don't come any bigger than this

Bigger is better. Well, it is if you're Stuart Paton who won the top prize of £1000 at the RHS's London Harvest Festival Show, which took place this month.

The giant cucurbit weighed 327kg (721.4lb). Now, Stuart is no stranger to squashy success and I can only think his competitors' hearts sink when they realise they're up against him. Last year, he and his twin, Ian, grew a monster and explained that the secret was in feeding the pumpkin a good, balanced diet. He must be right; when the lists were available on the website of The European Giant Vegetable Growers' their name featured heavily in the annual lists of heaviest pumpkins (all 1100lb+), a class that they won in 2010 and 2008.

If you feel yours have proved rather puny, then their Pumpkin Growing Instructions and, at Gardeners Net, Top Ten Secrets for Growing Record-Breaking Giant Pumpkins will give you a head start. Mycorrhizae might prove helpful too.  You have a way to go, though to break the new world record of 2009lbs, achieved by Ron Wallace in Rhode Island.

For those who want to give their pumpkin an extra spurt, without all that extra work, (or cheat, as the rest of us might say) here's an aged tip from The Garden Magazine, 1918, found on the delightful Earthly Pursuits website.

Secure some pieces of round lamp wick. Holes are made in the stalk of the fruit and, into these, one end of the wick is inserted. The other end of the wick rests in a jar of water which is kept well supplied.

This, it says, will ensure that pumpkins grow at twice their normal rate. Or will it risk injury to the vine and offer an entry point for plant diseases, as Pumpkin Nook says of the alternative option of feeding them milk.

It's a method used, I discover from the Milk Fed Pumpkin blog, in Laura Ingalls Wilder's book Farmer Boy, by Almanzo (yes, her future husband). The blog describes a modern-day attempt at the same feat. Sadly, until its early demise, their non-milk fed pumpkin did the best. So perhaps it doesn't work.

But you really want it to, don't you?

If by any chance you've succeeded with pumping up a pumpkin, then do let us know. In the meantime, don't assume yours won't take on a growth spurt (as happened to the person who's pumpkin is pictured above) and here are a few ideas for Halloween, gruesome and cute.

 

 

National Gardening Leave - a nef (or naff?) proposal

Have you thought that an extra day in the garden each week would be nice? Well, you're not alone. In fact the New Economics Foundation has suggested just that in its recently published paper, National Gardening Leave.

Here's their opening paragraph:

This pamphlet argues that Britain would be better off if we all spent less time at the office. It makes the case for a new, voluntary scheme to introduce a shorter working week. We call this National Gardening Leave. The proposal calls for adapting a wide range of available spaces for the rapid expansion of gardening, both productive and aesthetic in Britain’s towns and cities.

I want to like this. I really do.

But I can't. 

But what's not to like? It's a proposal that proffers an improved economy, a healthier and happier population, and an enhanced environment.

You've got to support your idea with more than "yes-but” statements: you know, the sort of woolly "facts" that might be thrown into general conversation over the dinner table.

“Settled farming…created time for other expressions of being beyond survival.”

So before then, cave paintings drew themselves? And did no one see Bruce Parry’s Tribe, which showed the remarkably relaxed lifestyle of the Kombai hunter-gatherers in Papua?

Small point, maybe, but the statement's been considered worthy of inclusion, setting the scene for the main arguments. 

nef

In case you didn’t know, nef (note those hey-we’re-breaking-boundaries lower-case letters) describes itself as an independent “think-and-do” tank that aims “to improve quality of life by promoting innovative solutions that challenge mainstream thinking on economic, environment and social issues."

Check! Theirs certainly isn't a mainstream proposal.

They are, they say, “unique in combining rigorous analysis and policy debate with practical solutions on the ground.”

Hmm. Here's how they present their rigorous analysis on National Gardening Leave.

Conifer comeback - good evergreens for the small garden?

 

Picea glauca JW Daisy's White, a conifer recommended by Derek Spicer

Something that may have escaped your attention is that this is National Conifer Week - yup, till 7th October. It's been going for seven years and its aim, according to an article in Hort Week last year, is:

 

to showcase the modern-day conifer, highlighting the structures, styles and colours available and the suitability for conifers in all types of garden.

"It's time to challenge the view that conifers are old-fashioned," say the organisers.

For those of us who remember 1970s gardens, this is the horticultural equivalent of the return of flares. You saw them everywhere, and were glad when they'd gone. As I recall, they were particularly present in the gardens of boxy new-builds with no chimneys (hmm, a physical expression of a subconscious loss?).   

Still, I suspect, however groan-worthy some of us find them, we do recognise their usefulness in creating structure in a winter garden, and punctuation in a summer bed. Go and get one and you'll be bang on trend. Conifers are making a comeback.