Weeding the Web

Garden product review: bamboo trowel and handfork

Bamboo is a tough old bird, as many gardeners have found to their cost, as they've hacked away at ever-spreading clumps.  According to the Guinness Book of Records, the fastest growing plant on the planet is a type of bamboo, racing away at 0.00002 mph to make a rather staggering 35 inches (91 cms) in one day. 

Such energetic performance, at a time when sustainable living is a constant goal, makes it an attractive possibility as a wood substitute (products include bamboo-based fibreboard and cement-bonded particleboard), but how about garden implements?

Bristol-based allotmenteers Jyoti and Martin Shaw run Damson, the rather attractive online garden shop. They recently sent me their bamboo trowel and handfork to try.

They describe the trowel as "surprisingly durable", suitable for all soil types, and "especially good for planting and weeding, mixing in natural fertilizer or transplanting".

The fork, they say, has been designed "to loosen soil, not to lift it" and is great for mixing soil materials, turning compost piles, weeding, and harvesting root crops like carrots and potatoes.

So, what did I think?  Well, the first striking fact is that they are incredibly light. Really, really light. If you suffer from sore or arthritic joints, then this could be a major bonus for you. You could also slip them into the pocket of a gardening apron and barely know they're there.

The tools are formed from a single piece of bamboo, which means the handle is very flat and in line with the working end. I find that the end digs into the palm a little. On the other hand, because they're so light and you don't need to grip them hard, this really doesn't bother me. However, if you found this a problem, a bit of gardener's ingenuity with some padding and string, or indeed Sugru, would let you retain a lightweight tool with a bit more comfort.

Performance-wise, I had to get past the mind-block of being scared to use something not metal and, therefore, apparently fragile. Once I got used to them, however, I was surprised. They are robust. This garden has heavy clay soil and I wouldn't want to try to break up concrete-like earth with the handfork, but it happily turned over the slightly looser soil of the raised beds. In wet soil, the tines clog up slightly more easily than metal ones, but again it wasn't a problem.

Damson also sell Bambu plant labels

The trowel is very sturdy and, in dried-out clay, had no more difficulty than a metal trowel in cutting through it (by which I mean, both of them can barely manage it). It has a thin edge, which helps in cutting through soil. Its body is a little thicker than a metal trowel, so in some soils I suspect it take a little more effort to push it through, but again in the looser soil of the raised beds I noticed no real difference.

Bambu, who make the tools, is a company focussed on renewable materials and sustainable business practices. They also make plates and cutlery and were awarded Green Americas Green Business Seal of Approval.  The tools are handmade from certified organic bamboo, without glues, plastics or lacquers, so their eco-friendly appeal makes them all the more attractive.

still, as all reviewers know, the real test of something comes after the trial. And the question is, Am I still using them? The answer is yes. 

There's another tantalising thought. If you've read the Implementations website, you'll know that one theory about copper tools is that their use reduces damage by slugs and snails. This, it's suggested, is  because they don't affect  magnetic signals in the earth the way that iron tools possibly do. If this is so, then it seems to me that using bamboo tools must also reduce slug and snail damage, as they surely won't affect magnetic signals either.

Anyone out there fancy conducting an experiment?

The Palm House, Sefton Park, Liverpool

At first I thought this was a rare flowering palm. Then I realised the petals had fallen from above...

Tell people you're going to Liverpool for a short break and it soon becomes clear that the standard response - at least, down here in the benighted and slightly superior South - is "Why?"

Which, I have to say, reflects more on the speaker than the city. We've just come back from our second visit in two years. If you haven't been yet, you're missing a treat.

We'd returned to mop up sites we didn't have time for last time. But we'd also added one: The Palm House, Sefton Park, which featured in Dan Cruickshank's very enjoyable Britain's Park Story on BBC4 back in April.

Sefton Park is one of those extensive parks we love but rarely create. Its 200 acres are filled with curving paths by cool borders, under shady trees, with large grassy areas for picnics and games, a boating lake, tennis courts, children's play area and a café. 

The park itself recently gained Grade 1 status from English Heritage.  Its design is pretty much unchanged since its opening in 1872 when designer Edouard André was the first to introduce French park design to England.

And, set in its own little enclosure, is the Palm House, opened in 1896. This, of course, extended the season for the Victorians and offered somewhere to promenade in wet weather. Back in the nineteenth century, it housed various water features and the warm air would have been filled with the sound of running water and thick with the scent of lilies.

 

One of the patrons was George Melly, who donated his cubist painting from 1947 to the Preservation Trust. Contact them to see if prints are still available.

I'm afraid the water features have gone, but we're lucky the whole structure hasn't disappeared. The Palm House, every bit a prey to the cuts in public spending as any other civic amenity, fell into disrepair and, with the danger of glass panes crashing to the ground, closed in the 1980s to threats of demolition. 

Local support gained a partial repair and reopening in 1993. More campaigning secured funding from the Lottery and English Heritage and a fully restored Palm House reopened in 2001.

And thank goodness it did. It's a glorious space, especially in the late afternoon sunshine that graced our visit.

Luckily we didn't have a smartphone with us to check  opening times, or we wouldn't have gone. Normally it closes at 4 pm but, throwing down our bags after arriving at the hotel, we hurled ourselves onto a bus and eventually (having no map) arrived on spec to find that a private view of artwork from a local college was keeping it open till six.

In the normal way of things, I could have done without the adornments, but as they were the reason we gained entrance, I couldn't really complain.

One of the artworks exhibited by Holly Lodge Girls' College, Liverpool.

I thought at first that this was an Indian maiden, posed by the Asian border, but she turned out to be Highland Mary, a popular subject for sculpture in the 19th century.

Sculpture by Benjamin Spence, 1854. Mary Campbell was loved by Robert Burns. "The golden Hours on angel wings/ Flew o'er me and my dearie,/ For dear to me as light and life/Was my sweet Highland Mary." Burns, a great poet (I'm told).

Around 300 plants from 50 countries are housed in the Palm House: 

   

 

 But for all the exotic flowers, it's the Palm House itself that is the real star.  I was sorry that this overhead walkway was firmly closed to the public.  That would have been a great view.

A Grade II* glass cathedral, 25m high, with 3710 flat panes of glass, all individually cut. Three cheers for the Victorians and a sense of civic pride:

If you are staying in Liverpool, take a bus up the Aigburth Road and get out at Lark Lane. This is a delightful approach to Sefton Park, full of bistros, delis and boutiquey shops, and a great place to grab lunch or an ice-cream before enjoying the park.

For pictures of the transition from dereliction to restoration, see Sefton Park Palm House Anniversary pictures from BBC News Liverpool.

Julian Pettifer's three-part BBC Radio 4 series on The Age of the Park from 2004, on the history and prospects of public parks, is still available to listen to.

 

Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day: Carpenteria californica finally flowers!

It was Wisley's fault. We saw this glorious bush - glossy leaves, dazzling flowers the size of fried eggs - and thought, We could grow that. The warning was there, had we actually listened to the nurseryman who told us he didn't bother to grow them himself now, as he found them temperamental.

No, we had to have a Carpenteria californica.

Also known as the Bush or Tree Anemone - in the Hydrangeaceae family but the only plant in its genus - it likes full sun and a sheltered position, so it went into the sunniest, most sheltered spot in the garden.

And what did we get?  Two years of a miserable plant that barely grew, the leaves of which became dull, dark and mottled, just like this old one you can see in the picture. And not a flower in sight. Not one.

Meanwhile, on return trips to Wisley, where the Carpenteria had been in a warm corner against the walls of the house, we were dismayed to find it gone. Removed. Completely. 

Ours certainly couldn't stay where it was, but a last-minute reprieve on a death sentence moved it to a spare patch at the back of the garden, north-facing, moderately shaded. And what do we get? An explosion of bright green growth and flower buds all over.

It'll need a bit of pruning to get it back into shape, but it's sprouting from the bare wood at the bottom, so that's no problem.

And what made the difference? Well, as well as liking full sun and shelter, it also likes moist soil. It got watered in the other place, but it was generally hot and dry. Now it's nicely moist, if somewhat shaded and cooler.

Which all goes to prove that in a list of cultivation instructions, some parts are more important than others. The problem, as ever, is working out which one you can't ignore. Now we know. It looks as if the Carpenteria is here to stay.

 
To see what else is blooming in garden bloggers' gardens around the world, nip over to May Dreams Gardens.

 

Herbal heaven: lovage biscuits and mint tea

This time of year is just herbal heaven. Mint tea - the type where you steep the green leaves in the pot, not the type with black tea included - tastes at its best right now. We have oodles of Moroccan mint. It strays up and down a long border.

Yes, I know this isn't good gardening practice, but equally, all those instructions you read about growing mint in a pot just won't give you enough, if you like drinking the tea as much as I do. A large sprig a day soon creates a forest of stalks.

Now is the time to really enjoy it. Mint starts growing as early as February in this garden but, earlier in the season, the flavour is pleasant but a bit thin, as if the plant hasn't quite geared up to churning out the essential oils that create the taste.

Later in the year, when the leaves are altogether tougher and flowers are on the way, the flavour is coarser and darker. But right now, it sings - green, freshly minty, filling the mouth with summer.

But mint isn't the only herb to sing at the moment. The lovage is also surging forth and ever since I discovered the recipe for Lovage Cheese Biscuits on Gluts and Gluttony, these have become a regular feature of the biscuit tin.

In fact, I have instructions that, if ever I feel my hand straying towards the cheese biscuits in the supermarket, I should smack it firmly and rush home to make these instead.

I've modified the recipe a bit. Kathy (who writes the lovely Gluts and Gluttony) uses 5 oz of Parmesan, but I use a strong cheddar (which was what just happened to be available the first time I tried these).

I also wouldn't slice the biscuits any thicker than 3 mm. I haven't found that they snap, as Kathy says, but that may be because I've used cheddar instead. To slice this thinly, chill the block for at least a couple of hours.

I make mine just over 1 inch square. They make a perfect, crisp mouthful. So perfect that, when I took them along to a Sunday lunch party, I barely got to taste them myself.

But if you don't get through them all (unlikely), it doesn't matter as they stay crisp very well in a tin.

Tree Following: lilac tree still bursting at the seams

I don't think we can expect a particularly startling advance on last month's sprouts. They're bigger, and the one at the top on the sunniest side is the longest. However, all are continuing to grow and, unexpectedly (for me, anyway), new buds are still breaking through. What, I wonder will be the best way to deal with them all? I think a judicious bit of pruning will be called for eventually.

   

This is part of Lucy Corrander's Tree Following meme at Loose and Leafy. Visit to see how other trees are progressing around the world.

Book review: Land Girl, a Manual for Volunteers - how cucumber houses won WW2

This Friday, 6th June, sees the 70th anniversary of D-Day.  While the day itself reminds us of Mulberry harbours, beach assaults and, possibly, Red Buttons hanging by his parachute from a French church-spire in The Longest Day, it might not have happened at all, had it not been for the Land Army.

"Without the food you help to produce, the bravery of the fighting services would be of no avail and the machinery in our munition factories would be silent and still,"

the Minister of Agriculture, R S Hudson, told the Land Army In October 1940.

Its vital work is rammed home in suitably bracing style in Land Girl, A Manual for Volunteers, written in 1941, and available now in facsimile by Amberley Publishing.

Britain faced a problem. The stark warning on page 1 - "Germany is attempting to starve the British people into submission" - was all too possible. Farming had been run on a shoe-string for years; often hundreds of acres of pasture were tended by only a couple of labourers. Now that pasture was needed for production, with the War Agricultural Committee demanding more acres every year.  Around the cities, market gardeners were expected to crop intensively too.  Labour was in very short supply.

By 1941, the Land Army had around 10,000 volunteers - not nearly enough. Conscription for women had not yet arrived, so the manual aims at persuasion, calling on women to come to the aid of the overworked countryside. It attracted plenty of attention - Land Girl was one the year's best-sellers.

Dr Wilfred Edward Shewell-Cooper was a natural choice as author. Distinguished horticulturalist, adviser to the Ministry of Agriculture, Command Horticultural Officer for the S.E. and Eastern Command, he was already a prolific writer and his reassuring, friendly style combines a touch of humour with an authoritative tone.

We tend to picture Land Girls on top of tractors and under haystacks, but they were needed in forestry, for timber measuring, in dairying, and for market gardens. Punches about the work aren't entirely pulled: Cucumber houses would be "very pleasant work in winter", but very hot in summer. Market-gardeners would have to endure "the interminable hoeing" and fruit-spraying was "not always pleasant".

But as you'd expect, the tone is upbeat. If cleaning out ditches sounds ghastly, there's the compensation of doing good work for your country. The chapter on Welfare promises that the Women's Land Army (WLA) rep will approve your billet, give info on local services such as library times and postal collections, and invite you to tea.

With hindsight, it all sounds rather rose-tinted, especially in view of some of the Land Girls' recollections in the BBC archive, People's War. Still, by the time 80,000 Land Girls had been enrolled in 1943, it's not surprising that some rarely saw their rep, let alone had tea with her.

Some chapters are full of details of rates of pay, insurance cover and forms that need filling in. No doubt, it was hoped to save time at enrolment. But there are other chapters - on the history of the WLA during WW1, the uniform and Making the Most of the Country - which make interesting reading for the casual reader today.

Volunteers had to be between 18 and 60, of "good physique", armed with a medical certificate, and look to the interviewer as if they were up to the job. Those who'd carried out the manual's suggestion of carrying full buckets of water for half an hour and pitching earth onto a breast-high shelf probably already had their own ideas on that.

 

The Staffordshire Branch of the Women's Food and Farming Union is raising money for this sculpture by Denise Dutton as a memorial to the WLA. Click on the picture to go to their website.

"The trainee will not simply be used for the purpose of providing unskilled labour," says the manual reassuringly. The message was lost on some. Contributors to People's War describe farmers who provided barely a bed, little more than sandwiches to eat, and expected girls to work through heavy rain. The chapter, Hints and Tips, with its advice on how to deal with roughened hands, stepping on nails and animal bites conjures a picture of damp shoes, tight gumboots and heavy lifting.

For all the discomfort, however, many enjoyed themselves immensely. I spoke to Ramsay Shewell-Cooper, the author's son. He well remembers working with Land Girls at a market garden where they carried out the specialised jobs of bundling asparagus and forcing chicory.

"They showed me how to dance," he said. "I was an innocent little boy from boarding school. They'd all go home for lunch and you saw them coming back, hair in curlers, scarves on heads, and you knew they were going out later. Watching these girls having dolled themselves up - my education was wonderful!"

It all depended how you looked at the work. No one, points out Ramsay's father, will be     a success if she boasts about town life, irritates her rural hosts, parades around in make-up when country girls don't, and pushes herself forward. If you put your best into a job, it'll be more interesting, he says (sounding rather like one's mother), and taking part in country life will make you more popular.

Earlier in the war, a number of volunteers had dropped out, so the manual is not above a bit of emotional blackmail. Training and equipment cost money; if a Land Girl drops out, says the manual, someone may starve. "She must feel that she is feeding the nation."

But, really, that was true. Every Land Girl was a vital brick in Britain's wall of defence. As R S Hudson also said, "Famine could achieve what no bomb or blitzkrieg or invading force will ever bring about."

This facsimile edition comes with photographs of Land Girls at work and the bracingly cheerful score of Back to the Land, the Land Army anthem. There's no doubt that some of this book will only interest those who revel in minutiae, but for the rest, Land Girl provides a fascinating glimpse into the logistics, organisation and expectations of mobilising a huge untrained workforce to keep Britain fed.

This book was provided for review by Amberley Publishing.

 

Chelsea Fringe 2014: Show of Hands Event

Following on from last year's Chelsea Fringe Bloggers' Cut event, Michelle Chapman at Vegplotting this year has the online Fringe event, Show of Hands. 

This weekend we visited the local horticultural society's plant sale (cake and coffee included, naturally) Gardeners' hands are, more often than not, wrapped in gloves or grimy with soil. But sometimes they're just reaching for things.  

Here's one...ooh, look another! 
That looks rather nice...are you sure you wouldn't prefer that one?

Mine, all mine!

Pop over to Vegplotting to see who else has been giving Michelle a hand (or five).