Weeding the Web

The joy of juicers - fresh veg for breakfast

Every so often a list appears in a newspaper - Top Ten Least Used Kitchen Gadgets - and you can be sure that, along with the bread maker and the sandwich maker, a juicer will be among them.

I was reminded of this in a recent post by Wellywoman. Juicer sales* are up by 210% in John Lewis but, she says, anyone who has ever owned one "knows the reality. You use them once or twice then you realise they are a nightmare to clean, they spend a year in the cupboard before you give it away to some unsuspecting relative."

NO, NO, NO! Honestly, are you wondering if it would be a good idea to buy one? Do it!

Quite why we felt moved to buy a juicer has been lost in the mists of time, but our first - a Kenwood - lasted 14 years. When it finally failed in the face of daily use, we gulped at the modern prices and bought one from, yes, John Lewis.

This too comes in for daily use. Yes, it's a pain to clean. I mean what idiot - what idiot? - thinks tiny pointed pockets you can barely reach with a pin, let alone a washing-up brush, are a reasonable design? You possibly don't want to know that I tend just to close my eyes to parts where contact with fresh juice seems minimal and blitz them with curses every so often.

But it is a joy. I grow an inordinate number of beetroot. Why? Because it's heavenly juice to drink. Here are some lovely combinations:

Beetroot, apple and orange.

Beetroot, apple and carrot.

Beetroot, apple, orange and carrot.

Beetroot, apple and celery.

Beetroot, carrot and celery.

In fact any combination of the above, so long as you don't mix orange with celery. 

At this time of year it's particularly enjoyable. The russet apples are now softening, even in the chill storage area. Some of our other apples suffered from codling moth. So these go in the juicer (I cut the brown bits out). Beetroot are gradually harvested from the beds (I "store" them where they grow. It seems to work). After nearly 20 years of daily juicing, I find shop-bought juice tastes thick, heavy and dead while juice from fresh fruit and veg packs a zing on a winter morning. And the colour is beautiful.

But am I delusional? you're wondering. After all, there's that Top Ten list that argues I might be. Take a closer look.  The Daily Mail article lists the unloved gadgets along with "the percentage of people surveyed who own, but rarely use them". So 16% of juicer owners rarely use one. That leaves 84%. I'm betting that a high proportion of those, especially anyone who grows their own veg, are as happy with them as I am. 

*That rise in juicer purchases is spurred, apparently, by Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead, which sounds like another of those if-you-don't-stuff-yourself-with-fast-food-you'll-feel-better" documentaries. There are some interesting sounding juices from the movie at Awesome Rawsome.

Which? Gardening annoy Soil Association with results of research

Ouch! The latest Which? Gardening magazine crashed through the letterbox yesterday, having blazed a trail in the day's newspapers.

In a two-year research project, Which? found home-grown organic produce to be no more nutritious or tasty than non-organic. In some cases it came off distinctly worse.

Here we go again.

Interested parties have leapt to defend organic. According to the Daily Mail, the Soil Association has branded the research "irresponsible". Actually, a quick look at the Soil Association's press release shows that it's not the research per se that it deems irresponsible, but the use of pesticides that have been implicated in the rapid decline of the bee population and the use of metaldehyde.

Much is made of the result that tasters preferred the non-organic tomatoes, but several thoughts come to mind. Taste is affected by the soil in which a plant is grown, and by the water and feed it receives...

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.

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.

How to combat tomato blight

My very own sketch of Bob Flowerdew's blight protection shelter

So, talking about Blightwatch as we were, supposing there is a blight warning? What can you do? 

 

The Potato Council offers a pdf of Leisure Growers’ Advice on how to avoid blight, which includes photographs to aid identification. In their words, “The most effective control for the spread of infection is warm, dry and sunny weather.”

But, in the absence of that, they suggest repeated applications of copper-containing fungicides, such as Dithane 945 and Bordeaux Mixture.

How to control Potato Blight is one of the Top Ten subjects that come up again and again on Gardeners’ Question Time.

Matthew Biggs suggests various tactics, most of which you should have implemented before the dreaded warning. These include avoiding sheltered sites (presumably because it reduces the possibility of a hot and humid patch with its very own Smith periods), planting wider apart, and looking for early signs on neighbours’ crops and spraying with Bordeaux mixture before the blight reaches yours.

Blightwatch - so you know what's coming

I recently received my second Blightwatch Alert of the year. If you grow tomatoes and potatoes and haven’t already signed up to this service, you should as, once you have, you’ll get warnings of Smith periods, which are perfect times for blight to flourish.

For anyone who doesn’t know, a full Smith period occurs when the temperature during at least 2 consecutive days is 10°C or more, and relative humidity is greater than 90% for at least 11 hours each day.

Back in August 2007, I wrote about Blightwatch and Smith periods for Organic Gardening magazine (sadly defunct) and spoke to Steve Gerrish, Information Resources Manager at the British Potato Council. He said, “If there’s a spore on a leaf at the beginning of a Smith Period, then it will have germinated by the end, but it’s all risks and probabilities. A blight spore requires free water on a leaf in order to germinate. The Smith period is an estimate of a high-risk period.” It’s also why you should always water tomatoes at the base, so the leaves don’t harbour any “free water”.

So, even if you receive a warning, the occasional Smith Period isn’t a reason to panic, as it won’t automatically result in blight ravaging your plants. However, if periods occur every 7 to 10 days, that’s serious, as blight takes 7-10 days to develop and sporulate (excellent word, must repeat it)…sporulate again, so it thrives in such conditions.

Blightwatch also alerts you to Near Misses, when conditions are considered almost perfect. These need to be noted too, as your plants may be situated in a spot that, with the help of such climatic conditions, nurtures its own personal Smith periods.

So, forewarned is forearmed! But forearmed with what?

Something for the next blogpost, I think.

 

Increase your vegetable harvest by weeding

Blogs come and blogs go. It’s a great pity that so many good ones fall by the wayside. And before you put out the flags at the thought of no more Weeding the Web, I’m actually talking about DIY Gardening, which ran out of steam in August 2008. Which is a shame as it’s easy reading, with a few nuggets of useful information.

The post on vegetable yields made me gasp. Startling figures taken from the Washington/Oregon Master Gardeners’ Handbook show the results for two identically sized plots, one unweeded, one weeded. The first produced 27.9lbs of carrots and the second (wait for it) 503.3lbs of carrots. Onions showed a similar disparity in yield, the least effect being seen on cabbages, but even they produced 81% more when weeded.

Do go and see harvest figures for other vegetables. You’ll be reaching for the hoe in no time!

Beat the deadline at the Heritage Seed Library

While seed catalogues continue to pour through the door, or crash out of magazines just as we reach the till in Smiths, one is already running up against its “sell-by” date; the deadline for ordering seeds from the Heritage Seed Library (HSL) is 5th March and fast approaching.

My ankles were black and blue last year after I’d soundly kicked myself for missing the deadline and depriving myself of the regulation six packets which are allowed as part of the membership of the HSL.

Theirs is my favourite catalogue, particularly strong on tomatoes, and the only source I know of a good variety of climbing peas (why anyone wants to grow anything else in a domestic garden is a mystery to me).

If you don’t belong to the Heritage Seed Library, it’s not too late to join to take advantage of this year’s seed quota.

Presents for Gardeners: Penkridge’s perfect produce

It might seem a bit cruel, giving a gardener a gorgeous replica of an apple. Sort of rubs it in – hey, have you managed anything as good as this? But on the other hand, of anyone, gardeners really appreciate the beauty in small things, such as the perfect peapod, or smallest berry.

More than twenty years’ experience in ceramics have made Lorraine Taylor and Nicky Smart, of Penkridge Ceramics, experts in reproducing fruit and vegetables, which they cast from moulds of the originals, then glaze. They have a range of over hundred different fruits and vegetables, from globe artichokes and garlic to tomatoes, plums and quinces.

Experience has taught them an intimate knowledge of their models. “Straight off the tree, colours are light and fresh, but as the fruit lies around the studio—assuming it’s not eaten—it ripens more and colours deepen and mature. We’re now experts on the aging of fruit!”

With each new growing season, they add new varieties and shapes to the range. “We make several versions of different fruit and veg so that they look natural piled up together,” says Lorraine. “We used to choose perfect specimens, but now we go for pieces with knobbly, interesting bits. In fact, we like to use home-grown produce. It has more character.”

I’ve seen their work and it’s truly lifelike and very difficult to spot the difference between these and the real thing.

For future reference, they’re also happy to copy a prize-winning vegetable for you, so Dad can show everyone just how big his pumpkin really was.

Now, there’s an idea for a pressie.

Giant Onions

Can any veg grower resist a peek at someone else’s plot? Not me. I actually grazed the underside of my nose last year, straining to poke it over a fence for an eyeful of a stranger’s asparagus.

If you have an allotment, you have ample opportunity to ogle the competition, but for those of us who don’t and who find that Next Door is a desert of lawn and plastic toys, it can be difficult to work out if it’s you, or if this really is a bad year for leeks.