The crop was clean with little slug damage. We did have some pest trouble as the resident voles feasted on one end of a bed! There were about a dozen nibbled tubers.

Related posts:

1. Potato harvest
2. Potato Cyst Nematodes (or eelworms)
3. Four legged pests?

General information is here.

Related posts:

1. Organic Fortnight 5-20 September 2009
2. Is biodynamic the new organic?
3. We need an organic gardening champion

In the US many local authorities are doing just that, saving money by not sending so much trash to land fill.

One town in Maine has tripled recycling rates while reducing expenses 50%. Sanford residents implemented a trash metering system that requires residents to pay by the bag for curbside collection. After one month, the 50% decrease in garbage tonnage far exceeded the town manager’s expectations. If projections hold true, this town of 21,000 in southwest Maine can save about $250,000 in garbage tipping fees, crucial as the city will face a 20% price increase in the service after the new year.

Over 150 municipalities in Maine have shifted to a trash metering system, and other towns and cities across the US are joining them as well. One program is WasteZero, a firm that works with about 300 cities in transforming their waste management systems. According to the company, these towns reduce their landfill waste about 43%, while together collectively net about $65 million, either in avoided disposal fees or revenues from recycled materials.
[From: http://www.enn.com/top_stories/article/41688 accessed 27 Aug 2010 0700 GMT]

So, why the reluctance to do the same in the UK? Why do we feel it is our right to expect somebody to always be there to clear us the mess we make?

It is strange that this should have become such a big issue. If reducing the amount of waste we throw out saves money why object to doing it? It is sheer madness. Or is it just laziness?

In this household we recycle everything possible. The result is that out small size wheelie bin could be emptied every 4-8 weeks.

Food waste, there should not be that much, and other green stuff can be composted at home and used on the garden. It is such a valuable source of nutrients I would never throw it out.

The big question remains, why did the current government scrap metered waste? Was it to win friends and votes? Was it to divert attention from the savage cuts? Was it that they just do not care?

Related posts:

1. Todmorden sows the seeds for a home grown food revolution
2. Composting kitchen waste
3. Use of local food boosts hospital funds

The legality of this is questionable. Some rental agreements forbid selling produce while others have clauses saying only the surplus can be sold. If you have 4-5 plots then there will be a big surplus!

Some enterprising gardeners are taking stalls at weekly markets and attracting a lot of customers as consumers have a preference for good looking fresh produce. You can’t blame them really when you make comparisons to the limp old stuff most supermarkets sell. But what of the real quality?

Most allotment holders use pesticides to control pests. It is part of the culture and at a recent meeting of dedicated veg growers boxes of a common pesticide were included in the raffle. There is no doubt that many prefer to use chemicals as it is easy gardening. I would argue that it also reliance on a quick chemical fix and does not lead to any understanding about ‘pests’ and how to avoid them.

The other big issue is that there is no regulation on the use of pesticides on allotment other than laws governing approval. This can lead to drastic over use and mixing of different products to produce cocktails of chemicals in combinations that were never considered by the manufacturers and that have not been tested or approved for use on food. I once heard an allotment holder tell that he had mixed Paraquat and Roundup together just to make sure he killed his weeds. He argued that as each was so good then the two together would be even better!

For the consumer the pristine appearance of much fruit and veg hides what has been used in production. A freshly picked perfect looking cabbage cannot reveal how much pesticide has been used and what residues it may contain. The problem is that we have become almost indoctrinated into using visual appearance as THE only measure of quality.

With no way of regulating how chemicals are used on allotments, and how often they are applied, it is impossible to know how pristine looking veg has been treated. Visual appearance is not a guarantee of quality. If in doubt ask the grower what they use, ask if you can visit them, make it plain that you do not want chemicals in your food. Most of all get used to real quality and accept that not everything needs to look perfect.

Related posts:

1. EU parliament votes to ban (some) farm pesticides
2. London’s Gardens: Allotments for the People
3. Cooperative allotments?

Got one of these on your broadbeans? Is it eating your plants? Is it a friend or foe? (Click to enlarge image.)

See this page to find out.

Or cheat – it is a ladybird larvae, they eat a lot of aphids and then develop into adult ladybirds which eat even more and then produce more larvae. Very useful!

Related posts:

1. Natural balance to defeat pests
2. More bugs this year
3. What support do organic food growers need?

Standing by your plot in the late evening spraying everything with a hose pipe will not work. The water needs to be on the soil and not on the foliage. Some say that watering at night is the best as it reduces evaporation,  that is true but if you see plants with signs of severe water stress, i.e. wilting, water then immediately.

In previous years we have used drip irrigation which is often laid under mulch. This works very well as it gets the water to where it is needed and the mulch cuts down evaporation. The system has not been used for a while but is now back in service.

The best plan is not to water a little every day but to soak the ground every few days. Giving just a little water frequently does little good as it does no penetrate very far. The small amount of rain we had earlier this week got no further than the first inch of soil and then evaporated quickly the next day.

For small beds, including square foot gardens and square metre plots, use a bucket and either an old baked bean tin or yogurt container to ladle the water directly around the roots of each plant. I remember my grandfather doing this  more than 50 years ago and it works just fine.

It is also a good time to consider collecting rain water as every garden should have some water butts. We are lucky in that we have 4 huge tanks to store recovered water but that will not be enough if the drought continues.

There are predictions that we will have more droughts that last longer and are more severe so we had better get used to coping with a lack of rain. Now is the time to plan how to manage your plots to ensure a good harvest.

Related posts:

1. Trials 2010
2. India to import food due to drought
3. February Checklist

Evidently children enjoy gardening and it makes them happier, stronger and more confident. Not only that when children grow food they are more likely to try different vegetables.

Why are we not surprised? Did we really need a survey of 1,300 teachers and 10 schools to confirm what many already knew? Maybe now that it has been proved, ‘scientifically’ more schools will have a garden.

Being of a reasonable age I well remember the school garden at the local secondary school. It was big, maybe around two allotments in size. From the first to fourth years boys were taught horticulture as part of the curriculum. We grew food which went round the corner into the kitchen as fresh ingredients for school dinners.

After nearly 50 years that is such a novel idea it is being reinvented as a way of showing kids where food comes from and as a money saving idea. It also teaches useful skills.

My memory is of the relaxation of gardening in the otherwise tense and overbearing atmosphere of school, so yes it does make kids feel happier.

If I have one plea it is that school gardens should be about growing food, learning where it comes from, learning how to grow it, cook it and eat it. There are so many curriculum links a school food garden could be a real education.

Related posts:

1. The edible school yard
2. Dietary pesticide exposure linked to ADHD in children
3. Jamie’s new TV programme

A supermarket in Crouch End, London is growing food on its roof at last.  They have about 450 square metres of space which has been turned into a food garden. The owner calls it a “… a farm on top of a supermarket” which I think is stretching things a bit; a garden yes but I do not know of any farms with just 0.045 hectares of land. Another quote says the project has a very low carbon footprint because all the equipment has been donated. Nice idea but plastic compost bins and other stuff has to be manufactured and transported to the site so does have a carbon footprint even though somebody else has paid!

Not that I am criticising what they are doing, I have long argued that using city roofs to grow food is exactly the way to go. There are some superb examples around the world where aerial gardens work well. In Singapore Changi hospital grows food on its roof and uses it to feed patients. Not only does that use what was redundant space it also give patients healthy and tasty food and maybe even saves money.

Many of the projects use hydroponics which, at the present time, use fertilizers which are not sustainable i.e. they are made from oil and use huge amounts of energy in the production process. Some argue that there is nothing wrong with that as long as it feeds people but the organic argument is that it relies on heavy imports of nutrients which is both unsustainable, costly and does nothing to address the issue of declining oil supplies.

There are alternatives like growing in containers using peat free, or home made, composts and making nutrients from composting food waste. Some years back a really innovative project in Australia tried to use a continuous worm composting system to make nutrient rich compost from restaurant food waste. The idea was to grow leafy crops in the compost on the roof which would then be used in the restaurant thus completing the nutrient cycle. There was never any news of whether it worked but technology has moved on now and such a project would be perfectly viable.

For me any food grown on roofs, or in gardens, has to be ‘organic’ i.e. not just free of pesticides but sustainable. That means no artificial fertilizers. I would really like to see some innovation in plant based nutrients and container growing which would produce a sustainable system that is low maintenance and productive. That would also have to include some way of watering automatically maybe triggered by sensors when the compost dries out. There are easy ways to do that it just needs the will and vision to see an alternative to existing growing systems. And a nice big flat roof!

More information

• Changi Hospital rooftop micro farm
• University cafe rooftop garden in Canada
• Rooftop gardens in Eygpt
• For a round up of rooftop garden projects see this page . (Not all the projects are about growing food.)

Related posts:

1. Rooftop Food Garden – YWCA Vancouver, BC, Canada
2. Vertical farms?
3. NYC Roof top farm

In his book “Comfrey past present and future” Lawrence Hills is quite clear about making comfrey juice i.e. concentrate not tea. He spent many years studying comfrey and even had a chemical analysis that showed comfrey concentrate had virtually the same constituency as Tomerite, see this page.

I am all for making things easier for newcomers to organic gardening but sometimes gardening celebs go too far. Comfrey tea is a very different thing to comfrey juice and will not have the same effects on plants. All too often I was asked why plants were not thriving and the usual answer was that they were not being fed enough, sometimes not at all!

Comfrey is an amazing plant and 0ne that every organic gardener should grow. Making comfrey juice is a good way to get lots of free fertiliser, just remember to dilute 1:10 for tomatoes (that’s 1 part juice to 10 parts water) and 1:20 (that’s 1 part juice to 20 parts water) for everything else.

Related posts:

1. Making comfrey juice in a barrel
2. Making Comfrey Juice
3. Comfrey

An article in “Living Earth”, the journal of the Soil Association, gives more information about these pesticides. What amazed me is that they are so readily available to domestic users who may well be unaware of the danger to bees. The table below is from the article and shows just where neonicotinoids are used.

Take action

If you care about the envioronment or are at all concerned abou the loss of the honey bee then I urge you to take action to ban the use of these products.

• Avoid neonicotinoid based garden products and write to your local garden centre asking them to stock bee-friendly alternatives.
• Buy organic food and support sustainable farming techniques.
• Use organic techniques in your own garden. Use a wide variety of plants and don’t be too tidy.Leave wild flowering plants in place, ivy is a particularly important source of winter food for bees.
• Take up beekeeping if you’ve got the space. There are some excellent courses available as part ofour Organic Farm School programme, details or which are available at www.soilassociation.org/farmschool.aspx
• Write to your new MP asking them to put pressure on the Secretary of State at Defra to suspend the use of neonicotinoids, as France, Germany, Italy and Slovenia have already done.

Related posts:

1. Pesticide threat to bees
2. Bees, food and gardening
3. Save Your Own Seeds