The God Complex

Weird thing, patience. As a bonsai grower you need patience in droves. It defines you as an artist, in that you are able to sit on your hands and allow your subject to do its thing. You cannot rush Bonsai, you can only nudge them in a favourable direction and hope they comply! Often they don't, but sometimes they do; and that's the fun. Little by little, year by year....

                      

All good things come to those who wait! Mostly....

And so it is with frustration that I find myself having rushed into things a little veg wise. I have a window-ledge with umpteen varieties of seedlings growing, a significant chunk of which should have been left for sowing at least a month later.

I have 3 courgettes; the damned things grow like triffids and have already been re-potted since sowing less than 3 weeks ago, which are fast outgrowing their new pots.

And yet as I have no greenhouse, polytunnel, or in fact any kind of cold frame or outdoor space at home to transfer them into, these are probably resigned to an early demise, with stronger siblings being raised at the correct time when I sow them late April.

I have tomato and marigold aplenty which again will not make it unless I somehow miraculously get them to last indoors for 6 weeks 'til end of frosts. So again I have planted too early.

What is most frustrating is that the seed packets themselves gave me this information. Like a fool I trusted them and now (and this may seem stupid) I feel almost guilty. I feel guilty that I've raised these lovely seedlings and they are all healthy and brimming with life, itching to produce some lovely fruit... and in all probability they will end up on the compost pile. What is that all about?

This is not an unusual phenomenon by all accounts; I expressed this feeling with a friend - this guilt about throwing away the smaller seedlings when thinning (and potentially whole plants going to waste due to my inexperience and  overzealous sowing) and I'm not alone - my feelings were more than mirrored.

And then there's my girlfriend. The slightest hint that I may be binning some of the less developed little plants is met with shock and horror and pointing of sharp implements. But where does this come from, I mean; aren't we growing these for eating anyway?

My theory is that it's linked to the excitement and wonder that you feel when that first seeding pops its head out from under the soil... that amazement that you personally had a hand in creating something living, at a time you decided, and it is complying - it's actually growing because of you alone.

A God Complex, if you will. 

And yet what makes us utterly human in this moment is the horrifying thought that this life that we have created is wasted and was in vain.... and that we are about to let down this tiny being and cast it aside........

And the beautiful irony of this entire complex of feelings, is that this entire endeavour is solely to produce vegetables which I'm going to eat, probably harming, if not killing the plants at the end of the season.


Maybe we are all just crazy...

***

So anyway, there's been a hive of industry at the plot and time is ticking on. Slowly but surely things are beginning to come together...

Shallot sets were put to bed!

I've had authorisation to build a 10ft x 20ft Polytunnel - incredibly exciting news which resulted in my immediate sectioning off of the central part of my plot, and covering with a light suffocating material; this is approx. 7m x 4m

I dismantled, moved and rebuilt a runner bean frame which my good friend Dave had built...on top of my existing Garlic bed!!

I transplanted some lovely strawberry into my 4' beds

Following excellent advice from one of the admins on the No-Dig facebook group, I made foil reflecting backs for my window seedlings to stop them being too leggy - with excellent results!

...and I now have a set of seedlings which will go out into the big wide world in the next two weeks!

Finally - I have been delighted with the No-Dig beds complete lack of weeds. The odd weed which has pushed through the cardboard has poked its head up but on the whole there's barely any weeding to do at all - meaning I have more time to attack the couch grass borders!


Everything is picking up pace now, and my increase in learning feels exponential right now.


This is what life is all about!

All my seedlings be like....

I'm a newish member of a superb facebook group "No Dig Gardening - Undug" which is both incredibly helpful and also quite amusing at times. I've found the admins particularly helpful with the most basic of questions and nothing seems to be too much hassle.

Just yesterday I got into discussions about "leggy" seedlings. In Bonsai, the term 'leggy' refers to undesirably long distances between internodes or branching with few buds and long sappy length. However, when looking at something like sweet peas I would expect them to display this characteristic as a matter of course.

Naturally, as seems to be the case a lot recently, I discover that I'm wrong!

It turns out that my one week old, very tall sweet peas seedlings are desperate for light, only being on my windowsill.

Just look at the poor little pookins desperately reaching out in the miserably low light levels...

Only one thing for it (with my cap doffed to Jodie for giving me the info on this brilliantly simple idea)... lets give them a self tanning reflective screen to improve the abysmal light levels and help them put a bit of bulk on!

Yeah yeah, I can see you shaking your head in pity at this tragic attempt, however, I had no cardboard in the flat and needed to get something together for today at least; so I salvaged a food box which had already been screwed up for recycling! I intend to construct something a little less shanty this weekend, although I must confess to feeling at peace with the Fisher Price feel of it...

Anyway, I thought I'd share this fiendishly simple idea for anyone who doesn't have a greenhouse/cold frame/outdoor space and suffers from leggy seedlings.

As with anything it seems the simple ideas are the best!

Flaming rhubarb and other stuff

Wow, this has been without doubt the busiest period of my allotmenteering since I started, and as a complete veg growing novice it's very exciting indeed!


The seeds I sowed are now a week old and are going great guns in their planters

My transplanted and forced rhubarb was unveiled this week and looked absolutely spectacular!

I got to work building a dual purpose frame, for growing Sweet Peas and Tomatoes - the tomatoes will grow vertically, and the sweet peas up the sloped back.


I firstly assembled a basic frame, using a combination of cable ties and twine


The basic tomato frame, with 6ft vertical poles sunk 1ft underground for amazing rigidity!

I then added four more vertical poles and 2 more horizontal poles for better load bearing and more places to clip the tomatoes as they grow

I then set about trying to make my composting area look a little less like a rag and bone man's yard....a couple of planters filled with manure and compost, and a little growing mesh, should look a treat when I plant some climbers up there and hopefully attract some pollinating insects too

I finally made a decision on the centre section of the plot, and decided to get a thick plastic sheet down, to kill off the couch grass and bindweed. This sheet, believe it or not, is 3.5m x 8m, and I picked one of the windiest days of the year to do it. It took me well over an hour with all the farting about! Still, I came up with a very simple trick to weigh it down - used milk bottles filled 3/4 with water (so they don't burst when it freezes)  and a few bags of compost and I was well away!

Next I need another strip the same size!

And finally, I've been saving some plastic boxes at work which could potentially double up as mini propagaters. Just drilled 5 holes in the bottom, added soil and then I was off!

I have a box with literally hundreds of them saved, so if they work it'll be a bit of decent thrift!

So, much going on at the moment - the flat looks like a garden centre as it's so full of seedlings, which incidentally will need a thinning soon. Everything feels like it's coming together right now.


Planting time must be coming fairly soon, and I'm super excited;

Bring on the spring!

 

A bit late with my Garlic....

 A bit late with a lot of things it would seem! I finally sowed my first seeds this weekend - but not before I FINALLY finished the vegetable beds!

I took delivery of 1000L of gorgeous organic mushroom compost, which arrived in 25 x 40L bags. Due to the narrow lane through our allotment I cannot have Hiab or tipper due to the soft verges and the proximity of neighbouring plots so I had to have it delivered to the gate of my plot. (My manure was delivered by tipper but at a cost to other plotholders....but that's a different story altogether)

Luckily I'm only 30 metres or so from the top gate so I ordered the pallet to be dumped there! 

 

3 journeys with a barrow later....

So I had a look at my beds and considered just spreading this over the manure I spread over the past few weeks. However, I had a niggling feeling that the manure chunks were just too big and you could see the manure capping(it took on a shiny grey/blue surface) from exposure to the wind and sun....not the ideal medium for planting!



I just couldn't tip good compost on top of this

So, out came the 5' rake - a bloody good investment for saving your back, and I had to break down this stuff piece by piece, section by section, bed by bed. It took pretty much 2 full days, but once it was done the particle sizes were more golf ball sized and nicely damp...



missed the odd bit but on the whole this is a much finer tilth



Then it was on with the compost...

1000L suddenly doesn't look like much...

This was my progress by 4pm Friday - I was shattered.....

my back was wrecked after this....

There was zero chance of me attempting to tackle the 9m beds after that much physical hard work, so I called it a day and went home to a nice bottle of red.

The following morning I was up again at the crack of dawn and hit the plot again, determined to break down the manure on the large beds. However, my forearms were screaming after only a few minutes, so I decided to do it in chunks and get some other bits done on my neighbouring bonsai plot which were less taxing and offered me some respite.

In the end I got there....and I have to say that the 9m bed looked a lot like the beds at Homeacres, so I was very very chuffed indeed. The paths look a complete wreck though, due to the storms. Just don't have enough material to fill them in....





The 9m bed will house my asparagus crowns once I order them...you can see where I've tamped them down hard with my rake head. The general advice is to walk on them, but with such a deep layer of manure it would have sunk so I opted for a firm rake tamping instead.

Nice bed, shame about the path.....

 So all in all a great result to see them done. I need to find a mulch for the paths...and I think its going to have to be woodchip as I have nothing else to choose from. Eventually these 2 beds will be come three when I fill the centre with more manure, but for this season at least, there's no way I can face doing that again.

What better way to celebrate than by planting out two shorter beds with 2 varieties of garlic (whose names escape me for now). I know it's late but I just needed to get something down! They went into the nearest two below, approx. 40 in all.

To say I was in high spirits afterwards would be an understatement! The following day I decided to do my first ever sowing and I entered into it with all off the gusto that you would expect from a complete novice.

just ready for a top layer....

Every implement in the kitchen was used, I think!

hi tech tools in use!

In went my salad..


 A quick plead to my good lady and she magicked up an unused photo album, which I though might make a good seed store...it also allows notes!

The commandeered photo album, thanks Tracy!


A quick reference to the Charles Dowding Veg Diary to make sure I wasn't being premature. I wasn't, with the possible exception of courgettes which I'm going to compare...

Once sowed I created a state of the art watering device to wet them down...


premium quality tools always help

In the end I finally planted;

Dwarf French double marigold

Cherry Tomatoes

Mizuno

Landcress

Rocket

Red and green lettuce(mixed)

Lupins

Courgette

Red Mustard

Tall sweet Pea

Incense sweet pea

*phew* - what a weekend!

Trying to build perfect no dig beds

Arse! I thought I had it all sussed a few weeks back but soon came to realise that I still had work to do in the creation of perfect no dig beds

Having looked at the spaces between my beds and realising that the surface was just too lumpy and the gaps too large between them, I took the plunge and ordered myself some mushroom compost - 1000L to be exact. It's a bit of a ball-ache getting a delivery company to drop off any meaningful quantity of this stuff, because none of them will drop on anything other than kerbside. The allotment path/road itself is stone and hard baked clay; the perfect surface to swallow the wheels of a  fully laden pallet truck while it dismounts a lorry tail-lift(which is exactly what they move it around on when delivering) so I had to think laterally about what I was going to do.


I could have ordered a large 1m x 1m x 1m bag which is dropped off on a hiab (lorry mounted crane) but they'd need to put out stabilising legs in order to operate the crane, and the road down the centre of the plots is only barely wide enough to take a 7.5t flatbed truck, let alone a 10ft(3m) wide HGV and 8ft supports.


So the only solution I could come up with, short of ferrying car loads of bags of compost backwards and forwards from the local supplier, was to have the pallet of compost bags delivered to the top gate of the allotment(which, usefully, is a private road) and then ferry them on a wheelbarrow from the gate to my plot.


I rang a few companies and eventually settled on Mr Watmore's organic composts for a number of reasons; firstly the product has a very good reputation and is organic.

Secondly they broke the product description down into specific percentages, which is something that other suppliers seemed unable to do.

Thirdly, their telephone advice and details of their delivery service were truly excellent. Not only can I have it delivered to the gate of the allotment, I will receive a call both 24 hrs before and also within 15 mins of the product arriving, meaning I can plan my day then take delivery and still be able to shift it all to my plot without it leaving my sight. I don't want to be hanging around for any longer than necessary so this was the only solution I could find which I was happy with.

The allotment north entrance

It was a little pricey but I figure this is all year one cost so hopefully will be the last of the expensive years while I try to build the perfect no dig beds.

This should be enough to give me a good top layer and have a go at filling the paths between plots. I'd originally thought it to be a good idea to woodchip mulch the paths on the plot, something I'd done on my other smaller plot with some success for reducing weeds and also reducing the hard baked cracking the clay soil suffers from in the summer.

However, when I asked Charles Dowding on the course I'd recently attended, he advised that there was a potential pest problem inherent with this material, namely woodlice. I'm guessing that I wasn't the first novice to express complete lack of knowledge about what I thought was a completely harmless bug, as I merely mentioned that I thought it wasn't an issue, before he started reeling off potential targets for these armour-plated beasties. By all accounts they eat things from the inside, with brassicas being one of a number of plants they'll happily cut off at the shin.

This meant a dramatic rethink of how I'll mulch paths for the first couple of years and this is why the compost was ordered. I want to get the beds sorted before planting out time!

In the meantime following the  transplanting of my enormous rhubarb crown a few days ago, I rewrote my allotment plan. Just a few tweaks and some space has also opened up next to my compost bins...just having a think about what I'd like there. I've also opted for a third(and possibly fourth) compost bin following my musings about composting



New day, new plans!



 

Things are moving and I'm more than entertained at the moment with planning and preparing.

I may not nail the perfect no dig beds first time, but I'm giving it my best shot!

It's a veritable composting frenzy!

Having attended the excellent no-dig course with Charles Dowding & Steph Hafferty last weekend, I came away awash with bright ideas, planning adjustments to beds, a fair idea of what I will plant where and why. In general I was quite buoyant about what the future may hold from a vegetable growing point of view.


I can confidently say that my enthusiasm has not waned in the days that have passed; in fact I'd say that I have found myself forming a mild obsession with one fundamental element of the no-dig approach..... composting.
 
Compost, I now understand, is the cornerstone to the whole approach and I have been wracking my brains for a way of producing enough compost to keep my plot ticking over. It's the first year of my new veggie plot, meaning I need a lot to get me started. I got things moving a few weeks back by taking a delivery of 4tonnes of well rotted manure, and forming beds - a considerable amount of work and material to cover a plot of this size, but I'm assured that the first year is the year you use the most.


One of the multitudinous issues that I now realise I have, is related to tilth. The manure I have had delivered is smell free but quite wet. It had made it quite difficult indeed to break it down into useable chunks, until it dries out a bit. Let's just say that having surveyed the soil quality at Homeacres and compared the texture of manures & composts with my own, there is still a considerable gap to bridge.


As you can see, it's a very variable size and profoundly labour intensive to break down any further...as it's wet, raking isn't working

Secondly, the gaps between my beds are visibly too wide - and I don't have enough manure left to decrease them

going to need more compost/material!

So it looks like I'm going to be ordering a pallet or so of nice organic compost. It's probably about £100 delivered which is a bit expensive but at the end of the day I want to do this properly. I've plumped for a mushroom compost as I think it'll give me both a nice alternative texture, and more nutrients along with its water retaining properties. Hopefully this will be the last time I have to build beds from scratch so I'm fairly happy to invest this time around.

However, the big question which I haven't covered yet is; how the hell am I going to produce composts in decent quantities? It's seemingly an innocuous  question - but the more I think about the amount of ground I'm going to be mulching with an inch or 2 each year, the more I realise that I need a proper composting strategy and not just a token few bits of potato peeling chucked in the pallet composter every now and then!

Thinking back to Charles' square footage dedicated to either storing or producing compost, I'd take a punt that the 3 separate areas under tarp plus his amazing composting bays were probably equal to about 20% of the area of the growing beds. Using this equation as a rough rule of thumb, I'm going to need a whopping chunk of mine to be dedicated to growing and/or storing composts.

Asides from buying it in, I have thought seriously about dedicating a chunk of the plot to growing 'Bocking 14' Comfrey - a less invasive strain of the plant which barely self seeds. However when I mentioned it to Charles originally, both he and Steph urged caution as it's an allotment - and that any successor may struggle to remove it. So the jury is still out!

If anyone can recommend a heavy  cropping, (cut 3 or 4 times a year) plant exclusively for composting, please do let me know in the comments as I'm a little confused.

Asides from this I have also bought myself a twin 48l kitchen bin - so that I can separate compostable material and bring it weekly to the compost pile. As a very rough guess, based on the last few weeks, I have been gathering around  20-25l of waste per week including cardboard and useable paper, as well as the food scraps. Based on this kind of continual volume I will probably be bringing around 1200l of raw waste per year - which will probably reduce down to around....300-400l of compost? I can bulk that out with shredded cardboard from work too - in pretty much limitless quantities.

It certainly is an interesting topic and one I see regularly discussed online. There's the obvious leftovers from when plants/veg are grown and harvested, but until I've run the plot for a few seasons I'm going to be clueless as to how much that will generate. I want to get into good practice now, so this really will be my focus until I get into planting season.

But for now I just find myself looking at every and any remotely compostable item at work/home/the plot and wondering how I can get it into that bin...


It's becoming as addictive as one of those simple games like Angry Birds or Tetris.... but probably a little healthier!

2 days not digging with Charles Dowding

I was fortunate enough this weekend to be able to secure a last minute booking for a 2 day no-dig course with the man himself; Charles Dowding. The author of 9 books on no-dig gardening and vegetable growing, and with a successful history of running both organic and no-dig market gardens Charles is the champion of No-Dig growing and a tireless proponent of information sharing, with his blogs, website, instagram updates and much, much more.

http://www.charlesdowding.co.uk/

Held at the lovely Homeacres, near Shepton Mallett, these courses offer a more in-depth understanding of the whys, whats and wherefores of this increasingly popular organically focussed horticultural approach. The No-Dig movement has been gathering a head of steam over the past few years, with a burgeoning group of disciples, due to the seemingly simple and common-sense natural approach to growing. As a new vegetable grower with a large plot it seemed the perfect opportunity for me to learn from the best, and so it was that I found myself booking on to his 2 day intensive course. 

As the course is more than a 3 hr drive from home I decided to take the Friday off and take a leisurely pootle past some infamous sights on the way, to allow me to stay overnight fairly locally.

So I left around midday and once I had passed the M25 I had a choice of whether  or not to stick to the M4, or take a slightly longer meander along the M3 then the A303 - driving right past Stonehenge. With time on my side, I took the latter and within a couple of hours I was admiring the giant circle from the comfort of my car in a slow crawl past. Naturally the traffic all slows to a virtual standstill as you approach the site of these magnificent stones.

Not a great pic, but if you've never seen them I thoroughly recommend taking this route into the west country.

So I decided to stop off in a town called Wells, nr Shepton Mallet as this was just a few minutes drive from the venue and would afford me a leisurely evening of drinking local ciders, and, more importantly, would mean a lie in!

While booking I happened upon a very old hotel called "The Ancient Gatehouse" which was basically the original gatehouse to the castellated section of Wells Catherdral's outer defences. Weird thing is, at the point of booking I didn't even know that Wells had a Cathedral - so Imagine my surprise when I saw firstly my hotel;

The staircase up, which I could imagine people swordfighting on in days of yore..

The olde worlde door, under which I had to bend double to get through!

Not a bad view from my room eh?

So with this lovely surprise in mind I had a few ciders with an old friend who lived locally and enjoyed some local ambience.

The following morning I got up with a somewhat groggier head than planned and settled down to one of the best B&B full English breakfasts I think I've ever had. Superb.

I hopped into the car and within 20 minutes I was sitting outside of Homeacres - situated in a small village, it's the home and market Garden of Charles himself.

At first appearance it looked just like any other period property in the area - nice stone, quaint roof and visibly well tended garden. It didn't take long to spot the signs of good organic practice however, with a compost toilet adorning a side lawn and every bed laying deep and rich with well rotted media.

After meeting a few fellow attendees we were taken to the rear of the property and sat inside a large rear facing conservatory which overlooked the greenhouse and growing beds. It was adorned with boxes of Charles' publications, large advertising posters, and strategically placed hanging vegetables of every desciption occupying pretty much every spare surface - assumedly curing.

What followed on, after introductions, was 2 days of detailed facetime with Charles, who took us through all aspects of his no-dig approach in a logical order - from the mechanics of running a plot, the financials and realities of modern farming, his soil health theories and experiences, bed building, sowing, planting, covering, outside growing, inside growing, species advice and failures, harvesting, pest control and composting. Each and every one of these topics was covered with a simple passionate elegance, with the host plucking specific experiences which instantly felt relevant and pertinent and helped to solidify a deep feeling of understanding of "why?" and not just "what?" - something which Charles himself appears to find effortless. Few lecturers, I suspect, would be able offer such a niche programme, and yet somehow identify and then cram in a such broad range of essential accompanying knowledge with such flawless credibility.

What struck me most about spending this much time with the man, was his seemingly unfazeable attitude; he laced his deeply engrossing dialogues with amusing anecdotes, and a quiet whimsical delivery which left you hanging off of his every word.

And yet there wasn't the faintest hint of arrogance or annoyance at the multitude of questions and specific topics which each of the students delivered while covering their own agendas. At times I felt like Harry potter when he first got to know Professor Dumbledore - he exudes a certain sagely charm which made you feel you had known him all of your life, and that you can trust his opinions implicitly.

So anyway....we were there for a reason. The topic of the weekend was in general; how to grow vegetables using no chemicals, and without digging! And what better way to see what was possible than to eat some of the produce which was grown on site at homeacres....

This is where the delightfully amicable Steph Hafferty made herself known to us, by creating lots of wonderful cakes, home made breads and biscuits, and hot and cold vegetarian dishes of which Yotam Ottolenghi himself would be proud.

https://stephaniehafferty.co.uk/

We were wowed at each break and lunch time by the incredible array of vegetarian pots and soups which came out in large quantities for the students and tutors to feast on together.

An incredible squash, red onion and toasted pumpkin seed dish!

 More yumminess!

Steph was full of stories and anecdotes at the table, her obvious passion for organic and vegetarian/vegan growing and cooking spilling out during the meals. She was infectiously warm and a perfect accompaniment to an excellently produced series of meals.

When reflecting about this absorbing experience, I realise that I know very little indeed, yet now I feel not only equipped to handle a particularly broad range of techniques....I feel confident that I can give it a good go. And that is the knack in many disciplines of learning skills of technical nature I think; that knowing "why" we are doing something allows us to make educated guesses when the unexpected happens and we don't have the answer to hand.

This is probably the most important aspect of what we learned this weekend - that many accepted and indoctrinated processes that we follow in gardening are there arbitrarily and that often nobody can explain why we do it. With the No-Dig method you can control pests, feed and condition soil effortlessly, reduce workloads, increase spare time, increase health, increase cropping and give something back to the very soil which feeds us. It's a relationship of mutuality and reciprocity which I'm guessing "chemical" farmers can only admire from a distance.

If you were thinking about attending this course, but were unsure about what it could offer you or how relevant it might be, my advice would be to "just do it". As a complete vegetable novice I found it engrossing, enlightening and inspiring - and I know that others who also attended who come from commercial growing backgrounds feel the same way.

There's a wealth of information online and you can learn more about anything, faster and in quite some depth in a relatively short space of time. However, nothing is a good substitute for some face to face learning with a genuine master of his craft who is at the top of his game, and this course gives you exactly that. Attending was one of the better decisions I'll ever make, if not just to experience a true pioneer sharing a taster of his 35 years of experience in just 2 days, which was worth the entrance fee alone.


I feel that I now have a whole new understanding and respect of the details, which I am so incredibly excited to apply... and hopefully now an arsenal of enough basic information to make a real go of the new plot!

Thanks for reading