Horticultural

Not-so Christmas cactus

I haven't written much (anything?) about my love of houseplants yet on this blog. But it's how I got into gardening in the first place. I guess I was an, um, slightly unusual child - my bedroom was full of at least a couple of dozen plants from the age of about 11 and that continued until I left home. These days I don't have quite so many, partly because of the lack of suitable windowsills and other plant perches in my house. One of my favourites is my bright pink Schlumbergera bridesii or Christmas cactus.

It's one of those plants that you often find on sale - and in full bud -  in supermarkets and florists, but many people are disappointed because as soon as they take these plants (they're not true cacti) home, the buds tend to drop off. They're not difficult to care for but they benefit from a spell outside in the summer and from a bit of "tough love" in the run-up to the flowering season: the link above gives you the details, but a lack of water is the key. The timing seems to have gone a little awry in the case of this plant, as it's been flowering for a couple of weeks now. With any luck, I can coax it into producing a few more buds so at least it lasts into December ...

Culinary cardoon question

Someone has emailed with a question:

Do you know the best time to harvest cardoon?  We've tried spring and fall, boiling the cardoon in salted water to extract the bitterness but it never seems to taste right!

I have to admit something: despite growing cardoons for the last two years, I haven't tried eating the stems. I love the dangerously spiky, painfully blue flowers held high above the silvery foliage, and the bumble bees they attract. But I just haven't felt the urge to bother with tying up the stems with cardboard or cloth to blanche the stems for eating. Given how much I like young globe artichokes with a vinaigrette, I really should try the edible stems of its cousin, the cardoon: perhaps that should be a resolution for 2005.

If you do want to try preparing the cardoon stems for eating, you probably still have time to blanche them before the first frosts: you'll need about four weeks of blanching before you harvest. This may help with the bitterness problem, although it may just be that they're an acquired taste!

I've just found this excellent piece in the Kentucky Courier-Journal, which has detailed instructions on the cultivation of the cardoon, or Cynara cardunculus. But I tend to agree with the writer, Diane Heilenman, when she says "my conclusion is that this is an awful lot of work and a terrible waste of garden ornament". Having said that, I have just found this cardoon and mango curry recipe: perhaps that might change my mind ...

Crowning glory

The post brought a very important envelope from the very generous Laura Franklin, who has sent me some seeds of the Guardian Unlimited news team's adopted heritage vegetable, the squash Whanga Crown.

From the look of the package, it's a mid-sized squash with very pale skin - the words "stores well" on the front are also very welcome. Come May, these will be planted along with Pumpkin Vif D'Etampes (saved from this year's crop), the compact and bijou Jack Be Little and a couple of others - the names escape me.

I'm already preparing part of the allotment for the squash: always greedy feeders, they love growing on compost heaps, so I am trenching lots of "raw" compost - in other words vegetable waste from the kitchen - straight into the ground. By planting time in May, this should be fairly well rotted, providing a reservoir of goodness for the squash to sink their roots into.

In the meanwhile we're still eating squash at a rate: our pumpkin party a couple of weeks ago was a success (risotto, pie, pate and soup all on the menu) but I suspect our stock will keep us going for several months yet.

 

Bagged

My gardening bag is fantastic: it was one of the best presents I have ever been bought. A sturdy bag is essential when you have an allotment: I don't leave anything remotely nick-able in my (unlocked) storage box so I need something to put my treasured copper trowel, secateurs, Thinsulate-lined suede gloves (swear by them) and so forth in to tote back and forth from the plot.

The trouble is that said bag, with its many ample pockets, has turned into a bit of a black hole: lots of items get put in, but nothing ever comes out. So today I emptied it out. No wonder it was so heavy: the list of stuff I had in there was so extensive I decided to share it with you:

• Suntan lotion bottles - 2
• Plastic bags - 2
• Digital camera - 1
• Box of metal staples - 1
• Secateurs - 1
• Kneeler - 1
• Set of knee pads - 1
• Knife - 1
• Gloves - 1
• Plastic bottle - 1
• Rolls of packing tape - 2
• Funnel - 1
• Wire spring - 1
• 1 ltr bottle of seaweed fertiliser - 1
• Balls of string - 2
• Piece of string - 1
• Tiles - 3
• Soil Ph tester - 1
• Packet of peas - 1
• Pair of scissors - 1
• Seed dispenser - 1
• Plastic labels - 4
• Tap key - 1
• Make up brush - 1
• Knife - 1
• Fair trade muesli bars - 4
• CDs - 17
• Wire cutters - 2

Now, there are a few items in there that you're probably wondering about.

"A make up brush? Surely she's not dolling herself up down the allotment?"

Certainly not: I pride myself on looking like a sack of potatoes in a Luton Town FC woolly hat and a checked shirt when gardening. In fact I use the brush to clean the leaves of various delicate houseplants, such as African violets. It must have slipped into my bag. The rest of it makes sense, too: the funnel was for pouring comfrey fertiliser into a bottle to bring back home for the garden: the muesli bars were for eating as a snack, and the CDs are for stringing up as bird scarers. A bit of rationalisation was necessary, though: I am not exactly slapping on the Soltan in this kind of weather. And I have no idea what I originally meant the packing tape for. Safe to say that the bag is a lot lighter now.

Footwear failure

This was the state of my feet after half an hour or so down the allotment today. I realised, not before time, that the "allotment shoes" I've been wearing for the last few months just don't cut the mustard. They've got no grip, they let in torrents of water and mud slops over the tops whenever I hit a muddy patch in my perambulations around the plot. Which is not surprising seeing as they're just an old pair of shoes that just got co-opted into gardening work when they got too miserable looking to be seen anywhere else.

So they went in the bin today, and I am upgrading to a pair of 8-hole Doctor Marten boots that date from my student days. I am going to re-waterproof them and see how they perform. No doubt the second I remove them from the place in my wardrobe where they've been languishing for years and commit them to the mudbath that is my allotment, they'll suddenly become, poncho-style, the trendiest footwear this side of Milan.

What do you wear when gardening? Suggestions for not-too-pricey footwear for the plot welcome ...

Let it snow

I should really take a picture of the garden right now, but my digital camera is tucked away in my gardening bag downstairs and I am loath to go into the freezing garage to retrieve it: freezing because it has snowed where I live for the first time this winter. Much of it has already turned to slush, as evidenced by my journey home from work tonight when I got caught in a downpour of epic proportions. A short walk from the bus stop to the train station turned into something akin to an endurance test on a Japanese game show.

As usual, I was thinking about my garden and allotment, though: what about those lettuces in the pot outside my front door? Will they survive the snow? I am very glad that Rick has already started overhauling the system of drainage trenches at the allotment: the amount of water and slush flowing into the drains outside my house was phenomenal.  On the up side, it has been a very dry month so far, so the water can't do any harm to the plants. The black leather boots I was wearing on my way home? Well that's another story.

Mulchtastic

Mary Keen writes in the Telegraph (registration required) about a clever way to grow vegetables, through a deep (1ft) leaf mulch. Sounds as if it works like a dream. Now, where can I get a skip full of leaves from?

Also of interest to us organic types: more people are eating organic - sales grew 10% last year, according to this piece in The Guardian.

Why blog?

I vowed to more than one person at last year's UK bloggers Christmas party (when I wasn't argu... er talking, to Tom Coates) that I had no desire to set up a personal blog.

So what happened? And why am I still blogging?

I have been sowing and growing since I was knee-high to a tomato plant, but since I took on an allotment, things have become pretty complicated. It was hard to remember how the plot looked from month to month, what grew when, which varieties worked and what didn't. Horticultural was created as a record of my gardening activities and as a place where I could channel my passion for organic veg, picking wild blackberries and grubbing around in compost heaps.

Owning a personal blog has helped me at work, too: I understand how blogging communities grow and are nurtured, how newbie bloggers feel when trying to choose a blog host and get their blog started, and I understand the pressures of trying to update a blog amid a busy schedule (... right now I should be getting ready to go out for the evening ...).

I also blog because I get help and advice from gardeners all over the place, and I feel part of something bigger. When I talk to most people about the joys of mulching, or try to explain why I put comfrey leaves into a bucket every few days, they look at me with mute uncomprehension. The blogging gardeners? They know the difference between chicory and chervil.

Why we blog

Don of Hands in the Dirt has written a reflective piece about why gardeners blog:

The garden blogger is using language to hunt down the passions that makes him or her go dig around in the dirt. We share secrets. We share delights and surprises. We talk about plants, some casually and other with a precise bontanical correctness. I would suspect that outside of our little circles, we are as boring as hell to non-gardeners. The more gifted among us use pictures to capture some of what we do. Pictures are best used in cold months, I think, to remind us of what we are cut off from, the dirt, our plants, the light of the day.

Why do I blog? It's a very good question: one I shall ponder on my journey home tonight and share my conclusions once I have assembled my thoughts.

Unidentified Fruiting Object

Carol King has sent me an intriguing picture of this UFO (unidentified fruiting object) with watermelon/squash-type leaves growing  among her tomatoes. She writes:

"It started growing among my tomatoes and I have no idea where it came from.  It's been growing for a long time... I wanted to see what it was,  but I"ve never seen any squash like it and it's not changing colors.  It's about 18 inches long and there is a second one smaller.  I put a closeup of the design on it in the corner of the picture.  If you recognize this please advise what it is and how to know when it is ripe as well as whether it will survive the first frost."

I suspect it's some kind of watermelon, but if you know more - or can identify this fruit for Carol, write a comment below. Whatever this UFO turns out to be, it's rather beautiful looking.