Horticultural

Vine weevils ate my fern... and they will pay

Look what the vine weevils have done to my Dryopteris wallichiana (and three heucheras - but, well, they're no great loss. I am definitely not a heuchera addict) - over winter, too! (Surely they should be resting or something over winter? Not the ones in my garden).

This means war. I shall destroy their larvae with the organic gardener's shock and awe tactic - the mighty but microscopic nematode worm, aka Nemasys. But not yet - the soil's not quite warm enough. If you don't know how to spot a vine weevil and the damage it does, you should. Here's a guide from the RHS.

Jarvis Cocker, you may just have a point

 

"This is the true story of the weeds, the origin of the species,

A story of exploitation, cultivation, civilisation

Found flowering on wasteland unnoticed, unofficial, accidental"

(Song lyrics from the song Weeds II by Pulp)

Long-time readers of my blog may remember that I own a weed wand, but I haven't used it for over a year, for killing weeds or indeed making creme brulee. Truth is, I've become a bit of a weed obsessive. (Oh yes, and I've also had another baby, which does somewhat limit time for weeding.)

Like many things in life, my weed fascination began in childhood. It all started with pineapple weed, Matricaria discoidea (pictured above, photograph by Arran_Edmonstone on Flickr). I was on holiday in Dorset when someone first demonstrated the pungent pineapple smell that comes from the crushed flower heads. I couldn't fathom why a weed would smell this good (still don't know the answer, can anyone help with that?).

As a gardener, identifying weeds is crucial - you need to know what to keep and what to remove - but I've increadingly found myself taking this detective hunt outside the garden: when I am out and about I spend most of my time with my head down, checking out what's growing in cracks in the pavement.

Why? I'm not sure. It's not always about foraging - although I did write a piece for Grow Your Own magazine last year on the possibilities of eating weeds. Sometimes it's just about the fascination of an odd name, like pellitory of the wall or shepherd's purse. And sometimes I just want to salute the tenacity of a plant that's managing to make its way in a hairline crack in a wall, like this ivy-leaved toadflax.

So it was with great joy that I read Weeds by Richard Mabey recently. I'd lie in bed with the book in one hand and a weed identification guide in the other, cross referencing one to the other to work out what thornapple looked like and so on. He describes just the kind of expeditions I like, criss-crossing London's wastelands in search of weeds, some exotic interlopers, like the tree of heaven, and other more familiar (though ultimately no less foreign) sights such as the wonderfully named shepherd's purse.

The planting of my green roof has only increased the fascination with wild plants, weeds, whatever you want to call them. I've already published a list of what's up there intentionally - what will be fascinating is to see what arrives under its own steam. Two things have bolstered my desire to reconsider weeds and their worth in and out of the garden: first, VP's recent post over at Veg Plotting about the delights of a verge full of dandelions, and second, the reading of Anne Wareham's new book The Bad Tempered Gardener, in which she insists we must look afresh at plants and throw away our prejudices and preconceptions about them - in her case, ground elder and variegated ground elder (the latter of which I already grow myself).

It's not always about the foraging possibilities of weeds, but often it is, and my other recent read, Stalking the Wild Asparagus by American foraging Euell Gibbons, has inspired me on this front (notwithstanding his obsession with making chiffon pies from absolutely EVERYTHING). One of my first missions after finishing the book was to make violet jelly - something I read about last spring but, heavily pregnant at the time, never got around to. This year I was ready, but had trouble tracking down the necessary quantities of sweet violets (there are a few dog violets thrown in here, you'll notice). A nifty bit of foraging by an army cadet hut produced a scant half-cup of blooms but it was enough to make half a jar of lovely lilac coloured jelly: given that Fortnum & Mason charge over a fiver a jar for the stuff, it wasn't bad going for the price of the sugar and pectin. The recipe's here if you want to try it for yourself.

Next up, I need to find some Japanese knotweed to try out Gibbons' knotweed jam recipe and this vodka recipe from Andy Hamilton. There is something (hopefully literally) delicious about subverting something so demonised in food and drink, don't you think?

Did I kill Victoria with kindness?

I took this photo of the Victoria plum tree in my garden yesterday. As you can see, it's not exactly a picture of health. There's a few sad leaves clinging on, rusty and crumpled, and some fruits - just starting to shrivel - left on the tree.

When we moved to this house and garden a year ago, I realised the tree had been badly pruned in the past - some branches carelessly lopped, the water shoots that followed left to form a mass of whippy replacements and protrusion with sheared-off, jagged edges like an open door to pests and diseases.

I read up on plum pruning and did what I thought was best, following the received wisdom, leaving the job until the sap was on the move in May or June to try to prevent the disease silverleaf taking a foothold. I didn't tackle all the pruning in one go, planning a phased programme over three years. I used a sharp saw, made judicious cuts, took my time.

First to go were the three "d"s - dead, diseased, and damaged. Then branches that crossed with other branches or were rubbing against the fence. I didn't attempt much more than that for year one.

But from the look of the tree now, it seems pretty poorly (click on the pic to the left and you can see a close-up on the leaves): is it the dreaded silverleaf (which enters through pruning wounds) or something else? Was it my fault for attempting to sort out the mess someone else had made? Perhaps I should have just left well alone?

On the plus side, this tree's  still a prolific fruiter, so I shall wait and see what transpires next year. I'd appreciate advice from anyone who can give me a diagnosis, too.

Coke, flames and big fat toads

In her Thrifty Gardener book, Alys Fowler recommends using Coca-Cola for killing off weeds in pavement cracks. Now, I have a particularly evil dandelion nestled in a crack outside my front door, so I bought some cola and applied it liberally.

Nothing. Nada. Dandelion thriving, growing even.

Damn you, Fowler!

Now here's the question - is it something specifically in Coke that kills weeds as opposed to the cheapo 39p Tesco own brand bottle I bought? Or is it one of those old wives tales that persists despite being useless, like knotting daffodil leaves after flowering? What about Diet Coke? My colleague Lia Leendertz tells me Coke is also supposed to remove limescale from toilets too but that didn't work for her either - just made the bowl brown.

Maybe it's all part of some cunning marketing ploy by Coke PR people looking to expand their market into new terrain, ie people with weed and/or limescale issues.

Anyway, I now have half a bottle of flat cheap cola sitting in my porch and I am going to be getting out my weed wand for a bit of late night flame throwing. This method definitely does work, although with something as pernicious as dandelions you need to keep at it for several weeks in a row. At least it puts the fear of god into any local ne'er-do-wells who happen to wander past after dark and see me laughing maniacally while prancing around crispy dandelion leaves and cackling "die, you bastards, die!"

Speaking of pernicious weeds, there are plans afoot to release a new biological control to deal with Japanese knotweed. This stuff is evil incarnate so I can see the attraction, but I'd urge caution: remember Toadzilla, folks...

Blackbird v Slug: no contest, really

This was the welcome sight outside my kitchen window today: a blackbird giving a slug a good pasting. The bird was holding the slug in its beak and moving its head from side to side, smashing its prize into the stone, presumably to tenderise it before eating.

I've seen thrushes use a stone as an anvil on slugs, but not this. It's a perfect illustration of why introducing birds into the garden is a must for the organic gardener. The mealworms I've been putting out have been doing the trick of getting more birds in, which is useful from an entertainment point of view, too, as my daughter loves them - she vibrates with excitement every time she sees one.

If it wasn't for those pesky ants ...

Seems my slug rant struck a chord with lots of you, as anything on this theme usually does. There's always some gardener's enemy for us to lie awake at night plotting to eradicate (or is that just me?). My friend Lisa is battling slugs and cats in her garden, investing in lion dung at great expense to see off the latter. The bad news is it doesn't look as if it works (do let me know if it has worked for you so I can give Lisa hope).

I suggested grapefruit halves as slug traps but that hasn't worked for her so far. Meanwhile Trev is "nuking" slugs on his veg plot by all manner of means. i told him about the Perrone-patented slug sleeve for his squash and beans, and he's giving it a go ...

Meanwhile the slugs on my patch seem to have beat a (no doubt temporary) retreat in the face of an array of tactics: nematodes, Perrone-patented slug sleeves, liberally applied coffee grounds and nighttime slug patrols. It seems the Slug Buggers PR people are keen for some publicity (they added a Q&A to the comments on my last post which I'll leave up as some people may find it informative) but I'd like to hear from anyone who can testify whether they actually work. And if they do, where do the slugs go?

My personal pest battle has moved to ants, an utterly different proposition. When I moved my wormery outside for the summer, black ants took up residence. They then began to expand their territory inch by inch until it included my kitchen, accessed by a tiny hole in the skirting board; god knows how they got from the outside to there. They thought the kitchen caddy filled with veg peelings on my worktop was the ant equivalent of a roadside burger bar. I sought advice from Allan Shepherd, who knows about these things, and apparently the worms won't be bothered by the ants.

He'd read somewhere that a good way of stopping ants getting into the Can'o'Worms in the first place is to place the wormery's legs in containers of water about one half to three quarters full. Keep the containers and water clean of debris so there are no bridges for the ants to cross. Now I just need to figure out how to get the ants that are in there, out, if you catch my drift. I might just dump the top two layers (which aren't very wormy) into my new beehive composter (yes I have fallen for the trend) when it arrives and hope the ants disperse from there.

Allan also said ants won't eucalyptus oil, lemon juice, lemon scented oil and talcum powder, while someone commented on his own blog that paprika was a good ant deterrent. Of course the old fashioned approach - provided you don't mind a few hundred tiny deaths on your conscience - is boiling water - I employed this method on a couple of red ant nests established in my lawn recently. Kills the grass too, but this grows back quickly. This doesn't work when the ants are living among your prize plants though, so the paprika option might come into play then.

Looking forward, not back, and a minor slug rant

i've been touched by the response to my decision to give up my allotment . Some people have tried to talk me out of it, but almost everyone was very understanding and recognised that . Emma Townshend of the Indie's A Nice Green Leaf blog wrote a lovely post bidding farewell to my allotment days and listing my "best bits", which was wonderful (I'd forgotten about that exploding pumpkin!) I will be keeping up this blog, and I am sure I'll still find plenty of horticultural matters to get my teeth into.

I visited the plot tonight for a brief recce of what needs removing before I hand in my notice and saw the Major for the first time in over a year. He looked the same as ever - a little ratty around the hind quarters, but generally sprightly. I'd assumed he was dead, so it was a welcome sight - just wish I'd had some food on hand to give him.

I should be able to harvest a good crop of garlic, strawberries and currants before I leave the plot for good, but seeing it again only confirmed my decision - there's bindweed starting an insidious romp across the chives and waist-high nettles around the compost bins. As I recognise in my book, allotments aren't for everyone - at this time of year it's several hours' work just to keep the weeds down, let alone grow anything - and right now, I have other things to do. I am sure I shall return to allotmenteering, but for now I am focusing on my garden. 

Speaking of which - will you permit me a brief slug rant? I Nemaslugged the whole garden the other week and yet the molluscs - like the zombies in Shaun of the Dead - just keep on coming, laying waste to my oriental saladini and French beans. Someone recommended New Horizon garlic granules the other day, but the downside is your garden stinks of garlic. I must reinstate a formerly semi-successful strategy, which has the other benefit of being free - grapefruit halves (the flesh already eaten) placed on the soil, cut side down. The slugs love them and crawl inside overnight. In the morning you can either chuck the fruit and the slugs away, or squish the slugs and put the fruit back for another crop the next night.

In the meantime, anyone tried the rather amusingly titled Slug Buggers? I can't quite believe there's a gardener out there who doesn't wish death on slugs, but perhaps I am wrong.

Becoming a bunny boiler?

My worst fears have been confirmed.

The holes dug in my raised beds that I'd blithely assumed were the work of one of the small dogs that occasionally roam the plot. But on a recent visit I clocked the poo pellets on the path - the final confirmation of the bad news that rabbits were responsible.

We've never had a bunny infestation before on the site, as far as I know. My plot is right on the edge facing open farmland, so it's a wonder there's not been a problem before now. I have to admit to feeling rather downhearted about it at the moment, and would appreciate any words of advice/encouragement/sympathy from any allotment holders similarly afflicted.

I am already eyeing up recipes for bunny burgers: now I just need to learn how to shoot.

What's in your anti-slug armoury?

The extract from my book that ran in the Guardian a few weeks ago was on that gardener's perennial, the slug: I was reminded of the useful anti-slug suggestions several readers responded with a couple of days ago when I spied my first gastropod of 2007 sashaying nonchalantly across my back step.

It was only a small one, but I suspected it was responsible for muching on the Iris reticulata that are planted (foolishly) in a walled raised bed that's very popular with slugs and snails. All that's left is a green stump.

Anyway, onto the suggestions: read the extract for my own ideas, but here are some readers' own top tips:

• Bill Coates says he's never tried it, but heard that slugs hate human hair and a spreading of clippings around any susceptible plants will do the trick, with the benefit of being non-toxic, bio-degradable and sustainable (unless you happen to be bald, I guess). Can anyone else vouch for this methoc?
• Ted Price tells me that planting pitcher plants or Sarracenia purpurea around slug-prone parts of the garden helps to keep the population down as these carnivorous plants will attract - and devour - lots of them. I grow pitcher plants and have never noticed them eating a huge number of slugs, but I'd be interested to hear what other people think of this suggestion. You also have to bear in mind that they won't be winter-hardy in some parts of the country, and require boggy conditions.
• Sue Beesley pointed out that Garden Organic sells some wildlife-friendly pellets that you can use safely without harm to wildlife, as opposed to the Metaldehyde pellets that we should avoid. Sue writes: "The active ingredient is Ferric phosphate.  Yes they are scarily blue, but they actually work better than the old type (the beasts crawl away and die tidily in a hole, not smeared on the path) and everything I have read assures me that they are totally safe to other wildlife.  As the formula suggests, they break down into iron, phosphorus and oxygen, so no nasty substances left behind either. I can't recommend them highly enough."
• Chris Maddams mentioned a similar-sounding pellet called Ferramol which has similar ingredients and is also safe for organic use, apparently.

I think I may take the laid-back approach to slugs this year and try the human hair method as well as a regular "slug patrol". Let me know how you're tackling the slug issue, won't you?

Cavolo nero and the curse of the whitefly

I love my Cavolo nero, the Italian cabbage that is easy to grow and tastes lovely, not least for its non-cabbagey taste  - no reminders of overcooked school dinners when you prepare this vegetable. The youngest leaves are good steamed but Italian chefs suggest frying in olive oil with garlic and chillies.

But there's a problem: the puckered leaves provide a snug home for whitefly, and while they don't do much in the way of damage, the little buggers are very tricky to remove before cooking. Last time they ended up either being washed down the sink as I splashed water everywhere while scrubbing the leaves, or flying up to a sticky death on the extractor fan.

Is there are better way to clear whitefly, either while the cavolo nero is growing, or once it's harvested? Do make any suggestions in the comments below.