Category: Food

Compost in 2024

Post author By Sick Veg
Post date July 18, 2024

Unlike with last year’s batch, temperatures in my HotBin have been solidly in the green on its dial. It’s been steaming away. I’ve been filling it up with uncooked vegetable kitchen waste since February, when I set it up after the scaffolding had come down. I’ve been mixing these GREENS with BROWNS, these fine wood chips, and paper waste. If anything, I would say I need a higher proportion of BROWNS in future, but it still smells good and aerobically composted.

The cats were pretty fascinated as I prized off the lid and scooped out the very bottom later from the HotBin. It looks pretty disgusting, I’d agree.

The first thing was to sieve the composted material. Because it’s a HotBin, and by its very nature moist, the result is not a fine tilth, but more like a cakey sludge. That’s a problem I was determined to solve.

Because I’ve found that my own compost is too much like a Black Forest gâteau, I’ve given a lot of thought as to what to add to it to give it some lightness and also the ability to drain better. In the past, I’ve used Perlite, but it’s not really doing anything in the soil.

So, after I’ve come across it repeatedly in my research for “The Garden”, and I’m a huge fan of the Carbon Gold range of compost mixes, I thought I would try amending it with biochar. In the past, I have used Carbon Gold’s own biochar amendment, but I need larger quantities than the small punnets I can get from them.

Then for good measure, and because I’m a little concerned about the possible acidity of my mix, I added a handful or two of Moorland Gold which I’ve been trialling. Really, I’d like to be making all my own compost. I bought too much this year. It seems crazy to be buying compost and throwing away organic matter from the household.

Because I only scooped out the bottom layer, this process only resulted in four small pots-worth. I moved four Lemon Tree seedlings into these pots, which I have grown from pips. There’s a lot of light on the roof garden, so I’m hoping these thrive.

Food Growing Urban

Potatoes

Post author By Sick Veg
Post date July 17, 2024

Astonished that this worked so well!

I planted a couple of chitting spuds in a fabric pot in March. I watered the abundant foliage until the plant looked like it was dying. That’s how it’s done. At this point, I stopped watering it so it would dry it out. Then, what is this magic? I dug out the fellers. Delicious taters – quite a return on my original investment!

Agriculture Food Health Practice Regenerative

The Koliskos

Post author By Sick Veg
Post date July 12, 2024

In the course of my research for my book “The Garden” time and again, I came across the work of the husband and wife Eugen Kolisko (21 March 1893 – 29 November 1939) and Lili Kolisko (September 1, 1889 – November 20, 1976).

They shared with Ehrenfried Pfeiffer the role of putting the flesh on Rudolf Steiner’s biological theories. It is my understanding that, while Pfeiffer was tied up on other Anthroposophical business during Steiner’s “Agriculture Course” lectures, the Koliskos were present at Breslau for them. This was the birth of the Biodynamic movement, which this year is celebrating its centenary.

Eugen Kolisko had a perhaps broader range of interest than his wife. This above is my copy of “Zoology for Everybody” (1944) that I discovered in the bargain bin in the bookshop at Emerson College. But his other works include writings on nutrition, natural history, geology, chemistry, medicine, even fiction.

Lili Kolisko, on the other hand, was dedicated to the scientific method. Early on, pursuant to Steiner’s esoteric ideas about the function of the spleen, through her microscope she discovered a new type of speckled platelet, which she and Steiner termed “regulator cells”. This reminds me somewhat of Wilhelm Reich’s microscopic investigations.

As much as Steiner himself celebrated her work, she was met with a cold shoulder by the medics and scientists of the Anthroposophical Society. These internal disagreements between the couple and other senior figures in the movement effectively drove them from Germany to resettle in England in the thirties. Eugen Kolisko died relatively shortly afterwards in 1939 leaving Lili in penury and eking out a living sewing purses.

In 1936 Lili Kolisko published “Moon and Plant Growth” in which she showed, by means of statistics and these beautiful photographs, how the influence of the waxing and waning moon could be used to optimise sowing. The Biodynamic idea is, in short, that you should plant root vegetables on a full moon, and leafy ones on the waxing moon.

Agriculture of Tomorrow in the library at Steiner House.

The couple’s book, Agriculture of Tomorrow (1939) is probably their masterpiece. Although Eugen had compiled the research with his wife, just as they were about to start writing it, he died, leaving the task to her. In it, they set out a series of experiments exploring the influence of the moon and planets and the role of chemical elements on plant growth, and upon the subject of nutrition. They also perform a scientific breakdown of Steiner’s suggestions for the renewal of agriculture.

In a sentence that could be penned today, in the book’s introduction Lili writes, “I want to write therefore about the regeneration of agriculture, which is the basis of the physical existence of men. Without proper food mediating life-forces to the human organism, human beings cannot grow strong and healthy, nor become able to develop the clear minds and moral strength we so urgently need.”

Among the photographs in the book (see below) you can glimpse the Kolisko’s house, Rudge Cottage, Edge, Stroud in Gloucestershire. Lili Kolisko died there in 1976, and it’s interesting for me to reflect that at that very moment I was living only 3 miles away in Lypiatt, Stroud.

Because I am in Gloucestershire often, with two uncles and aunts living just outside Stroud, and on this occasion travelling back from Wales, I thought I would drive past their old house and have a look.

[Big shout out to Jason Warland]

Community Food Health Nutrition Urban

Parkway Greens

Post author By Sick Veg
Post date May 19, 2024

I love to visit this shop. It’s the best fruit and vegetable shop I know in London. Looking at it from across the road today, I thought to myself, “This shop isn’t ALWAYS going to be there…” So I reasoned I had better take some photos of it. Just like I used to chronicle record shops back in the day.

This evening, reflecting further on that transience, I remembered Compendium Books by Camden Lock, just around the corner from Parkway Greens, a remarkable store and something of a cultural hub for the many years it was there.

We don’t think of green grocers in quite the same affectionate way as bookshops, but of course we should. The owner here is a particularly lovely chap. Long may he prosper.

Ecology Food Growing Organic Practice Spirituality Urban

Herbs

Post author By Sick Veg
Post date May 14, 2024

Fooling around with 20m2 on a roof terrace in the centre of London, there are distinct limitations to one what can achieve in a garden. I could, as the genius Mark Ridsdill Smith does, grow a lot more vegetables. However, my own view is that whatever vegetables I grow to eat – and this year it’s been spinach, leeks, rocket, red cabbage, yacon, potatoes, runner beans, broad beans, beetroot, and tomatoes – is only ever going to be a token, for giggles…

For whatever reason, after growing cavalo nero, lettuces, and spinach erbette, I’ve cooled on growing leaves. I’ll grow spinach again over the winter but, although they are touted as the best things to grow in the city (because they are fast to grow and expensive to buy), I find leaves somehow boring.

Equally I find most ornamentals, often highly cultivated plants you couldn’t imagine happening in nature, almost products of a laboratory, a very tedious thing to grow. The flowers I’m growing, borage, phacelia, limanthes, marigolds, sunflowers, dandelions, nasturtiums are found at vegetable-growing seed suppliers as varieties that are good for insect life. Even my most ornamental flowers honeysuckle, poppies, zinnias, dahlias, (this last especially a concession to Mrs Ingram who loves them – they are beautiful…) are renowned for being attractive to pollinators.

What works very well among these select vegetables, trees, and carefully-chosen flowers, are herbs. Ever since I came across Juliette de Baïracli Levy and went on Kirsten Hartvig’s amazing country ramble at Forest Row I’ve been enchanted by them and their awesome potential. In the city they really work well, they don’t take up masses of space, the bugs love them, and they are fascinating. Currently, I am growing nothing particularly far out.

I believe that what one grows in the city should fundamentally address our urban alienation from nature. That selection should be geared to making us connect with the process of growing, with the seasons, with the cycle of life and death, and our cosmic alignment. In the city, we can’t pretend that we’re living wholly natural lives, but at least we can use growing to keep in touch with those things; like a diver underwater has an oxygen tank.

Ecology Food Growing Practice Soil

Sunflowers

Post author By Sick Veg
Post date May 6, 2024

In the past I have never liked Sunflowers. I always felt there was something ungainly about them. That they were such a popular flower, I think also brought out my snobbishness. What is a music critic but a snob?

However, on my journey writing “The Garden” I came across them repeatedly. More than any other plant they are emblematic of the hippie movement. In practical terms, not only do they attract wildlife, they also create a crop with their seeds. They are not a boring ornamental.

For instance, this is Helen Nearing’s walled garden at The Good Life Center in Maine. I wish I had a better photo of the Sunflower itself, a volunteer which the center’s residents let grow because it was Helen’s favourite plant. You can see it in the distance against the back wall on the left.

Therefore, this year I decided to grow them myself. On the left in the seed tray are the classic Giant Yellow variety; on the right with the darker stalks are Velvet Queens.

When the seedlings got root bound, I graduated the larger ones to pots.

Here are the largest and most promising seven plants.

Then I started hardening them up outdoors on the roof garden where we get a lot of sun.

These too needed planting up quite quickly. Lorra growing power in Sunflowers which can reach up to 30 feet tall.

I planted the biggest three into my own compost in large pots which I had been protecting through the winter with clover. This will be their final destination. I’m excited to see how they will get on through the Summer.

Food Growing Urban

April Raised Bed Update

Post author By Sick Veg
Post date April 27, 2024

Half the Spinach was already harvested but I wanted to flip these beds to Beetroot.

I was very proud of these Leeks but they took FOREVER to grow.

Amazing!

Very nice crop of Spinach. Did well through the Winter.

Rocket was surprisingly excellent. I’ve a bad habit of leaving it too long. It then gets woody, “lignin”, but this was delicious.

After everything had been harvested.

Mulched.

Mulched with this stuff which I bought by accident but subsequently got great value out of.

Out come the Beetroot seedlings from under the grow-lights. Less far along than I was with the soil blocks last year.

Looking very cheerful in their new home. Gotta love Beetroot.

Planting my other seedlings from indoors. Chamomile. Calendula. Red Cabbage. Rosemary. For the first time, I sieved my potting compost. I’m going to do this every time from now onwards.

Pretty alarming all this huge debris. Great compost though – and this stuff is nice mulch for my bigger plants.

Here are the seedlings in their makeshift tent.

Washing Spinach.

Rocket and Spinach ready to eat.

Leeks steaming on the stove.

Ecology Food Growing Organic Practice Urban

My Trees

Post author By Sick Veg
Post date April 8, 2024

I’ve been meaning to write a post about my trees for a while. Growing trees from their seeds takes a certain amount of care and patience.

I was worried about the health of these two Horse chestnut trees. I was sure they’d succumbed to fungus and died. But they’ve come back looking very strong this spring about which I’m delighted. I’d potted them up and put them in my own compost. These were grown from two conkers I found in the street around the corner in the autumn of 2023.

It’s troubling when young deciduous trees lose their leaves in the winter. You think they have come a cropper. This Oak I found as an acorn on Hampstead Heath. I think it’s going to do well this year. I gave its siblings to friends in Wales.

Since I rather optimistically planted a pip in a friend’s back garden in the early seventies when I must have been, ooh, six years old, growing an apple tree from a pip has been an cherished ambition. This was from an organic apple from the supermarket. I currently have a few more pips I’m hoping will sprout – one a particularly delicious variety I got from a farmer’s market, the other from the apple tree by the Caddy’s caravan in Findhorn. I read recently in Mark Ridsdill Smith’s excellent “Vertical Veg” book that apple trees do well in containers on roof gardens – so have redoubled my efforts. It’s all about tree crops, people.