I can never get over the miraculousness of plants growing. Look how scrawny these beetroot seedlings looked just two months ago. And look at them now!
I’m well on my way to a bumper crop. Those worms can’t have done any harm.
Category: Growing
Peter Saville, the legendary designer best known for his work for Factory records, is our most-esteemed EC1 local luminary. In the past I had the opportunity to briefly meet and work with Peter at his studio on this Colorcalm DVD in 2005. He’s extremely charming and has a particularly inspired working method. At the time I took the opportunity to get a copy of “Closer” signed for my friend Mark Fisher which present I gave to Mark. I think in due course Mark went on to interview him. I see Peter around our neighborhood or down the shops from time to time, sometimes stopping to say hi to him. I don’t think he really knows who I am, which is no problem really. I hardly know who I am myself.
In 2006 it happened that our local St Luke’s Gardens were renovated. Seeing as how he was a local resident, the planners asked Saville to design something for the space. Inspired by the area’s traditional role as a centre of printmaking the idea was for beds with Cyan/Yellow/Magenta/Key (Black) plantings of flowers. Nice concept.
Fast forward eighteen years. As with these things so often the execution hasn’t kept up with the vision.
The first thing is that a slightly unsightly bird feeder has been installed in the middle of the centre “puck”.
I don’t really mind this so much, because I happen to like birds, but it’s a bit of a car crash.
Easier to address is that the planting has gone awry. I can see Magenta, Yellow, and Black here – but the Cyan definitely needed a hand. This would be so simple for Islington council to rectify but quicker to fix myself.
I ordered a small pack of Blue Cornflower seeds from the reliable Tamar Organics (Centauria cyanus should anyone accuse me of messing with the concept). This is a flower that bugs love.
These are the most remarkable seeds I have ever seen, like miniature shaving brushes.
I put a little seed compost down, because these guys wouldn’t survive just dumped into the parched flowerbed, and gave them a generous watering.
Yeah, no worries, you’re welcome.
My Guinness traps have been very effective at snaring them but I still have to destroy slugs and snails every night. I’m out late with the torch on my phone and some repurposed kitchen tongs. Often I find these slimy critters clustered around these home-made devices where I intercept them. It’s one of the downsides of having to do this before bedtime that the activity has been threatening to permeate my dreams.
Apart from this, although I have lots of insect activity I’m really happy about, bees, wasps, hover flies, butterflies and now worms, I have had precious few pests. That’s a benefit one reaps from looking after the soil and keeping it healthy (organic compost, no pesticides, no dig) and also having a diversity of planting (which includes some weeds that I have encouraged). The less diversity the weaker the ecosystem and the greater the need for pesticides.
One of the weeds I have let grow in pots is Dock. I never gave this much thought. Although I uprooted it from some pots, for instance I ripped out a massive Dock which had sprung up where I am growing an Apple tree, in a few spots I have left it. What I could not have foreseen was how this would benefit me so dramatically.
For some reason a swarm of Aphids chose one Dock over and above any other plant in the garden to settle on. Even better, there they are being farmed by some Ants.
Farmers sometimes use what is called a Trap Crop to draw pests away from valuable ones. A classic example is how Alfalfa is planted to draw the Lygus bug away from Cotton plantations. Weeds can apparently function in the same way.
Last year some Dandelions sprung up in the garden and I was delighted.
Rather than just let nature take its course I thought I would cultivate them. Here are the seeds I gathered last year.
I planted them in seed trays here on the far left. Then transplanted the most successful ones into pots. It was fun doing this with a “weed”.
They bloom very early in the season. This is them at the very start of April. They open in the morning and shut in the evening in a very pronounced way that, familiar as we are with flowers in vases, one tends to forget.
Just as quickly they transform into their “clock” form. This was taken on the 15th April a mere two weeks afterwards.
Here’s a close-up of the same head which image I’m using as an icon on my email account at the moment.
You can eat Dandelions and they are supposed to be good for you. I tried the yellow flower heads and the leaves. They taste ok but they might benefit from some vinaigrette.
One of my very earliest childhood memories was of eating Dandelion stalks. These are hollow tubes which you can split open and flatten out. Never did me any bloody harm I can tell you.
This photo, taken today on May the 5th shows how quickly the season is over. Perhaps they will flower again this year?
Again, I gathered some seeds. [David Attenborough VO:] And so the cycle repeats itself.
Rock nerds will know that Dandelion was the name of John Peel’s record label. Peel may have been aiming for the same free-wheeling, raggle-taggle vibe that characterises the plant but apparently the name came from one of his hamsters at the suggestion of his then flat-mate Marc Bolan.
Last Summer I ate a particularly delicious melon I bought from the supermarket. I thought I would try my hand at growing some from its seed.
Here they are planted in soil blocks. In fact this lot totally failed to germinate. A bit casually I didn’t use seed compost. Normal compost is a bit coarser and it seemed like the seedlings couldn’t struggle their way through it. I thought this was yer typical gardener’s myth but it turned out to be true.
Undeterred I tried again with a finer compost (this time in a seed tray) and they grew very vigorously.
Supposedly melons need a warmer temperature to grow in our climate. They will do well in a green house but I don’t have one of them. The window in my room has a nice south-facing aspect. It gets a lot of sun. So I planned to grow them there. I prepped a trough on the window sill, suspending stones on strings from the frame above so they would sit under each of the three root balls. By this method I plan to train the melon’s vine around each string.
When I popped the three strongest-looking seedlings out of the tray the roots were looking healthy. As far as I know that circular one off the bottom is the tap root.
I sunk them in deep burying the stem underground. This is cool apparently. Gets them snug.
A week or so later they are really thriving. I will update you on their progress. Let’s see if we can’t grow something we can eat.
Over the past few years I have frequently agonised over what to do with snails in my tiny garden. I’ve gone as far as airlifting them to local parks.
It’s been a tremendous weight off my conscience to realise that I don’t have to tolerate them. Consequently when I discover snails, like this one in a nightly sortie, I throw them away.
I’m happy to welcome cats, birds, flies, caterpillars, wasps, weeds, and all manner of bugs. But not snails, they can fuck off.
I sowed Rocket last October. With the Broad Beans it was the only thing which I grew through the winter.
You can see it here in the autumn just beginning to sprout beside the Red Cabbage.
Rocket is amazingly hardy – surviving even the snow.
By last week it was a riot. But the stems had started to get quite tough and it was beginning to flower. That’s supposed to make the plant bitter to eat. Tasted fine to me. Nice and peppery.
I like this shot deep in the foliage. It gives one the sense of being its own little cosmos.
By Old Street standards I got a pretty huge crop which did about three meals.
Here is the bed tidied up, mulched with some compost, and sown with Leeks. Thought I would give them a try because my daughter has always loved them.
From farm to table. XD.
I was on my daily cycle which takes me over London Bridge, behind Tate Modern, and (walking) back over the Millennium Bridge. In the old days I would often go and see Luke and Edmund at their poetry shack by the river. In a skip beside one of the new developments that are going up that are the subject of litigation I saw a huge selection of plastic plant pots that were being thrown away.
Because it was fenced in I was unable to clamber in myself but a guard very kindly hooked out some for me. I took as many as I could carry with me on a bicycle. The process reminded me a little of collecting the wood for the forms sculptures. I saw from a sticker that the blue pots I liked had been part of an order of eighty Pinus Mugo Pumlio. These dwarf pines must have been for making little bushes or summat.
Here they are stacked up on a bench by The Tate. They cleaned up very nicely back at home. Can’t have nice plastic pots going to waste!
Categories
Cow Parsley
It’s interesting cultivating weeds. These plants are robust and want to grow where you find them. There’s a lot to recommend them.
Cow Parsley is on my mind because, just this morning, I planted some that I collected at the Tibetan Buddhist Monastery Samye Ling in the borders of Scotland. You can see a clump of it, white heads, just to the left of the gate in the picture of Tara above.
Cow Parsley is one of the very few plants I could actually name that I remember from the hedgerows of Gloucestershire and my childhood. Apparently it’s from the same family of plants as carrots; and if carrots cross-pollinate with it they can “regress”.
The seeds are satisfyingly large. I like large seeds.
I’ve planted them in a module tray. I tucked them in a bit after I took this photo. Very interested in seeing how they prosper on Old Street and whether the insects like them.