coopette.com - Articles

Buying plants

emma — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 12:55:37 -0500

I’m not writing many articles at the moment, because I’m concentrating on the book, but if you haven’t already seen it you should check out my article (No Hoe Zone) that appeared in the Guardian on Saturday.

And this morning I’ve done a quick recap on how to buy garden plants over at HowToDoThings.com, a subject I covered in more depth earlier in the year in episode 52 of the Alternative Kitchen Garden show.

Grow Your Own Chocolate

emma — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 01:18:29 -0500

Outside of the tropics, the only place you’re likely to see a cocoa tree (Theobroma cacao, the trees that give us chocolate) is in a heated greenhouse at the botanical gardens. They can be grown as house plants, and seeds germinate easily when they’re fresh, but their size, their requirement for heat and the fact that you need two plants for pollination means that they’re unlikely to bear fruit. And even if they did, the process of turning cocoa beans into chocolate is a long one.

But if you’re a chocoholic gardener, all is not lost. There are some plants that will happily grow in your garden that have a chocolate scent or flavour. The most well known of these is the Chocolate Cosmos (Cosmos atrosanguinea), a sun-loving perennial with brownish-red blooms, reminiscent of dahlias. These blooms are produced prolifically from June to September and will scent the afternoon breeze with vanilla-tinged chocolate. Your plants won’t survive a cold snap though, so you’ll need to life the tubers for winter storage before the frosts set in.

Another plant that emits a chocolatey aroma is the Chocolate Scented Daisy (Berlandiera lyrata), another perennial that appreciates a sunny spot. It has yellow flowers and chocolate brown stamens, and a lovely chocolate scent that is most pungent in the morning. These open flowers attract beneficial insects to your garden, and the plant itself makes a good container specimen.

But if it’s the taste of chocolate that you crave then try Chocolate Mint (also known as Chocolate Peppermint). This hardy perennial is as easy to grow as any mint, and has a real after dinner mint scent and flavour – making it an ideal addition to desserts. What’s more, the bees will go mad for its purple flowers.

And if you have a damp and shady spot in your garden, consider growing Water Avens (Geum rivale) – a hardy perennial that grows around a foot tall. A chocolate-like drink can be made from the roots, either fresh or dried. In the past they’ve also been used to flavour beer, and when dried also make a good moth repellent!

This is one of the articles I wrote for Green Thumb. I was runner-up in the May competition to write the most articles; you can read all of them on the Green Thumb site.

Don’t struggle with spinach – grow chard

emma — Thu, 29 May 2008 04:12:36 -0500

Even the most experienced vegetable growers sometimes struggle with spinach. It’s a very fussy plant, demanding the best possible conditions and even then running to seed at the drop of a hat. Forget about transplanting your spinach, or nursing it through a dry season, or just forget spinach entirely and try one of the other leafy plants that are just as good to eat and easier to grow.

Chard is a large plant, popular in cottage gardens and vegetable gardens that are on show because it grows large and glossy green leaves on coloured stems. You can get everything from white through yellow and pink to dark red – and when the sun shines through the chard stems there are very few plants that can match them for visual appeal. They’re easy to grow, too. Chard is a member of the beetroot family, germinates easily, grows strongly and is bothered by very few pests – seedlings will need slug protection, but other than that they’re usually healthy and happy. You can harvest leaves through a long period, too. Spring sowings will crop all summer and late summer sowings will stand through the winter and then try to flower in spring.

Chard leaves and stems are both edible, but need to be cooked separately because the stems need a longer cooking time. Some people find the flavour a little strong, but if you’re one of them then you need to try chard’s baby brother – leaf beet. Leaf beet is a much smaller plant, growing in clumps rather than reaching for the skies. It’s plain green, with smaller leaves and delicate stems, but just as hardy and easy to grow and with a milder flavour. Young leaf beet leaves (also called perpetual spinach or spinach beet) can be eaten raw in salads. Older ones are great in stir-fries or wherever you would use spinach.

Leaf beet is occasionally bothered by leaf miners, who live within the leaves and eat see-through trails through them. If only one or two leaves are affected then just pick them off and put them on the compost heap. If the plant is badly affected then cut it right back to just short stems. The plant will survive the harsh treatment (although you might want to give it a liquid feed to say sorry!) but by the time it sprouts new leaves the leaf miners are likely to have moved on.

There are plenty of other leafy vegetables you could try growing, but if you’re looking for a garden staple then you can do a lot worse than chard and leaf beet. With their long season and ease of cultivation, they deserve a spot in kitchen gardens everywhere.

For more information on growing chard and leaf beet, listen to episode 6 of the Alternative Kitchen Garden show.

Dealing with copyright infringements

emma — Thu, 29 May 2008 04:12:57 -0500

If you have a blog or a website for long enough, then eventually you will come across someone who is reproducing content from your website on theirs, without your permission.

It has just been done to me, but fortunately I have been able to resolve the situation without too much trouble.

The first step against copyright infringement is to make it clear what is copyright on your site – a simple statement is enough. You will see that there is one under each of my articles. On my blog there’s a copyright statement in the sidebar that covers all of my blog posts and any comments that are made by other people. The AKG is different – it is released under a Creative Commons license, meaning that I allow it to be reproduced for non-profit purposes, as long as it is unchanged and correctly attributed to me.

The second thing you can do to prevent copyright infringement (or to at least make it more difficult) is to put a lot of links back to your own site in all of your material. Done sensitively, this helps people to navigate their way to useful stuff on your website, but unless the copyright thief wants to sit and hack out all the links in your stuff (and, lets face it, if they wanted to make an effort they’d write their own content), they’ll reproduce it with the links in and eventually you’ll spot from your stats that someone is reproducing your stuff.

When you find out that someone is reproducing your content, I would suggest a polite email asking them to stop. This may well be enough, especially when you point out that they are breaking your copyright.

If that doesn’t work, you can leave comments on their site that make it clear to their readers what they’re doing – and get all your friends to do the same thing. You can’t ensure those comments aren’t deleted by the site owner, but it will get the point across.

If you suspect you’re not the only victim, then let the others know – there’s strength in numbers, especially if some of the other content creators are big sites.

Send an email to the site’s ISP – copyright infringement is one of their big turn offs, and they may kill the site.

Finally, if all else fails, get a lawyer to write a Cease & Desist Order for you. It will cost you a little bit of money, but unless they want their arse toasted in court, it will deal with pesky copyright thieves.

Be Nice to Nettles

emma — Thu, 29 May 2008 04:13:07 -0500

This week is National Be Nice to Nettles Week with plenty of nettle events taking place around the country.

Although nettles can be pesky weeds, and give you a nasty sting, they can also be valuable in the garden and were (until relatively recently) thought of as very useful plants. Read more about nettles in my article: (B)eat your weeds: Nettles.

Green Thumb Articles is a database of gardening articles, so if you’re looking for something to read, then check it out. But the main purpose of the site is to provide e-zine publishers with content, so if you submit articles you could drive a lot of extra traffic to your website. Although Green Thumb Articles doesn’t pay for submissions, they do run contests – the two authors who submit the most articles in a month, and the one with the most original articles (i.e. not submitted elsewhere) win cash prizes.

Composting Awareness Week

emma — Thu, 29 May 2008 04:13:18 -0500

Worms doing their job in my worm compost bin

There’s still 2 days left of Compost Awareness Week, so here’s a round-up of some composty goodness:

A hot topic among the Oxfordshire Master Composters at the training sessions was how to keep rats out of your compost, something that many people worry about, but which need not be a problem.

If you can’t live without your caffeine fix, then you might want to consider composting your coffee – some coffee shops will even give you their waste coffee grounds to take home, for free.

Read my thoughts on Bokashi composting or my compost weeds clinic.

Or check out the Alternative Kitchen Garden podcast for information on general composting, worm composting and cold composting.

Country Gardener: Companion planting

emma — Thu, 29 May 2008 04:13:43 -0500

My copy of the May edition of Country Gardener magazine has arrived, with one of their new hessian bags! Perfect for carrying plants around, or doing a bit of shopping. They also do notecards and a 2009 Edible Garden calender. If you’re a fan then you can download a copy of the mail order form and buy your own. (I’m not on commission!)

This edition will be available in a farm shop or similar outlet near you from 1st May. This month the latest article in my Eco Garden series is on companion planting.

The HowToDoThings Guide to Green Living

emma — Thu, 29 May 2008 04:13:51 -0500

Over at How To Do Things they collected together a whole bunch of articles on green living topics for Earth Day.

Some of my articles are featured:

How to use urine as a fertilizer
How to control slugs without chemicals
and How to garden with wildlife in mind (which was aimed mainly at kids).

But if you pop over and check out the whole Guide to Green Living there’s plenty of other writers involved too, and you can learn about green spring cleaning, treating asthma in an earth-friendly way and packing an eco-friendly lunch, among other things.

Container herbs for beginners

emma — Thu, 29 May 2008 04:14:11 -0500

Increasingly, we’re being told that we can green up our lifestyle by growing some of our own food. Articles everywhere suggest that everyone can grow a few herbs on the windowsill, but if you’ve never gardened before then that’s not as simple as it sounds. Here is a basic run down of what you’ll need, and what you’ll need to know, to grow some easy culinary herbs in pots.

Firstly, you will need some containers. Herb plants are sold in small pots, which will quickly be outgrown. Look for some containers that are at least 15 cm in diameter (but they don’t need to be huge). If they don’t have drainage holes in the bottom then you’ll need to punch some yourself.

You’ll also need some compost – potting or multipurpose is fine for most herbs. Look out for ones that say they are peat-free. You won’t need a large bag to pot up a few herbs; your containers might have their volume printed on the bottom. If not, estimate how much compost you’ll need.

Herb plants can be divided into two main categories. Perennial herbs live for several years whilst for annual herbs you’ll need new plants each year.

Perennial culinary herbs include thyme, mint, rosemary and oregano. There are many different varieties of each, but the most useful varieties will be widely available. For perennial plants it’s easiest to buy a small plant from the garden centre and grow that on at home.

Thyme is a low-growing plant that likes sunny and dry conditions. Rosemary likes the same things, but makes a much larger plant. You can get upright rosemary and prostrate (which grows down over the side of the pot), but the flavour is the same. And oregano is another herb in this group (known as Mediterranean herbs, because they like it sunny and dry) and also grows quite tall, but oregano is much less woody than rosemary.

With all of these sun loving herbs, you will need to water them to start with when you plant them into your pots. But once they show signs of new growth you can leave it longer between watering and let the compost dry out. Never leave them sitting in water, because they will rot. They are tough plants and usually survive the winter, but you may want to bring them under cover in a wet winter.

Mint is different, it can handle a lot more water and more shade than the Mediterranean herbs. It’s also a thug – keep it in a container by itself, because it will push out anything else that’s planted with it.

With just a little bit of care, perennial herbs will provide all the fresh leaves you need for several years. If they start to look too big for their pots, you can either pot them into bigger pots, or tip them out and divide them into sections and replant the sections into different pots – so you’ll have more plants for your garden, or to share.

The cheapest way to grow annual herbs, like basil, coriander and parsley, is to buy some seeds and sow them yourself. If you sow them indoors, on the windowsill, the warmer conditions indoors will help them to germinate more quickly.

Parsley is best sown early in the spring, for summer harvests, and in late summer for autumn and winter harvests. Parsley will happily live indoors on the windowsill, or outside on the patio. The seeds can take a few weeks to germinate, though, so be patient. One or two parsley plants should be enough at any one time. Parsley likes sunny spots, but more water than the Mediterranean herbs.

Coriander likes warmer weather than parsley, so don’t put your plants outside until the weather has warmed up (usually May) or the cold will kill them. Keep harvesting leaves from your coriander, even if you don’t want to use them. Coriander runs to seed very quickly, and then the leaves taste bitter, but regular harvesting slows it down. Sow a pot of seeds every couple of weeks for a continuous supply throughout the summer. Bring a couple of pots indoors if you want fresh coriander through the winter.

Basil is a sun-loving herb, so don’t sow your seeds too early in the year unless the plants will be growing indoors – they don’t like cold weather. Keep your basil well watered, and harvest leaves even if you don’t use them, because (like coriander) this will stop the plants flowering too soon.

When your annual herbs are flowering, put them and their used potting compost onto the compost heap and start again with fresh seeds and fresh compost – used potting compost has no plant nutrients left in it to feed new plants. If you don’t have a compost bin yet then it’s time to start one so that you can turn your plant and kitchen waste into home made compost to feed your herbs next year!

Spring green manures

emma — Thu, 29 May 2008 04:14:23 -0500

Spring is a busy time for gardeners, with seeds to be sown, digging and planting to be done, and the first weeds making an appearance. Green manures may not be the first things that you think of to sow, but there are many green manures that are ideal for spring sowing and bring many benefits to your garden.

At this time of year there are two primary benefits to sowing a green manure. If you have bare ground that you’re not going to cultivate in the next few weeks then sowing a green manure helps to avoid weed problems and add fertility to the soil. Choose the green manure you sow according to the amount of time your soil will be fallow – there are varieties that mature in a few weeks and some that can be left in place for much longer times. This is an ideal way to get a new allotment under control – cultivate a small portion for now, and sow green manures on the rest until you’re ready for more.

Green manures are crops grown specifically to add nutrients to the soil. They are dug into the ground before they flower and get tough and woody, and left to rot down and add organic matter. Some green manures are also nitrogen fixers, able to actively add nitrogen to the soil and make it more fertile. If you’ve got a patch of soil that will be vacant for 2-3 months, then sowing a nitrogen-fixing green manure will give your next crop a big boost. Some green manures can even be used to undersow permanent plantings – adding fertility as they grow, without disturbing your perennials.

You can also grow a patch of green manure to cut and use as a mulch elsewhere, or to provide green material for the compost heap.

When you’re choosing a green manure to sow in spring, you need to take several factors into account. The first is the sowing time, as some can be sown earlier in the year than others. The second is the length of time that you want the green manure to be in place for. The third is what benefits you are hoping to achieve – do you need a nitrogen fixer, or are you looking for a green manure that gives excellent weed suppression? And last, but by no means least, if you are using green manures on your vegetable plot then you need to keep your crop rotation in mind – some green manures are from common vegetable families, and need to be used in accordance with the rotation.

Nitrogen fixers you can sow in early spring include Crimson clover and lupin. Both can be sown right through into summer, are left in place for 2 or 3 months and prefer lighter soils. Fenugreek is also a nitrogen fixer, if you have suitable bacteria in your soil, and prefers well-drained soil. Fenugreek will inhibit seed germination – good for weedy plots, but you will have to wait several weeks after digging it in before you can sow seeds. Transplants will be unaffected.

Trefoil is another nitrogen fixer. Its claim to fame is that it can tolerate some shade and is very low growing – ideal for undersowing hungry plants, and you can leave it in place for months (it may even survive the winter).

Mustard is quick growing, needing only 1 to 2 months in the soil. It’s a member of the Brassica family though, so be careful with your crop rotation. Phacelia needs a month longer, but isn’t related to vegetables. And if you can let a small patch flower, the bees around your patch will love you for it.

As spring moves on you can sow Essex red clover, a nitrogen fixer that can be left in place for up to 18 months. You can even sow winter tares for a quicker nitrogen boost – they take 2 to 3 months to mature.

And by late spring you can be sowing alfalfa, a nitrogen fixer that should be left in place for a year or longer to have the most effect. Buckwheat is the best choice for poor soils, giving a nutrient boost in 1 to 3 months.

Whichever green manure you choose, remember to dig it in (or cut it down, if you follow the No Dig approach) before it flowers, when the growth is softer and will be incorporated into the soil more easily. Then sit back and let the earthworms and other soil creatures do the rest of soil improvement for you.

If you’re interested in growing a permanent supply of fertility for your garden, then consider a comfrey patch.

A different selection of plants are grown as autumn green manures.

Here in the UK, the Organic Gardening Catalogue has one of the best selections of green manure seeds.

Wanna be a nature writer?

emma — Thu, 29 May 2008 04:14:33 -0500

If you’ve ever fancied being a nature writer, then check out this competition from BBC Wildlife Magazine and Earthwatch.

You’ve only got until the end of April to enter, but it looks like you can write on any (relevant) subject. You have to have had your 18th birthday before 1 January 2008 to qualify, but you can be a published writer.

The prize is publication of your article in BBC Wildlife and on the Love Earth website, plus a place on one of Earthwatch’s expeditions – to Spain, Vietnam or South Africa. And when you come back you get to write another article about your experiences.

It’s all a bit intrepid for me, but it’s a golden opportunity for a writer somewhere….

Garden Footprints

emma — Thu, 29 May 2008 04:14:43 -0500

With Earth Hour coming up tomorrow, it seems like a good time to look at the environmental impact of gardening.

Gardening is universally seen as an environmentally friendly pursuit – and it is, but that doesn’t mean that it is completely environmentally benign.

Last year I participated in one of Garden Organic’s members experiments, looking at the ecological footprint of gardening (ecological footprints are a way of estimating the environmental impacts of products and activities). They’re continuing their work this year – they sent me the report on last year’s experiment to read and comment on this year.

Garden Organic members are, pretty much by definition, people who garden organically, grow some of their own food and are environmentally conscious. But the report shows that growing some of your own fruit and vegetables can make a real saving on your overall environmental footprint – up to 6%, similar to installing double glazing, replacing an old boiler or cutting down on your car use.

The things which ramp up a garden footprint are buying in products that have a long supply chain, or use energy – like power tools. Making sure that you buy good quality tools, and maintaining them properly so that they last a long time, is a good way of cutting down on your garden footprint.

It’s also important to close nutrient cycles, by composting, and add fertility from home-made products such as comfrey liquid and green manures.

So the good news is that having a kitchen garden is environmentally friendly, but it’s important to keep an eye on what you buy. As in many other areas of life, adapting a frugal mindset in the garden will save the environment as well as your wallet.

Caffeine Awareness Month

emma — Thu, 29 May 2008 04:14:56 -0500

To celebrate Caffeine Awareness Month, How To Do Things have collected together a variety of articles about coffee.

You may already have read my contribution – How to Compost with Coffee – and my blog post on the coffee grounds I carried all the way home from Starbucks in London.

But if you pop along to How To Do Things you’ll be able to read all kinds of other interesting stuff about coffee, including the 10 top uses for coffee grounds and how to grow your own coffee plant.

Frugal Gardening

emma — Thu, 29 May 2008 04:15:06 -0500

Fruit seedlings, grown from pips

The lovely folks over at Peazyshop (a website and forum dedicated to saving money) asked me to write an article about frugal gardening.

With the rise of green consumerism, it sometimes seems as though the only thing we can do to save the planet is to spend money – on the latest eco-gadget, organic products or stylish recycling bins.

But the truth is that being eco-friendly and saving money often go hand in hand. Although there is a very strong link between poverty and environmental degradation, that isn’t an issue that most people in the Western world have to battle with.

If you would like more information about any of the subjects mentioned in the frugal gardening article, then have a look around the website, because they keep coming up. Here’s a selection of related pages to get you started:

Compost
Compost on the Alternative Kitchen Garden show
CAT ‘High Fibre’ Composting
Worm composting on the Alternative Kitchen Garden show
Harvesting worm compost

Water
Water-wise gardening on the Alternative Kitchen Garden Show
Make your own recycled weather station

Garden recycling
20 garden uses for a plastic bottle on the AKG
Using paper in the garden

Seeds
Seeds, an extra harvest from your garden
Seed saving on the AKG
Planting pips on the AKG
Seed swaps on the AKG

Article round-up 2

emma — Thu, 29 May 2008 04:15:22 -0500

Rhubarb leaves emerging

It’s been a couple of weeks since my last round up of articles that I’ve published elsewhere on the web.

At How To Do Things they’ve been collecting articles about coffee, so my contribution is How to Compost with Coffee, an article that has already been mentioned on about.com, which is very exciting (thanks to Madeleine for pointing that out).

And I’ve also been talking about making rosti, which is the latest thing we’ve mastered in our kitchen. If you follow the link to the article, it’s got a link to a great YouTube video about rosti at the end.

I’ve also been busy on Helium, talking about why I love each season, my ten favourite plants (all edible!), the importance of recycling and composting in the garden and how to start gardening early in the year.