Weed 1 is quite pretty, with little pink flowers and dainty leaves. However, it doesn’t smell particularly nice when you bruise the foliage.

Weed 2 is leafier, and the chickens will sometimes peck at the leaves but it’s the seeds they go nuts for. The seed heads come apart into hooked seeds that stick to everything in sight. It’s easy for me to get covered in seeds when I’m working in the gardens, and if I sit down in the chicken run the hens will peck them all off for me!

I assume they’re both pretty common weeds, but what are they? You can click through for larger versions of the photos if you want a good look.

Some of the foods are straightforward enough – the processes are larger scale versions of things you could manage in your own kitchen, or easy to understand. We might not attempt homogenization (a process that makes the fat globules smaller and more even) or pasteurization (which kills off a lot of the bacteria) at home, but they’re not too disturbing unless you’re a proponent of raw milk.

The segment about eggs was really interesting to me as a chicken owner. Fortunately Jimmy visited a free range chicken farm, so there were no horrors on display. The staff go out of their way to avoid stressing the chickens – because it can cause deformed eggs or issues with the shell quality – and even knock before they enter the chicken shed!

Once the eggs have been collected a UV light is used to detect eggs that are wet or dirty, and these are classed as seconds. Another process is used to guage the size of the air sac inside the egg (caused when the egg is formed at chicken temperature and cools down after laying). The air sac increases in size as the egg ages, and eggs with larger air sacs don’t stay fresh as long. The air sac is the reason that stale eggs float in water. Cracked eggs are easily contaminated, and so a special machine checks for cracks by tapping each egg and listening to the resulting sound. Cracked eggs give a dull noise, and are off to the seconds pile. But the less than perfect eggs aren’t thrown away – they’re processed into liquid egg for use in the catering industry.

A visit to the cheese factory was also not too worrying. The unique taste of each variety of cheese comes from the bacteria involved in making it. Traditionally these bacteria would have been present in soured milk, but these days they arrive at the factory in frozen pellets, to ensure consistency. Once added to the milk they feed on the lactose (milk sugar) to form lactic acid, and that curdles the milk. At the right point in this process, salt is added to discourage the bacteria, and the cheese is pressed into moulds to mature – now the bacteria are working slowly to develop the flavour of the cheese.

It was the last segment that was less appetizing. Butter is formed by shaking milk until the fat globules stick together (something you can do at home with cream and a jam jar). Margarine is made by treating vegetable oils so that they are solid at higher temperatures and adding colour, flavouring, water, salt and milk powder – plus an emulsifier to stick the whole lot together. A lot of margarine includes palm oil, the production of which can cause serious environmental problems.

According to the schedule, the next episode is on Wednesday and looks at food preserving.

Time to plan your seed orders

I’m really quite excited because Seeds of Italy (who are fans of the show :) are having some open days in the run up to Christmas. They’re opening up their warehouse and letting people in to wander round and browse the goodies to their heart’s content. They do some lovely stuff – I’m still trying to find a suitable place for a truffle tree, and they do seed mixes for pet food and unusual things like risotto rice and barley and … well, if you like growing unusual things you should check out their catalogue.

When you see Seeds of Italy seeds for sale in garden centres, they only stock a small portion of the range, which means if you want any of the odd stuff then you have to put in an order via their website. Which is no problem, but if you want to avoid the postage costs and have a good nose around then perhaps the open day is for you. Here are the details from their email newsletter:

“We are pleased to invite all of you to 3 pre-christmas Italian shopping events where you are welcome to come to our warehouse at Seeds of Italy in Harrow to complete your christmas shopping. illy coffee, vin brule and Panettone will be awaiting you as we show you around and you will be able to buy signed copies of our cookbook ‘from seed to plate’ personalised to your loved one, fine Italian soaps from Florence and Milan, some limited cookware from Piral of Genova, and of course, lots and lots of Franchi seeds with expert advice on which ones to choose for 2010.

Nearest tube is Harrow and Wealdstone (Bakerloo line) and we are 5 minutes walk, out of the front of the station (where the shops are), turn right to the bridge, right and walk down the hill and 2nd left into Rosslyn Crescent where the costcutter is. Half way around, you will see Phoenix Industrial Estate and we are the first unit on the left, unit A1.

The open days will be held on Saturday the 28th of November between 0930 and 1600 with parking directly outside for a limited number of vehicles, and then again on Friday the 18th of December from 1600 to 2030 and again on Saturday the 19th of December from 0930 – 1400. Some items will be discounted on the day and with no P&P, you could make some good savings too! Why not order your goods in advance for collection and we can even wrap them for you!

If you can’t wait, then you can see us this week until Sunday the 8th of November at Spirit of Christmas at Olympia and then again next week from Friday 13th-Sunday 15th November at BBC Good Food (Masterchef live) at Olympia and the Italian Christmas bazaar on the kings road on the 1st and 2nd of December at the old town hall, Chelsea. We look forward to seeing you there.”

I’m currently in negotiations with Pete as to which event we can attend :D

My garden today, with neighbour’s hedge removed. New fence pending.

It must have been nearly two months ago now that my neighbour came around to inform us that he was getting quotes for having his hedge removed and replaced with a fence. I was ambivalent about it – on the one hand we hated cutting our side of it, it was a real chore and one that we did not really embrace. We were always embarrassed that our side was shaggy and his was not. On the other hand, trees are good and hedges are great for wildlife. My neighbour was pretty ambivalent about the process as well. It wasn’t his idea – even in his 80s he’s still game for climbing a ladder and trimming the hedge with shears. His family were less keen.

Yesterday was the day, and a team of 3 guys came around to remove the hedge. The noise of the chainsaw and the hammering upset the chickens (and us!) and it didn’t help that my other neighbour’s father chose yesterday to prune the ailing horse chestnut that drops leaves (and occasional large branches) on my compost heaps, and then burn the wood in a smoky bonfire.

By the time the sun went down, the hedge was history. A couple of fence panels are up, but there’s more to finish today. In the meantime, I have a very unusual view into next door’s garden.

Now that the hedge is gone I can conceed it is an improvement. I get about a foot of garden back, and it’s a good foot because it means I can access the back of my raised beds. The hedge won’t be trying to encroach on my veggies next year, and at 6 ft the finished fence will be lower and will block out less light. And the dense conifers didn’t do much for the birds anyway. The sparrows prefer the straggly bush at the end of our garden that needs a jolly good prune and is attacking the grow dome. We hope to tackle that this winter and get it under control.

There is lots more banging on the agenda today, I suspect, and the chickens won’t like that either – at the moment I think the new vista is freaking them out, but they’ll soon get used to the new fence and so will we.

Remember the eddoes? (aka elephant’s ears). I planted them in pots in April 2008 to see how they would grow. They overwintered in the grow dome and spent their summers outdoors. This year they were troubled by drought, and when it came time to clear the garden up I decided their time had come.

I tipped them out and they hadn’t grown much in the way of new roots. It’s not surprising, and hence not disappointing. I never did try the leaves. They did look very tropical when in leaf though, if you like that sort of thing :)

Got milk?

Pete and I were talking in the car earlier on about a programme he’d watched on the iPlayer last night that he thought I might like – the second episode in Jimmy’s Food Factory series, What’s in my sandwich? (available online for another month).

In this series, Jimmy looks at what it takes to put some of the processed foods we rely on onto supermarket shelves. Pete thought I might enjoy this one because it involves a giant greenhouse of tomatoes and fields and fields of salad vegetables.

First up, though, Jimmy tried to recreate the Chorleywood process that is used to make supermarket bread that is soft and bouncy and lasts for a week or so after you buy it. The secret lies in whipping a lot of air into the dough and adding some additives so that the air bubbles stay put.

In the giant tomato greenhouse, a UK grower is able to supply tomatoes all year round through keeping them in a climate-controlled environment. But as fuel prices rise, how do they keep the heating bills down? They’ve settled on a novel solution – they use tonnes of waste fruit and vegetables, biodigesting them to produce methane, which is then burned for heat. And all the carbon dioxide that produces is piped into the greenhouses to increase tomato production. Which all sounds like a wonderful way to keep waste organic material out of landfill, but as Jimmy pointed out a lot of this ‘waste’ food is perfectly edible and could be feeding people directly rather than being used to keep tomatoes warm out of season.

Out in the salad fields, a war is being waged against insects. Firstly, yellow sticky traps are deployed – a low tech, ‘high tack’ solution to finding out what’s living in the fields. Bat boxes encourage bats into the fields (who can eat 3000 bugs per night), and flowering plants are used to attract an army of beneficial insects. Which reduces, but does not eliminate, the need for pesticides. And high tech machinery is used to separate any remaining bugs from their dinner before it’s bagged to become ours.

And then it’s on to cheese slices – apparently processed cheese is only 60% cheese. The rest is water, milk powder and ‘melting powder’ that helps to stick these non-sticky ingredients together. Which is why processed cheese is rubbery. Yum.

Jimmy’s excitable delivery is part pride in his achievements as he recreates these processes in his barn (mainly using power drills) and part wonder at the achievements of the food scientists who make all this possible. But, I have to say, watching all this food processing really does bring it home to me what we do to our ‘food’ and how far removed it has become from what we used to eat.

Highly processed food may be convenient, and cheap, but I certainly don’t fancy it much when I’ve seen how it has been made. Out of morbid curiosity I went back and watched the first episode in the series, ‘breakfast‘, but I wish I hadn’t. Robot milking machines that get a yield of 30 litres of milk per cow per day (as opposed to a ‘traditional’ system that gets 20 litres) and cornflakes that have all the goodness removed and then added back in (iron filings, yum!) make the process for getting sugar crystals from sugar beet look quite tame. But I am glad I don’t drink instant coffee ;)

It’s about as far removed from Slow Food and permaculture as you can get.

Doesn’t time fly? It’s been around 3 months since the UK publication of The Alternative Kitchen Garden: An A to Z, and the latest news is that it will be available in the US from February 2010 (although Amazon UK and the Green Shopping Catalogue both ship internationally if you want a copy before then).

If you’ve already read the book, would you consider writing a review? If you have a website/ blog of your own then you could put it up there and I will link to it from my Books page. If you’re an Amazon shopper, you could write an Amazon review. If you don’t have an online presence as such then you could email me your comments and I could put them up on the Books page.

If you let me know that you’ve put up a review I will happily say thank you with a gift of home-saved seeds from the Alternative Kitchen Garden (if you’re in the UK) and/ or a signed book plate to stick in the front of your copy.

I was up next, talking about the Grow Dome and the chickens, and if you really want to you can head over to Soilman’s blog and watch a little video of me talking.

Ben from Real Seeds gave a short presentation on why GM crops are bad (for the low down, check out the Real Seeds 2008 newsletter, there’s a really good diagram that Ben recreated for us on the ‘Soup of the Day’ chalk board).

Vickie from Garden Organic explained a bit about the work of the Heritage Seed Library (HSL).

Dr Simon Platten from the University of Kent gave a very interesting presentation on his anthroplogical study of local allotment sites – and he also brought along his collection of French bean seeds that I saw at Kew in March.

Tom Wagner of Tater Mater gave a very detailed presentation on his work breeding new varities of tomatoes and potatoes (with the aim of conserving genetic traits from old varieties and landraces by bringing them forward into new varieties and also to increase the nutritional value of the varieties we eat).

What with the seed swap and the pot luck lunch (I made hard boiled eggs!) you can see that we had a really full, interesting and fun schedule.

I came home with two new things to try – Patrick’s litchi tomato seeds and two cloves of elephant garlic that I have potted up this morning.

(Look back at FoGroBloMe ’08.)

If you could save any plant in the world (but just one), what would you choose? I am currently fascinated by the wild apple forests of Kazakhstan, so I guess that currently I would choose the original apple species Malus sieversii* – although it’s hard to choose because there are so many worth candidates.

So what would you save? Leave me a comment below!

*If we’re going to save apples (and any other fruiting plants) then we’ll have to save the bees as well.

I’m raising money to save an entire species with the Millennium Seed Bank – if you have a little bit of spare cash then please head over to the Alternative Kitchen Garden Seed Appeal on JustGiving and make a contribution. Thank you!

This morning I have been listening to Plight of the Bumblebee, which was broadcast on Radio 4 yesterday and is available on iPlayer for a week. Although there has been a lot in the media about the decline in honeybee populations, there has been less focus on the fact that all bee populations are declining, including the bumblebee.

The show starts in Scotland, where a fruit farmer who grows strawberries, raspberries and blueberries in polytunnels uses hives of imported (from the Netherlands) bumblebees to pollinate his fruit crops. He says that the bigger, fluffier bumblebees do the pollinating work of 20 honeybees, and they are able to work in cooler conditions.

With the loss of two species in the last 70 years, there are 24 native bumblebee species in the UK, and about a quarter of those are at risk. The Bumblebee Conservation Trust was set up to address this issue, and they do a lot of research into bumblebees and also run conservation projects. They even have a sniffer dog, called Toby, who is being trained to sniff out bumblebee nests early in the year when they just contain a queen – with no workers coming in and out of the nests they are impossible for a human observer to spot.

The different bumblebee species have different lengths of tongue, which basically means that they are capable of pollinating different flowers. They also have a trick called Buzz Pollination – they can alter their vibration from their customary low drone to a high pitched buzz which causes some flowers to release a shower of pollen. Without buzz pollination, our tomato crop would be very limited.

The Great Yellow bumblebee has been affected by the loss of wildflower habitats and is now only present in Orkney and a few other places in Scotland. The Short-Haired bumblebee has been extinct in the UK since 1988, but colonies were exported to New Zealand 120 years ago to help with pollination there, and so the bee could be reintroduced to the UK in a special project running in Dungeness.

Although special projects like these are important, there are more gardens in the UK than nature reserves, and if we all grew a few bee-friendly plants then we would be creating a huge bee reserve. How do you choose bee-friendly plants? A good tip if you’re at the garden centre and can’t remember any plant names is to wander around and see which plants are being visited by bees. If it will grow in your garden then it should attract bees there too :) You should also be looking for old-fashioned flowers that would be at home in a cottage garden – the modern annual bedding plants have been over-bred for showy blooms and are very little use to bees. Especially the sterile F1 hybrids, which have no pollen.

What does the future hold if we lose the bees? Fewer flowers, less colour in the countryside, less fruit and more wind-pollinated grain crops. If we want colour and a diverse diet, we need to look after our bees! Follow the link to the show homepage for links to more of the projects mentioned in the show.

You know me, I love everything to do with unusual edibles. My bookshelf proudly displays Sally Cunningham’s Asian Vegetables and old favourites Growing Unusual Vegetables by Simon Hickmott and Plants for a Future by Ken Fern. So you can imagine I was rather pleased when I spotted a new book in the Wiggly Wigglers catalogue called “Grow and Eat Something Different“, by John and Shirley Murrell. It’s not widely available – it’s a self-published book and it’s odd to own one that doesn’t have an ISBN, a barcode or even a blurb on the back.

It’s main strength is that it is written by two very experienced gardeners who have also travelled widely and brought back both plants and ideas. This book is their collection of information about some ‘less common vegetables and fruit’, although some are bound to be familiar to readers of this blog.

In fact, the book is organised with the most familiar crops at the front, ranging through to the most unusual at the end. There are less than 30, so it’s a slim volume, and it won’t take you long to read through. But once you have it’s a useful book to have on the shelf to refer to when you attempt to grow something new to you.

It covers (shown here in the order in which they appear in the book) – kohl rabi, celeriac, Jerusalem artichokes, salsify and scorzonera, Florence fennel, winter squashes, winter salads, Asian greens, cardoons and artichokes, winter radishes, beans, sea kale, asparagus peas, sweet potatoes, tomatillos and cape gooseberries, celtuce, okra, jostaberries, Japanese wineberries, huckleberries, figs, korila (achocha) and chayote.

I’ve grown about half of those at least once. There are some on the list I am unlikely to try (I am not a big fan of celeriac) and some for which my garden is currently too small. But I still found the book interesting.

Because it is a self-published book, it has the feel that you’re listening to two very knowledgeable gardeners talk on their favourite subject. But it also has limitations – the photos are OK but not spectacular. There is some odd punctuation and the occasional minor error (leaf miners are referred to as leaf minors, but I find that description quite apt!). There is the odd omission, too – the instructions for winter radishes encourage you to sow them right through to the beginning of October, but the harvesting date is not mentioned.

This is not an all-encompassing manual on how to grow these less common crops, nor is it supposed to be. But it succeeds in its aim in passing on the Murrell’s experience, and is worth a place on your shelf if you’re interested in unusual edibles. And it’s entertaining because there is plenty of character in the writing. There are notes on the culinary uses of each vegetable, although it appears that the authors are happy to eat pretty much anything if it’s covered in cheese and breadcrumbs and grilled to become an ‘au gratin‘ dish. And apparently ‘eating too many fresh figs can make you a bit runny’, and you can’t say fairer than that :D

If you’re new to Wiggly Wigglers then you can get £10 off your first order of £50+ by entering the Wiggly discount code FVS909 when you checkout. And you can also get a free copy of their book about the transformation of the Wiggly Garden – Bringing a Garden to Life, by Jenny Steel (normally £18, catalogue code S9292). These two offers are only valid until the end of October 2009.

I’ve talked before about the Millennium Seed Bank and the important work they are doing in preserving the world’s wild plant species from extinction. Some of the seeds are stored in their facility at Kew’s second garden in Wakehurst Place (Sussex, UK) and others are collected and stored by Kew’s partners across the world. (There was a lovely article about one group, in Botswana, in the Observer in July.)

Yesterday, the MSB announced that it had reached its first major milestone – seeds have been collected from 10% of the plants. The next milestone is in 2020, and aims to collect 25%. However, there is a problem – there is a lack of funding to continue the work.

The MSB is now asking for donations, and if you are so inclined you can adopt a seed for £25 – which might be the perfect gift for the gardener who has everything.

I am sure you share my feeling that this is an important cause (even though, we know, it is a safety net and not the entire answer to species extinction). Many of you will be saving and sharing seeds at home, helping to protect the biodiversity of our familiar crop plants and ensuring that heritage (heirloom) varieties are passed down through the generations as they have been for centuries.

And so I think that together we could go one step further and save an entire plant species. The list of species that is currently available for sponsorship includes edible and useful plants that should appeal to AKG listeners. The cost of sponsorship is £1000 or £2000, depending on which species is chosen. From the current list I would choose Origanum syriacum (the most economically important edible wild plant in Lebanon) if we hit £1,000 or Oldfieldia dactylophylla (a multi-purpose fruit tree from south central Africa), if we can raise £2,000.

And so I have begun something new to me – an Alternative Kitchen Garden Seed Appeal. I have a JustGiving page, which means that you can donate via credit card or PayPal, and means that you can be sure that the money raised goes directly to Kew. If you’re in the UK and you would prefer to send a cheque then send me an email; once it arrives I can add it to the total.

If we reach our goal then our sponsorship of a species will be recognised on the electronic touch-screen register at the MSB in Sussex.

Thank you!

October 15th 2009 is the third Blog Action Day – a global, online event aimed at raising awareness of a particular pressing issue. The first event, in 2007, was on the environment; last year’s topic was poverty.

This year we’re looking at the environment again, but this time a specific environmental issue – Climate Change. In some ways, climate change is a simple issue. The world’s scientists agree (although there are still some dissenters) that our use of fossil fuels is sending so much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere that we are rapidly changing our climate. The planet as a whole is getting slightly warmer, but the effects that will have are very dependent on where in the world you are. Sea levels will rise, inundating low-lying areas. Extreme events such as prolonged droughts and floods will increase.

Here in the UK the impacts of climate change are still unpredictable. We have noticed changes over recent years – earlier springs, drier winters and wetter summers. If the UK gets warmer then the natural habitats of native plants and wildlife will move northwards; less mobile species will struggle to cope with the changes. Rainfall patterns will change and the seasonal trends that have been familiar for centuries will disappear.

Gardeners are uniquely placed to see these changes as they occur, as the growth habits of plants change, growing seasons become more challenging and new pests and diseases become problematic. We’re also uniquely placed to help combat climate change and to learn how to cope in our new environment.

The UK government has recently published a strategy to protect and conserve our topsoil – apparently we’re currently losing 2 million tonnes each year to erosion. We’re also building on it, polluting it and depleting it. The soil can be a powerful carbon sink, removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and holding it, but only if it is in good condition.

Of course, there are already many people across the country who recognise the importance of healthy soil – they’re called organic farmers and gardeners. The whole point of organic farming and gardening is to look after the soil so that it looks after the plants. Adding organic matter to the soil, minimizing soil disturbance and promoting a healthy soil ecosystem (by avoiding chemical fertilizers and pesticides) leads to healthy soils, healthy crops, healthy people and a healthy planet.

For more information on supporting organic farming, check out the Soil Association; Garden Organic are the UK’s organic gardening charity and there is a lot of information on their website.

But, perhaps unsurprisingly, it is individuals and bloggers who are leading the way on these issues – trying things, sharing a wealth of information freely and looking for new solutions. If you have an ornamental garden that you want to future-proof then ave a read of My Global Garden. If you’re wondering which edible plants will grow well in the brave new world that’s coming then check out Otter Farm.

And if you want to connect with real people, doing practical things, then check out the Agroforestry Research Trust, Permaculture Magazine and Transition Culture.

Of course, you could always read my book, too! The Alternative Kitchen Garden: An A to Z is all about climate-friendly gardening, permaculture and unusual crops that may thrive here in the future.

The Radar onion sets I ordered have been sitting on my desk for a little while, and the purple sprouting broccoli plants have been acclimatising in the garden after weeks in the Grow Dome. It didn’t save them from being munched by cabbage whites, though, and they look pretty ropey. They are starting to put on fresh growth now.

I had already cleared the quinoa bed (and no, I haven’t tried threshing it yet, so don’t ask!) and added a layer of fresh compost, and with yesterday afternoon’s lovely autumn sunshine I was well and truly out of excuses. It was time to plant some winter crops.

I checked with Bob Flowerdew and he reckons brassicas and onions are good together, so this year I have planted up my largest raised bed with the best four PSB plants and almost all of the onion sets. Partly because it makes better use of space and partly because only one other bed is empty (the sweetcorn bed; the Incan crops are still growing) and partly because at the beginning of November there’s going to be a man tramping around my garden to remove my neighbour’s hedge and replace it with a fence and I’d rather not give him the opportunity to trample my veg plants. So the beds next to the hedge will have to wait.

I had a few onion sets left over, and I planted most of them into a set of shallow rootrainers. I can plant them out later when the beds are free. And that left me with about half a dozen small sets, so I planted those up in the cold frame outside the sun room. It already has carrots and Welsh onions growing, and I can use these extras as spring onions and not wait for them to mature.

As you can see in the photo, I had to make brassica collars out of cardboard because I couldn’t (as usual) find mine. And I have installed cat defences in the form of prickly branches, and staked the broccoli against winter wind rock.

I was outside for a couple of hours; the chickens were roaming free for much of that time and had fun pecking around in the newly emptied sweetcorn bed and I was back inside before it really started to get cold. Job done!

This time last year, I was buying some new things to try from Jungle Seeds. One of the things I chose was a bell pepper called ‘Lilac’. The Jungle Seeds website makes it tricky to link to, but click here for their picture.

The first thing that became apparent was that they weren’t going to end up lilac. I don’t know why – I don’t think I missed the lilac stage, although I wasn’t really paying attention. Instead they have come out as a very deep purple I would describe as aubergine (and not crimson, as the website suggests).

Which is slightly disappointing, but they did grow and we did get to eat one of the peppers (and there are more on the way), so it’s not all bad news.

Inside they are thin-walled and very seedy – good news for seed savers, but perhaps less so for cooks. They have a strong pepper smell, and taste like peppers but not overly sweet.

My verdict is that I may grow some of my home-saved seeds to see if they germinate and grow true, but otherwise this pepper seems to be a novelty and there are far better (and much earlier) varieties out there for kitchen gardeners.