Edible Posy

Not only does it look beautiful, but the flavours are wonderful.

The shoots comprising this posy are Purple Sprouting Broccoli, Nine Star Perennial Broccoli, shoots and flowers of old collards.

Green Growth

The mild weather continues and we benefit from wonderful growth on the Daubenton's kale. This is an old Victorian perennial form of kale. The leaves are nicely soft and tender which means it is quite lovely eaten raw in salads and even as part of a sandwich!

To boost the growth I regularly fed it with dilute urine, starting from the middle of  February. The dilution was about one third urine to two thirds water, watered at the roots on a weekly basis.

Mind anywhere else in the country where the likely of heavy frosts it may be better to start this in mid March. Here in Pembrokeshire with the much milder conditions we can get away with encouraging new soft growth earlier.

Healthy tender leaves on the Daubenton's kale.

Mild

Winter seems to be passing very mild this year in the way of warmer temperatures. We may have suffered some intense storms with much damage around, but hardly a frost to be felt up to now.

The garlic in the garden is growing strongly

Winter Storm Damage

As with many places we suffered damage with the Winter storms. Down at Swanlake Bay many who walk there help to keep the beach and surrounds clean of rubbish brought in by the tide.

The intense storm not only brought in lots of rubbish but also ripped the neatly bagged and ready to be disposed of pile that lay above the beach.

It all got distributed around the beach in the bay. If nothing else this scene brings home just how much we are polluting the seas around the world with our indiscriminate throwing away of plastics and other manmade junk.

 

From rope to many forms of plastic.

By far one of the biggest sources of rubbish found are plastic bottles. Of which most are drinks and water bottles. We are clogging the sea with bottles!

I'm not sure if this is a sight that is good or bad. Goose barnacles take advantage of a floating plastic bottle to form a small colony.

Low Tide

One of our favourite walks along the Pembrokeshire national park coastal paths is from Manorbier to Swanlake Bay.

Seldom do we get to see the tide as low as this to reveal areas rarely seen and rocks to explore. Seen from the vantage point above the bay, shows the full sweep.

Wild Cleddau

The Cleddau estuary stretches deep into the Pembrokeshire countryside. The upper reaches becoming the Cleddau river where deliciously moody areas await discovery.

Porthgain

Porthgain is a small port over on the West coast of Pembrokeshire. Well worth a visit if you love the feel of small coastal villages and walks along rugged coastline.

The harbour at Porthgain

Rugged coastline at Porthgain

Dahlia Delight

The Bishop of LLandaff is a lovely dahlia with intense red flowers and dark purple leaves.

Bishop of Llandaff

Woodpile Visitor

Stacking wood in the shed and I have to say it made me jump. At around 2" or 50mm long it has quite an imposing look.

Harmless and though it looks as if it sports a really large sting the Horntail or Giant Wood Wasp is only interested in wood.

This is a female the large sting is actually an ovipositor. It's used to drill into the wood of pine trees where it lays its eggs. They take around five years to develop. Split a pine log and immediately you know if a Horntail larvae has been in it. The tunnels look as if a huge wood worm has burrowed through, which I suppose is the case.

Horntail or Gant Wood Wasp

Long Live Old Trees

It's all too easy to cut down an old tree and replace it with a younger specimen. But so much is missed if the old is simply cleared away and new replanted.

Apart from the fact that older trees have built vast colonies of life over the decades or centuries they have been around. Complete exospheres in themselves, many animals, birds and insects depending on them.

But David Milarch an American tree conservationist recognises them as true Super Trees. His scheme is to clone from some of Britain's oldest trees and make them available to schools, cities and landowners.

Trees such as these have proved their resilience by living through extremes of climate and into the Industrial age. So we need old trees not only for their beauty, but also to keep our stock of true survivors.

Sneaky snake

The compost bin warms up really nicely inside. Perfect for this visitor.

 

Grass snake (Natrix natrix)

Too fast for me even though I lifted the lid on the bin as quickly as I could, I still only caught the back end of the snake.

Things Are Looking Up

When it comes to the weather this year, things are looking up compared to last year. It seems a long time since we had a decent Summer. 2012 was terrible, many things in the garden suffered and did not achieve their best with the continuous wet.

It has not been exactly ideal this year, but it is looking up to be reasonable Summer.

Sun through Chive Flowers.

Many plants that were suppressed last year are looking decidedly perkier than last year. The garlic in the garden promises to be very good, no sign of rust on the leaves that had already shown itself by this time last year.

The continuous wet without much in the way of drying out periods encouraged the rust fungus to thrive. It does depress the size of the heads, but at least garlic is tough enough to produce something of worth even with rust on the leaves.

The weather men are promising even warmer weather ahead, and sunshine! Welcome.

Babies and Children Can Learn To Love Vegetables

It is notoriously difficult to get children to eat healthy vegetables, all they want is sweet and fatty foods.

Okay all kids love sweet foods, but not eating vegetables is learned taste as much as eating them influenced by the Mother!

Controversial?

Research has shown that babies can acquire the taste of varied vegetables while still in the womb. What the Mother eats during this time has a great influence on the tastebuds of the unborn child. It learns from the flavours through the amniotic fluid surrounding it. Then once it is born further taste influencing is done through the Mothers milk and what she eats within her own diet.

Strongly flavoured Mustard Green mix.

Eat strong flavours during pregnancy and whilst feeding from the breast helps a child to acquire a more sophisticated taste preference, and with it a much healthier diet during it's life time.

Grow More Food With GMO's?

The cry is we need GMO's to grow more food in the world. Yet the startling statistic is we waste anything like 30-50% of all food produced.

Estimated that around 1.2-2 billion tons do not even reach the human stomach. What with overproduction, food ploughed back into the ground and the vast amount simply thrown away by households and industry. Where is the need for even greater amounts, as the GMO supporters would have us believe would be produced.

Lets not have the old chestnut that it could be supplied to developing countries, because it is not being distributed now!

 Food waste acquired from a household food recycling bin.*

Further food production by GMO's is also aimed squarely at grain crops, looking to increase production not for human nutrition but animal feeds. Trying to keep the status quo running where obscene amounts of quality food grain is fed to animals to fatten up for meat production.

Reduction in meat eating not only would free up more grain food, it would lead to better health amongst the population as research shows time and again. Eating large quantities of animal flesh, as many people do beyond their requirements for protein to live, causes degenerative diseases such as cancer, heart disease and possibly contributes to Alzheimers.

The need for GMO's is completely overstated and unnecessary.

*This is a typical mix of foods that are thrown away by many ordinary households each week. It is not from our household, firstly we do not eat refined bread of this type, or eat chicken. Any household waste we have IS waste, inedible parts. Everything is composted, as was this sample. Another thing that is beyond me why anyone would thrown away valuable composting materials when they have a reasonable sized garden!

You Have Worms

Be proud, you have a rich bio diversity of worms, in your garden that is.

Unlike large tracts of agricultural land where soil conditions are pretty much the same over a large area. Gardens are rich in their habitat.

Lawns, flower beds, vegetable plots, compost heaps and even pots of plants create so many different kind of places for various types of worm life to live. From acid soil to dried near arid areas, some kind of worm is likely to thrive in it.

Brandlings, compost or manure worms thrive in the moist conditions of a compost bin.

Gardens a repository of worm life and all we have to do is create a healthy garden to achieve it.

Time to make Terra Preta

I think it is time to delve into making Terra Preta in our garden. Last year prompted me into pushing forward with this. It was a year of nigh on continuous rainfall. Many of our vegetables suffered for it much of which was due to the washing out of some nutrients due to the high rainfall. Most noticeable was my garlic crop which suffered from Potassium loss, showing up as rust in the leaves.

I had been thinking of  following Terra Preta growing for a while, if your not sure what Terra Preta is visit Wikipedia for a concise description.

Although our soil has masses of organic matter added to it each year, the bottom garden especially is a voracious light soil that suffered the most from the continuous rain last year.

My research has shown that Terra Preta soil making centred around the Amazon Basin, was developed by the indigenous people to overcome the poor thin soils of the Amazon that are subjected to very high rainfall.

Benefits of Terra Preta

If they could counter the effects of high rainfall leaching nutrients from the soil by creating Terra Preta soil, it sounded like a solution to my problem.

The method also seems to work at its best on acid soils, which ours is, although it is possible some benefits will occur on alkaline soils. The most obvious benefit for any soil is the Carbon storage that will occur. Basically adding the charcoal to any soil will mean locking up Co2 for possibly many thousands of years, hopefully.

So I had to find a source of charcoal to make a start. You need to start ahead of the time it is needed as the charcoal needs to be conditioned before it is added to the soil. That is if you want to plant up immediately. If the charcoal is not conditioned it can hold back growth on plants or seedlings. This is down to the charcoal needing bacterial and fungal cultures to move in to the spaces present in the charcoal itself.

Magnified image of charcoal showing the spaces within.

This is one of the secrets of adding charcoal to soil, the effects are being studied to see why it is so effective. So far though it is surmised that the bacteria present and the mycorrhizal fungi that take up residence in these microscopic holes enhance the bio activity and nutrient holding capacity of the soil.

Conditioning charcoal

The conditioning method can be done in two ways. Either soak the charcoal in an active solution such as compost tea to allow the bacteria to colonise as the charcoal takes up the moisture. A fairly quick method that can be effective in two weeks. But it means the charcoal will be fairly wet and messy to try and spread on the soil and even harder to add between already growing plants.

So I opted for the compost charcoal mixture. Adding either well rotted compost or worm compost to charcoal as a 50/50 mix. Then allowing to condition for a month before use. This I thought a better option as the charcoal itself added to worm compost that I have would make it into a nice spreading mixture.

No charcoal

This time of year though there is no charcoal to be had from anywhere. It's too early for barbeques and all the paraphernalia to be stocked by garden centres etc. If you are going to buy your charcoal in, try and get locally grown and processed charcoal rather than imported. Also make sure it is untreated charcoal as some contain combustion agents to making the lighting of it easier. These are pollutants that most probably damage plants and bacterial life.

So I had to make some of my own. We get quite a bit of very small wood chips from the duck bedding, which I normally rot down for mulching. But it is also ideal for making into charcoal. The small size also means it does not need further crushing before use as would be the case if lump charcoal is bought in.

Duck bedding waste

The bedding is not too wet after they have been cleaned out so it would not be too difficult to process with heat.

To experiment I have started small and in fact found it quite an effective method that produces reasonable quantities of charcoal without much effort. Although a wood stove is needed for the heat to make the charcoal. But if you have one and want to have a go here are my tips.

Method

Basically I fill an old tin, such as a cat food tin. They are made easier by the tops being able to be removed without a tin opener. Pack  the wood chips, shavings or sawdust into the tin, even small twigs can be used. Then just place the lid back onto the contents. The lid sits perfectly and stops the contents igniting and burning down. A simple and effective way I have found.

The tin then needs to be placed within the stove for the heat to pyrolise the contents, producing charcoal. In the heat the tin gives off water vapour as steam, then gradually the steam stops and a flame appears on the top of the tin as flammable gases are driven off by the heat.

  Gasses are burnt off as a yellow flame on top of the tin.

After about an hour the process is finished. The tin should not be giving off any smoke or burning smell, it should just smell hot, just don't burn your nose if you do smell it! I can usually process three tins each time which produces a surprising amount of charcoal during an evenings fire burning.

Once cool enough the charcoal can be tipped out ready for mixing.

The charcoal bits.

Next the charcoal gets mixed with worm compost.

Worm compost.

You need to hold your breath for the initial mixing or if you cannot wear a mask as quite a bit of dust flies up first thing, make sure your upwind as the dust is black.

 Worm casts and charcoal.

Once mixed its stored in an old compost sack for a month, ready for use in the garden.

I am already thinking out ways to increase my production of charcoal in the garden, but in the meantime this is an easy small production method anyone who has a wood stove can follow.

Granny's Curls

Granny's curls, Pheasant Berry, Himalayan Honeysuckle, Flowering nutmeg are all common names for Leycesteria formosa. They are beloved by Pheasants and also Blackbirds (Turdus merula).

Both love the dark purple berries that the Leycesteria now carry at this time of year. The sweet berries attract them as they gradually ripen over the next couple of months. They look juicy and inviting, but I have not yet found anyone finding them to their taste. The flavour I can only describe as sweetish burnt sugar. First it seems okay then a sickliness follows on. Try one and see.

Lecesteria formosa is a shrub well worth growing with a graceful arching aspect to the stems, growing up to 6-7 feet (2-2.5 metres). It first produces white flowers followed by the showy red purple bracts and deep purple fruits.

It is very tolerant of most soils, though it likes to be well drained and moisture holding. Sun or partial shade suits it fine, but some shelter from harsh winds is advisable.

There is a golden leaved form around that will need sun to retain the leaf colour.

Curiosity Kills The Pheasant

It's time for the big kill now. In the wood below us they have been blowing pheasants out of the air. The shooting goes on  until Christmas and beyond (1st October-1st February).

 Cock Pheasant

I just cannot see the attraction of killing a slow moving bird, or any bird that is. Does it pop into a shooters head "What a lovely day, the kind of day I want to go out and kill something". A day like that I want to enjoy to the full and it does not occur to me to deprive another creature the joy of the moment.

But the shooting goes on and the daftest thing happens. Pheasants that live up here at the top of the valley where there is plenty of food, disappear. They go off down into the woodland, crazy!

When the shooting stops after a few days a couple may drift back here again, but the numbers slowly dwindle.

We can only assume that they are so curious, instead of being scared, and go to see what all the noise is about ending up as another fatal casualty.

Curiosity kills the pheasant!

Snakes Alive

Digging out the compost heap to prepare the beds for garlic planting, suddenly a rubbery bundle fell out of the centre.

Grass snake eggs

A full clutch of grass snake eggs, full with young embryos. Around twenty six in all , but one got damaged in the reveal.

This set me a problem as I had dug away the compost heap where they had been laid.

 

The interior was soft and well rotted and well insulated from the cold. The only thing I could do was to dig a hole down in the thickest part of the heap to the depth that the eggs were laid. Then lining it with the soft rotted compost, gently place the eggs onto it. I carefully filled the hole to the top with the same rotted compost to protect the eggs. To make sure I also laid a piece of board over the top of the area and piled un-rotted coarse material on top for further insulation, the board spreading the weight.

So now I hope that they will get through to Spring when it is time to hatch out. This area of the compost heap cannot be touched until later in Spring when they should have all dispersed hopefully into the garden.

A salutary warning though to always use a fork to break compost heaps open. The fork tines are less likely to cause too much damage, unlike a spade that would have sliced right through the clutch with more casualties than just the one egg as in this case.

Garlic Time

October and it's time to start preparing beds for garlic planting. Here we can plant right up to December usually as we stay fairly mild then.
                                                         
Growing garlic organically is the only way for this marvelous vegetable. Inorganic garlic has been shown to have lesser nutrients, which means lower levels of health giving factors.
                                                                     
Talking of growing organically. A fact that has come forward with the American Presidential candidates. Mitt Romney the multimillionaire Republican has been involved with Monsanto since the late 1970's. A firm supporter of GMO. Yet although he is all too keen for others to eat GM food stuffs he himself only eats ORGANICALLY.

That's right!

Even in his own private jet, the galley is stocked with all natural foods that are all organically grown. Old Mitt is not taking any risks with his health!

Mitt's wife also eats only organic foods and is a firm believer in wholelistic medicine. She herself is a sufferer of multiple sclerosis but credits the turnaround with her health due to organic wholesome foods.

Sadly even Obama is a supporter of Monsanto, yet the Obama's themselves eat organically. It seems other ex Presidents were not going to take any risks either, George W Bush and Mrs Bush along with the Clinton's all insisted on organic foods, yet see nothing wrong with the general populace eating GMO's.