Grow Like Grandad Ideas, Tips & Guides

We’ve probably all heard the horror stories about severe skin burns from Giant Hogweed exposure (all Putin’s fault according to the Daily Express), but not many people realise that there are many other plants in the Apiaceae family capable of causing the same damage. At my allotment site earlier this year a fellow plot holder was quite badly burned after strimming her overgrown plot. I believe her arms and legs were exposed and as a consequence, when she cut through the weeds, she was covered in tiny bits of toxic sap which burned her skin. This was not caused by giant hogweed (as she first hypothesised) but by common hogweed which grows in abundance all over our allotments in Dorking. It grows quite large, sometimes up to eight feet tall with big thick stems, but not as tall as its giant cousin Heracleum mantegazzianum.

Over the years I’ve heard a number of allotment folk say that they remove the flowers from their potato plants because it increases the number of potatoes. The theory is that by preventing a potato plant from putting its energies into flowering and fruiting, it goes on to produce larger tubers below ground instead. But is there truth in this crop yield boost idea or is it yet another gardening myth?

On social media this week I’ve seen an increase in demand for an end to the COVID-19 lockdown both in the UK and US. Apparently a large swathe of the population have ‘lockdown fatigue’ and after four weeks ‘just can’t take it anymore’. There are going to be a lot of mental health issues to deal with if life doesn’t return to ‘normal’ immediately (say the papers). Conversely for many introverts, or those who suffer with social anxiety in ‘normal life’, this lockdown is bringing peace, solitude and often a drop in anxiety and stress symptoms. A contentment not found in everyday life.

In 1939 at the advent of World War Two there were only 46 million people in Britain and the majority of vegetables were not imported from overseas. Indeed there wasn’t any large scale vegetable rationing during the entire war, only on foods like butter, meat and eggs. Supplies of other food ingredients such as bananas and oranges were hugely disrupted. The government of the day launched the well-known ‘Dig for Victory’ campaign to encourage us to dig up our lawns and village greens and turn them over to fruit and vegetable growing. This was largely to try and increase the amount of available food, to compensate for other things and not because of widespread vegetable shortages.

In an ideal world we’d obviously like our tomatoes to ripen the best way, on the vine. You’ve spent half a year getting them from seed to fruit, pinching out the side shoots, tying them to supports, watering and feeding daily, now you want to taste the juicy rewards! But there’s a problem, there are hundreds of tomatoes and they’re all stubbornly GREEN. None of them are turning red. Then it gets worse, the weather hits a cold autumnal spell and the first few that show any hint of ripening fall off in a partially ripened state. How can you speed up the tomato ripening process? How do you ripen the fruit that have fallen off the vine?

As well as making my own compost, I buy all kinds of different peat-free composts throughout the growing season for use with planting out in the garden or allotment. For indoor seed sowing I find some extra steps are needed to improve germination and plant health. My objective is to achieve a fine granular nutrient-rich compost, free of sizeable lumps which might block the path of a small seedling or its hungry roots.

Chelsea Flower Show is back to its regular May slot for the first time since the coronavirus pandemic took hold and I shall once again be volunteering on an RHS Feature Garden. I’m particularly excited this year because the garden concerned is the ‘BBC Studios #OurGreenPlanet & RHS Bee Garden’. Designed by Joe Swift and situated at the bottom of Main Avenue, the garden is the product of a partnership between the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) and BBC Earth.

I like to apply manure to my beds where I can because it’s a good mulch for moisture retention and helps add organic matter to the soil. Regular horse manure is actually pretty poor in terms of NPK benefit (0.5, 0.35, 0.43) instead my favourite manure has always been zoo poo. Elephant dung has an NPK value of 3, 1, 5 – try getting hold of it now though, my last zoo supplier stopped two years ago. Thus I’ve been forced to use whatever gets delivered free to the plots from local stables or purchase the bagged stuff. A few years ago I had some problems with what I suspected was weedkiller contamination from local stables and my runner beans. This year I have definite contamination of beans from bags of Country Natural organic manure.

Earlier in 2020 the first COVID lockdown triggered a massive spike in demand for vegetable seeds.  With little to do at home, those with the opportunity to grow their own food in gardens and allotments did so like never before. Initially garden centres were all closed, online suppliers struggled to cope with demand as they were overwhelmed with seed orders. Now, as 2021 approaches, with a third lockdown (Tier 4) in place for Christmas I find myself thinking of seed orders for the coming growing season. But what has become of prices? With a huge increase in demand, you would be forgiven for thinking that seed prices must have increased accordingly.