On Mother Dirt (GoldBerry)

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GoldBerry
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On Mother Dirt (GoldBerry)

Post by GoldBerry »

I've been growing fruit and veg for years in a mostly 'mobile garden' - pots, trugs, tubs, troughs, anything I could put soil in and then move. I've spent a lot of my life on the move and so I have never entirely trusted to putting roots down anywhere, either figuratively or literally. I did a bit of in-the-ground gardening at my current house as I discovered I had an entire found-garden space to the side filled with gone-to-bramble raspberries and currants, but due to ever-present ground elder I just never bothered overmuch with in-ground growing.
I am a haphazard gardener - I'm originally from the US and so growing veg or fruit in strictly regimental rows with nary a weed between doesn't come naturally to me. I like my plants to ramble! I mulch, I use hugelkultur in my growing troughs, and try to stick to heirloom and chop-and-drop as much as possible. My solution to weeds is to grow a lot in a little space, so weeds don't tend to have much of a chance. It's usually successful, even if such a wild woodland growing space where a bit of Himalayan Balsam can spread everywhere with a mere touch.
I have numerous fruit trees in large pots that give me a small, manageable crop of fruit with no wastage, copious amounts of berries, and as many herbs as I could cram in between veg. I love nasturtiums and calendula for their colour and benefits, and comfrey and mint sprawls everywhere.
As I find myself moving yet again, I'm trying to decide which trees will come, and which will stay. The hazels, most certainly, will stay here. I hope to incorporate them into the hedge I planted at the edges of the properly to control the soil erosion (thanks to former tenants' clearing a bunch of trees to put in a treacherous-to-walk-on deck). The plum, cherry, apple, mulberry, fig, and lilac will come with me. I've debated replanting the cherry in dirt for better yield, and I may do the same with the apple. I'm undecided - we don't know what our next house will be like, and while I insist there be a garden, what that will actually mean in real terms, one never can tell.
That didn't stop me from ordering seed, however! Yep, I totally did...I regret nothing! My OH loves cooking as much as I do, and his salads are inventive and delicious, so he has asked for some veg I've never really bothered to grow before (celery and fennel to name two). My son has made a request for rhubarb as he's become a fan thanks to crumbles he made in school recently. While I miss sweet corn, I can't make it grow for the life of me, so I will give my attentions to my second favourite veg, winter squash. While the seed order has quite a lot of different seeds, I'm not too worried, as I've learned I can cram a lot into a little space, with just enough ingenuity.
I have endeavoured to learn how to save my own seed, and I've had good results. But this year I want to start fresh, with fresh seed - mostly because gathering seed from the various beds I have outside is beyond me due to accessibility problems.
As health took a downturn last year, most of my seed-saving projects (and a fair bit of the garden itself, tbh) turned into a nearly impossible mass of greenery. Anything I planted down at ground level, I couldn't work on any longer - including the slightly raised beds. So now, if the garden isn't at least high enough to work from my chair (or powerchair if required), it's a no-can-do. Thankfully my OH is handy with woodworking and building, and while I have one very good trough that I very much like (and will be emptying out and bringing with me when I move), he has promised to build me a few more, or to make sure there are beds I can sit down and work without much difficulty.
As per always, my main goals are to create a productive garden with as little work as possible. While the rest of my current garden wasn't entire successful, everything I've grown to date in pots, tubs, or trugs has proven it's feasible - put enough foliage in the ground that no weeds can take root, plant a combination of veg and herbs, keep away from monoculture, chop and drop rather than clear the soil, mulch with comfrey and composted chicken wood chips (though the chickens hopefully will be rehomed soon - I'll have to come up with a different mulching system).
So for now, the next month is taking an inventory of what plants I simply cannot leave behind (I'm definitely taking up the loganberry, if nothing else), what plants can stay in the tubs, which ones I'll try and put in the ground, and sitting on my seeds and not being at all tempted to try and get them germinating until the house is agreed.
I hope!
Mo
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Re: On Mother Dirt (GoldBerry)

Post by Mo »

Hope all goes well with finding the right house and moving.
The loganberry will walk there itself, given half a chance - I have a wilderness of tip-rooted stems. The fruit trees in pots will be more of a job for some-one.
Never heard of hugelkultur before - it looks interesting.
My fruit trees are in the ground - some of them not very dwarf. The idea was to keep a family of 5 in apples for the whole season (following on from the plums & soft fruit). Once they came into full crop there was always too much for just us, so I gave them away at dance clubs (or put them on the Charity bring & buy table). I used to be so busy trying to use up windfalls that I hardly had time to pick the good ones. Now I've relaxed. I pick enough for me, and take as many as I can to dance club. But enjoy watching flocks of blackbirds, fieldfares & redwings enjoying the rest. No Waste.
Dance caller. http://mo-dance-caller.blogspot.co.uk/p/what-i-do.html
Sunny Clucker enjoyed Folk music and song in mid-Cheshire
GoldBerry
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Re: On Mother Dirt (GoldBerry)

Post by GoldBerry »

My trees are all on dwarf stocks, and a few are minarettes, as it's only been my son and I, The tubs control the root spread, which also helps to control size. I simply cannot be worrying about copious windfalls unfortunately - the trees next door never get eaten, always dropping all their fruit and while, sure, the birds eat a fair bit, the wasps go for the rest when they've fermented, and it's like having some angry group of lads looking for a fight on a late Friday night! My son is desperately terrified of flying insects, bees, wasps and anything that might even possible be a wasp - so controlling windfall fruits has been vital or I don't think he'd ever go outside. However, as the new household will have a bigger family to feed, I am considering planting the apple and the cherry and seeing what comes of those. I love cherries, I can never have enough of those, so if it grows a bit more than currently, more the better!
I hear you on the loganberry - my current one is being well bramble-y out front and I'm going to have to hack it back a bit before getting it in a pot! But it makes such lovely fruits I simply can't bear to leave it behind.
Well I figure the last movers got the trees here to this house, and while I'm sure there was a fair bit of cursing under the breath, if they got them here, then someone will be able to get them out! I'll just have to be sure to make plenty of bacon in penance!
Mo
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Re: On Mother Dirt (GoldBerry)

Post by Mo »

Do you net your cherry?
I have 3
1. a Morello (sour cooker), which the birds tend to leave alone - though it is short lived, this is the second I've planted and it is almost dead
2. Stella, a white fleshed cherry. Some years I get the crop, some years the birds do.
3. a Black cherry. Never gets anywhere near ripe before the blackbirds and crows strip it - and those are by far the nicest.
Maybe there is an advantage to keeping it small.
Dance caller. http://mo-dance-caller.blogspot.co.uk/p/what-i-do.html
Sunny Clucker enjoyed Folk music and song in mid-Cheshire
GoldBerry
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Re: On Mother Dirt (GoldBerry)

Post by GoldBerry »

I've got a Stella as well. I'd like a black cherry but it will have to wait till next year. I never net the fruit - I have 'sacrificial' fruit nearby: honeyberry (most misnamed of berries, it's bitter as), some currants, and a few raspberry canes planted in strategic places, as well as plenty of bird seed. The birds easily go for these instead and tend to leave my cherries in peace - the blackbirds love my loganberry, and I leave them quite a bit - there's plenty and to spare. Perhaps you could do some strategic placements of your own to entice birds away from your trees?
The only problems I've had with cherries is late frost (my current microclimate is a bear for hard frosts in May that kill all the blossoms), or torrential rains that make the fruit split. In a previous house I was able to grow my cherry trees under a south-facing awning so they were were well protected from rain and had plenty of sun. I got a bit spoiled! So I'm hoping that new Haus I can do some creative shuffling once I get the rhythms of the seasons in whatever area I find myself in. It will be an interesting challenge!
Mo
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Re: On Mother Dirt (GoldBerry)

Post by Mo »

Yes, I've noticed that my redcurrants are second choice until they've eaten the berberis, when they've finished the red they go for blackcurrants, maybe I shouldn't pick those to give away, until I've had what I want of the Stella (it's a tall tree and I'm getting a bit old for climbing too high). But black cherry seems to top the list for them as well as me, so you may be best to net if you plant one that's small enough to cage.
Dance caller. http://mo-dance-caller.blogspot.co.uk/p/what-i-do.html
Sunny Clucker enjoyed Folk music and song in mid-Cheshire
GoldBerry
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Re: On Mother Dirt (GoldBerry)

Post by GoldBerry »

Image from Pinterest - it really IS that colour inside.
Image
Today I opened up my prized Musquee du Province squash - the only one I managed to grow last year thanks to a freak frost in mid-May that killed nearly everything I planted outside (Farewell, plum blossoms/first to grow upon the tree/so fleeting! And gone! - Heian period poet I am not!). I had seeds in reserve and I managed to get some more started and outside, buuuuuuut the issue with this particular squash is it needs time to grow. A lot of time. A whole lot of time at decent temperatures, and getting a plant in the ground somewhere in early June was pushing it.
And then it rained. A lot. And then there were slugs. A lot of slugs. Every new squish flower that was fertilised and formed a proto-squish was eaten in a matter of 48 hours. I wept, truly I did.
At my wit's end, I secured some nematodes to add to the soil - something I'll definitely do this year if the invertebrate hordes are on the ...erm...well not, march, more like a squelch...this year. The remedy worked and I could see blossoms forming and fruiting again, not being nommed within the moment sunset came down.
And then it rained some more.
Everything rotted :(, the corn, the sunflowers. The carrots didn't even germinate except for a handful. The tomatoes managed to escape until around August as they were covered, but eventually even they succumbed. What escaped the blight, the slugs found. (NOMNOMNOM). I got a handful of toms, but that was it. Le-sigh. To be fair, I might have been able to save some of the plants with a bit more care, but I had a really nasty flare during the summer, and was barely able to walk. Accessible my garden is not :/ So I put all my energy into the one plant I could reach: the squash growing in the low bed in the front of the garden.
The rain was good for the squash vine, but the lack of sunlight and warmth was not. I only got one decent squash off the vine before October rolled round and frost threatened. I offered a prayer to the Powers of Field and Flower, and cut the one squish off the vine and brought it in to mature, hoping it had just enough time.
It was green when I brought it in, but after curing and then putting in the pantry, it turned a powdery greenish-orange. I've been curious about this particular squash for a while now as it's purported to be remarkably sweet, and I finally decided to cut it open today. I was lucky! The seeds inside were not formed well enough to save, so I only JUST harvested it at the right time. It was also incredibly moist on the inside - not rotten, not past its prime. The maturing meant the liquids were breaking down into sugars.
I decided to be brave (I'll try anything once) and cut a sliver off the pumpkin - remarkably easy to cut! - and try it raw as the natives from whence it comes tend to do. Sweet? Yes! It was bizarre, like eating cantaloupe with a faint hint of savoury at the end of it. I've never eaten anything like it before. And the colour was absolutely extraordinary! I saved a quarter of it to show my OH when he comes to visit again this weekend as any photo I tried to take just didn't do it justice. Another quarter went to my Henz (who are still utterly spoiled madams), and the remaining half I sliced up and tossed with olive oil, sage, bacon lardons, salt, pepper and chorizo sausage to roast. It came out like a dream - a little softer than I'd like, it cooks down very quickly, and again, SWEET. Sweet-potato type sweet, actually, that's sort of what it reminds me of.
It's a shame I only managed to get the one, but one was better than none at all, considering. And while I doubt I will grow that variety again - the growing season length just isn't enough for the UK - there is a similar kind of pumpkin, Rouge Vif d'Etampes, which reaches maturity sooner (w/in 90 days, rather than Musquee's 120+) so I will give that an experiment in the coming year. Fingers crossed I can devise a better system I can move around in even on my worst days.
For the nonce, I'm in a bit of garden limbo. I ordered seed, and although I planted some rhubarb seed (yes, seed, as I said I'll try anything once), everything else is being held till the move. This week's job is breaking down the mini-growbeds and putting them away for the move, then getting the loganberry into a pot so it can come with us. And when I said 'job', read 'I am supervising my OH because I'm not allowed to lift anything over 4 kilos'. He's my hero! Doesn't know a thing about plants but he's game.
GoldBerry
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Re: On Mother Dirt (GoldBerry)

Post by GoldBerry »

'Don't you dare stave off gardening until we move. If I do a Luton van run with the floor covered in plants and seedlings and trees, then so be it.'
And this is why I love the OH..doesn't know a thing about gardening, but knows how important it is to me personally, and therefore will do everything he can to accommodate, even though we're still trying to figure out how to move two households into one.
As a result, I'm sifting through my seeds today and deciding what I can get a start on early-ish, and what can wait a bit. Just like every January, I'm so done with eating root veg, I want something leafy and green. It's still several months before I can think about getting lettuce into the ground, but I can plant some seeds in trays indoors, and harvest that way. I actually really enjoy doing this with pea shoots, cavolo nero, and a few other leafy greens, provided I can keep the cats out of it (propagation lids, go!). So I'm soaking some seed peas today to plant into trays, and will do a baby-leaf blend of various greens to keep on one side.
Due to the variable temperatures (and my sporadic health issues) I've decided to stick to growing some of the more sensitive plants indoors this year. I can't always rely on my ability to move very well and get out and about, and while it may seem like popping outside and pottering around a bit while sitting on a chair might be easy enough, sometimes even that is too much for me. Fingers crossed we get a house with a conservatory, but failing that, a couple south-facing windowsills will do! It's not a perfect solution, but I have grown peppers, aubergine, and a few tomatoes inside before. The crop isn't incredible, and whitefly can be a bit of an annoyance, but it can be done. It also tends to function as a really good sunscreen for summer, keeping the house cool behind a wall of foliage in the window. So rather than watch my well-cared for seedlings die under blight or a ridiculous amount of rain again this year, I'll keep my peppers and a few toms indoors as insurance. This year, I'm growing Hungarian paprika, Palivek, Nigel's Green pepper, some bell peppers for my son, an heirloom bush tomato variety called 'Legend', and two tea-hibiscus varieties (different from the flower varieties most are used to - mostly as an experiment). While I have one vine tomato variety I'd like to try again - Amish Paste variety and Italian oxheart type, I simply won't do it this year unless I can grow them under cover.
Working on the theory of growing more indoors than I used to, I'm also going to start growing some holy/Thai basil, which can be grown indoors year round provided there is enough light (I may ask the OH about setting up a grow-light system for the darkest month of the year but we will see if it's really necessary). I had good results growing shallots and onions from seed the past few years, and therefore I think I will do so again this year. The everlasting onion is still growing outside, but it's difficult for me to get to - I'll lift a clump and take it with me when we move, as it's handy to have round.
So that's my mission over the next few months - getting what for most people would be a optimistically early start on some of the seeds I have, so that we can harvest cuttings for salads as early as April with any luck. Just need to bone up on my whitefly control - and I now have a small handheld hoover which can easily suck the beasties off the underside of leaves to help, as well as soapy water sprays and nematodes when required.
Mo
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Re: On Mother Dirt (GoldBerry)

Post by Mo »

Well done, you are an inspiration.
Dance caller. http://mo-dance-caller.blogspot.co.uk/p/what-i-do.html
Sunny Clucker enjoyed Folk music and song in mid-Cheshire
GoldBerry
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Re: On Mother Dirt (GoldBerry)

Post by GoldBerry »

Thanks, Mo. Mostly I fumble along best I can manage, and sometimes it works!
Started my first tray of pea shoots, which is starting to sprout up nicely. It was a bit of a challenge to keep my cat out of napping in it, but I got the tray covered and it's good to go. The rhubarb has sprouted and I'm slowly nurturing it.
This week's mission is to move all my tech and stuff off my seedling table. It's early in the year, but I find peppers need to be started rather early, so I'm going to get them going soon. Thai-Basil is getting started, and the parsley and sage. I'm going to get a start on the onion and shallot seed as well, which I've had good luck starting in modules. I'm also going to start some kale in modules, and transplant one of my tree kales into a pot before the move.
Richard
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Re: On Mother Dirt (GoldBerry)

Post by Richard »

Going well Goldberry>veg3< >veg3< )like(
Richard
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