Designed to be eaten

It is now just over 6 weeks until the BBC Gardeners' World Live show and my panic levels are rising slightly. I have been sowing seeds for this project since early February when I was working on the design side of things. The successful designers were due to be notified in early March, so I figured that it would be too late to start some plants at that stage, so optimistically began sowing sweet peas and other fairly hardy seeds. My greenhouse is bursting at the seams and I feel like I've been pricking out lettuce and other seedlings since the very dawn of time, but I'm optimistic that I will be able to fill the raised bed come June.

The plans below are taken from my submitted application to the RHS. As Edible Patches is considered an amateur category, they weren't too prescriptive about how the submission was made. Which is lucky, as my autocad drawing skills are somewhat limited. So, drawing on my knowledge of garden design plan types, I went for a 'plan view' (a bird's eye view) of what the bed would look like and two 'elevation views'  – a simple sketch giving a sense of what it would like standing at each of the long sides looking across the bed. My freehand drawing skills stopped developing at age 13, so I relied on my trusty iPad and an app called Paper to put my ideas down in a visually attractive way.

The plan view gives a very simplistic impression, mainly concerned with colour and texture variations between my selected crops and flowers. The plan is not to scale, so I also generalised the space taken up by each plant.

In the elevation views, you can get more of a feel to the vertical structure and hierarchy of the components of the raised bed. The 3 central circles in the plan view have become wigwams up which climbers will grow. Some plants are in symmetry across a central axis, some contrast with the plant adjacent or reflect some element of the plant at the opposite side.

Lastly, this is the planting plan and plant list. Still, the space taken by each type of plant is generalised but this allows you to see what plants I am intending to use in what area of the bed.

1. Limnanthes douglasii (poached egg plant)
2. Broccoli Kailan 'Kichi'
3. Nasturtium 'Milkmaid'
4. Kohl Rabi 'F1 Ballot'
5. Asparagus pea
6. Chard 'Bright Lights'
7. Basil 'Red Rubin'
8. Lettuce 'Romana Mortarella Verde D'Inverno'
9. Lettuce 'Navara'
10. Cucumber 'La Diva'
11. Climbing Nasturtium mixed
12. Broad Beans 'Crimson Flowered'
13. Lathyrus chloranthus 'Lemonade' (sweet pea)
14. Cucamelon
15. Purple dwarf french beans
16. Sage
17. Dill 'Bouquet'
18. Pea 'Golden Sweet'
19. Lancashire Lad purple podded pea
20. Lathyrus odoratus 'Matucana' (sweet pea)
21. Fennel
22. Cerinthe major 'purpurescens'

My selection criteria for these were:

* edible crop or companion plant with a specific benefit to edible crops

* can be grown from seed

* easy to grow – no specialist gardening knowledge or equipment needed

* has an attractive merit: flower colour/shape, colourful leaves/stems, unusual variety, productive crop

The Edible Patches are designed to show how a small area can be turned over to edible crops, so I made sure that everything I chose will grow well in shallow soil or containers (as some people's small space might be a patio or balcony) and I wanted to show how quickly edibles can get from sowing to harvest.

I may have to make a few small tweaks/changes to this design by the time the show comes around. My sage is an existing plant in a beautiful container, that was grown from seed a few years ago, but everything else has been sown since autumn 2013. I have plenty of back-up plants as well as a few replacements in case one variety fails, succumbs to pests or simply gives up the ghost in the next few weeks. But I hope to stick as faithfully to my original design as I can.

Slug patrol

To follow up on my previous post, I can report that I did order some nematodes a few weeks ago. Application is very easy – the contents of the packet are mixed with a specific volume of water and then you simply water the lot over your garden. I had 6 raised beds to treat and then used the remainder on specific areas of the wider garden where slugs are causing a problem. I planted out 4 echinacea plants that I raised from seed last year, and within 3 days, they were looking very nibbled and sorry for themselves. I also have an open area of a sunny bed where my dahlias will go, so that was a target area to treat also.

So far, things are looking pretty good. I planted out meteor pea seedlings a week ago and there are very few signs of any slug damage on those. The plants have really started to grow well in the recent warm weather and a couple of them are now showing flowers.

And in the greenhouse, where space is a little tight right, I've been pricking out my tomato plants. Hopefully I will have room to move these onto larger pots next month.

I am finding small slugs and snails in the greenhouse still – maybe hitchhiking in on the bottom of a pot? It's not all bad news though as the chickens are making short work of these as a breakfast treat!

In need of nematodes?

While doing a spot of weeding the other day, in preparation for potato planting, I came across an alarming number of slug eggs in the soil. Doing a bit of internet research on the subject made for worrying reading:

• A slug can lay 20-100 eggs several times a year
• Slug eggs can remain dormant in soil for many years, hatching when conditions become suitable.
• A cubic metre of garden can contain upto 200 slugs
• Slugs are hermaphrodite (possessing both male and female reproductive organs) so can mate with any slug of the same species they come across.
• They can also reproduce without a mate by producing eggs without the male gamete being transferred (parthenogenesis).
• Only 5% of a slug population will be above ground at any time. The remaining 95% will be below ground, laying eggs, feeding on roots and seed sprouts, and digesting your newly emerged seedlings.

(slug facts courtesy of slugoff.co.uk) 

Last year was just awful - I'd never seen such a rampage of slime-secreting leaf-eaters that ploughed through my seedlings last spring. Previous years I've not had such a big problem. They occasionally hit a particular plant – salad leaves are usually popular – but 2013 was notable for virtually nothing being safe. They worked their way through so many of my crops – they put paid to the first sowing of rocket salad and of beetroot. I sowed carrot seeds three times and had the grand total of two carrots reach true leaf stage. They took down a lot of my pea, borlotti bean and sugar snap plants when they were first planted out, they nibbled lots of the potato haulms and had a really good go at the courgette and squash plants. I feared they might have finished off my Hooligan pumpkin plant but thankfully it rallied and went on to produce a single fruit. One after one they decimated my baby nicotiniana plants. I kept some replacements in the greenhouse, but even there they didn't seem to be safe – a few nibbled leaves and even telltale trails on my 4 foot tall tomato plants. It seems there is nowhere a slug won't go for some dinner.

Having had such a mild winter, I fear for the 2014 crops already. A less than frosty winter means that the slug population has avoided the natural population control of freezing temperatures, so I may well employ the services of nematodes to keep the hungry hordes at bay. My finger is hovering over the 'Buy' button as the weather warms up and hoping that there will not be a shortage of the product as many fellow gardeners do the same.

Wildlife gardening

While I sit here typing this I am watching, despite the drizzle and cool temperatures outside, a pair of blackbirds collect moss and plant debris from the edge of my lawn with which to build a nest. Earlier, a host of house sparrows collected, first on my neighbours' hawthorn tree and then on our apple tree, loudly chattering and constantly moving from branch to branch. The local foxes have been out overnight again – this I know because my raised beds are a moonscape of hillocks and holes where they dig for who knows what. And only yesterday, a rather huge bumblebee flew heavily into the window pane looking out onto the garden. Nonplussed and unharmed, it bounced away noisily disappearing over the fence. My garden is about much more than the food and flowers I grow within in and the method by which I do this is as important as the result I work towards.

My reasons for growing organically are twofold. The first is an understanding that my garden environment is a ecosystem with populations of organisms from the bottom to the top of the food chain that naturally respond to the environmental conditions and availability of suitable foods. As the seasons pass and the weather changes and one year rolls into the next, the success or otherwise of a reproducing population will be reflected further up the food chain without the need for intervention or control by chemical means. A boom in creatures that I might consider to be pests, such as slugs, snails and aphids will be followed by an increase in their predators as they take advantage of the increase in numbers on which to feed.

My second conviction is one that we have heard lots about, particularly during the past year. That the effects of various chemical pesticides are often not fully known or understood until they begin to affect wildlife that was not the original target. For years now, new chemicals have been introduced and hailed as the next big thing, the saviour for gardeners amateur and professional, before years later they are withdrawn under the shadow of a human health scare or for some previous unknown effect on one or more wildlife populations.

A solitary bee checking out available accommodations

Frogs are a frequent spot in the suburban veg plot

A sleepy bumble bee having a snooze on an arbour

A ladybird in metamorphosis

The unwelcome Vulpes vulpes

An introduced species – the lesser spotted lawn ruiners

A bee feasting on the nectar of Dahlia 'Bishop of Landaff'

Possibly not taken in my garden. But given time, and a land bridge from India...

Sowing the seeds of a busy year

Such a mild winter and warm start to the year has meant that many people have started sowing earlier than usual. Beware the cold nights though – temperatures dropped to 3 or 4 Celsius around here last night. Tender plants need to be covered with fleece if outside or kept under glass.

I for one have been transporting a tray of tomato and chilli seedlings out to the greenhouse every morning and back in the house come the evening. Best not to take the risk of losing them.

In other news, the seed sowing is taking on epic proportions. Aside from a backlog of RHS seeds I've been meaning to get sown for a couple of years (let's hope they're still viable), I've also been hedging my bets by sowing lots of salad and veg seeds in case a certain project came through. And then it did.

So, come June this year, I will be planting out an 'Edible Patch' at none other than the Gardener's World Live Show at the NEC in Birmingham! The teaser bit is here on their website. Most of the other beds seem to be from allotment associations, so that sounds like they have a group of people growing the plants that will form the display. There's just lil' old me to produce mine. Hubby is lovely and supportive (and will definitely be roped in for all the heavy lifting come June) but his strengths just don't lie in seedling tending...

Outfoxed

When we first rehomed some ex-bat chickens in 2010, there was no shortage of people telling us that we'd lose them all to foxes. Even living in a fairly suburban area you would expect there to be some foxes in the immediate vicinity. But we saw no signs of them around our garden and no sightings were reported by our neighbours. 

Earlier this year however, rumours began that foxes had moved into our street: late night sightings of a family group trotting around local roads, relaxing in the sunshine on a neighbours lawn and the characteristic screaming in the dark of night. So, we weren't too surprised when they finally revealed themselves in our garden, showing a healthy fox interest in our feathery pets. 

What came as a surprise was how bold them would be – no skulking around in the shadows for them, waiting for night to fall. No, they turned up, confident as anything, at all times of the day. Usually it would be the chickens who sensed them first, setting off loud squawking calls of warning and panic. Thankfully we have a very secure Eglu coop and run, which when closed up is fox-proof, so although the chickens can have some fresh air and a bit of freedom, but remain safe from physical attack.

The following photos were taken one morning in July, when the chickens loudly announced the presence of an unwelcome intruder in the garden. From an upstairs window, I could at first see nothing, but after a couple of seconds, saw this striking animal amble calmly out from behind the shed and sit down in the veg plot. Call me paranoid, but he/she seemed to look directly at me apparently unaffected by the commotion in the (firmly secured) chicken run only a few metres away. The fox made itself comfortable, posing for photos for upto 10 minutes, before slowly raising to standing and trotting out of sight again.

Since then the (same?) fox has visited numerous times, sometimes during the night where it gets tangled up in the tall nylon fence, which keeps the chickens contained when they are allowed to free range, sometimes during the day when we have witnessed it jumping around on top of the coop and run terrorising the chickens within. It was on the second of these occasions that our little flock was badly affected. Although we know the fox can't get at them, that fact clearly isn't as obvious to a panicked chicken – especially when a snarling fox is leaping around only centimetres away. After chasing the fox away, we brought all 3 chickens inside the house to calm them and remove them from further stress, but it had all become too much for Snowflake who had what I can only guess was a heart attack as she sat in a pet carrier on the kitchen floor. Her companions were left shaken and nervous for a number of days and are only now growing back feathers they lost. I am told that this is a stress response, to simply shed feathers in the advent of an attack as it makes escape from the jaws of a predator possible – the attacker is simply left with a mouthful of feathers but no prey. We continue to allow the remaining two chickens as much freedom as safely possible, while still seeing the evidence of night-time visits of our foxy foe.

Uchiki kuri

Also known as onion squash, this lovely curcurbit finally decided to produce fruit for me this year. Just the one mind you. As a plant it takes up much less room than a butternut squash or traditional pumpkin, so I would recommend it if space is an issue. It produces the familiar long yellow flowers of the squash family, followed by a matching globular fruit, that swelled to the size of a honeydew melon. 

It showed off its beautiful range of glowing colours as the skin ripened in the sun before I moved it to the greenhouse to finish the curing process in a dry environment.

 It now resides in the kitchen where I am deciding what to do with each and every 749g of it. A big roasted stuffed squash maybe? A sumptuous soup or a rich sweet risotto? A small part of me wants to just admire it rather than break the spell by cutting into it. I makes me wonder what those gardeners who grow the champion vegetables for competition feel like when the time comes to consign their prize specimens to the pot. At least I won't need a fork-lift truck when the time comes!