Plants as presents
Don’t imagine that when you generously offer friends hand-sown, hand-reared tomato, basil or cucumber plants they will be accepted with open arms. Sometimes they will, but quite often they won’t. Friends of the latter variety will politely shy away, saying that they a) have not enough room (they often have twice the size of your own accommodation), b) have not enough time (even though you remind them that they are tomatoes you are offering, not armadillos or some other alarming foreign pet), or c) can’t take the responsibility (as though they are being asked to foster a bunch of delinquent children). Lack of green fingers is another reason, despite your suggestion that this might well be remedied by a season of looking after a tomato or two; in fact, they might possibly enjoy the experience. In the end you may have to beg a friend to foster a few plants, guaranteeing step-by-step plant-rearing tuition by telephone, in return for their generosity. Ah well … never mind. Some of the most rewarding recipients of plants are Big Issue sellers.
Travelling with seeds and plants1
Once you start sowing and growing seeds and plants you will discover new interests when you are away and new places to go away to. For example, when abroad, I always look in the potato department of supermarkets, street markets and greengrocers to see if there are any potatoes I haven’t encountered before. From Paris I returned with some purple potatoes; from New Zealand with some black Maori potatoes; from Zurich with potatoes specially suitable for making rösti. From a street market in Marseille came a potted magenta bougainvillea and its clashing red companion. In a meadow on the outskirts of Beijing (not the sort of country one associates with meadows) where I was having a picnic, sitting next to me was an intriguing dried seed head, its seeds already beautifully packed in their pod for transporting back to England. From Cairo came the pips of a small, thin-skinned but intense lemon. From Istanbul a couple of stocky tulip bulbs. From Spain a pot of flowering saffron corms so intense, exotic and erotic I was surprised I was not apprehended at the customs. While visiting France I was almost tempted to bring back a potted evergreen oak sapling, beneath which black truffles like to grow. Fortunately I came to my senses (or what’s left of them) and decided that a minute dark garden in central London might possibly not be the ideal place to start a truffle plantation.
Some of the seed travelling companions I return home with and enjoy most are the ones whose identity remains a mystery until they germinate. Even then they can continue to remain anonymous, despite taking them on identification trips to the Chelsea Physic Garden and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, or sending them, carefully wrapped in cotton wool and cling film (the next best thing to an ambulance), to the Royal Horticultural Society.
I always wonder why it is so important for us to know the name of a plant, animal or bird, even though that name is man-made. When I went on a first and last bird-watching trip, we all trudged along a path, the ‘birders’ dressed in their rather odd bird-watching clothes, weighed down by binoculars, tripods, picnics, cameras and bird-identity books. When the bird they were looking for was spotted (miles away, it seemed to me) tripods were clicked into position, cameras aimed, bird books opened at the right page and finally the bird identified and ticked. More time was spent doing this than looking, so it was more like a shoot, the bird being bagged rather than watched.
An interest in sowing and growing plants also opens up different possibilities of places to travel to. Top of my list would be Peru, for the potato museum in Lima, plus all the Indian potato markets. Although I have been to Spain to see a saffron harvest, I should also like to go to Persia, Greece and Morocco to see how their propagation and harvesting methods differ.
Lastly, there is the pleasure of looking out for particular plants or seeds which you know particular friends like, or being given plants or seeds by friends who know of one’s specific interest.
Early one year I was given a giant Greek single garlic clove, 2ft (60 cm) high and 2½ft (75cm) wide, whose original home is in Tinos, a small Cycladic island. Before planting it, I put it outside to wait for weather more akin to the Cyclades than the Arctic. But the impatient garlic couldn’t wait and although it had just been laid casually on a seed tray, its roots were soon gripping at the earth, longing to get into it, while its tip sprouted a pale green shoot.
Beijing bean
The other side of the plants-as-presents coin is seen in the case of the Beijing bean. While having a late autumn Chinese picnic on the outskirts of Beijing, I picked up a few pods and seed heads, having no idea (at this stage in their life) what they were. On returning home, I gave one of the pods to a friend at the Battersea Park Horticultural Therapy (now renamed Thrive) centre where I work as a volunteer. Several months later, both pod and picnic forgotten, my friend presented me with a small plant in a small pot. It had furry, ivy-shaped leaves and great potential for growing and twining. A short time after it had been repotted, it produced several blue, miniature, morning-glorylike flowers whose buds are also furry – more like small birds than buds.
The flowers are wide awake in the early morning (having succeeded in adjusting to the time difference), then close promptly at about midday – half-day-closing flowers. When they die they leave behind what look like plump, pincushion-shaped fruits, held by five furry, elegantly designed claws. (How often the number five occurs in the plant world, in the number of petals and the shape of leaves. I am not numerologically inclined, but have always regarded five as a good number because of our five fingers and toes; the frequent presence of the number five in plants reinforces this choice.)
This Beijing bean, given as a seed pod and then returned as a plant, is the source of great pleasure and interest. In a few weeks it will be taken on an excursion to Kew to be identified. One of its cousins now lives near Bristol. I should very much like to be given seeds from a country to which I have never been. It makes travelling even more interesting. It might be better to spend time collecting a few seeds than wasting it taking photographs that you and your friends will probably never want to look at.
In praise of Italian rocket
Rocket – I use rucola coltivata (produced by Franchi seeds) – must be one of the best seeds for a seed-sowing novice. Even the most anxious or impatient of beginners would be delighted by the speed of its germination. Only three days after sowing it, there were green specks on the surface of the compost. A day later a team of anaemic, spindly-stemmed seedlings were pushing their way upwards towards the light, raising the compost as they did so.
Confession number three, concerning miniature root vegetables
I have had little or, to be honest, no success with these vegetables and I have grown quite a few of them: carrots, celeriac, fennel, turnips and spring onions. A few months ago I had a final fling with beetroot. I don’t know why I keep trying as I rather despise these stunted, so-called vegetables, which are only really for people with blasé palates. What is the point of eating something which is almost dimensionless? In their way they are as pointless as their malformed, generally tasteless giant equivalents.
They are not difficult to germinate. In the case of dolls’ house beetroot, highly polished, dark-Burgundy-verging-on-chocolate leaves soon appear, their maroon phosphorescent stems already bleeding vivid blood-red sap. However, below ground virtually nothing in the way of growth takes place, either horizontally or vertically. The pygmy beetroots just sit there for months on end pretending to be a table decoration, the leaves becoming tougher and rougher, not even suitable for salad.
Despite giving them such a damning report, I will definitely try growing them again next year.
Feeding
Feeding the vegetables begins when their flowers turn into fruits – tomatoes, cucumbers and aubergines, for instance – or, in the case of salad vegetables, when they reach the adolescent stage. Apart from the pelletized organic chicken manure added when filling the containers with soil (see page 42), a little more sustenance can be given now, plus some extract of seaweed (half a capful in 2 gallons or 9 litres of water). As most of this will drain away, another alternative (though both may be employed) is to foliar feed. This requires a small container, called a hose-end feeder (available from garden centres), which is attached to the end of the hose and filled with the seaweed extract. Water and feed are then mixed in the right proportions and sprayed on the leaves. Avoid windy days, strong sunshine and when it is about to rain; also avoid spraying when the beans are starting to flower, for they are too fragile to withstand the weight of the falling droplets. This form of feeding leaves gives a pleasant, seaside-ish sort of smell, intriguing in the centre of a city.
This may be wishful thinking, but there was a definite difference in taste between the seaweed/pelletized manure-fed tomatoes and those fed with a much-advertised chemical feed.
Beans
The runner beans have started to bloom in red. Some of the flowers have already begun to turn into beans. Don’t wait until they are boomerang shaped before picking or they will be furry, stringy and tough. Pick when a little bigger than a dwarf French bean, about 4–5in (10–12cm) long.
Most window-boxes, pots and tubs can have a runner bean or two planted inside them. They clamber and scramble up everything even vaguely vertical: wisteria, plum and pear trees, drainpipes, honeysuckle, washing lines and jasmine. As they are quite chameleon-ish, this makes harvesting them a game of hide-and-seek between the leaves.
One of their favourite supports is a Viburnum x burkwoodii that is now the size of a little tree. A non-gardening friend spotted the beans hanging from the viburnum branches and asked what the plant was. ‘Vibeanum x burkwoodii,’ I explained to my credulous friend. Also using the viburnum climbing frame is a cucumber.
Bean and alpine strawberry diary
It is worthwhile jotting down how runner bean flower buds become edible beans. At the same time write an alpine strawberry diary.
6 July Tie a piece of soft twine round the bean stem which is to be observed. Green bud is as small as a risotto rice grain; no hint of the flower’s redness to come.
First alpine strawberry in flower.
7 July, 8.45 a.m. Bean bud slightly larger. Red is entering the green, producing a greeny-orange colour.
8 July Green tinge disappearing, bean bud plumping out into two fat, little puffed-out cheeks.
Alpine strawberry petals have fallen, leaving a pointed, pitted-thimble, off-white fruit.
11 July Bean still swelling.
12 July Bean swelling completed. During the night the puffed-out cheeks opened, revealing a snapdragon-ish flower inside.
It would be disgraceful to be asked at the end of one’s life how a bean-flower bud becomes a bean and not to know the answer. How many summers has one been witness to this so-called common-or-garden event without ever really having seen it happen?
Common or garden
The Oxford English Dictionary definition: ‘passing into adj., in the slang phr. common or garden, a jocular substitute for “common”, “ordinary”’.
So-called pests
Don’t worry about them. People who concentrate on pests fail to see the plants on which they perch. Insects, like so-called weeds, and we must be on this earth for a reason, not just plonked here arbitrarily. There are only two ‘pest’ antidotes I use. The first is an organic insecticidal soap spray (it can be obtained on the Internet, under the unpleasant name of Bio Pest Pistol), which to date has only been used against blackfly on nasturtiums and against scale on an orange bush. It can also be used against whitefly, greenfly and red spider mite; if used properly, it does not harm ladybirds. The second is a children’s library book on insects. I consulted this when a group of yellow, caviar-sized balls gathered together (like a circular bus queue) on the back of a nasturtium leaf. Thinking they might be another form of black- or greenfly, I was about to aim the only too easy-to-use Pistol at them, but decided to return to the children’s library and re-borrow the book on insects. The yellow ‘caviar’ turned out to be butterfly eggs, laid on a nasturtium instead of a cabbage leaf. What happened next took place in August: see page 92.
Perfect-lawn mania is another aspect of horticulture with which gardeners are apt to become afflicted, failing to see the lawn for the ‘weeds’ and molehills. After all, a lawn is only an unnaturally cultivated, comparatively dull crew-cut stretch of Wilton carpet, which is presumably for lying and walking on. If its ‘owner’ becomes demented by the natural appearance of a few daisies and dandelions and by the grass’s constant demand to be mowed, what is the point of it? Where is the pleasure? Trying to force something to behave in a way in which it was never intended seems a somewhat fruitless exercise. I would not care to be the child of an obsessive lawn owner.
Small trays versus containers
The advantages of sowing seeds in small 8 x 6in (20 x 15cm) trays instead of directly into containers are that it is easier to see what you and the seeds (both before and after germination) are doing, and there is more to observe. The seedlings receive individual attention. The trays can be moved round to follow the sun or find the shade. (This can of course be done at all stages of window-box gardening.)
If you are going away for the weekend by car, and have no one to do the watering, you could take the trays with you. If they would be unwelcome, then before leaving get a small plastic bottle, fill it with water, cover the open end with your thumb, turn the bottle upside down and quickly submerge it in the compost.
To plant the trays, follow the seed-sowing instructions on pages 7–8, up to and including stage 5, until the compost has drained. Divide the tray into four lengthways with a pencil, laying it on the compost and pushing it to and fro while pressing down and creating a furrow. Then, depending on the size of the seed, deepen the furrow with the crab march (i.e. by marching your four fingertips sideways up and down, making little mounds on either side: see page 59). Write the name of seed, the date and, if large enough, the number of seeds sown. Unless the seeds are very small they can be sown individually, or trickled slowly into the furrows. Then with your forefingers return the mounds, covering the seeds. A 9in (23cm) long furrow full of seeds will be sufficient to stock a 28 x 8 x 8in (70 x 20 x 20cm) window-box.
A recent discovery
Cut-and-come-again salads are perfectly content growing in much smaller and shallower containers than I previously used, making it possible for people to grow them with even less space than I have. At the moment fifteen different salads are growing in saucers measuring anything from 12–8in (30–20cm) in diameter and between 3–2in (7–5cm) deep. Filled window-boxes or deep tubs are both heavy and cumbersome to move, whereas smallish saucers are portable. For those in favour of a dining-table épergne, what could be more original and attractive than an edible centrepiece saucer of mixed salad? Harvesting the saucer salads, either leaf by leaf or trimming with scissors, makes one feel like an apprentice hairdresser.
Another advantage of the portability of saucers is that it makes it much easier to observe germination. It is surprising how dramatic and exciting it is to watch a lettuce seed, the size of a pencil tip, germinating. It is well worth writing a diary of its progress.
P.S. To make drainage holes in the plastic salad saucers, heat the end of a sturdy screwdriver on a gas or electric cooker plate. Being careful that it doesn’t slip, pierce the bottom of the saucers with several evenly spaced holes.
Will the future be flowerless?
Just because you concentrate on vegetables and fruit this does not mean a flowerless future, for – much to some people’s surprise – fruits, vegetables and herbs also have flowers. They may not be as buxom and fluorescent as the flowers we are accustomed to; they just need to be discovered and looked at differently.
Vegetable flowers
Instead of pulling up vegetables that are about to bolt (run to seed prematurely), let them bolt and then cut them as flowers. The world of vegetable flowers is not really appreciated; they are not given a chance to bloom. So now is the time to let them complete their cycle and examine them properly.
For instance rocket, whose leaves are by now singeing the mouth, has little pale buff-coloured, complicated, propeller flowers: old fashioned, intricate, strange – as though from the nether world. It is a somewhat mysterious, almost creepy flower one wouldn’t quite trust, unlike an open-faced daisy. It is the sort of flower a medieval German artist might have engraved. Despite this, it will sit happily in a vase for several days. Pak choi has gentle, yellow countryside-scent flowers of which the eaters of stir-fries know nothing. White basil flowers, despite their smallness, smell (not unnaturally) strongly of basil. They are snapdragon-ish in form, having a bouncy platform (or, if seen in profile, what resembles a Habsburg lip) on which small insects can land and stand while feeding.
Seeds to sow now, outdoors
Winter purslane
WHAT TO EAT NOW
‘Gardener’s Delight’ tomatoes
This is a combination of small sweet ‘Gardener’s Delight’ tomatoes, hummus, black olives and a tin of tuna fish in olive oil.
1 Before returning to the UK with any plants, it is wise to consult the RHS.