Vertical potato bed

At the community gardens, we had some spare potatoes so we have decided to try a vertical bed.

We weeded the ground underneath, and put one of our wire compost bins on top of the soil. On that, we put a chimney of compost and soil, with a surround of hay. We then put about 3 levels of 3-4 potatoes, finishing off with around 8 in the top layer.

We watered it well, and will start to put kitchen scraps in and will tip the grey water into the middle to keep it watered.

Will update later in the season.

Leek/garlic grass?

So - I am only blogging new or interesting stuff, you don't want the same old nonsense each year right?

So - new developments.

My Leek/garlic grass. I seem to have bred a new thing. It has come from a bunching onion, which I think may have crossed with something else and the resulting well, result - is garlic grass.

I thought it WAS grass, and went to pull it out last year. To find it smelt of garlic. As it gets bigger, it grows to what we would call over here 'baby leek' size, and it looks like a baby leek. But it tastes of garlic. It grows bulbils on the stems and once it flowers it set seeds and grows new bunches like chives would. Some pics above. It is marvellously mild, delicious raw in salads and potato dishes and I love it! In the pics it is growing in amongst one of my garden beds, with nigella, Szechuan pepper, strawberries, parsley and poppies.

Summing things up and new to grow!

Well, what a busy year. I make no apologies, when things are busy you just have to knuckle down. So last year I only made a few significant posts on here.

I finished my teacher training in February, and almost a whole week later, was signed up to do another qualification - it came with a virtually guaranteed bursary and was a new qualification so it was hard to walk away from. I started off at one uni, doing the diploma and when I realised that the tutor was [to say the least] hard work, I thought I'd pull out. But when the notification came that the bursary was approved, and a list of other providers came straight after, I set about to find a new provider. After a few weeks, I found one, who was doing the qualification internally but was willing to accept me on their course. And now, I have finished that, and the bonus was - they weren't doing the diploma, but a degree. So that's nice.

I'll put it on here once I have been awarded the qualification but for now, lets just say I'm looking forward to having some spare time again. I've been doing some supply work and spreading the word about food growing in schools.

And to the future - my Heritage Seed Library seeds turned up yesterday. I have got Jordanian cucumber, Kelper gigantic swede, Paddy cabbage, Shishigatani squash, Cantalun melon, Relon Broad Bean, Cantalun melon [donated originally by one of the Nottingham Organic gardeners], and some Snake Bean as a lucky dip. I can't wait to try these, some are new to HSL and if they grow well for me I'll try and save some seeds for my seedy friends and share them out. Pic below.

If you haven't joined Garden Organic and the Heritage Seed Library then the link is here - there is still time to join and to choose your HSl seeds for 2015. If you already grow and save seeds, and have a bit of space to become a Seed Guardian and grow some seeds to give back to HSl members, then find out about Seed Guardians here. And if you are in the UK and want to be part of our seed circle, you have a couple of weeks to send me your 2014 saved seeds, so contact me through this blog and I'll let you know what you have to do.

And if you don't want to do any of those, but just want to sit and watch TV - then please watch Rob, another Seed Guardian for HSL, who won best in show for his Boothby Blonde Cucumbers this week, on The Big Allotment Challenge on BBC1. Come on Rob, we are all rooting for you!

And Happy New 2015 to all my readers, here's to a healthy and hearty year of growing scrummy food.