GreenFriends™ UK

Gardening Corner: June 2010

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"Only through love and compassion is the protection and preservation of Nature possible. But both these qualities are fast dimishing in human beings. In order to feel real love and compassion, one must realise the oneness of the life force that sustains and is the substratum of the entire universe. This realisation can only be attained through a deep study of religion and the observance of spiritual principles."
From Man and Nature by Amma

Unpredictable Weather

Amma tells us to always be ready for changing circumstances. Anyone who has helped at the Amma's London Programme can vouch that the Programme is a massive teaching as regards this! So too is the weather. We have had such a variable time recently. Warm then cold and frosty. A lot of plants don't like this. Our runner bean seedlings in the greenhouse were slightly frost damaged and some of their leaves died and went slimy. The tips of our newly sprouted potatoes went black. A solution we have found is to buy garden fleece, a very thin material to protect plants. We were been covering all of the greenhouse plants and some of the plants outside with this to protect against frost damage. Now, however, it is very hot, so the fleece has all come off! But, it is set to turn cold again soon. What do you do? As Amma says you can only do your best and then pray.

Watering in the Dry Weather

It seems that there are different opinions as to the best strategies for watering plants. Some feel that a good drenching is the best method. However, there is the opinion that if you keep doing this after a plant is established, then it will never grow a deep root system to search for water, so watering sparingly is better. It also seems to vary with the type of crop. Onions fare quite badly during very wet spells. We know someone who lost almost their entire onion crop last year because the plants got too wet. Don't overwater your onions!

Another way to stop the soil from drying out is mulching. This is placing a layer of plant material several inches thick on the soil. Straw, dead leaves, hay or many other materials can be used for this, and it definetly keeps the soil damper. However it also can shelter slugs (we don't really want to help them!) and cause other problems. Once we tried leaves as a mulch on a bed of garlic, and found shortly after, signs that a large animal had disturbed the leaves, and knocked over some of the plants. We think it was probably a fox looking for earthworms. We love foxes, but we don't want our plants knocked over! It seems to us with mulches that you definetly gain in one way and lose in another.

Watering in the evening helps to reduce the amount lost by evaporation,  when the weather is hot, and also someimes plants can be "burnt" with water on their leaves in the hot sun.

Bluebells

Part of what we hope to do with this article is to encourage people to enjoy the nature around them. As Amma says, nature needs our love. One of the ways we can love nature is just to appreciate the beauty that is around us. Here we have a view of our one of our local bluebell woods.

They are called Ecclesall Woods and are one of our regular nature "pilgrimages" (other pilgrimages include a beautiful limestone valley in June, and the heather on the moors in August). I hope that you get to see some beautiful flower displays this year. 

Allotment Diary

It is now the time when the allotment is at it's busiest. As the next month or 2 goes on, the ground will, God willing, become more and more full of young vegetable plants. Lots of tender young things embarking on their journey in life, very kindly providing us with food. Once they are all in, there is usually a short lull, around July. But for now its all hands on deck so to speak. It is a race once the frosts have finished, to get the plants in with enough time to produce. This is because alot of the vegetables that we eat are not really suited to British climate, and therefore need the warm summer months to grow them in. This includes potatoes, tomatoes, courgettes, pumpkin and lots of others.

In very ancient times, the crops that were grown in this country were very limited in number. I have read that broad beans were grown here a long time ago, but very little else that we would call vegetables. People supplemented their diets with wild foods of many kinds: leaves, fruit, berries, roots, nuts and seeds. It isn't very practical for nearly 60 million people in the UK to live like this, eating only wild food! Hence grow your own.

Here is a recent view of our allotment, looking across the vegetable beds towards the East.

So as we said above, we in the middle of planting out lots of crops at the moment. Peas, runner and french beans, courgettes, pumpkins and other gourds, beetroot, the list goes on. We are hoping that next month we can show you a quite different view.

At the end of our allotment is our fruit area with rapsberries in the background coming up, strawberries in the foreground and the fruit trees in blossom. After this photo was taken we enclosed the strawberries in a chicken wire cage to guard against mice, which we think ate the whole crop last year, bar one which was delicious!

Apple blossom is really quite beautiful.

Happy gardening and see you all next month

- Richard and Kaivalya

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