a man, 40

2007-05-21T11:20:00.000-07:00

Really beautiful weather this morning, cool but very warm sun and the air smelt of the seaside.

I planted seven squash/pumpkin plants in car tyres. This means digging a hole, filling with compost, rough leaf mould and grass cuttings and then putting the tyre on top which is then three-quarter filled with soil... finally the unsuspecting cucurbit gets planted on top. I've no idea if this will work but the results from early (April) plantings have been very good - the tyre seems to provide the plant protection from the wind and retain heat from the sun.

I then constructed the canes for a dozen beans and planted out a few more sweetcorn seedlings. The morning had vanished.

2007-05-20T11:53:00.000-07:00

The Observer goes nuclear - for reasons it finds hard to explain. Nuclear power is 'hardly a carbon-neutral enterprise', could be a target for terrorists caused by 'blunt strategic' decisions like this, 'and the questions of safety, especially the treatment of toxic waste, remain highly contentious.' Sign me up then. Presumably, the chatterers at the Obserers have realised that their ability to sell advertising space has a direct relationship with global warming: more product = more warming.

Finally someone was brave enough to say it. Amazing it was Aaronovitch... This is a worthy feature, if a bit ironic if you use it to sell newspapers. All of which conspires to keep other stories of children suffering buried. Oh well, there's always Kids' Club...

Elsewhere, a victory for the Veggie Society, or is it the Masterfoods PR department? Certainly not for the fight against dementia, or for the well being of cows and calves.

2007-05-20T06:39:00.000-07:00

It's all about trying to find room for those early sowings now. I got my celeriac plants out of their 5" pots and planted them in the compost/bean trench. I read somewhere they will like this luxury accomodation. The best plant was about 6" high so I'm expecting roots the size of footballs (not the usual ping pong scale).

The bean trench isn't expecting a full quota of beans any time soon as the first sowing got half-slugged... In an increasingly elaborate companion system, the bean trench bed has wild asparagus down the middle. This is surrounded by sweetcorn seedlings. Then a row of seven tyres to house seven pumpkins. Then the bean trench (with celeriac in it). The bean canes will overarch the whole shooting match. Already things are looking a bit shaky, though. The sweetcorn got soaked in all the rain once too often and looks a bit off-colour, and only half the wild asparagus is showing. However I did have fun identifying the weeds that had emerged from the compost in the trench - onions, potatoes, a turnip, chamomile and something which looked like angelica!

I cleared a bed of old kale plants - some of them were nearly 5' high - and planted out yet more alliums: shimonita bunching onions and some leeks (12 x 3 French varieties). The latter resembled fat chives, not the pencil thickness prescribed by the gardening authorities. It was the first 'follow-on' planting of the year and got me wondering what was going to follow the spuds and overwintered alliums that will be harvested at the end of next month... so I reached for the excel sheet and...fortunately there are about 400 remaining options, only half of which are varieties of chicory.

2007-05-19T11:13:00.000-07:00

Warm, cold, sunny, rainy and windy. I weeded my allium beds today: two barrow loads of unwanted competition. And feeded them too - a generous helping of seaweed meal, hopefully putting back some of what the weeds had robbed. Lots of goose grass and grounsel for some reason this year. The crop itself looks healthy - just some yellow tips on the garlic and some of the shallots suggesting, perhaps, some sort of mineral deficiency.

2007-05-18T21:23:00.000-07:00

Ahhh....fresh bread and synthetic vitamin B9. There's no escaping it. I was reading about the over-prescription of prozac the other day. Some wag suggested the authorities should add it to drinking water and have done with it. I had a thought, did an internet search and hey presto! No wonder the kids are so damn cheerful at 6:00 am. This, however, is enough to test even the chemically cheerful.

Back in the real world, I met two near neighbours in Tescos this morning. We chatted, they went home in their seperate cars and I walked off to the train station. 3 carbon emissions for a possible 1. Bargain.

Sod it. Let's run away. Here will do nicely, enough land for generations to come. In fact, what am I doing here when I could be a proper French peasant??

2007-05-17T12:14:00.000-07:00

(Today, I am 40. Unthinkably old. Probably over half way, although I'm aiming for just a third, by cunningly consuming lots of kale, and ...errm, that's all. This new blog is an attempt to conflate my ((previously seperately recorded)) interest in growing food, living to be 120, an increasingly bizarre world view and parenting. Because, of course, they're all part and parcel of the same thing).

Happy birthday to me.

Very wet. Snails feasting, even on my kale. A very wet mid-may watershed - the last of the solanums, winter brassicas, leeks, have, at least, germinated. All potatoes should be in (they're not). The greenhouse tomatoes are in their final positions in the greenhouse borders, the peppers and aubergines will only be potted on one more time...

The first real 2007 harvest: dribs and drabs of radishes, and small new potatoes from the greenhouse sacks, and three big red - but not very sweet - strawberries. The jerky transition from maniacal sowing to tending and harvesting has occurred. Most things sown from now on will follow something already sown this year.

Lessons learnt so far this year:

1. don't sow outdoor tomatoes until March, don't even think about planting them out until late May;

2. planting courgettes in old car tyres really does work;

3. sowing sweetcorn in April really doesn't work, unless it's into big pots.

4. I NEED TO MAKE MORE COMPOST!

On this last point I'm trying a number of strategies, all to achieve the ultimate goal of not stealing fertility from elsewhere. The weeds I composted in bin liners two years ago - including bindweed - has made the best compost I've ever created. I now have eight huge sacks of weeds following suit, fermenting nicely with home produced urine. There's a kind of saintly zeal attached to pissing in a milk carton. Not satisfied with this liquid contribution, I've bought one of these. Soon I'll be ecologically sound and completely uncivilised. Win, Win.

I will not, however, confuse any of this with the smallest notion of saving the planet - especially after visiting Chris Jordan's web place. Excuse me while I pack for the three horsemen...