Use Your Herbs

Use Your Herbs

I know that you can buy plenty of fresh herbs down at your local store, but it is really wonderful feeling just stepping out of your kitchen into your garden and picking your own herbs.

The flavour is best just before the herbs flower and try to pick the young leaves from the plant in the morning when the dew has evaporated.

Flavouring your food with herbs means that you will use less salt, which can only be a good thing!

Chop lots of fresh lemon thyme and mix with a little butter lemon zest and garlic and smear it under the skin of a roast chicken or halfway through cooking of your Bolognese sauce, add lots of finely chopped fresh rosemary and garlic instead of salt.

Using herbs does give your food a fresh taste and they are not beyond the reach of most people to grow.

A few easy herbs I grow are:

Mint; This is a plant that likes a lot of sun and water, according to the books but I find that mint will grow just as well in the shade and can be forgotten about in a pot and still thrive. In fact, it is one of those plants that are very hard to kill. For this reason it is not a good idea just to plant it in your garden because it can be very aversive and take over. I grow mine in pot and have no trouble with it.

There are many types of mint; spearmint and peppermint are problem what spring to mind when you think of mint both of these have a very refreshing flavour, but why not pop down to your local garden store and see what else you can pick up in the Mint line. That is what I did and now have over ten different tasting mints to use.

Mint likes a thin coat of rotted manure or compost for the winter, however a spring dressing is better late the never.

You may find that old mint plants have orange patches of mint rust on their leaves, you can cure this by digging up the plant and washing the roots in water that is 110 f and leave the roots in the water for ten minutes before replanting. But remember that well-fed mint rarely rust, so new beds or old that are dug, split and remade every fourth spring, need compost or manure. If you have neither you could use 4 oz a square yard of fish meal.

Parsley is another very useful herb that can be grown in a pot near your kitchen. This herb is wonderful for garnishes and flavouring as well as being a tasty supplement to green salads. It is not very easy to germinate, so it is best to buy a few plants from your local store. Parsley is a biennial, and so should last you for a few seasons.

Chives are another of my favorites. These can be grown in your garden or you could use them to grow along your path edges. All you have to do then is go out with your scissors and snip away as much as you want for they will soon grow back.

Broad Beans all Summer Long

The first to appear 

Broad beans are the first to appear in your garden, for in milder parts of the world they can be sown in the Fall.

They are a particularly delicious vegetable when garden fresh. Just cook until tender and serve with butter for a true " taste surprises"

When the bean is no more the three inches long it has very tender pods and can be eaten whole. Older beans will need to be shelled

For most people Broad Beans are a “no goer”. In other words, they will not touch them in any shape or form. I have researched the reason for this by asking as many people as I can why they do not like Broad Beans. 99% of the time the answer comes back: “ I had them at school and hated them”

School beans are not good for many reasons; they are not fresh, they are grossly over cooked and they are covered with some foul smelling sauce. In my case the sauce used, was white and full of bits of green; upon reflection, it must have been some sort of parsley sauce. What ever it was, it put me off broad beans for at least 50 years.

My interest in Broad Beans was rekindled when I got an allotment and saw that the vast majority of my neighbours grew them with great success. I am always one to grow what every body else is growing, practically if they are doing it successfully. It means to me that the soil good for that plant and that the crop suits the local climate.

One of the attractions of growing Bread Beans, to my mind was that you can sow them in late fall and mid winter. I do like winter crops because I think that it is the test of a true gardener as to how many crops you have on offer in the winter. Broads Beans fell right into that category.

So off I set and brought some broad beans in November prepared my land and sowed them with great excitement. True to form, some ten days later on a bright November day, I have the first showing of green shots. What joy, what a disaster for the temperature dropped right down to -17c and stayed well below -10c for the next ten weeks. The broad beans were wiped out.

Since that time I have never again grown winter broad beans. However, what I have done is grown Broad Beans as early as I can in late winter( end of January) and then every two weeks till the end of July and it works a treat. You know what? I love them. They are fresh and I steam them for about a minuet; much better then the school ones.

Almost any soil will do and the only preparation necessary will be forking in composted vegetable refuse. In addition, fish manure should be added at 3 ounces to the square yard. If you do not have enough compost, you could use sedge peat instead.

When I sow, I space the rows 2 feet 6 inches apart with the bean black eye up, 3 inches deep and about 6 inches between each bean. I find that the best way to keep the black fly down is to hoe regularly. I also pinch out the tops when the bottom beans are forming. Doing this encourages early production. I pick regularly, when the pods are about 4 inches long. They are then delicious.

Growing Raspberries

If the call of the soil is in your blood, if you have green fingers in the springtime and feeling to get out there and “dig” , then you must get yourself a garden or plot of some kind without delay and go grow some rasberries. 

And it is not a difficult task. Fruits, in the main are not that particular about their soils. They grow in anything between a sandy soil to loose, as to be almost shifting, and heavy clay. Lets face it, your soil is what it is, you can change it a little with a bit of hard work, but in the main you are stuck with it. 

To get a really heaver crop of raspberries you need to plant your canes on rich soil where the roots can run deep down for moister. Bear this in mind when selecting a site on which to plant your cains.

If you have such soil, the canes will do best in full sun, however if you have light soil they would do better in semi shade.

Raspberry canes should be planted in the autumn or winter months. If you are starting afresh then dig in plenty of manure, and add more every time after fruiting. Raspberries are a very hungry crop.

Allow six feet between the rows and about a four feet between each plant. The raspberry, is such a strong grower, that you will find that it needs this sort of space to produce a heavy yield.

Pruning:

During the first spring after raspberries have been planted, the whole of the cane should should be cut down to an inch or so off the ground. This means that the first years crop will be sacrificed, but believe me the subsequent seasons will be much heavier, because the necessary amount of root growth will have taken place. 

Pruning in the following seasons is done directly after the season’s fruit has been harvested and consists of cutting out all the old fruiting canes. This is so that the plant can replace them. Leave three or four of the strongest young shoots on each root. Best to prune in late August or early September, because the young canes are then ripened by exposure to autumn sunshine, should there be any.

Autumn fruiting raspberries:

To mine mind , these are the best raspberries to grow, mainly because birds do not seem to go for them.

To get autumn raspberries make sure you buy the right varieties and to do this, ask at your local suppler. Like the ordinary summer fruiting raspberries, this crop likes rich soil and moisture for its roots.

Where so many people fail with the autumn fruiting is with the pruning. The way to do this is to cut down all the canes to within two or three inches of the ground in the month of April. The young growth that comes up from this drastic cutting will give you a great autumn crop in October or November is it is not too cold.

Loganberries:

I find this fruit fits in well with my fruit growing because it makes a very good boundary fence and gives you fruit at the same time. The plants growth is very quick and hardy. The crop does best on fair to good soil. When planting, allow about six feet from plant to plant in the row, and prune in exactly the same way as advised for summer fruiting raspberries. 

RASPBERRY ENEMIES 

There is one problem that you cannot over come and that is: orange rust, which also attacks the blackberry and loganberries. There is only one thing that you can do and that is pull up the cains and burn them. There is no treatment as yet. Just on the bright side, I have never seen it, so it is quite rare.

There are bugs, of course, the cut worm and rasberry-borer. I spray my crops with liquid soap once a week and that seems to keep most things at bay. However you must net for birds. 

What do worms do?

Why you need worms:

The earthworm is naked and blind, and has no teeth or claws or for that mater no weapons or defense. The worm has no mind to be afraid and no feet to run away and yet Charles Darwin noted that no other creature played such an important part in the history of the world.

For it is the earthworm that continually maintains and renews the valuable film of top soil in which your crops grow. All waste products of life, dead vegetation, manure as well as dead animal residues make up the chief source of earthworm food.

It is well noted that animal life, in all its forms from man down to microbe, is the great transformer of vegetable matter into food for the lowly earthworm.

If you take notice of the above you will realize that the number and distribution of earthworms is of course influenced by the many different factors of soil environment. The numbers of earthworms will change according to the amount of organic matter in the soil.

No one can say:” my earthworm population is high and I need not do any thing more about it”. You cannot have too many worms. As a grower you much be constantly caring for your soil by creating an environment suitable for the earthworm.

A good worm should be about as thick as your little finger and two to three inches in length. The worm is general more active in the spring and fall and in the summer and winter will general go down deep into the soil and and ‘sleep’ (for want of a better word). They do not like the dryness of summer or the cold of winter.

All thing being equal, when you dig your soil you should see at least one worm for every forkful . If you do not have this level of worms active in your soil then you will need to encourage them into your soil by adding humus and some form of irrigation. They will appear like kids to a sweet shop.

A worm, by the way, lives for about fifteen years and has both male and female parts.

The earthworm is the true cultivators of the soil and the grower must see to it that they are helped in their work by providing food for this army of virtual workers.

The real fertile soil has a crumb structure. The particles of soil are loosely stuck together to form crumbs; these are only lightly attached to their neighbors. The host of fungi that live in the soil weave fine strands among and about the crumbs of soil and in doing so help prevent them from sticking together too strongly. The more fibrous the roots are, the more lasting the effect.

It is the long straight burrows of the earthworm that gives the main channels for air and water. Roots of your crops will find it easer to grow down a worm hole than go down through the soil itself. All you have to do, as a grower, is to supply the organic matter in the form of compost and this compost by its very nature will provide plant food for you crops and food for the lowly earthworm.

Compost from your kitchen waste

If you want to make compost but do not have anywhere to do it or if your plot is too far away to keep running down there with a bag of kitchen waste; do not despair there is still a way that your can use.

Let me introduce you to Vermicomposting, or as it is more commonly know as Worm Composting. This method is increasingly becoming a very popular method of turning your kitchen waste into compost

It is a very simply technique; worms are introduced into a box that is full of high-fibre bedding material. The worms then quickly eat through this and any of your kitchen waste that are added. This makes a nutrient-rich cast or worm droppings.

These tiny worms are a very efficient at breaking down material, they can get through there own weight in organic matter every day. In doing this secretions in their intestinal tracts liberate more plant nutrients of which the end result is humus containing five times more nitrogen and seven times more phosphorus, and with 11 times more potassium than normal compost. Great material for your crops.

Do not be put off by the worms, that is only an irrational squeamishness. Once you fully understand how the worms work and see the organic material that they produce you will be hooked. A worm bin will be able to recycle all of your kitchen waste and if you are able to use it in conjunction with a lager-scale compost heap on a vegetable patch, which is regularly stocked up with dead plant matter like leaves, manure and grass cutting you will be well away.

You can buy readily available worm bins from many suppliers. The best ones are a plastic tiered system that makes the compost very easy to harvest. All you have to do is put your kitchen waste in the bottom layer, and the worms will come up and work on it. As their supply runs out all you do is add another tier with more bedding and waste. When the worms more up to the next level they leave their casts behind in the lower tier. It is this wonderful matter that you need to put on your soil. As a bonus, the system collets excess liquid, which makes for a wonderful plant liquid feed that you could use on pot plants or vegetables.

This really is a great way to turn your kitchen waste into valuable compost. Remember that it is not just any old soil bulk-up sort of compost but good-quality compost for your garden, and all from your kitchen leftovers.

The Way and The How of A Compost Heap.

Just how does good compost get made? If you know the answer to this one then you will be a hundred per cent successful in you garden.

The compost heap is like a great factory ran on the most efficient lines. It is full of millions of tiny living entities all working away 24/7.

As well as or more to the point because of the vast amount of active that goes on in the heap; heat is made which is also a very important part of the compost heap.

This heat comes from the quick breaking down of all the living tissues, of materials such as leaves, stems and flowers; This gives an intense heat for a few days; then, with the release of the plant juices, it tempers to a moist pleasant warmth, ideal for the life and action of countless millions of microscopic soil workers.

All these little bugs are transforming the vegetable matter into the rich humus that soil craves. When this is put into or onto the soil, worms will then get to work on it. Each worm is targeted with the task of tuning the compost into rich plant life and creating small pathways within the soil for air to aerate the soil making it able to grown new life.

To make good compost all you must do is spply the means and material. The means is a simple wooded bin. This need be no more then a box with four sides and no bottom. The bin must stand on soil because that is where all the bugs will come from.

The best material to make the box from is wood and the reason for that is because wood is warm, alive, generally obtainable, and easily erected. However, there are substitutes.

Brick walls, with spaces for aeration, say five a side

Turf placed grass downward

3. Bales of straw built round the heap.

Do not use iron sheets as these tend to be cold and the outside of the heap will not compost very well. Mind you, you can always use the unused composted part of your heap for the start of a new heap.

You must provide some protection against heavy rain, because it will douse the heat much as it will put out a fire.

A sodden and confined heap cannot breathe. It is the aerobic (i.e., air-breathing) microbes that produce compost; the anaerobic microbes exist without air, and the result of their activities is putrefaction. Therefore, it is important to have adequate shelter to ensure both heat and air. Place a sheet of corrugated iron at a slant, so that air can pass under and rain run off it: or, as an alternative, make a shelter of stretched canvas, strong sacking or old carpet. It is not advisable to use rubber or plastic sheeting because such material is an insulator and does not allow air to pass through it, therefore staving the heap of oxygen.

It is essential that you provide good drainage. 

If your soil is light, place the bin directly on it. If it is heavy, dig down about six inches and fill the space with rubble and a cover of soil on top. Why? Because the heap produces a lot of moisture, especially when plants are succulent. This must be able to disperse, or it would saturate the compost and exclude the air.

A good idea is to lay down a thin layer of charcoal on the floor of the bin. The reason for this is that it will absorbs unpleasant gases, much like a filter. The charcoal need not be anything special just make a small bonfire, with wood and when it is red hot, pour some water on it – and there you have your charcoal!

Comfrey For Your Compost Heap:

Comfrey is the forgotten herb that in the past was known as the compost plant.

A compost heap is vital; in fact, the very lifeblood of your soil and comfrey should be one of the main element in your heap.

This very important plant contains more potash than farmyard manure or compost and holds all records for being the richest source of vegetable protein known except for the Soya bean.

Its root system will penetrate to a great depth and thus will pull up potash and other trace elements from the subsoil, which are out of reach of many crops.

So a combination of comfrey cuttings plus vegetable waste and all other organic matter suitable for composting makes for a quick breakdown into compost with a first class end-product.

The best comfrey for your compost is Bocking No.14. This variety is ready to harvest quite early in the spring. It is a variety that is very rich in potash, which makes it a very good chicken feed.

The best results are obtained in your compost heap if the stems and leaves of the comfrey are allowed to wilt for a day before you put it on your compost heap.

The stems should be mixed generously with other compost materials, especially lawn cuttings, but onto account should a heap be built entirely of comfrey.

One comfrey plant will give you about 7 lbs of leaves and stalks each month. Therefore, a patch of a dozen plants should give you some 2 cwts of organic matter each season.

Well worth growing comfrey and using it in your compost heap because after a few years of using it you will have vegetable to die for.