Song for Jasmine

Yesterday, I finally dug up my dead sunflowers. Even though there are still a few seeds in them, as you can see in the photo, the birds have stopped visiting them, so it’s time for them to go. I had intended to save the dead flowers to put out later in the winter for the birds, but they found them before I harvested them so I let them have them. I’ll put out other food for them later.

Sunflowers are one of my favourite flowers, I first grew them when I was a kid. I’ve taken a number of photos of this years crop during the summer, here are a few of the best. Hope you like them!

The garden is finished for the year, which is a shame because it’s been a lot of fun. We had the last of our lettuce just a few days ago. It was surviving nicely due to the lack of frost, though it was hardly growing anymore, it’s too cold now. I’m surprised it has lasted so well, I wish I’d planted more towards the end of the summer!

Today I ‘officially’ closed the garden by covering the big plant tubs with their water-trays, to avoid having the winter rains leech out all the nutrients before the next growing season. I’d never really paid much attention to how soil in pots gets depleted of its nutrients before, but that was brought home to me this year. The white tub that I have had for many years grew tiny sunflowers compared to those with new soil, which were three or four times bigger. Shame on me, I should have known better.

I don’t want to use chemical fertilisers, I don’t want to replace the soil in the pots, and I don’t think I can realistically put a compost heap on my terrace, so I’m trying something different. I’m digging small, deep holes in the soil, and burying vegetable peelings in them. Hopefully, over winter, they will rot down enough to feed the soil without also rotting next years plants. Maybe it will work, maybe not, we’ll see!

Our garden has been quite productive, and we’ve enjoyed the produce from it. A recent study claims that organic food is no healthier than normal food, but that study completely ignored the use of pesticides in conventional agriculture. I’ve read enough to convince me that pesticide-free veggies are a good thing. Of course, there are other benefits to growing your own vegetables, such as reducing food-miles.

Food-miles are a measure of the amount of fuel needed to transport food from the farm to your plate. That fuel all contributes to climate-change by emitting greenhouse-gasses, so getting your food locally means less global warming. You can’t get more local than your own garden, so growing your own food is good for the planet too!

On a larger scale, organic farming is also beneficial in the fight against climate change in other ways. Organic farming feeds the soil, not the plant, and doing so means that the soil will absorb and hold more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than chemical-intensive methods. The Carbon Farmers of America have taken this one step further, deliberately adopting farming techniques to optimise carbon sequestration, and making farms more productive in the process. The story of the farms of “Yobarnie” and “Nevallan”, in Australia, is quite an eye-opening account of how well such techniques work.

So your organic garden may be good for the climate, as well as providing good food. I could have squeezed a few more vegetables out of our garden this year, but I’m glad I left some space for sunflowers instead. Apart from being pretty in their own right, they’ve been feeding the bees all summer, and now feed the birds, long after nearly everything else out there has finished. If you look closely at the photo below you’ll see there are 6 goldfinches, quite a sight!

Nor is it just goldfinches, we’ve had great-tits too. As you can see, they’re not timid about getting their share, this one was quite happy to push in while the goldfinches were feeding. He’s more agile than the goldfinches, so manages to get his way.

Other birds have benefited from both the goldfinches and the great tits dropping seeds on the ground. Black Redstarts and sparrows often forage around the pots while the other birds are doing their stuff. Sparrows may be plain compared to other birds, but they’re still fun to watch. Here’s 3 of them looking on while a fourth is dipping into the bowl of water we put out for them. You can’t easily tell, but he was taking a bath at the time.

Finally, although the garden outdoors is finished for the year, we’re still growing something! Dweezeljazz has got the bug now, and is growing fresh shoots of all sorts for our salads. They’re very easy to grow, using a neat little gadget from Satoriz, and make a welcome addition to our meals. Thank you, Dweezeljazz.

Winter is approaching, and change is in the air. We’re wrapping up warmer these days, and we’re not the only ones. Insects, such as this lacewing, are looking for a safe place to spend the winter. This year, I’m trying to help them.

There are lots of places on the web where you can get good information about the type of home that you can provide for insects for the winter. They range from simple things like a pile of leaves in a wire cage to more elaborate and attractive DIY projects like the one at Herbs and Dragonflies. Other sites have more detailed information, such as the Paignton Home Garden & Allotment Society, or the Cheshire Wildlife Trust. For the ultimate in accomodation for garden wildlife, take a look at the invertebrate habitat they designed as part of their exhibit at the 2005 RHS Tatton Park Flower Show.

I wasn’t nearly as ambitious as that, maybe next year, who knows! I put together a simple bug-home from a plastic container, a few pieces of bamboo, and a bit of string. I started by sawing off the bamboo into sections, just behind the knuckles so that each section is closed at one end. Many of the sections were still filled with pith, I used a long drill-bit to clean them out.

Then I made four holes in the plastic container, two at the top, two at the bottom. The holes are spaced about a quarter of the way around the container, and the pairs of holes line up along the axis of the container. Oh just look at the picture, you’ll get the idea!

I threaded two pieces of string, one in and out of the top pair of holes, one in and out of the bottom. Then I stacked the bamboo in the container, with the closed ends inside of course! Pack the bamboo in tight, so that it holds itself firmly.

I made sure that the string was looped around the bamboo inside the container, so that when I pull it tight it will hold the bamboo tighter together. Otherwise, the string might just tear through the plastic over time, and that would not be good.

Then I simply tied it to our fence. It’s deliberately placed on a slight downward angle, to prevent water running down into the bamboo and drowning any unsuspecting occupants. It’s also close to our wall, and facing it, so that it gets protection from direct rain and winds.

My only question is, how will I know if there’s anyone living in there? Any ideas?

My little organic terrace-garden has been rather successful this year, and the produce has been very welcome at our table. We’re not the only ones to appreciate it, naturally, there are plenty of critters who have helped themselves throughout the summer. That’s OK with me, I’m happy to share to some extent, providing they don’t eat everything.

One common form of damage has been beetroot leaves eaten out from the inside by leaf-miners. There was a lot of this in early summer in particular, and I had little choice but to remove the affected parts of the leaves and throw them away. Otherwise I would have had very few leaves left on some of my plants! Apparently, some plants have evolved patterns of markings that look similar to the damage caused by leaf-miners, which protects them because the leaf-miners prefer unoccupied leaves in which to lay their eggs. Maybe I’ll ask Dweezeljazz to go out and paint the leaves for me next year, that sounds like a job for an artist!

There have been any number of butterflies hovering around the garden, even well before there were any flowers in evidence. They must have had something else in mind and yes, sure enough, I have found lots of eggs hidden on the leaves. Some were quite hard to spot, among the beetroot in particular. Some were easier, like the yellow eggs on the nasturtium leaves.

Butterfly eggs, of course, hatch into caterpillars, and I have found quite a number through the summer. On the left is a ‘Small White’ (Pieris rapae), this one was just running around the rim of the pot like he was desperate to find the end of it. I don’t know what the one on the right is called. Below them is, I think, the caterpillar of a Garden Tiger moth (Arctia caja). Apparently, Tiger Moth numbers have been decimated in the last 30 years, due largely to excessive use of pesticides. Like many other small creatures, they are now in need of protection in the UK. This one was running across our living room floor at high speed, heading for the stairs, looking for a place to pupate. He was safely redirected to the great outdoors!

There have been a number of other insects, such as this bright green beetle (probably a Chrysolina species), and the two crickets below.

The one on the right is Roesel’s bush cricket, (Metrioptera roeselii), and this poor specimen has lost one of his hind legs. Despite this, he was quite agile, climbing easily, and was able to manage a decent hop when I picked him up and released him in the nearby bushes.

It’s not just insects that visit our garden. After being absent this summer, the goldfinches are back, this one investigating the sunflower heads for seeds. Well, that’s why I planted them! I know it’s not a good photograph, but it’s the only one of a goldfinch that I have at the moment, so it will have to do. Hopefully I’ll get better photos later.

Although not closely related to the American goldfinch, it does share its taste for sunflower seeds!

Finally, late one night a few weeks ago, we found this hedgehog doing the rounds on our terrace. I don’t think he found anything edible, but he’s welcome to come back anytime. Again, not a perfect photo, but we don’t like to use flash on animals, especially nocturnal ones. He wasn’t hanging around for us to get many shots, this is the only one we got of him too!

I haven’t any photos of all the bees, butterflies and wasps that have visited my garden too. Maybe next year. It’s amazing how much variety you can get visiting just a few pots of plants.

Although we’ve had a heatwave recently here in France, the dominant theme for this summer has been rain. Lots of rain. And yet more rain. With all this rain, I’ve not had to water my terrace-garden very often. I was initially concerned that my plants, being on a west-facing terrace, would get too hot. That has not been a problem! Despite this, I’ve had a fair bit of success in the garden so far. We’ve had lettuce and chard in good quantities since the middle of June, and will still have plenty for some time to come. I planted a second crop of both a while ago, and that is giving me a good succession. We’ve also had our first beetroot, as you can see from the pictures here. They weren’t quite the cricket-balls you can get in the supermarkets, but they were certainly big enough for us. As with everything that comes straight from the garden into the kitchen, they tasted great! There are still plenty more out there, so they’re not done yet!

The beetroot leaves have been supplementing the chard whenever we want fresh greens. I deliberately planted many of my plants closer together than they say you should on the packet, with the intention of taking a leaf off here and there to keep them from getting overcrowded. This has worked well, more or less, and has allowed me to make good use of the few tubs I have available. Lettuce, chard, and beetroot have rubbed shoulders – or roots – and kept us well supplied. That said, I have to admit that some of the plants were just too close, and I should have left them more room. I’ll know better next year!

Not everything has been entirely successful. The herbs I planted have not grown as fast or well as I had hoped. The thyme has not flowered, which has disappointed me because I was hoping it would attract bees. I think it may have been too cold and wet for it, and it has also been crowded by some of the leafier plants. The rosemary never came up, which is also disappointing because it can provide useful food for bees in winter.

I lost a number of seedlings, plucked by birds looking for something to eat. I’m guessing that they may have been younger birds, perhaps recent fledglings learning how to forage, because the damage all happened in a short period of time around the end of June. I’ve not lost any later seedlings this way. If they were adults that pull up seedlings regularly, I would expect to have lost some of my later sowings too.

I also had an attack of powdery mildew on the beetroot leaves. Looking around, it seems that one way to deal with that is to spray the plants with milk! Incidentally, if you go looking for the article referenced on that page, the link they give is incorrect. The original paper was in the journal of Crop Protection, not Crop Science. If your Portugese is any good, you can also take a look at a technical note by the same author, which you can get without paying for it!

I’ve mentioned the ants on my sunflowers, they were farming aphids. I read in several places that mint deters ants. Not having any mint to hand at the time, I put down the contents of a few mint tea-bags, and that seemed to do the trick! That same link actually advocates planting sunflowers so the ants will herd aphids onto them, taking them away from other plants. I didn’t read that bit first time round, it seems there’s more to companion-planting than meets the eye!

The peas I planted actually produced some decent pods. I think I will try a few more next year, cascading out of the pots where they will not compete with other plants. The spring-onions are doing well too, as is the basil, of course. We have been having some very good salads lately!

We have 6 large tubs for our terrace garden, plus a number of smaller pots, which provide a good deal of growing space. We shall add more tubs next year. We paid more for the pots and soil than we have saved on the food we have grown so far, but I think that it will only take 3 or 4 years to pay back the initial investment. Meanwhile, we’ve been able to go shopping less often, saving us time, and money on petrol, and we have been able to supplement our table regularly, with good-tasting, pesticide-free produce. All things considered, our first summer of organic terrace gardening has gone very well so far, and it’s not over yet!

I have written about my vegetable garden before, but I have another garden, a secret garden. It’s not secret because it’s hidden, on the contrary, it’s in full sight of everyone. No, it’s secret because I do nothing to make it grow, nothing to make it flower. My secret garden is the wild flowers around me, which I find as beautiful as any domestic garden I have seen.

There are lots of different sorts of flowers in my garden. Even the dandelions of spring are a part of it, fields of yellow that are just lovely to see, and which provide the emerging bees with some of their early-season food. For the most part, I don’t know the names of these plants. If anyone does, please, let me know!

There are lots of these daisy-like flowers, simple yellow-and-white things. I have no idea what the blue flowers below them are called, but the bees love them. So do I, the way the pink buds open to reveal blue flowers is quite something. They’re not quite as common as some of the other plants, and the flowers are a little more hidden below the upper leaves, so they’re a bit harder to find. But they’re worth it.

Then there’s one that I can name, Verbascum Thapsus, above. I learned their name quite by chance when my good friend Shannon mentioned them in her “Wildlife in Summer” blog-post recently. She has a photo of some of them flowering on a rooftop, having somehow found room to put out roots. According to Wikipedia, Verbascum Thapsus is a biennial, so those plants had been there for a while! They flower tall and bright, and they flower for a long time. I bet that if they were annuals instead of biennials, they would be popular with gardeners.

Thistles are commonly regarded as weeds, but the flowers are really quite pretty. The thistle has been the emblem of Scotland for over 700 years, and the story of how that happened is rather amusing.

I found this ‘Checkered beetle’ (Trichodes Nuttalli) on a thistle very close to my home. I’d never seen a beetle quite like this before, he’s really very colourful. Thanks to “The Marvellous in Nature” for a post just a week or two ago which identifies this critter!

This next lot, I have no idea what any of them are called. The spiky plant above is really quite impressive up-close, and I’ve seen that in winter the birds come time and again to pick seeds from it, so it’s worth encouraging. The pink flower to its right grows on small shrubs that flower profusely, one or two of them would fill a niche in a garden very easily. The yellow flower to the right is much smaller, but close up it’s really very delicate.

Then there are some more familiar plants, like the poppies that come up everywhere in spring and the pale blue cornflowers that follow them in summer. The flowers change with the seasons, but there are always so many to see, all through the spring and summer. I’ve only mentioned a few in this post, maybe I’ll show you some more of my secret garden later on. Stay tuned!

The country lanes in the Pays de Gex need to be cleared of grass and wild plants from time to time, or they would rapidly become overgrown. I guess it’s necessary, but it always makes me sad to see all that lush green growth cut back in its prime. The photo above was taken one week after the one of the orange butterfly on the right, and in the same place. All those flowers gone in a moment, and the insects that relied on them for food and shelter now have to go elsewhere. Spiders, lizards, frogs, and other creatures that feed on the insects all get disturbed too, of course. It seems such a shame to harm all those plants and animals in the process, but is there really any alternative?

Even if it is necessary to cut back the growth to keep the paths open, there are ways that it could be done that are less harmful to both the plants and the animals that depend on them. For example, don’t cut back all the growth in one area at the same time, leave some as a refuge for insects. Not all insects can easily move on to new grounds. Some bees, for example, nest in banks along paths like this one, and are more exposed if their cover is removed. Other insects may have already laid their eggs on these plants, and the eggs will not survive when the plants are cut back. Even those insects that can move on can’t always move far or fast, so may not survive if the nearest intact stand of plants is too far away. They may not be able to feed on the crops in the fields, so the nearest food plants may be a long way off down the lane. I’ve no idea how far a caterpillar can walk, but with that many legs, sore feet can’t be fun! If a patch of plants every few metres or so could be left alone all season, instead of mowing down an entire area, these insects would have a chance to complete their lifecycle in a more natural manner.

It’s not just the insects and other animals that will benefit from a stay of execution, the plants need it too. They need to be allowed to flower and set seed, and for those seeds to be dispersed, or the next generation of flowers will have to come from somewhere else. For some flowers, this might not seem to matter, dandelions and daisies can probably survive the worst that the lawn-mower can throw at them. But sometimes, it really is important. Near to where I work in Geneva, there are grassy areas among office buildings that have been found to harbour orchids. There are at least two orchid species there, in fact, and one (Ophrys Apifera) is rare enough that it is on the CITES list of endangered species. The other (Anacamptis Pyramidalis)is more common, especially so since the grass it grows in is now left alone until late in the summer, so the orchids are allowed to flower and set seed in peace. A simple act of not cutting the grass is enough to help these orchids to thrive.

So before you cut your grass again, or dig over that plot of land at the bottom of the garden, why not pause to take a good look at what’s living there. Even if you don’t have rare orchids, you might find some pretty wild flowers that you have overlooked in the past, or maybe a small frog or two, as I have found in my Mums garden in recent years. If so, maybe you can leave a patch of ground undisturbed for a while longer, and let nature do its stuff. You can help it to survive, by simply doing nothing to it.

Back in April, I described my gardening plans for this year. Time for an update! It’s been seven weeks since then, so I ought really to be well advanced with my plants. Unfortunately, we have not had access to our terrace all that time because of work that needed doing on it, so I’m rather behind with the schedule. Still, there is progress to show, and here it is.

I bought the seeds, here they are, most of them. I was interested to see that some of the seeds on offer were ‘certified organic’, like the beetroot here on the left. I’d never heard of organic seeds before, but if that means they don’t use pesticide or fertilisers to raise the stock, that gets my vote.

I also got some big pots. I have had the white one you see here for some time, and I recall it was expensive when I got it. It seems pots still are expensive, which is why I’m not getting more until I am convinced I can produce something in them. The brown pots are huge, they hold 120 litres of compost each, that’s over four cubic feet. I would have preferred white pots that would absorb less heat, but despite the number of garden centres in our area it’s not easy to find something suitable. Large pots will hold a lot of water, so plants will survive better in the summer heat. Our balcony takes the full force of the summer sun, so that’s an important consideration!

Our local organic store, Satoriz, now sells organic compost, which is a great idea. It’s good stuff, but it can’t be used on its own because it needs something mixed with it to help it drain well. On its own, it tends to pack solid when its wet, forming a solid layer like a dried-up river bed. That’s not good because the soil doesn’t breath or absorb water properly when it’s like that, it needs to be open and porous. Still, it’s good to know that ‘organic’ is really entering every part of the home-food-growers’ domain, and I will definitely be using this compost as a regular part of my gardening.

When you fill a pot as big as these with new soil, it’s a good idea to make sure the soil is thoroughly wet before you plant anything. The compost sold by garden centres is normally very dry so it weighs less, people are more likely to buy it if they can carry it. When it’s that dry it can take a lot of water to soak it thoroughly, these big pots actually took 30 litres of water before anything drained out the bottom, that’s one quarter of their volume in soil! I watered them 3 or 4 times over a day or so before I was happy enough to plant in them.

The lettuce is growing strongly, as are the chard and beetroot. I’ve already thinned them out, but I may still have to thin the lettuce some more, they’re growing very vigorously. The spring onions have sprung, as you can see at the top of the post. You can see a sunflower growing well in the white pot above, but I can’t take the credit for that one, it’s a seed that found its way into the pot somehow and sprouted without asking permission. The sunflowers I planted are a dwarf variety, they shouldn’t grow to more than about 18 inches/45 cm high, and you can’t see them over the edge of the pot yet.

I also have some peas coming through. I had not intended to plant peas, but we bought some for eating and there were a few that were sprouting, so we thought we’d give them a try. They’re doing very well, in fact they’re currently the biggest plants I have out there.

The french marigolds are doing well, and I did plant nasturtiums, which have also come up. The thyme, sage, rosemary, and basil have sprouted too, but they have been a bit disappointing with their germination, slow to come through and slow to get on with the job. The mint hasn’t come up at all, but that’s my only no-show this year, so I can’t really complain.

Since the herbs were supposed to be our organic pest-deterrent, that leaves the other plants a bit vulnerable at the moment. The sunflower that that seeded itself is harbouring aphids, which are being looked after by ants. That’s not good, so I need to do something about them, and would welcome any suggestions for dealing with them. I’m pretty certain the ants aren’t nesting in the pot, there are only a few of them, so I don’t have a nest to eradicate, just a few visitors.

Fortunately, other characters, such as this enormous slug, have not found their way into my little garden. That’s one advantage of an exposed, hot terrace, it forms a natural barrier to some pests. I don’t think my lettuce would last long if this guy found them!

So I’m not competing with the local farmers yet, but even since I took these photos a couple of days ago the plants have grown quite a bit. It won’t be long before I’m getting a few lettuce leaves at least. I know other people out there who are blogging about their organic gardens, The Natural Patriot has already started harvesting goodies from his. The Earth Home Dwellers are having a go too, but I don’t know how they’re getting on. C’mon guys, tell us, I’m curious!

If anyone else is growing their own organic vegetables out there I’d love to know how you’re doing?

Easter has come and gone, and those of you lucky enough to have a garden may well have been out in it planting things. I don’t have a garden, and my mum is probably raising her eyebrows right now because I didn’t get that much done in hers over Easter, but I do have a terrace, and I am looking forward to trying my hand at growing a few plants this year.

I’ve grown vegetables in pots before, but not without pesticides and fertilisers. This year will be different, I intend to follow the growing trend and see how well I manage without chemical assistance. If it’s good enough for Michelle Obama, it’s good enough for me!

Michelle Obama wants to plant an organic garden in the white house lawn, and apparently this is upsetting the agricultural chemicals industry in the US. They are concerned that it sends the wrong message because it is organic. This despite the fact that more and more people out there are moving away from pesticide use. The fourth Semaine sans Pesticides (‘week without pesticides’), just last month, was twice the size of the one last year.

14 countries participated, from Canada, South America, Europe, and Africa (a summary is available online). Pesticides are nasty chemicals, and it seems a lot of people, the world over, think we can do without using so much or so many of them. But how?

Fortunately for the small gardener, there’s a lot of good information out there about natural pest control, such as using coffee to repel slugs and snails, using neem oil as an environmentally-friendly pesticide, companion planting, for mutual pest-resistance, selecting plants to attract useful insects, and growing vegetables in pots. I’ve even read some of it, and have decided what I want to grow this year.

I want to grow lettuce, beetroot, chard, and spring onions. Beetroot leaves are good in salads, so they’re not just for the roots. I also want to plant a few herbs (basil, thyme, rosemary, mint), as much for the smell as anything. I’ve chosen these plants for a variety of reasons:

• they’re easy and fast to grow, so I can hope to get something quickly
• for the most part, they’re cut-and-come-again, so I can hope for a long season
• lettuce and chard, in particular, don’t keep too well in the fridge. By growing my own, I hope to have them fresh whenever I want them.
• they don’t need staking, so occasional high winds and storms won’t damage them (I hope)
• in the event of a disaster (hailstorm, heatwave, locusts, whatever) I should be able to replace them rapidly

Incidentally, if your parrot likes beetroot, do bear in mind that it retains its colour as it passes through the digestive system of your feathered friend. Jasmine liked beetroot, but the first few times we gave it to her we were a little concerned about the red droppings at the bottom of the cage a few hours later!

I also want to grow some flowers, partly for the colour but also for the local birds and insects – some of them anyway. The local bees will probably like the thyme, and I’m sure they’ll go for sunflowers too. The sunflower heads will be kept for feeding the birds later in the autumn and winter.

The minimal research I’ve done so far suggests that french marigolds are good at deterring aphids, so they’ll be very much in evidence, in and around the other plants. Nasturtiums are easy and, if I am to believe what I hear, edible too, but I’m not convinced. Maybe I’ll try them, maybe not.

I don’t intend to be too ambitous with my gardening this year. I won’t have a great deal of time for it and I’m not expecting to save a lot of money. I do expect to grow some tasty food, and to have a lot of fun in the process. I’ll let you know how it goes!