Song for Jasmine

The recent spell of freezing weather is coming to an end, but not before it dropped a foot of snow on our terrace. Birds have a hard time in such cold weather, in fact it amazes me that they manage to survive at all. There’s a very interesting post over at Willow House Chronicles about how birds survive cold temperatures if you’d like to know more about how they manage it.
We’ve been putting out food for the birds again this winter, normally just clearing the snow and placing it on the wall. That seems to suit birds like the robin, above, and our resident sparrows, but it can easily be covered by snow or washed away by rain, so this year we’ve also added some proper bird-feeders.

So many of the feeders in garden centres seem impractical and decorative, but after some shopping around I finally found this very practical feeder shown on the right. It’s not particularly cheap, but it does keep the seed clean and dry against all weathers, which has got to be a good thing. I don’t have anywhere obvious to hang such a feeder, so I took the low-tech solution. I found a suitable branch on our morning walks, tied it to the railings of the fence, and hung the feeder from that.

We also got two suet-feeders, and then spent some time looking for suet in the shops we frequent. Our favourite bio-store, Satoriz, didn’t have any, but they did have peanut butter, so I used that instead. I’m sure I could have found suet if I had looked around enough, but since the peanut butter is organic and any suet I find would not be, I prefer to use the peanut butter. I buy organic food for myself because I don’t want to eat pesticides, and I don’t see why wild birds should do so either.
I mixed some bird seed in with the peanut butter, quite a lot in fact, put it in the suet feeders, and hung them from another stick I’d picked up on our morning walks.

For a bit more variety, I tied some millet to the fence too, and I continue to put food loose on the wall for those that prefer it there. I also have a thistle-seed sack-feeder for finches, but no seed to put in it yet. Soon, I hope!

Now the restaurant is open, all we need are customers. First to find us was our robin, of course. You can see him here checking out the feeder during the day of heaviest snowfall. Like so many birds, he shows a great deal of curiosity at anything that changes in his environment. Having decided that it’s safe, he continues to be our most regular visitor.

A couple of days later and a few more birds had found us. The great-tits seem to like the peanut butter, while blue-tits like the tall feeder. We have even been visited by a magpie, who comes a few times daily, takes 3 or 4 peanuts in one go, and flies off to enjoy them somewhere else. I expect that as time goes by we will get more visitors, and hopefully more species too – I know there are woodpeckers nearby.
The magpie is our largest visitor so far, and unless the chickens down the road escape from their coup we’re not likely to get anything much bigger than them. Some people do get larger birds visiting them, such as our friend Shannon Ryan. Take a look at what she gets visiting her bird feeders. They must take quite a bit of feeding!

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.

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!

The BBC published an article on Tuesday with the title Farmers fear EU pesticide rules. Interestingly, a few hours later they changed the title to “Euro MPs back pesticide controls”. This concerns the very law that I mentioned in a previous post, “Optimism“.

It’s a shame the BBC changed the title, but the story still made it out into the world with that title, so i feel I am allowed to refer to it as such. So why should British farmers fear these rules? The majority of the EU states welcomes them, as do I, though the MEPs don’t ask me for my opinion.

Apparently, they fear the rise in price that would follow the drop in productivity, even to the point that the ‘British carrot’ could become extinct. Why, then, does the Soil Association believe otherwise? The Soil Association is an organisation that supports and promotes organic farming. They published a report in October 2008 entitled “England And Wales Under Organic Agriculture”, in which they discuss the consequences (email them if you want a copy, it’s not available for download). They point out that going completely organic could, for the UK, reduce the use of fertilizers by 95%, spraying by 98%, and increase jobs by 73%. There are many other benefits, not least of which is a huge reduction in the carbon footprint of their food.

The common objection to going organic is that yields would decline. This report shows that they would not suffer as much as is often claimed, Britain would not starve. It might even be better off with the right balance of farming techniques, there’s plenty of scope. If the Argentinians can manage to raise organic beef on large farms and export it around the world, surely Britain can do likewise?

Unfortunately, the soil-association report doesn’t mention the fate of the British carrot, so I don’t know what would happen there.

France is not so scared of going organic, it seems. The French are putting 12 million euros annually into turning their farms organic. They want organic production to grow considerably in the near future. France is the biggest consumer of pesticides in europe, but they don’t seem to be scared of running out of carrots as they change their ways.

Personally, I buy most of my food from a French organic chain, Satoriz (Jasmine often came with us). Their prices are reasonable, the quality is good, and they have a full range of organic products, from soap and baby food to beer and wine. Oh yes, and carrots, like the one at the top of this post. I’ve also noticed that the food I buy from there tastes better than food I get from elsewhere. Satoriz have a lot of shops in my area, and have recently opened a large new outlet. I hope they continue to do well.

America, too, has an agricultural system strongly based in the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. As Obama prepares to be sworn in as president, there are people calling on him to reform the way the USA produces food, citing largely the same reasons.

So if all the French, the Argentinians, and the USA think they can produce food without so many chemicals, I have to wonder what the British farmers have to fear? Surely they aren’t really scared for their carrots?