An Edible Garden at Glastonbury & other festival tales

We're very excited to be doing the round of festivals this year. Having just done a very successful stint at Sunrise festival, we'll also be taking Rocket Gardens out on the road over the summer, heading to, amongst others, Port Elliot, Gilfest, Camp Bestival & Harvest at Jimmy's.

Right now though, we're busy polishing our wellies, packing our shewee's and practising our sunshine dances- we're off to Glastonbury this weekend!

The Rocket Gardens crew is heading up the A303 to build a shed with an edible roof! In keeping with our mission to get everyone to joing the grow your own revolution, we're working with Greenpeace to design and build the tasty structure. The roof will be made up of 24,000 plants, crafted lovingly into a Greenpeace logo.

John, our resident computer whizz has been released from the confiines of his laptop and into the wilds of Somerset to get to work on the building of the shed, before the rest of us join him in time for the start of the festival. He sent us this photo:

It seemed a shame not to use all those plants for something a bit more useful afterwards though. So, we figured if would be the perfect opportunity to support Garden Organic's One Pot Pledge. Like us, they're working hard trying to encourage more people to have a go at growing their own veg', so we thought we'd try to help them out a bit. From midday on Sunday, festival-goers can stop by the Greenpeace stand and pick up a bit of Glastonbury to take home with them. When they sign up to the One Pot Pledge, they will be able to choose a plant from the Rocket Gardens roof display. We're hoping that people will recycle plastic cups by using them to carry their plant in, so that we can help with the big Glasto' clear-up, too!

Slugs and snails!

Slugs are part of a garden's natural habitat, so I prefer to think about keeping the little blighters away from my plants, rather than necessarily destroying them.

With this in mind, I have learnt that regular weeding is imperative as this ensures there are less hiding places for slugs and snails. Similarly, regular picking of crops, particularly leaves, can be effective. Picking strawberries, beans etc. regularly means there is less to tempt the creepy crawlies anyway.

One of the stranger pieces of advice I have received was to think like a slug and act accordingly. A bit weird but also oddly handy. Slugs like to hang out on and in walls, so it makes sense that if you plant things near a wall, the slugs have less far to travel and are more likely to munch your crops there. Canny planting can thus make a real difference to the survival of your crops.

Also, slugs are partial to a midnight snack or two, so a night-time patrol and launching a surprise attack can catch quite a few in the act. I've taken to doing this and (maybe I lead quite a dull life) but it can get quite exciting. Peering behind a leaf, only to discover a slug mid-munch, then removing it carefully to the safety of a distant patch of undergrowth, can be really rather satisfying.


I can anticipate, however, a time when my nightly sojourns become slightly irksome. When this happens, I'm reserving my special weapon- beer. It turns out that slugs and snails are both partial to a drop or two of ale. Place a glass of beer next to the plants and the sugary, hoppy liquid will attract them. They'll then climb up the glass, plop into the beer, get drunk and drown. No all that ceremonious but it's a way to get rid of slugs and snails more permanently, when you're really fed up, without resorting to chemicals or sprays.

Strawberries

Rob's been on his travels again. This time to the Big Smoke- London! It doesn't happen very often and it's quite an occasion when he does- he even shaved his beard this time.

He was up there to help out with a rather quirky and exciting project with Cafe Direct. They wanted to film him doing what the Rocket Team happen to think he does rather well: plant stuff.

The Cafe Direct crew have rather cunningly managed to acquire bits and pieces belonging to celebrities, which they've then used as plant containers. And Rob was the man to help them out! Hence, he found himself attacking Stella McCartney's handbag with an electric drill to make drainage holes. Absolute sacrilege, if you ask me!

Designer handbag massacre aside, Rob's adventures have definitely inspired me to want to have a go at growing my own strawberries. And I'm in good company it would seem, as the story goes that Henry VIII loved them and even ate them as a cure for gout.

Strawberries do need a bit of tender loving care- pretty and delicious as they are, they're also ever-so-slightly temperamental.

I'm using traditional strawberry plants, which are far more straightforward to grow than runners. Runners arrive in a dormant state and need to be soaked in water for half an hour and then planted, before they'll spark back into life. They then grow horizontal shoots, which then grow individual roots themselves. Whilst runners can produce more fruit than just plants, if you've only got a small amount of space, they can be a bit of a hassle because they'll root themselves in amongst gaps between other plants and take over. As a novice grower, I've decided to steer clear from this method of growing strawberries, for now.

I'm going to plant a couple of rows of strawberry plants in one of raised beds in the garden- this will hopefully keep me in strawberries for most of the Summer. I'm using an early variety (Honeoye), a mid-season variety (Cambridge Favourite) and a late variety (Judibell) in order to spread out the harvest.

I may well also plant a few pots on a window sill - partly as an experiment to see which grow best and partly because they'll look so pretty. That's the beauty of strawberries, it seems to me though: they'll grow in a variety of locations....pots, raised beds, gro-bags; inside or outside.

Strawberries love lots of compost and also a layer of straw laid amongst the plants keeps them protected and happy. I'm fast becoming a fan of worm cast fertiliser, so I'll put a good handful of it in each hole, before popping in each plant.

Strawberries really dislike the cold and frost can kill them so it's really important to cover them in fleece until all danger of frost has passed.

Because of their beautiful, brightly-coloured fruit, strawberries have quite a few admirers in the animal kingdom: slugs, snails, birds and badgers are all partial to the fruit. Regular checking of the plants and removing any pesky slugs and snails will hopefully solve that problem. Covering the plants in netting should stop birds from attacking. Badgers could prove a little more tricky, however....I'll keep you posted.

Although a little nervous that my plants survive, I'm really excited about picking my first crop of fruit and eating whole piles of them, slathered in Cornish Clotted Cream!