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!

Forcing Rhubarb

When those in the know at Rocket HQ suggested I grow forced rhubarb, I wasn't that keen. It sounded rather violent and not very natural. However, after a bit of a talking to, followed by a bit of reading up, I discovered that actually it's more 'encouraging' than 'forcing.' By preventing natural light from reaching the emerging rhubarb plants, they shoot upwards more quickly than normal, trying to search for light. The result, so I'm told, will be delicious tasting, bright red fruit.

Everything I've read and every conversation I've had about rhubarb tells me that it's the easiest thing to grow. Perfect for a beginner like me, then. Although you can grow rhubarb from seed, apparently year-old plants, called crowns, are the best way to do it. I'm more than happy to let someone else do the hard work for me, so I collected some ready-made crowns from the greenhouses at Rocket Gardens. These pinky-greeny fleshy blobs (I'm getting really technical here) come in 3-litre pots and just the tip of the crown pokes out the top of the soil.

Having prepared the beds last weekend, I was able to transfer the rhubarb crowns straight into the ground. I was told to choose a spot that receives plenty of sun, at which point, I got really confused- surely if they're going to be covered up to prevent them from seeing the sun, choosing a sunny spot to plant them in is, at best, slightly silly and, at worst, just teasing the poor plants? Again, I was wrong.

Rhubarb plants will harvest annually for around 10 years and it's only the first month or so of each growing season when you might want to cover them up and 'force' them. The rest of the time, the sunnier the spot, the sweeter and more fruitful the plants will be.

So, I chose the perfect sun trap spot and simply dug a hole about 30cm in depth into the bed and put in a handful of wormcast. I then emptied the contents of one of the 3-litre pots, and popped it into the hole. I then covered it all over and gave it a pat with my hand (I'm not quite sure why I pat the soil but I vaguely remember doing it whilst gardening with my Dad when I was little and old habits die hard.) Finally, I placed a bucket over the top of the newly-planted rhubarb and weighted it down with a large stone. I'd been warned that rhubarb likes to spread and so needs rather a lot of space, so I placed each plant about half a metre apart.

They'll take a month until they're ready to harvest initially and at this point I'll leave the bucket off and let the plants get some sunshine. Generally, the harvest season lasts between March and July, although this will be pushed back somewhat with the harsh Winter that we've had. Who knows, in Scotland, you may well be picking rhubarb well into August!

If you do fancy having a go at growing some forced rhubarb, Rob says there's still time to order some from us. In fact, his exact words were, "they're beauties!"

There's a scrumptious-looking Jamie Oliver recipe for rhubarb bellinis that I just can't wait to try!

I'm hoping my rhubarb turns out like this!

Growing Potatoes (part 1)

What with winter lingering rather chillingly in the air and the inches of snow that some of the country have seen, the growing season has been put back by a couple of weeks. That's actually quite lucky for a late-starter like me though because it means I haven't missed the boat to get some early potatoes in the ground.

Not so very long ago, I imagined that you just dug a hole in the ground, stuck in some potatoes you had lying around that you hadn't yet baked, fried or mashed, and waited for them to magically sprout more little tatties. Surprise, surprise; there's actually a little more to it than that.

In order to get any harvest at all, you have to use chitted seed potatoes. (Chitted means potatoes that have little green shoots poking out them.) Each shoot is new growth and, once in the ground, will be where the new harvest of potatoes will grow from. A good number of shoots on each seed potato is 2 to 3- any more than that and there won't necessarily be enough food from the original potato to supply all the new growth.

So, I've had a delivery of ready-chitted potatoes and I'm ready to get going! Although I could have planted them straight into the garden, the ground is still a little bit cold (the ideal temperature to get them moving quickly is 9 degrees c. Anything lower than 4 degrees c and they stay dormant.) So, instead I've put the seed potatoes into egg boxes (one potato in each egg holder.) I've placed them with their green shoots facing upwards and set them all on a sunny windowsill in my kitchen. I also kept each potato variety seperated and labeled them, too- the theory being that I can do the same when I plant them out and be able to keep track of what I'm digging up.

I'm using Maris Peer, Ambo, Orla, Charlotte and Colleen varieties. As it's my first go, I thought I'd try several different sorts to see if any grow better than others and also which I like the taste of. It's also no coincidence that these varieties are available on the Rocket Gardens website- but then I figure, there's got to be some benefit to working for the family firm!

Setting the potatoes in egg boxes is great because it keeps them upright and (hopefully) the shoots will grow nice and straight. Alternative holders would be egg cups or even cup cake holders. I ran out of egg boxes though and so I used a cereal box, clumping several potatoes together, and they don't seem to be any the worse for it. (I can tell I'm not going to be a particularly fastidious gardener!)

It's been beautifully sunny and spring-like over the weekend and the shoots have responded to the warmth already- I'm sure it's not my imagination and over-enthusiasm and the shoots really have got longer. I'll have to wait a couple of weeks, until the shoots have reached 2-3 cm in length and then I can plant the potatoes into the ground.

Partly because it's necessary and partly because I'm too excited to be able to leave my potato-related activity at that, I also started preparing the ground outside this weekend. I've dug over the raised bed, which is going to house them and also covered the ground in compost. I then dug in some organic worm cast fertiliser for good measure, in order to make sure the ground is full of nutrients when it comes to planting time.

Considering this has been my first full weekend dedicated to being a 'real' gardener, I think it went pretty well. It's been brilliant having an excuse to be outside, and digging up compost feels like a much more wholesome calorie-burning activity than going for a run. So far, so good!