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!

Borlotti Beans

I stumbled upon this contraption in one of the store rooms at Rocket HQ the other day and was immediately intrigued. Was it a miniature maypole? I realised probably not.

It's actually a climbing frame for Borlotti beans. Brilliant!

Borlotti beans grow on climbing plants and the plants need something to climb up, otherwise they droop over. The particular contraption that I found has 8 strings stemming from a central pole. Each string can be pulled out straight and secured with what looks like a tent peg. It's quite compact, so can be used in a container, as well as in beds.

One Borlotti seedling can be planted next to each string and as it grows it will wind itself round the string, keeping it nice and vertical. As they get taller, I'll probably have to secure them with ties, just to make sure they stay put.

It's also possible to use canes for growing beans on (runners being another climbing bean.) You can either place them individually in rows or make a tepee by placing them several canes in a circle, then tying them together at the top or placing a topper on it. If you've got a bit of space, you can also use netting.

I'm keen to use my new-found contraption though and so I'm going to stick with the climbing frame.

Borlotti plants are best sown outside from May onwards, when they are at least 5cm in height. Considering it's been so cold this year (there was snow up in Scotland yesterday, apparently!) I'm running the risk of killing them by planting them out right now but with a blog to write, I've got to plant something! It might be best to hold fire for a couple of weeks before planting them. Either that, or cover the baby plants up with fleece to protect them from the frost.

When choosing a spot to plant Borlottis, consider that they like plenty of sunshine. Dig a small hole, sprinkle in a small handful of organic fertiliser and then pop in the plant. They like plenty of space so try not to plant them too close together. An ideal space would be 30cm between each plant. Once they start flowering, they will need regular watering.

Marigolds are a good companion for Borlottis as they will help keep the bugs away. Slugs and snails are also partial to these particular plants so I'll have to do regular checks. If they do become a problem, I'm going to try sprinkling used filter coffee granules round the base of the plants, as this apparently is a deterrent. If that fails to work then I'll have to resort to the glass of beer trick, which draws the slugs in and then drowns them- a bit gruesome though!

Borlotti beans should be ready to harvest from August onwards. You can tell they're ready when the pods turn cream. Before that, they'll be speckled with red.

Earthing Up Potatoes

My potatoes are looking 'andsome!

In just a few weeks, the plants have shot up and are now a good foot or so high, with a thick covering of leaves. This means that the potatoes, hidden underneath the ground, should be growing well, too.

Unfortunately, just as the wanted plants are growing, so too are the weeds and so today it was time for a little bit of weeding. Luckily, the unwanted weeds were small enough to be pulled up by hand, which I did in between each row of potato plants.

The space now looking much clearer, I was told by my resident expert, to 'earth up' round the potatoes. As they get bigger, there is a danger that the potatoes themselves will start to emerge from the soil. This is bad news because, once in contact with the sunlight, they will turn green and become inedible. So, I scooped soil from in between the rows and mounded it on to each row of potatoes. This makes the depth between air and potato deeper, making it less likely for the potatoes to pop up as they continue to grow.

With any luck, I reckon I'll be eating home-grown potatoes by the end of May.

Salad leaves

It appears there is no limit to my brother's talents! I arrived at his flat, which happens to be above the office at Rocket HQ (so that we can keep him working 24/7) and he proudly showed me to the direction of his balcony where there were 3 containers full of a variety of salad leaves. Considering we haven't yet reached May, this is quite a feat and so I made suitably impressed noises.

I imagined that there must be some clever gardener's trick that he had employed to get such successful results so early on in the season.

At this point, he went rather quiet.

At last, he confessed that, no, there was no trickery or voodoo magic involved, he had simply stumbled across some plugs leftover from last year and had casually sown them into the pots to see what would happen.

It would seem that our particularly mild climate, deep down in the southerly tip of the UK, means that plants, such as delicate-looking lettuce, are able to survive where in other parts they wouldn't be quite so lucky. The farm is also pretty well sheltered from any extremes of cold or wind.

I should probably now highlight that my aim of writing this is not to encourage you to ring up our office, demanding our Salad Garden immediately! Although Rob was lucky, it is definitely preferable to wait a month to be sure of success.

Having said that, the taste of those leaves, picked fresh from the ground and chopped straight into a salad is absolutely divine! If you've not tried growing salad yet, I cannot recommend highly enough that this is the year that you give it a go. As proven by Rob, you don't need much space, or skill, or even a very high attention span. The books say that lettuce likes shady, cool areas and damp soil. In a roundabout way, they imply that salad leaves are easy to grow.

From Rob's experience, I'd recommend the following:

Stick them in whatever container you have available. Water them occasionally (Rob admits he was sometimes a little sporadic with this). If they are outside, watering them is often done for you, straight from the sky.

Rob is now noticing though that a lot of the salad plants are going to seed, he reckons through lack of care and attention, so regular picking is good.

One book I read gave "Keep eating," as aftercare advice. Now that's something even the most novice of gardeners can surely do!

Onions

Inspired by a delicious recipe for onion and cheese pie in How to be a Domestic Goddess (I'm aiming high on the domesticity front!), onion sets are next on my list of "Things to plant."

I'm going to be growing some onions from plant and others from sets, to see how I get on with both. Onion sets are basically mini onions, which are meant to be much easier to grow than from plant. Despite this, I'm quite looking forward to attempting to grow from plant though- I like the surprise of not knowing how many onions you're going to harvest. With sets, the number of mini onions you plant is the same number you'll harvest- only, they'll hopefully have grown quite a lot bigger!

I'm growing Sturon onions, which are a variety that can be planted during the Spring. I'm planting mine in the raised beds that have already been prepared and, like the rhubarb, they like growing in a sunny spot. Onions are a good companion for carrots, so I'm told, as they help to keep the carrot fly at bay. Which is helpful.

I've planted the onion sets straight into the ground, without digging a trench or anything as they need to be planted only shallowly. I pushed each bulb into the ground, leaving the tips only barely showing. If you leave too much tip showing, there's a danger that birds will uproot them. I left a space of about a hand-width between each onion. The books tell me you have to be particularly fastidious about weeding around onion plants because their thin leaves can't deal with competing weeds (bless, the delicate little things!)

And that's it! A big tick for the ease of planting onions! Completely faff-free! I just hope that they grow just as easily!

PS. I had a look at my forced rhubarb just now and it is looking FANTASTIC! Bright red and delicious- I can't wait for it to be ready. As a comparison, I also planted some in pots and left them to grow normally- although they're growing, they are nowhere near as big or as brightly-coloured as the forced stuff.

Forced rhubarb (not a very convincingly Unforced rhubarb- much

red photo, I'm afraid.) smaller!