Hubble Bubble Soil and Trouble

Firstly due to the very strict European laws on what actually constitutes a fertilizer for domestic use I'm not sure how much trouble I can get in for even showing you this. So please keep in mind that this is a blog. It is in no way an instruction manual or "how to" post.

I know it's not pipe bombs but you'd be surprised what a lack of a sense of humour some government departments have when it comes to these things. Who knows what list I'm going to end up on for having Pipe Bomb twice in the same paragraph. Aaah! What the heck. Pipe Bomb. Three times is the charm. Right?

Anyway. You may remember that earlier in the year I got excited about planting some comfrey. This lot comes from a small cutting kindly provided by Aunty Val & Uncle Brian some time ago. The plant was reared in the herb patch for a year before being split up and planted around the darker corners of the plot. This year the comfrey has been growing nicely and is at a usable size.

That's the comfrey. Growing on the right and along the back of the picture. Before the plant starts to flower collect up all the leaves and just leave a couple of stems above ground. It looks harsh but this plant is bullet proof. These are in perfect condition for picking.

There are a couple ofways of treating the leaves. You can add them direct to your soil before planting, you can even add them to your compost. However I favour the big bucket method. Place all the leaves in a bucket and cover with water. 40 litres should do the trick. Cover the bucket and keep it away from everything with a nose. Really.

That's the bucket in the left corner of the picture. This is as close as I can get to the bucket during the summer.

Six weeks later you should have a brown smelly sludge in the bottom of the bucket. It will smell quite foul but it will be a unique smell not of decaying vegetable matter or decaying flesh for that matter. Sort of like the way horse manure smells bad but you can tolerate it because you know it's not malevolent.

Anyway pour a litre of this muck into a watering can . Add 10 litres of water to it and start watering. It's great for squashes, cabbages, lettuce, roots and herbs. I've not tried it on potatoes or tomatoes or onions and garlic but all would benefit from comfrey in the soil before planting.

Neither have I tried it in the green house or on our fruit bushes as these all have their own feeding and watering routines which I do not want to mess around with.

Free green fertilizer. The results are magnificent.

The dark art of rhubarb forcing.

What the....?


I know. It looks kind of odd but you have to remember two things.

1. We have more of these barrels than you can shake a stick at.
See. I think they might be breeding. If you look to the back you can see that a few have split from the herd.

2. I looked for Rhubarb forcers on T'interweb and they cost a fortune. Most of them are made of terracotta, a very pretty product but notoriously feeble in cold wet winters.

You don't want to spend a fortune of this stuff, let's not lose sight of the fact that this is just rhubarb we are talking about.

Here is what is happening inside the bucket. Shortly after Christmas Harry dug up a dormant rhubard root and placed it the bottom of the bucket with some compost and horse doings. He put the lid on, wrapped it in fleece and dropped it in the greenhouse.


Whilst most Rhubard is just poking a head above it's top dressing of horse poop this time of year, Harry created a warm dark Spring in a bucket and our root went about growing. This one is 14 inches long. It has almost no top leaf and if the experts are to be trusted in a few weeks we'll have a crop of the tenderest sweetest rhubard known to man.



Seems like a lot of fuss, but honestly you need something to entertain you on the plot during the long dark teatime of the soul that is Winter.



See.

Rhubarb. Rhubarb. Rhubarb. Nope. That word has now lost all meaning!

Silly Bastard Trenching

Please! stay with me. I'm not being rude.

There is a technique called Bastard Trenching. (see capital letters. Noun.) It's probably some down home countryside phrase. In the same way that Asparagus is called "Sparrow Grass" in Norwich.

On a previous post I got all excited about my double digging and adding organic matter to the soil.

Well, there's a website ,dear reader, that I regularly visit which is far more knowledgeable about vegetables than my happy little site. I've been advised by people on that site that what I've been doing is not double digging. Not even a little bit.

I fear I've lead you astray dear reader and for that I can only apologise.

Some calcification is required. Double digging involves digging a trench twice the depth of your spade head. That's the double bit I guess. Then you dig another double trench next to the first trench and fill the first trench.....You know what ? Here's a picture.

Then there's Bastard Trenching. This involves digging the first trench to a depth of one spit then just forking over the soil the bottom of the trench to aid drainage, let air in and help roots go down deeper etc. You then dig another trench and empty the contents of that trench into the first and so on.

What I was doing was none of these things. Still at least I gave clear instructions so that those that know, were able to set me straight.

But I did your digging.

So, technicalities aside, if you like my style of digging and feel like adopting it for your own plot then I have provided a suitable hybrid name in the above title. Nothing flash or self titled. It's just so that when someone asks, you can tell them what you're up to. I dare you!

The Red hot chilli pepper experiment

Get a group of burned out surfers, teach them a few chords and find them a decent drummer. Add one catchy song that they can dine out on for a decade and turn your back.

Miraculously a very ordinary Californian funk band become the biggest flipping band in the world. Huh!

As the late, great Bill Hicks used to say... "I missed THAT meeting". **

Lets hope that I have as much success with my chilli plants.

Throw away your Television but not your chilli plants. The word in the green house is that we don't need to grow our plants from seed every year. With a little TLC, a side order of bubble wrap and stiff pruning we can have home grown red hot chilli peppers in early summer.

Lets give it a shot.

first pics to follow.

**Actually he's kind of rude and angry so please be careful. But if you must, then go visit youtube.

Can I dig it? Yes you can!

We are double digging the top plot. I can't begin to tell you how boring this is. Still at least it was very hard work and look a really long time!

We had a massive harvest from the crops on this part of the plot (Tomatos, sweet corn and tomotillos) The ying to this particular yang is that the crops sucked the soil dry. By the end of September the soil was as hard as concrete and did not contain an ounce of organic matter.

Let me walk you through it.

Dig a trench and load the soil in front of you.
Clean out the trench and put that soil on top of the first lot.

Then break up the soil in the bottom of the trench and the add lots of organic matter in on top. Nettles, chopped up crops, old compost and newspaper it all goes in.


Then fill the hole by raking back the soil dug out ealier.

Oooh! Nice and tidy.

Repeat.

It's not as fun as it sounds. I'll confess that a trip to the Tesco fresh veg counter might be easier.