MO BACTER

It’s been another strange year for moss treatment on the lawn. We had bad moss at home this spring after such a hard winter; and what wasn’t moss appeared to be clover or buttercups.

I put the MO Bacter down towards the end of April during the glorious weather (just a dim memory now). Unfortunately it didn’t rain and it didn’t rain and….. So, after about 2 weeks there were large brown patches, which looked as if they would never recover. I did a bit of watering, though I must confess that I wasn’t as diligent as I should have been. However, we have had a few days of good rain in the Midlands over the last few weeks and – lo and behold – all the bits of desert have greened up beautifully.

Hardly any moss to be seen, apart from where I missed with the spreader, and I didn’t lift a rake once to clean up the debris. The MO Bacter did exactly what it said on the bag. Just the clover and the buttercups to deal with now!

Cabbages and things

Look out, look out – the Cabbage Whites are about!

Everything is ridiculously early this year because of the amazing Spring weather, and that includes Cabbage White butterflies. I have seen them in my garden in Worcestershire so my mind immediately turned to protecting the brassicas. I am determined that I will never again have to throw away a slimy mess of cabbages and Brussell sprouts because I didn’t react fast enough.

Our Gardenskill pop-up fruit cages are, I have found, the perfect and immediate protection – the medium height ones (1.25 metres – about 4’) are exactly right for even the most vigorous specimins. It took about 20 seconds to open up the cage and place over the plants and another minute or so to peg it down. Job done!

Watering through the net is easy – I don’t have to remove it for that – and when I want to hoe or weed it takes a matter of seconds to lift off the cage or I can work through the convenient zipped entrance.

I can look forward to a clean crop later in the year and enjoy the taste and the fruits of my hard work. The Cabbage Whites can go and lay their eggs elsewhere!

Spice Nirvana - Growing a Sichuan Pepper Plant

Even up against some stiff competition it was probably the oddest dinner of my time in Shanghai: eighteen dishes, three bottles of wine (personal consumption, not shared), fifty red-faced locals sweating and sneezing and generally looking like invalids from a TB ward, and a gaggle of agitated waitresses shouting over the grubby, bronchial din. It is notoriously difficult to describe the cause of this carnage. Some say it’s like a nine volt battery on your tongue, others that it tastes of frozen spoons; people have likened it to a colour (bright silver), a sound (‘shrieking falsetto’), a medical emergency (like having a heart attack) - even a kind of semi-religious experience.

Mentioning it to anybody who’s tried it ‘blind’, without any prior knowledge of its effects, tends to elicit the wild eyed, clammy-handed panic of someone reliving a half-suppressed trauma. On the other hand its disciples (I count myself among the converted) generally display a level of slavering enthusiasm for the stuff you’d happily cross a busy street to avoid.

The Chinese know it as hua jiao, botanists as the Zanthoxylum genus. To Westerners with a passing knowledge of mainland Chinese food it’s the infamous Sichuan pepper, key ingredient in one of the fieriest cuisines on earth - that of the southwestern province of Sichuan. The Chinese distinguish between two types of spiciness – ‘la’ which refers to your bird’s eye chilies, vindaloos and Tabasco-style sauces, and ‘ma’, a strange, numbing sensation that affects the mouth, tongue, lips and, given enough time and effort, the whole body. Only from the seed pods of three or four types of Zanthoxylum shrub do you get the ‘ma’, of which the Zanthoxylum Simulans (the species native to Sichuan) is the fieriest.

In a typical Sichuanese meal the effect of ‘ma’ is cumulative, starting with a mild tingling in the gums and ending with the not unpleasant sense that all your blood vessels are surfing a giant wave of static electricity. Essentially you are paying to be poisoned, but in a good way, and one of the pleasures of a great Sichuan restaurant, like any great meal, is the feeling that you are part of a carefully orchestrated performance. Not a symphony as such; more the sensory overload of a three day tribal initiation ceremony.

The ‘ma’ effects of Sichuan pepper start diminishing the moment you harvest the pods, but the only version readily available over here is a dried and bottled Sichuan spice mix – good, but lacking the visceral hit of the real thing. I very nearly wept for joy then, when I read this article in the Guardian. Apparently Zanthoxylum Simulans, hardy shrub that it is, can be grown quite easily in the UK, needing no more than a decent bit of sunlight and a well-drained spot in the garden. Hooray! And given that any bird dim enough to eat the seeds will probably go into neurological meltdown, spending the rest of its days rocking back and forth on a branch and dribbling over the grandchildren, I doubt I’m going to need a fruit and vegetable cage to keep this bad boy safe. I’m ordering my plant this week, so I’ll let you know how things go over the the course of the season.

Growing San Marzano tomatoes in the UK

Taking my cue from cult New York pizzeria Una Pizza Napoletana I thought I'd try my hand at growing San Marzano tomatoes last year. Big mistake. For those who don't know, San Marzanos hail from a small town of the same name near Naples and are widely considered to make the best tomato sauce in the universe. They sit there, baking away in volcanic soil at the foot of Mount Vesuvius, bathed by endless hours of Mediterranean sun, until they reach a sweetness and depth of flavor unrivalled in the world of fruit-masquerading-as-vegetables. Which, in my mind, made them perfect for growing in the Midlands in April. I seeded around twenty pots, re-potted a dozen of the best seedlings a few weeks later, and then transferred them to the poly tunnel in June. The sun, which had been most obliging up until that point, decided, in a fit of pique, to disappear for the next two months. My plants grew, grew some more, grew again, finally fruited in late August, resolutely refused to turn red and then developed Blossom End Rot. Of the small rainforest I'd cultivated I ended up with one solitary 'ripe' tomato that tasted of nothing. Weeks of loving care and attention wasted. Apparently the Italians just leave them growing wild and unkempt and let nature do the rest. Life isn't fair is it?

Spring has sprung?

Well maybe but let's be honest it can all change so quickly. Chilly nights with frost, still a real possibility especially here in the Midlands so I won't be packing away my fleece covers just yet. We all know some protection is needed for those tender plants, young and old and crops sown to steal a bit of a march on the season and Gardenskill's new range is designed for just that purpose. They've called them 'pop ups?' which is exactly what they do when taken out of their own little bag, anyway they do just pop over pretty much anything you like cos they come in various sizes. Me, I've just put one over some shallots I've put in and so far it's kept the marauding squirrels from digging them up!

A bonus, if it does suddenly go cold I can pop a fleece over the 'pop-up cages' or the 'pop-up Cloches & Tunnels' ....belt and braces guys...can't be bad !

Here's to a lots of lovely growing.

White Salt - 2

With another harsh winter looking a distinct possibility, it might just be worth stocking up early on ice prevention treatments, in time for the biting winds and deluge of snow that’s predicted for large parts of the UK over the coming weeks.

The simplest and most cost effective of these treatments is white salt for spreading on paths, driveways, car parks, and generally around both the home and the office. Fascinating though the chemistry is, the fundamental point about white salt is that it lowers the freezing/melting temperature of water. A 10-percent salt solution freezes at 20 F (-6 C), while a 20-percent solution freezes at 2 F (-16 C). If you’re in to your scientific observations, you can watch the process happen, as white salt melts the snow and ice immediately around it, and then the melting spreads out from that point.

For best effect, clear away as much snow as possible before applying white salt, as any effect will be diminished if the white salt becomes too diluted.

When applying white salt it is always necessary to wear gloves, as it can cause rashes and burn the skin. For small areas, spreading with a trowel or small shovel is best, though for large areas a dedicated white salt spreader is recommended. As always, care should be taken to clean off the excess salt from your spreader or trowel after application, and any remaining salt should be stored in cool and dry conditions for next time.

White Salt - 1

We in the Midlands have fared far better with the bad weather than Scotland and the North East of England – just a light snow fall on Friday night and a bit more of a substantial cover this morning.

My driveway is not the easiest in winter. Its short but steep and even a light coating of snow or ice causes all sorts of problems. On Saturday morning, after clearing away the worst of the snow, I spread a light coat of White Salt, using a small hand shovel, concentrating on the tyre track strips on the steepest part. The results were extraordinary and almost immediate, with a clear pathway and perfect traction appearing in less than 5 minutes.

What surprised me even more though was that, despite temperatures as low as –6 on Saturday and Sunday nights, the area remained ice free throughout Sunday and Monday. Even more impressive was that this morning, despite 1” of snow overnight, the driveway is still clear and ice-free. I was able to leave home for work on time and without having to clear the drive again. White Salt was continuing to do its job. Very impressive.

White Salt is both the easiest product in the world to use and does not leave an unsightly brown stained area on the ground – it is clean and effective. Recommend it? Yes, definitely!