Pig Sty Avenue

That'll be 15 years in November for this blog, and it's time to move on. In particular I'm trying to disentangle my life from all things Google. So, bye bye. If anybody reads this regularly, I'm going back to Flickr, to see if that works as a blog (of sorts). It's owned by SmugMug, which is less of a data harvester than Google. "Pig Sty Avenue" is easy to find there.

I sowed in the poly-tunnel about 150 Beta vulgaris seeds, a month or more ago, and they were almost all all eaten by slugs. So I sowed another 150 more recently, (if I'd kept up with the blog a little more, I could be certain about the timings, but there you go), taking more slug-defence measures . Unfortunately, mice (I assume) seem to love the seeds, and dig them out of the seed tray, obviously to the detriment of growing seedlings, which is very unhelpful. So this morning, I pricked out the remaining 24 (exactly) seedling survivors from various seed trays and collated them in one module tray, and elevated that so they're hopefully safe now from slugs AND mice. This is the second time I've tried to grow this plant. First time was a direct sowing and only one plant grew. I saved and subsequently lost the seed I harvested from that. So if I get, say, enough for a couple of rows, (about 20) from this batch, that will be a 2000% improvement on last time, even though it'...

The poly-tunnel has not been an overwhelming success. There's the enormous temperature range for one thing: -1c to 51c during one week last May. And then the slugs have wreaked havoc. For example I have only 5 parsley plants of 100s which germinated, and those 5 are not looking good. I've got 2 lemon balm, ditto. The tomatoes, var. Latah are a joke: I've had 1 single cherry tomato, and it was quite bitter; the tomato situation was not helped by the poly tunnel moving 1ft north during a gale, crushing most of the plants as it went. So I've got some heavy duty tent pegs to keep the frame in place. I've never used slug pellets because the plot is so thickly populated with frogs, which I don't want to be collateral damage. But as they don't climb onto the polytunnel table, I've started sprinkling some there, with good effect. I've also, this morning, sprinkled a defensive line of salt around the pots, trays and modules which are gathered together in th...

Rumex obtusifolius, the common dock, is well named, being an obtuse weed. Likely, it took hold at the plot during the years before the drainage works were undertaken. The plan is to banish it from everywhere but the pond area. Membrane induced light deprivation, (which I learn from Rapp et al, 2015, is better called dark induced senescence).   And senescence of plant cells is a form of dedifferentation, which is what happens when a cell changes its function, and becomes something like a stem cell. I'm getting out of my depth here of course, but I can theorise that light deprivation will affect dock roots, but that they will survive in their senescent state in well drained ground for longer than a couple of years. Pull back the membrane, therefore, and the docks (and the comfrey) will reappear.   Cai, S. A., Fu, X., & Sheng, Z. (2007). Dedifferentiation: a new approach in stem cell research. Bioscience , 57 (8), 655-662.   Rapp, Y., Ransbotyn, V., ...

Glasgow Fair weekend, so four days to get to grips with the plot at this most disheartening time of year, when the weeds seem to grab me by the throat and slap me around the face, gangster style. This is the most troublesome bed, where the midden and the ruined greenhouse once stood, so infested by ancient weeds and broken glass. The strategy is to have maybe 2/3s of the whole plot under membrane, so that it's under control whilst I get the other 1/3 cleared of weeds and planted out with perennials. The membrane is a tool, not a state of affairs, to be used actively, rolling it back and hoeing the ground when time permits, and rolling it on again when the next flush of weeds comes. A 2-3 year process.

Here's a fun fact for you: slugs LOVE parsley, but leave lemon balm untouched. This morning I have attempted the rescue of 40 parsley seedlings. Their cotyledon have been badly mauled, but despite this their first true leaves were emerging. So I pricked them out into modules. I've balanced the module tray on a big tin cup in a tray of water to frustrate the slugs and give the seedlings a chance of recovering.  In front of them are lemon balm, also showing first true leaves, but nevertheless still tiny. Big enough to be pricked out this weekend. I want a lot of them, a patch 12x6ft, so 80 plants. It's a genuine therapeutic herb: Scholar gives almost 3000 hits of mentions of Melissa officinalis since 2018. We'll mostly use it for tea.

...I pricked out 40 sorrel seedlings. The 12 sunflowers have gone outside to harden off. The rest of the seedlings are still a couple of weeks away from pricking out, and I think the tomatoes might need another month before they can go in the ground. I've been keeping gorse clippings to use as anti-slug and -snail barriers, but was disgusted to find a small slug hiding amongst the the clippings in their bucket, so maybe slugs can negotiate their way around the prickles, the wee bastards. Getting the sunflowers outside leaves a space on the poly-tunnel table, so, probably tomorrow, I'll sow the rose seeds which have been stratifying in the fridge for 2 or 3 months now.

As I said, 'germinating like mad' . What I've learned here, is that I needn't have bought a packet of 3000 seeds. 300 would have been enough. The question now is, do I prick them out into 1 or 2 trays of 40 modules? I'm thinking probably the latter, giving me a big old patch of 80 plants. It's clearly a significant culinary plant, particularly in France, where, apparently, 'l'oseille' is an idiomatic term for money .

Pronounced "lay-tar". I got these from the Real Seed Co ., whose (false) assumption that they were Russian is understandable as they came from the Moscow campus of the University of Idaho. And they were selected for their tendency to ripen over the short growing season of a northern latitude. I am late in sowing them, but according to this site, planted out in late May, they were producing fruit a month later . We'll see. It appears from this 2010 article that the University of Idaho has been working on short season tomatoes since the '70s. Ariel Agenbroad tells us she "gets a kick out" of producing tomatoes with names like Latah, which is the county in which the campus is situated. And so, let's see how it copes with a Glasgow polytunnel's climate.

Above , how it looked when set up. The "instant-collapsible" table is now heavy laden with seed trays. Below , the max/now/min thermometer yesterday afternoon. With the door open, it drops quickly to something like the ambient temperature. And 5.6C, well, that's what the ambient temperature is at night. Whether or not to try growing anything over winter is not a pressing matter, but I did consider getting a rabbit in a hutch in there, which would warm it just enough. Or something. 

Never mind the sorrel for now, the big news of course is the poly tunnel, which means I can begin to propagate from seed properly. I've sown a var. of tomato called 'Latah'; a var. of sunflower called 'china cat'; pipiche; wrinkled giant hyssop; and of course common sorrel. (I note that I grew french sorrel, back in the day , and recall it being one of the first plants I grew successfully.) I've headlined with the sorrel because it's on my mind this evening. For reasons which I cannot fathom - I wasn't drunk or anything - I planted it in a seed tray without holes , the sort one uses as a base for trays with holes in. It's germinated like crazy, but as i found this evening it's hard to water, from above, without washing out the seedlings. I could buy a small watering can, with a rose, but then I won't make this mistake again, so that would be a waste. Instead I'll prick them out asap. What with dogs and wood pigeons, I've succe...

Clearing ground and sowing winter field beans progresses slowly, as you'd expect given the time of year. I'm working my way down the middle western bed, going northwards. I've had plenty to say about weed suppressing garden membrane in the past, but the realisation that I could cover maybe 40% of the plot for a couple of years, and thereby vastly diminish the weed problem, has lifted a great weight from my shoulders. That's the small SW bed, by the corner-shed, and the former midden area. Two interrelated realisations: firstly, I'm gardening for the dogs, for bees, and eventually for chickens; so I need tough perennials and good pollinator plants. Secondly, this is a long haul: I can't get chickens just yet, and maybe not until I retire, which is eight or more years away.  And I've recollected that I've always wanted to grow all manner of herbs, and that any plant whose name ends with -wort must be worth growing. Like sneezewort, which could be fro...