My wife loves sweet potatoes. I mean the dark orange variety of ipomoea batatas Americans refer to as yams. And of course they’re an important part of our Thanksgiving Dinner, even if we’re having it in Buckinghamshire, just outside London.
We had a few sweet potatoes we bought from Waitrose in our fruit and vegetable bowl long enough to develop tiny purple sprouts, which gave me the idea of growing my own. Online advice was to allow the tuber to “chit” until those little purple sprouts were an inch long. So I waited – and waited. What you’re hoping for are splits, the purple, leafy part with roots attached which are then planted out.
After weeks I had one leafy chit about half an inch long and looked for more online advice which suggested I suspend the tubers directly in water using toothpicks – the way you did when you tried to grow an avocado plant when you were eight. The results were spectacular and immediate. After a week with the tubers in water, I’ve just twisted off my first split, and also cut a little chunk of sweet potato with a tiny leaf and root system from another one and planted both up. When they’ve come on a bit and I’ve got more splits potted I plan to plant them in a grow bag at the bottom of my two foot deep “greenhouse”. Fingers crossed.
I got online information from –
http://blog.gardening-tools-direct.co.uk/2010/02/growing-sweet-potatoes-in-england.html
http://www.downsizer.net/Projects/Growing_food/Growing_Sweet_Potatoes/
http://www.rhs.org.uk/Gardening/Grow-Your-Own/Veg-A-to-Z/Sweet-potato
Sunday, 11 July 2010
Sunday, 4 July 2010
Trouble in Wormland
I had been meaning to get some aeration holes retrofitted to the wormery for weeks, and by the time I finally got around to it last week I had troubles, big troubles. Mites, ants and fruit flys were using my wormery as party central and my worm population seemed to be declining. My handy moisture meter told me the bottom of the wormery was saturated and the thermometer said the middle of the bed was 28 C, so the upper limit of what they can stand. I could just imagine my worms, battling parasitic mites and carnivourous grubs fleeing the top layers of bedding only to be cooked in the middle or drowned at the bottom. Not good.
As the wormery is compartmentalised I was most concerned about the section that has the worms, and is almost full. I drilled two sets of hole in the top and bottom. I tried using a 2 cm bit to create a reverse cloverleaf pattern as this is supposed to be an excercise in aesthetics as well, creating two holes at the top for each compartment and two holes at the bottom. Boy, did it smell when the drill poked through those bottom holes and a I got a nice rush of black, reeking slime.
To keep the nastys out I covered the holes with a plastic insect mesh, probably 2mm. I bought a meter of the stuff online and it will last forever, fulfilling all my insect mesh needs. I could fit it on the inside for the top holes (see photo) but had to slap it on the outside for the bottom holes. Not attractive or ideal, but I'm going to apply all this learning to Marque Two.
Now I just had to deal with the mites, ants and flys. We collect plastic takeaway containers so I had enough on hand to fashion four ant traps using ant powder, sugar and kibble and punching holes along the bottom edge and laying them on top of the bedding or burying them around where the ants were congregating. I also dug out the corner where they were swarming and poured a kettle of boiling water over the buggers. I dug around but could never find a queen. For the mites I lay a sheet of newspaper along the top of the now much disturbed bedding, and will take it up, dispose of it and replace it regularly. According to The Worm Book (Nancarrow and Taylor) mites are supposed to congregate on the underside. The Ant Death Trap their idea as well. And the fly trap. Again I used a takeaway container, filled it halfway with cider vinegar, put in a couple drops of washing up liquid, made an opening in the top and laid it carefully on top of the bedding.
So now when I lift the lid of my wormery I looks something like this. That was all yesterday, so too early to tell whether the attempt at aeration or pest control has worked. I'll keep you posted.
As the wormery is compartmentalised I was most concerned about the section that has the worms, and is almost full. I drilled two sets of hole in the top and bottom. I tried using a 2 cm bit to create a reverse cloverleaf pattern as this is supposed to be an excercise in aesthetics as well, creating two holes at the top for each compartment and two holes at the bottom. Boy, did it smell when the drill poked through those bottom holes and a I got a nice rush of black, reeking slime.
To keep the nastys out I covered the holes with a plastic insect mesh, probably 2mm. I bought a meter of the stuff online and it will last forever, fulfilling all my insect mesh needs. I could fit it on the inside for the top holes (see photo) but had to slap it on the outside for the bottom holes. Not attractive or ideal, but I'm going to apply all this learning to Marque Two.
Now I just had to deal with the mites, ants and flys. We collect plastic takeaway containers so I had enough on hand to fashion four ant traps using ant powder, sugar and kibble and punching holes along the bottom edge and laying them on top of the bedding or burying them around where the ants were congregating. I also dug out the corner where they were swarming and poured a kettle of boiling water over the buggers. I dug around but could never find a queen. For the mites I lay a sheet of newspaper along the top of the now much disturbed bedding, and will take it up, dispose of it and replace it regularly. According to The Worm Book (Nancarrow and Taylor) mites are supposed to congregate on the underside. The Ant Death Trap their idea as well. And the fly trap. Again I used a takeaway container, filled it halfway with cider vinegar, put in a couple drops of washing up liquid, made an opening in the top and laid it carefully on top of the bedding.
So now when I lift the lid of my wormery I looks something like this. That was all yesterday, so too early to tell whether the attempt at aeration or pest control has worked. I'll keep you posted.
Wednesday, 9 June 2010
My Balcony Farm
My Balcony Farm is contained within my three by two meter first floor balcony just outside London. To be honest I'm pretty new to this - I mean both blogging and raising vegetables on my balcony. Oh, and keeping a wormery. That's why it's not just a garden. It's a farm.
So "My Balcony Farm" is going to be about mistakes and experiments. Take the wormery that I designed and built back in March out of shiplapped floor boards and two by two. It's supposed to look like an aesthetically pleasing medieval Japanese pickle barrel. It's not supposed to look like the ugly green plastic bins that are available online, just because - well if all you've got is six square meters you don' have room for anything that's ugly. I'm just not sure yet whether it will be adequate to keep the little guys alive and chomping through my melon rinds and egg cartons. Early days.
More to come - about spuds in burlap bags, the pointlessness of naming your worms Betty and Barney and red cabbage in pots. And how many diseases I've spotted so far on my tomatoes
So "My Balcony Farm" is going to be about mistakes and experiments. Take the wormery that I designed and built back in March out of shiplapped floor boards and two by two. It's supposed to look like an aesthetically pleasing medieval Japanese pickle barrel. It's not supposed to look like the ugly green plastic bins that are available online, just because - well if all you've got is six square meters you don' have room for anything that's ugly. I'm just not sure yet whether it will be adequate to keep the little guys alive and chomping through my melon rinds and egg cartons. Early days.
More to come - about spuds in burlap bags, the pointlessness of naming your worms Betty and Barney and red cabbage in pots. And how many diseases I've spotted so far on my tomatoes
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