Roundhill Gazette. Security. SmartWater Day. - call the police.

Transcription

1 Roundhill Gazette March 2009 Volume 1, Issue 2 Security Just a gentle reminder to everyone to be extra vigilant on the security front. We are obviously constrained by the local bye laws as to what we can do to protect our plots, but that doesn t mean that we have to make things easy for the opportunist thief. Locking the gates is the easiest way to avoid people wandering onto the site. We have seen several children, who when questioned have been looking to talk to some mythical chap. Not everyone is happy about confronting strangers, but talking to your neighbors means it s easier to spot the non-plotters. Remember your safety is the paramount concern, and if you spot anything out of the ordinary don t feel you have to investigate, or have a go - call the police. Please also report all thefts and acts of vandalism to the local police; this all helps our case for better security to be provided by the council for none urgent calls for Catshill and Marlbrook local policing The Inside story SmartWater Day Dates for your Diary 2 We had a good used for adding Local Knowledge 2 turnout on the postcode details to Prickly Planting 3 SmartWater day and Community Support equipment. Help a honeybee 4 Officer Kirsten Things to be doing 6 Bee news update 7 Winter warmer recipe 8 And finally 8 Bowkett of West Mercia Police was able to mark plenty of tools with the SmartWater. Two bottles of SmartWater have been allocated to Roundhill Allotments, with each bottle containing roughly 40 drops with only one drop required to mark a tool. There was plenty left over, and the association has kept this for future use, along with some UV pens that can be If you have any large items that you would like to have marked please have a word with any of the committee members.

2 2 ROUNDHILL GAZETTE Dates for your Diary 28th March Sale day at Pershore College 5th April Get set grow - Garden Organic offer everything you need to get you started in the garden. At Garden Organic Ryton Other courses available include Muck and Magic, Organic herb garden and 6 workshops on Starting an organic Allotment starts on 5 th September Through out the year on Thursday mornings Webbs of Wycbold are running Tea n Talks starting at 9:30 covering subjects like How to grow herbs How to grow Blueberries and other New Fruits and Fruit Tree Pruning BOOK 3 TEA 'N' TALKS AT THE SAME TIME AND GET A 4th TALK FREE! 31st May Last date for getting information into the next news letter Local knowledge I would like to try and build up a list of varieties that are tried and tested at Roundhill. Even on our small site the soil conditions vary greatly from one end to the other, up the slope, or down, but it would be useful to hear what varieties you have tried successfully or failed miserably with so that we can all share in the successes and avoid the failures. Last year we did well with the Picasso and Rocket potatoes, But we didn t do too well with beetroots and carrots, so this year we will be trying something different. (See the and finally.) Last year we were pleasantly surprised by the broad beans so will be trying a larger crop this year trying the variety xxx as provided by the association shop. I am looking for a couple of good pumpkin varieties one for size and one for taste unless you know of one that does both? I will also be trying Keith s tip for parsnips. Plant in June later than normally recommended, use a dibber to create a hole, fill with compost and drop 3 parsnip seeds into the compost this should create small and sweet parsnips through to next February I ll let you know how we get on.

3 3 Prickly Planting Prickly planting is a visual deterrent and physical barrier intended to complement traditional crime prevention measures such as locks. Home grown security can be adopted to protect perimeters of your property, to form a barrier making entry more difficult. PYRACANTHA Large evergreen shrubs suitable for wall training or hedge. White flowers. May- June followed by red, orange or yellow berries in Autumn. Thorny branches. Grows 2-4" tall. HIPPOPHAE RHAMNOIDES Sea Buckthorn grows in any soil and is wind resistant with silver foliage and excellent thorns. This large shrub provides superb cover. Plant in groups of 3 to obtain berries. BERBERIS OTTAWENSIS SUPERBA Use as a hedge or an individual shrub. Deciduous barbed plant with beautiful purple foliage. Yellow flowers in Spring. Reaches m tall, allow two plants per meter. BERBERIS STENOPHYLLA Use as a hedge or shrub. Graceful evergreen with long arching prickly branches, masses of yellow flowers in Spring. Grows m tall, allow two plants per meter. BERBERIS JULIANA Prickly evergreen shrub with shiny dark leaves. Yellow flowers in Spring. Grows m tall. ULEX EUROPAEUS Common Gorse, viciously spiny. Yellow flowers April-May. Grows m tall. Plant in full sun. MAHONIA BEALEI WINTER SUN Prickly evergreen shrubs with fragrant yellow flowers in Winter and Spring. Grows m tall. Suitable for shade. CRATAEGUS MONOGYNA Common Hawthorn. Forms an impenetrable thorny hedge. Fast growing, wonderful sight in May and June with fragrant white flowers. Red haws in Autumn. Plant in staggered row 4 per meter. Prune to required height. ILEX Holly. Evergreen shrubs for hedging or individual shrub. Green or variegated available. Plant in sun or shade. Females produce berries when males present. Go Local Half price seeds are available at: Barnett Hill Garden & Leisure Worcester Road Clent Stourbridge West Midlands DY9 0EE Tel: Burcot Nurseries Alcester Road Burcot Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, B60 1PW CLIMBING & RAMBLING ROSES Useful to give added protection to walls and fences. Wide selection. Heights vary from 2.7m. ROSA RUGOSA RUBRA-CRIMSON Fragrant old fashioned rose - densely prickly for hedges or individual shrubs. Grows up to 2m tall. Red, white or purple flowers followed by hips in Autumn. ROSA BLANC DOUBLE DE COUBERT - WHITE Fragrant Old Fashioned Rose - densely prickly for hedges or individual shrubs up to 2m high.

4 4 ROUNDHILL GAZETTE Help a honeybee today At the end of November's article I posed the question, "How can we help honeybees?" and answered with: 1, grow more beefriendly plants and 2, use less or no chemicals on the land. How and Why Grow more beefriendly plants at home and on the allotment Grow single flowered varieties of plants. Doubles are lovely (I have penchant for double flowered Primula auricula cultivars) and bees might be attracted to their bright colours but they can't get through the layers of petals to reach any pollen or nectar Encourage wild flowers or 'weeds' around the edges and in uncultivated parts of your allotment and the site. I'm not saying let couch grass or horsetail (two of our most prevalent weeds at Roundhill) take over, on the contrary, weed these out and encourage the more delicate flowering plants to colonise. It is likely the soil on our plots is full of wildflower seeds and seed is also carried on the wind and by birds from miles around. Every time the soil is disturbed seed that has lain dormant for years will be exposed and germinate when conditions are right. It is unlikely weeds will ever be eliminated and even if they are we may find that nothing else will grow there either. So by weeding out the more pernicious ones, the gentler ones are allowed to cover and protect the ground, benefit the bees and encourage biodiversity. Then when a crop is ready to plant they'll be easier to hand-weed or hoe off and they'll compost well, returning fertility to the soil. Grow green manures such as white clover, phacelia and buckwheat and let them flower. Grow comfrey on the allotment and Borage at home, bees love flowers in the Borage family and it makes a delicious honey. After flowering the comfrey can be cut at ground level and used to make a nutrient rich liquid feed to give your winter salads or brassicas a boost, or you can add the chopped up plant to the compost bin. (Comfrey has deep roots giving it the ability to bring nutrients up from the subsoil where most plants don't reach, so it's really worthwhile growing it - there are several patches on the Roundhill site.) Let onions and leeks flower if you can spare them. Grow plants which flower at either end of the growing season, extending the season. Using less or NO chemicals on the land Bees have a particularly low immune system (they have a very high rate of genetic recombination which gives protection against disease, but modern breeding has significantly reduced the genepool) and the damaging effects of chemicals used to control pests and weeds have been understood for some years. However, further research is still Busy spring bee being carried out and until products are thoroughly proven to not be detrimental, we are using alternative methods in our allotment and at home, based around the idea of encouraging biodiversity. In January the European Parliament voted for tough restrictions on the use of herbicides and pesticides. Substances regarded as 'dangerous' will be banned. These may include bifenthrin, used in greenfly sprays, mancozeb, used against blackspot in roses, the systemic weed killer glyphosate and metaldehyde, the chemical in most slug pellets. The products will be gradually phased out, as the licences expire. Since it takes approximately 15 years to develop new chemicals for horticulture there will soon be a very limited range available. So NOW is the time to start converting to nonchemical gardening!

5 5 Help a honeybee continued To reduce weed problems Hand weed. It might sound arduous, but it's really not and if you are prepared to be methodical about it the results might well astound you. We think this a much more effective way of removing and preventing the spread of weeds than using herbicides or power tools (another article on Hand Weeding to follow). Use mulches and/ or green manure to cover ground, preventing germination/ growth/ seeding of pernicious weeds such as, couch grass, horsetail, dock. Intercrop. e.g when planting a bed of cabbages plant lettuces between them. The lettuce helps to cover the ground, thereby reducing water loss and also inhibits weed seed germination and development. When the lettuces are ready the cabbages will be covering more ground and ready to use the extra space. I have found by doing this, when I go to pick some lettuce leaves (I always harvest leaves rather than whole plants to maximise cropping) I am forced into checking on the cabbages too! To reduce pest problems Protect vulnerable crops, e.g. brassicas and carots from damage by cabbage white and carrot root-fly with material such as agralan or fleece Grow sacrifice-crops to encourage pests away, e.g. nasturtiums for brassicas Grow enough for 'them' and you! When asked last year how we deal with the ubiquitous problem of slugs and snails on our lettuces, we replied, we grow enough for them too! Hand remove pests. We always have too many slugs and snails and they always seem to go for the juiciest and tastiest plants, but rather than using slug pellets (if they can kill slugs then they can damage the health of frogs, toads and beetles too, and so on up the food chain), or ineffective 'organic' methods: eggshells, or expensive copper bands (worth a try for prize specimens but too costly to put everywhere) we pick them off. This isn't a once-only method (what is?), we do slug picking every visit, but it is a proven method for successfully growing tasty veg and salad. Create habitats where natural predators can thrive and allow the insects and animals to control pests in your allotment. We haven't tried to make 'special' places for particular creatures, but we suspect that having never used chemicals there is a 'lushness' to our allotment that not only we feel, but that the wildlife we aim to encourage finds attractive too. Frogs, toads, birds, hoverflies, bumble bees, wasps, butterflies, ladybirds, crickets, shield beetles, worms, slugs and snails, are some of the creatures that live on our plot. Help a honeybee and Bee News update provided by Gemma Suggitt

6 6 ROUNDHILL GAZETTE Things to be doing Now I have studied lots of articles about what should be happening now. Not one of them mentions snow! There s a lot to be done on the getting ready front. The inclement weather also allows extra time for flicking through the catalogues and planning what new things to try out. After the success we had last year with sweet corn, this year we are going to try growing corn for making popcorn as well as the normal sweet corn. One good thing about the snow was the ability to see the bunny tracks. The harsh weather and holey fences appear to have taken their toll and many crops have been devastated by the little furry creatures (not what I called them when I first spotted the damage) so our first task will be fence repairs, before we start planting things. I will also be investigating various liquid fences that keep the bunnies away by smell! Dave Thomas also seems to be having problems see And Finally and it has also been suggested that some of the damage we have seen is due to deer. If anyone has seen deer on the site can they let us know - it s always good to know your enemy! There is still plenty of tidying, digging, manuring to be done in the preparation of the beds.. If you are going to lime the soil for your root and brassica crops, this needs to be done six weeks ahead of sowing. If you plan to fertilize the soil with hoof and horn, this should be done two weeks before sowing as it works on slowrelease. Five year old rhubarb should be dug up and the roots divided to give the plant a new lease of life. So it is a good time to cadge some rhubarb roots from friends or neighbours This month make plans for the perennial vegetables that can be propagated by root division. Jerusalem and Chinese artichokes are harvested in February or March and a few of the best are replanted for the next year's crop. Jerusalem artichokes are happy in any soil, sun or shade. Make sure you have room for them because they will shoot up to a staggering 3m/10 ft in a single season. Though there are similarities in the growing pattern and taste, the Chinese artichoke is unrelated to the Jerusalem one. Coming from the mint family, it only grows to 45cm/18ins and produces pink spiky flowers - though these are rarely seen in the U.K. It has a nutty artichoke taste and the crisp consistency of a water chestnut. Dead easy to grow, they can be sprouted in trays of compost to get ahead - though this is not necessary - and planted out in March or April in well drained soil, sun or semi-shade. They will ready to harvest from October onwards. Early peas and broad beans can be sown outside in mid-february under cloches or in the cold greenhouse. Not sure if that is wise with the weather forecast, so I have put some in pots to get them started, if you have been braver let me know how you get on.

7 7 Bee News Update Our bees have survived the cold and the snow, as they should! There really isn't much we can do for them over the winter, just checking they are still there and they have enough stores, by 'hefting' the hive. I have been continuing my 'bee research' with particular attention to what plants they prefer (and are best) for forage. This year I am on a mission to grow more beefriendly plants in my newly created herb bed. There are hundreds of flowers which rely on honeybees for pollination, including many of our crops of course, but most brightly coloured, open-shaped flowers benefit. Deeper flowers such as foxgloves tend to be pollinated by other bees and butterflies which have a longer proboscis to reach the nectar. Some of the flowering plants and herbs I am planning to grow include: wild bergamot, Betony, Borage, Chicory, Dill, Echinacea, Hyssop, Knapweed, Linseed, Purple Loosestrife, Scabious, Clary Sage, Wild wallflower, Echinops, Garland chrysanthemum, Viper's Bugloss and Woad. We already have many herbs for example, wild thyme, wild oregano, wild basil, lavender, rosemary, Calendula officinalis, Limnanthes douglasii, camomile, buckler leaf sorrel, winter puslane. Now is a nervous time in the beekeeping year as there is much that can go wrong in the beehive. The colony is about to have a population explosion, rising from about 10,000 in the winter to 60,000 bees at the height of summer. They have to get their timing right. Too many larvae or young bees and not enough food, or poor weather which prevents foraging, means starvation. Too big a brood nest and not enough adult bees to keep the temperature of the hive up during a cold snap means the larvae die of cold. Cold damp weather, while there is pressure on the colony to build numbers, can contribute to the colony weakening and even dying from the problem of Nosema, a form of dysentry caused by a spore in the gut of the bees. However, we are feeling very positive about our bees. Having survived several million years the species Apis mellifera has adapted to natural change, so getting through a chilly winter should have been a doddle for them! This year we want to expand the number of hives, by splitting the current colony, hopefully catching a swarm and maybe trying our hand at breeding a queen or two. We would also like to harvest some honey this year too! So, after the cold, cleansing winter, we are hoping for a mild sunny spring to give the bees the best start to the new season.

8 8 ROUNDHILL GAZETTE Broccoli or Cauliflower and Stilton Soup Ingredients 1 Onion 1lb Broccoli or Cauliflower 1 Medium Courgette (optional) 1 Large or couple of smaller Carrots (optional) 1 Medium Potato 1oz Butter 2 tbsp Olive or Vegetable Oil 3 Pints of Water or Stock (vegetable) 3oz Stilton Cheese (or more to tatse, I like loads) Method Dice vegetables and add to pot with the butter and oil and a small amount (about 3 or 4 tbsp) of water. Heat whilst stirring to avoid burning then put the lid onto the pot and cook gently for around 15 minutes to soften the vegetables, stirring occasionally and replacing the lid or shaking the pan to avoid sticking. Next add the water, bring to the boil and then simmer gently for around minutes, then reserve the liquid and blitz the veggies in a food processor or put through a Mouli. Return to the water and crumble the Stilton cheese in and season to taste. Notes If you like stilton you can add loads more than the recipe calls for - upto 12 oz. Stilton. It can also be made by adding the Stilton to the processor along with the rind and it is fine. Extra cheese does And finally Tips and Questions I've received the following from Dave Thomas plot 66b Fruit tree bark removal. This winter we have suddenly lost most of the bark off our apple trees up to about half a metre height. It's never happened before and I guess it is due to rabbits. We have wrapped the trees in Polythene, but it maybe too late to save them. Has anyone experience of this and why has it never happened before, as despite the wire fence the rabbits have always managed to find their way in now and again. Carrot root fly prevention For the last two seasons we have grown most of our carrots inside mini polytunnels, and they have not been affected make it a very hearty soup. You can make it using half the water and freeze the 'concentrated soup' adding water or milk to bulk it back before serving. If you have discoloured cauliflower it is a good way to use it up as well. You can also use broccoli stems that maybe you would not eat. For the frugal amongst us freeze your discoloured cauliflower then visit a supermarket a bit after Christmas. You can pick up crazy bargains on Stilton cheese. This can also be frozen and used for the soup when the vegetables are available. by root fly. We have tried root fly hardy carrot varieties but that hasn't helped in the past. Not only have the carrots survived attack, but they have tended to grow much better than those exposed to the elements, although the foliage growth is sometimes over vigorous. The perfect way to use some of your allotment produce. Contact Details Association business roundhillplots@btinternet. com Allotment Officer Joanne Hall j.hall@bromsgrove.gov.uk Tel: Articles, comments or feedback Tel: ChrisCJCookie@aol.com Chairman Paul Clemons paul.clemons1@btopenw orld.com Secretary Jayne Auger auger137@btinternet.co m Treasurer Chris Cook ChrisCJCookie@aol.com