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Food Growing Get-Together, Part 2

In a post a few weeks ago I proposed a Food Growing Bloggers Get-Together in the UK.

So far roughly 23 people, either publicly in comments or privately in email, have expressed an interest in coming (some of them very tentatively). It seems like every few days another person pops up, so I would say this number is likely to grow. I’m guessing that even if a few people on the current list drop out, more people will emerge, and around 20-30 people will come in the end.

It should make for a nice get-together!

So Far

It seems like Oxford, Berkshire or somewhere nearby is a good location for most people.

Saturday is better than Sunday for most people.

No one has expressed a preference for a particular date, so I suggest we plan for 20 September.

There seems to be a lot of interest in organizing a symposium.

Most people seem okay with something along the lines of a picnic or barbecue, indoors if necessary.

We need an indoor area to use, both for presentations and for our picnic in case it rains.

A number of people would prefer to meet at or near a pub, because we don’t know each other.

Did I forget anything?

Venue

There is not complete agreement on the type of location this should be held at.

For example there are people coming with little or no affinity with flowers, and while I don’t think anyone is against flowers per se, some feel meeting at a public gardens might be a distraction from the stated purpose of a food growers get-together.

I personally am very oriented toward non-commercial plants, and meeting some place that either sold or promoted commercial plant varieties would be a distraction for me. I think there might be others that feel this way too.

I think we have to be a little careful to choose a neutral location for the main Saturday event.

If anyone is around on the Sunday following the event, I would be happy to make less formal plans for a group visit to a public garden somewhere!

There have been some suggestions of trying to use University facilities, allotment facilities or perhaps a community centre, preferably with a kitchen, loo and picnic facilities nearby for use if the weather is nice.

Can anyone help with specific suggestions of locations near where they live that might be suitable for this, together with approximate costs?

Does anyone have connections with the University at Oxford, that might allow us to make use of classroom or other facilities? I had a look at the University website, and there doesn’t seem to be any way to formally request this kind of thing, but these facilities do of course exist. This sort of thing seems to be administered at the college level.

Presentations

What would everyone like to see in terms of presentations?

Is there anyone who would like to give a presentation, perhaps about what they are growing or interested in?

I might be interested in saying something about what I am growing, and perhaps hosting a mini heirloom seed swap.

Does anyone have specific suggestions of interesting people we might invite to talk to us?

Costs

Finally, what does everyone think is a reasonable amount to ask people to pay for something like this?

It’s certainly possible to do this totally for free. We may not be able to find free indoor accommodations besides a restaurant, pub or other facility where we would likely be expected to purchase something. What do people think of this?

While we can probably find people who will come and talk to us for free, some people who give talks at events like this expect to at least have their travel costs paid, and sometimes want a honorarium.

Should we only look for people who will talk for free and pay their own travel costs, or should we collect some money for this?

Can anyone think of anything else we should collect money for and provide as part of this?

What would everyone think about paying £5-10 (or more?) per person?

Links

MustardPlaster
Spade Work
Daughter of the Soil
The plot thickens
Vegmonkey and the Mrs.
Joanna’s Food
Kitchen Garden in France
Growing Our Own
The smallest smallholding
A Blog Called Fuggles
Veg Plotting
Soilman’s Allotment Blog
My Tiny Plot
Manor Stables Veg Plot
Fluffius Muppetus

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Some Things Not to Buy

Build a Ball/Pyramid Cane Caps

I recently bought some garden products I was very unimpressed with, so I thought I would try to save anyone else from going to the trouble only to find themselves disappointed.

Pyramid Cane Caps

Cane is the British English word for what Americans would call bamboo stakes, and these caps shown on the right side of the picture are supposed to be used to make teepees for supporting peas or beans.

While this is a good idea, this product is just not well made. The plastic these are made from has no grip, and the canes/stakes just slip out with the very slightest of provocation. They are not even cone shaped, and the plastic is not very flexible, really limiting the diameter of bamboo stake/cane they will accept, since all canes/stakes are slightly different sizes anyway.

They really are not useful in any way, and a complete waste of money.

In addition, in sunlight the plastic becomes soft, and I think it’s very unlikely these would last any more than a season or two of use. This is even if you were to find them somehow useful.

Build-A-Ball

These are intended to be used in the construction of garden cages, and suffer from similar problems as the cane caps above.

These are made from very hard plastic, and the holes are made to a very specific size. Supposedly you can use these with normal canes/stakes to build garden cages of custom sizes, but in reality normal canes/stakes don’t fit without some considerable effort (cutting and whittling) and even then the resulting structures are not strong enough to be useful. I did not try the special poles you can purchase with them, but I wouldn’t expect them to be any better and after you have bought the balls and the poles, the total cost is too high anyway.

These too are in my opinion not useful in any way.

The basic idea behind the cane caps and build-a-ball is a good one, and I’d like to hear from anyone who has managed to get home made versions of these kinds of things working.

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Perennial Onion Harvest

Perrenial Onions

These are mostly Amish Onions, with a few Egyptian Walking Onions mixed in.

I’ve posted before about perennial onions, and now in my garden I have Amish, Egyptian Walking and Fleener topsetting onions. The Fleener onions aren’t doing well right now, and struggling along.

I’ve been growing perennial onions for a few years now, and I really like them. Basically you can eat any part of the plant you want to, at any time. The onions I have now are all topsetting onions, and leading up to the summer solstice will send up a scape similar to a garlic scape and form topsets that can be eaten or replanted for more plants. Sometimes the plants also form root divisions. You can leave the plants in the ground, and they will continue to produce new topsets year after year. Anytime you want, you can dig up the whole plant and eat the root which is an onion with a unique and special taste, but then the plant will be gone.

The plants are very disease resistant, so it’s not necessary to rotate them and they can be left in the same spot year after year. They also tolerate transplanting very well, and can be dug up and moved almost anytime. They are carriers of some of the same diseases that are a problem for other members of the Allium family like garlic and onions, so where you grow them has to be taken into account when planning crop rotations for these other plants.

Honestly, if you don’t like eating onion greens, this kind of onion is probably not for you. The greens are the best part, and really have a nice taste. The greens are also available early in the spring, when there aren’t often other sources of onion available. The roots and topset, while edible, are not really spectacular.

I am still trying to find the best way to serve the greens. The flavor is wonderful, but delicate and easily overwhelmed by other food flavors. They disintegrate quickly when cooking. So far, I have enjoyed them most in salads (as long as you don’t have a strong tasting dressing), as well as a garnish in many places.

Except for the handful that went into dinner, the onion greens you saw in the picture above, after going through my dehydrator, became this:

Perrenial Onion

They turned into something similar to dehydrated chives.

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Holland’s Three Most Important Exports

According to police in the Netherlands, the three most popular export products are:

  1. Cucumbers
  2. Tomatoes
  3. Marijuana

Dutch marijuana is reportedly flooding international markets, and displacing products from other countries such as Morocco, Lebanon and Pakistan.

For decades now the sale, use and possession of small amounts of marijuana has been allowed in the Netherlands, and in recent years the growing of marijuana has also been increasingly allowed. For personal consumption, the growing of five plants per adult living in the same household is currently permitted. There has also been a degree of laxness when it came to enforcing the law in larger growing operations.

The situation has now changed, and the police are currently closing down about 15 growing operations per day.

It’s Different

The marijuana that’s being produced in the Netherlands now is different from anything that’s ever existed before. I know we’ve all heard this before, the warnings that marijuana is getting stronger and becoming less safe, but it’s really important to understand this time is different.

For a number of years now, a lot of attention has been paid to breeding new cannabis plant varieties in the Netherlands. A lot of money has gone into it, and big name plant science laboratories have become involved. The approach has been the same as with other food crops, trying to develop marketable varieties.

Most of the new super varieties are F1 hybrids, and they are patented!

The emphasis has been on strength, because to have a patented product that is the strongest means you will control the market. After all, if you are a marijuana consumer (or wholesaler or distributor) offered a choice between a stronger or weaker product, the natural thing to do is choose the stronger one.

The Problems

Besides the underlying commercial greed that goes into this sort of plant research, the most immediate problem with current varieties seems to be the balance between two chemicals THC (Tetrahydrocannabinol) and CBD (Cannabidiol).

The strength of marijuana is normally measured by it’s THC content, and this appears to be the focus of the research on the new varieties. Unfortunately, this appears to be at the expense of the CBD content, which is lower in the new varieties.

The THC is what makes you ‘high’. The CBD on the other hand makes you more relaxed, reduces paranoia, and most users report a higher CBD content makes the high more pleasant.

The true importance of a good balance between THC and CBD is only recently coming to light.

The local media has been full of stories recently of dramatic increases in the levels of mental illness and psychosis associated with the use of these new super varieties. Police have associated an increase in crime as well.

Discussions have been taking place in both the Netherlands and the UK as to if the laws need to be changed in order to protect users from these new plant varieties. As is usual with this type of situation, a clear link is not being made with the new commercial varieties, but rather with marijuana in general.

It seems very unlikely that any government is prepared to only ban the commercial varieties of a particular product, while continuing to allow the non-commercial variant. It seems unlikely any government will take the necessary steps to provide the necessary quality control in this situation.

If you are a consumer, you should be looking for other sources besides Holland!

Perhaps if you are a consumer of Dutch cucumbers or tomatoes you should also be looking for other sources, but I think this is a topic for another post…

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Important Information for People Growing Ulluco

I know there are a few readers of this blog growing Ulluco now.

Frank just left a very informative comment on the previous post. There’s more information in this comment than I’ve been able to find on the entire Internet to date.

So far I have several plants that are surviving, but I can’t say much more than that. Since I was expecting to hill them up like potatoes, I planted them in trenches. This means the ground is a little wetter than the rest of the garden, the plants are a little shaded by the sides of the trench (I dug them east-west), and so are staying a little cooler in this hot spell we are having.