A Few New Blogs

I guess these mostly aren’t very new, but I hadn’t noticed them before:

Dropstone Farms: Have a look at their FAQ to learn what a dropstone is. If the layout of their blog looks familiar, that’s because they use the same template as this blog.

Worms and Flowers: There’s not much background information on this blog visible, but the pictures look like the Blue Ridge mountains in the south of the US, maybe it’s the Shennonodah? I’m not very good when it comes to geography by pictures, so really I don’t know.

Holly Cottage Garden: Home grown fruit and veg in the UK

Ravensbourne Allotment: Is thinning murder? A UK allotment blog

Food Growing Get-Together, Looking for a Place

Those of you reading this who haven’t seen the previous posts, we are planning a food growing bloggers get-together in the UK. I made a second post about it here.

A suggestion was made to ask the Oxford Botanical gardens if they had space for us, and they do have a room we could use. It only holds 20-25 people, and we could use it if it rains for an indoor picnic. I don’t think there is a kitchen available.

The only issue here is price. The room costs £150 for the day. On top of that, admission to the gardens is £3. If for example 20 people come, this means about £11 per person. This is of course just for the room and gardens, and perhaps there would be more expenses, I’m not sure. Perhaps it’s safer to count on about £15 per person. If we fill the room to capacity and have no other expenses it could be less than £10 each.

How do these costs compare to what most people will have to pay for transportation?

We are already up to 25 people, but several people have said they may not be able to come. I think a few more people will pop up who want to come, but in the end I think 20-25 is a reasonable number to plan on. It’s possible we may have to turn a few late comers away, but I think that’s the price for needing to plan something now.

Some other people mentioned they might know of other possibilities, or would have a look. Has anyone else found anything?

I really don’t have any idea what everyone was expecting to pay. If we are unable to find a cheaper place, does this meet everyone’s expectations as far as price goes?

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
NomeGrown
Purple Podded Peas
A Nice Green Leaf
Hills and Plains

Peas

Golden Pea

This is the only pea that made it this year. I have them growing now in my greenhouse with the tomatoes, something that was probably a mistake. The idea was the peas would be a cover crop, that would fix nitrogen before the tomatoes were planted, but the timing didn’t work out. Anyway, everything is doing okay in the greenhouse, but the tomatoes are getting a little overwhelmed by the peas.  The peas are almost finished.

I’m growing these for seeds, because my stock of these seeds was getting a little old and it was time to grow it out again.

My other peas I tried growing outside, and they didn’t make it. I’m not sure why exactly. I usually direct seed my peas, and in spite of other people reporting problems with the seeds rotting in the cold wet ground, I don’t usually have that problem. Maybe this is a problem with the new garden.

Many of the seeds did actually germinate, but the plants didn’t survive.

There might have been something wrong with the ground in that part of the garden, but I’m not sure what.

Anyway, I’ll try again in the fall or next year and see what happens. Perhaps I’ll try them in the winter in the greenhouse.

Afghani Leek

One of my gardening buddies in the community garden is a recent refugee from Afghanistan, and he brought what looks like an interesting leek with him. It doesn’t have a name, ‘Afghani Leek’ is my name. He’s given me some plants, and this is what I have growing in my garden now:

Afghani Leek

I know to some of you this won’t look like a leek, but don’t be fooled by first impressions! Even though it looks like chives or something similar, it’s not, it’s a leek.

You have to understand my method of communication with this gardener is Dutch, which is neither of our first languages. It’s sometimes hard to understand him.

What I understand is that I first have to let it grow in a clump, but use a pair of scissors from time to time and trim the top. After a while, most of the shoots will rot and die, and I’ll be left with one larger one. He says you can eat the trimmings, and they do taste like leek!

This is a picture of his garden where he has it growing:

Afghani Leek

The middle bed is full of clumps of these leek plants.

Here is a close-up of one of his more mature plants:

Afghani Leek

Has anyone else ever seen anything like this?

Hopefully I’ll have some seeds soon if anyone else wants to try growing it.

Babington’s Leek

I’ve made several posts lately about perennial onions, which I really like. There is also a type of perennial leek called Babington’s Leek. While the plants right now have sent up a flower stalk or scape, so I assume it can be propagated that way, the plants also form roots that look very similar to a bulb of garlic and can be broken apart and replanted.

It’s not uncommon for me to receive the same plant from two different sources, for example because I make a mistake on a seed order or someone gives me a ‘free’ packet of seeds or plant as a gift. That’s what happened here in a way, about a week apart I first got some Babington’s Leek from Lieven, then Søren sent me some as a ‘free gift’ together with some other things he sent me.

The world of plant trading is very small here in Europe, so I assumed 2 or 3 generations back these must have originally come from the same person, but at the same time they looked different so I decided to plant them in separate spots and compare them.

I’m sorry, they are growing in and amongst my garlic and the straw background makes them hard to photograph clearly.

This is Søren’s Babington’s Leek:

Soren's Babbington's Leek
and this is Lieven’s:

Lieven's Babbington's Leek

The main difference is Søren’s plants have a slight yellow color, and the leaves are more horizontally extended. Lieven’s is a darker green color and looks more like a small normal leek.

We had one of Lieven’s leeks for dinner tonight in a salad:

Babbington's Leek

It’s a little hard to see in this picture, but the end is a little swollen probably because it is forming root divisions.

The taste was very nice, and much like a standard leek.

If propagation is only possible from root divisions, it’s going to take a long time before I have a reasonable number in my garden. I think Søren’s only forms two divisions, and Lieven’s four or five.

In a conversation about a year ago Lieven mentioned he sometimes comes across root divisions in standard leeks, so perhaps it’s not strange that Søren and Lieven would send me different varieties of Babington’s Leek, because perhaps it’s a common trait but modern varieties have just been selected for not dividing at the root. Maybe there are lots of varieties around. Is anyone else growing this? It might be interesting to trade.