Jungle Clearance - Before and After

As promised - "before" and "after" shots of the scary jungle area. There's still more work to do - more manure to shovel over all the plack weed supressing membrane, the final strip in the background still to be strimmed, cleared, membraned and manured, and then we can plant all our pumpkins and squash in it. But we've made a heck of a lot of progress already and it's looking much better.

Weekly Carnival Roundup

This week, Bean Sprouts has been featured in the following blog carnivals:

• Vegetarian Carnival featured Fried Halloumi with Redcurrant Chili Sauce


• The Sixth “Tips for Green Living” Carnival featured I Believe...


• The Carnival of Environmental Issues featured I Believe... (I was quite proud of that post so I submitted it to a few relevant carnivals)


• Looking Nearby for Food 2nd Edition featured Wild Blackberry Leaf Tea


• Carnival of the Recipes - May 19th Edition featured Roasted Vegetables and Goats’ Cheese Pasta.
  
  A blog carnival is a bit like a magazine. It is a collection of blog articles on a particular topic, e.g. tips for green living, frugality, or recipes. Why not visit one (or more) of the Carnivals to find out what bloggers are saying about that topic, and discover great new blogs?

Full Moon

May's full moon is on May 20th at 2:11 GMT. Remember that full moon is an instant - the moment when the moon stops waxing and starts waning. It's not a date. The instant of full moon this month occurs on May 20th in some time zones and on May 19th in others. Thinking about celestial mechanics is enough to make your brain dribble out of your ears, but I think I'm right in saying that wherever you live, the moon you see after nightfall on 19th May will be fuller than the moon you see after nightfall on the 20th. That's why I'm publishing this post today and not tomorrow.

In India and other places close by, the full moon moment occurs on May 19th, so that is the date Buddhists celebrate Vesak - Buddha's birthday. Buddhists make a special effort to avoid harming anything for the day, they eat vegetarian food even if that isn't their usual practice, and they release birds, insects and animals as a symbol of liberation.

We've had beautiful weather so far in May and I'm looking forward to getting a good view of tonight's full moon, and perhaps taking some photographs. But the beautiful photograph accompanying this article isn't mine, it's by kind permission of Kerrdelune who writes Beyond the Fields We Know.

Jungle Attack Plan Update

Quick update on the Jungle Attack Plan: We hired a strimmer (aka weed whacker) on Saturday and attacked the weedy 14 yard x 10 yard jungle on the allotment. We took down a fence that used to separate the two parts of the plot, and hacked about 90% of the weeds. But we shattered two strimmer blades in the process, and could not continue because we had no more blades.

We changed the plan a bit; we're no longer going to rotavate. Instead we laid weed supressing membrane over the cleared areas and heaped several inches of manure on top. Thanks to everyone who commented for all the jungle clearance advice. The membrane cost less than hiring a rotavator, and ought to be less work as well as more reliable at clearing the area.

I shifted 30 wheelbarrow-loads of manure today, and there's still lots more to do. There's still plenty of manure so that's no problem. I'll go to the allotment every day and pile on as much more as I can. Next weekend we'll hire the strimmer again and finish the job. As soon as the squash plants are big enough, we'll plant them out.

I took some "before" photos, but I didn't take my camera today so I have no "after" photos. I'll get some soon and show you what we accomplished. It's an amazing transformation. I feel knackered, but very happy.

Sunday Funnies

Tom's favourite joke at the moment: he approaches one of the allotmenteers and asks,

"Do you put manure on your rhubarb?"

When they say "Yes" he replies,

"That's funny - I prefer custard on mine".

Boom boom.

Cartoon by Throbgoblins. Click on the panel to read the whole strip.

Review: Grow Vegetables

Dorling Kindersley very kindly sent me some books to review. I'm very glad to receive free books. I'll also review CDs, chocolate and wine if anyone wants to send me some. One of the books they sent me was Compost by Ken Thompson, which I reviewed in March. The other is Grow Vegetables by Alan Buckingham.

As you'd expect from a DK book, the photography is gorgeous and the design is attractive and easy-to-use. Throughout the book, the author has borne in mind the different situations people might want to grow vegetables, from an allotment or a large garden down to a small veg patch in an ornamental garden, a patio, balcony or windowsill. There is something for everyone here, although if all you have is a windowsill you may prefer to borrow the book from the library rather than pay £16.99 for it.

The book seems to be aimed at beginners. For example it includes some extremely basic stuff, such as what does a hoe look like and what is it used for. That's a good thing - we all had to learn at some point, whether at our granddad's knee or from a book at a more mature age. All the basic stuff is covered in the first couple of chapters, titled The Perfect Plot and Vegetable Grower's Know-How.

After that it gets down to business, with sections dedicated to Cabbages and Leaf Vegetables, Root and Stem Vegetables, Peas and Beans, Salads, Fruiting Vegetables, Cucumbers and Squashes, Perennial Vegetables and Herbs. I think that's a very sensible way of dividing them up, collecting together types of vegetables that are cultivated in similar ways. It's better than putting them in alphabetical order as so many books do. That way runner beans, climbing French beans and dwarf beans are all in different places. If you want to look up a particular vegetable by name, there is a comprehensive index in the back of the book.

Within the chapters, each vegetable has a photograph, a description and instructions of how to grow it, and a little chart showing the "season". This shows you when to sow, transplant, and harvest the veg, but it only splits it into spring, summer, autumn or winter, rather than telling you the month. I think I understand the reaosning - not everyone lives in the same growing zone. I know that Stonehead in Aberdeenshire has a shorter growing season that we do in North Cheshire, whereas Stuart and Gabrielle of Permaculture in Brittany have rather longer. But I feel that just stating the season rather than the month is so vague as to be pretty useless. Almost all the vegetables say "Sow in spring, transplant in summer, harvest in summer or autumn". Well, duh!

However all is made up for in the following chapter, Vegetable Year Planner, which gives a month-by-month rundown of what to do in the vegetable garden each month. The final chapter is the inevitable Vegetable Doctor. It's the scary one with all the pests and deficiencies and diseases that might strike, very sensibly left to the end so hopefully it won't put anybody off.

The bottom line? I don't think I'll be offering this book as a competition prize, I think I'll be hanging on to it. That's probably the best review I can give.

The Jungle Attack Plan

Alice wrote:

Rotovators are a NIGHTMARE! They chop all the soil up so it LOOKS fluffy, which doesn't actually serve any purpose. Then all the weed seeds that have been brought up by the digging start to sprout, and all your couch grass, bindweed, dandelions etc which have been chopped into little bits start growing a whole new plant from each little tiny piece... DON'T DO IT!!!I cleared most of my jungle-like plot by covering large parts at a time for one whole season. A layer of cardboard excludes light really well, then a layer of plastic e.g. bin liners to speed things up by excluding water, then something heavy on top to weigh it all down e.g. old carpet.Take it all off in late Autumn and dig something organic into the soil like manure, and off you go!

Actually I'm going to combine parts of this plan. The whole plan for the scary weedy jungle is as follows:

1. Strim all weeds to ground level
2. Rotavate
3. Plant 17 pumpkin, courgette and squash seedlings which we have been bringing on at home
4. Plant tall things such as sweetcorn and sunflowers amongst the pumpkins and squash

The thick broad leaves of the pumpkins will (with any luck) smother the ground and suppress any weeds that try to come up after rotavating. Potatoes might also work but it's a big area and we'd end up with a heck of a lot of spuds. I think I can barter pumpkins more easily than spuds. I'll take the courgettes we want to eat and the ones we don't want can rot on the vine for all I care.

The size of the area is what deters us from the cardboard and old carpet method. We really couldn't get enough cardboard and carpet to do it. In any case, I've found the same thing with that as you found with rotavating - the really bad weeds such as ground elder and couch grass just lie dormant under the carpet and they pop up again when you take it off, even after a whole year. There's no way to get out of forking all the roots up, but if we chop them into tiny pieces with a rotavator we'll put them back long enough to get our pumpkins established, backed up by daily hoeing.

After the first frost when the squash plants all deflate like popped balloons we will fork the area over and remove any remaining weed roots. Then if we can get it we'll cover the whole area with as much manure as we can - at least a few inches. Or we might go the green manure route, although Ed's not a fan of that.

That's our jungle attack plan. Phase one starts tomorrow.

Zilok Launches in the UK

I've still got a big weedy area on my allotment that hasn't been cultivated for years. It's a total jungle, we couldn't possibly tackle it all by hand. So we investigated hiring a strimmer and a rotavator to get it all under control.

Our nearest tool hire place wants £33 a day for a strimmer and £52 a day for a rotavator, which is pretty expensive.

There's probably somebody I know who has a strimmer and/or a rotavator in their shed. I've been asking everyone who I think is likely to have one, but I haven't got anywhere so far. Wouldn't it be great if there was some kind of database of who has what tools? Then when you wanted a strimmer or a power washer you could look up if anyone near you had the thing you want and was willing to lend it out. I'd pay money for a service like that.

It would work both ways wouldn't it? For example, my apple press and scritcher get used just a few days a year. If I could hire them out to other people I could recoup some of the cost. Or, as it was a gift, I could bring in a bit of income. I'm sure there are other things in my shed that don't get much use. The steam wallpaper stripper, for example, the kiln, the router. They could become nice little earners.

Fortunately someone has already thought of it. Zilok.co.uk is a Rental Marketplace where anyone, individual or professional, can rent or rent out anything (from a fancy handbag to a drill, from tuxedos to digital cameras or even cars or baby strollers…). They call it “peer-to-peer renting”, or an eBay for rentals. There are star ratings like on Ebay so you can protect yourself by only renting from (or to) people with an established reputation. Or you will when it has been up and running for a little while. It was only launched this week, so when I went on it I couldn't find any strimmers or rotavators, and nobody has any stars.

I'll be keeping my eye on it. It sounds like a brilliant idea and I'm dying to try it out when it's properly running.

Save the Planet - Stop Shopping

I received a nice email from a reader who said:

I get frustrated with advice that amounts to don't drive/buy a hybrid car/convert to solar power/wrap yourself in sack cloth and live in a cave.

It bugs me too that so much green advice seems to boil down to "spend a lot of money, buy all this 'green' stuff". 'Green' is not a lifestyle choice. It's not a sort of fashion that is only available to the rich. The greenest people on earth are the poorest. They don't cause as much pollution, carbon emissions etc as we do because they can't afford to. It's we in the affluent countries who are causing the problems. And the solution isn't to buy a lot of green junk, but to buy less junk.

"Save the planet - buy less junk" is a great message because it's cheap - cheaper than your present lifestyle. It's easy and achievable as long as you take it in babysteps. If you get rid of your car, your tumble drier and you try to only eat food you've grown yourself, all starting on the same day, you'll soon get overwhelmed and give it up. But if you make just one change, take time to get used to it, and then make another one, you should find it's all pretty effortless. That's the thinking behind the monthly Bean Sprouts challenges.

The only real problem with this message is that you have to break the addiction of retail therapy. We're constantly bombarded with adverts telling us we'll be happy, attractive, popular if we only buy their product. A lot of the ads are based on clever and subtle psychology and they work. It's very difficult to break the spell (one way is to avoid advertising, get rid of the TV and don't buy any magazines or newspapers, but even then you'll see ads on billboards, on the Internet, inside shops, and on people's clothes - that's what logos are after all). It's easy to end up feeling deprived and miserable because you can't buy all the things you're told you "need". But of course they don't deliver what they promise. The products don't really make you happier, more attractive, more popular etc. So people keep shopping in the search for happiness.

I think that's the main obstacle in the way of a green revolution - consumerism. The green movement can't afford an advertising budget to counteract the degree of brainwashing we've all been subjected to for years. And the adverts steal and subvert green messages into their own consumerist domain anyway. That's why now so many adverts tell you "Buy our green car, buy our green clothes, our green detergent, our green gizmo". How do you persuade people to stop buying stuff? I dunno. Bean Sprouts is just my little drop in the ocean showing that a non-consumerist lifestyle is possible, and isn't about wrapping yourself in sackcloth and living in a cave.

Slow Cooker v Pressure Cooker - Differences

This is the third in a series of articles comparing pressure cookers and slow cookers. The first article compared the nutrient content of food cooked with these methods. The second article looked at similarities between them. This article is about the differences between them. But first, a quick quiz:

• Are you the kind of person who makes a weekly menu and sticks to it?
• Are you very well organised?
• Are you a morning person?
• Do you enjoy casseroles, pot roasts, soups, chilli and curries?

If you answered "yes" then you'll probably love a slow cooker. You can prepare a meal in the morning, leave it cooking all day, and come in from work to a delicious home-cooked meal with no more work to be done.

• Are you rather disorganised?
• Do you wish you could have more home-cooked food but you hate to spend hours in the kitchen after a long day at work?
• Do you enjoy casseroles, pot roasts, soups, chilli and curries?

If you answered "yes" then you'll probably love a pressure cooker. You can fling some ingredients in it and put it on the hob, then enjoy tender meat and thoroughly-cooked vegetables in a fraction of the time. But as you probably spotted, you can cook similar sorts of foods in both of them.

The main difference between them is how they work. A slow cooker uses a low heat for a long time. The food never reaches boiling point, but over several hours this low heat is enough to cook vegetables and meats right through. The slow cooker plugs in to an electrical outlet - you don't need a stove. I wish I'd had one when I was a student in halls of residence. A slow cooker draws very little power because it doesn't boil the food, so it's cheaper than conventional cooking methods. Many types of slow cooker have a removable crock that can be used as a serving dish. The lid on a slow cooker just sits lightly on top of the crock, it isn't sealed.

A pressure cooker lid, by contrast, has a tight seal. The lid contains a valve with a weight on top, so as you heat it on the hob the pressure builds up inside until the pressure is great enough to push the weight up and release a little bit of steam with a loud hiss that scares some people. This makes the pressure drop inside so the weight falls and the pressure starts to build up again. (There's really no reason to be scared of pressure cookers. They make a loud hissing noise, but there's nothing that can hurt you. They're a damn sight safer than a stepladder.) Because it is operating at more than atmospheric pressure, the temperature inside the pressure cooker reaches more than 100°C. A pan of stew or soup on your hob, with or without a lid, will never get hotter than 100°C. At this pressure and temperature, the food cooks much quicker, using less electricity.

Because of this, I use my pressure cooker a lot for cooking dried beans and pulses. Beans take hours to cook on the hob, so the pressure cooker saves a lot of time and money. Some beans (particularly red kidney beans and soya beans) contain toxins that are destroyed by heat. The high temperatures in a pressure cooker are more than enough to destroy these toxins so this is a safe way to cook dried beans. But you should never put soya or kidney beans in a slow cooker without cooking them first to destroy the toxins. The Vegetarian Society recommends pre-boiling all varieties of dried beans before slow cooking. Tinned beans of course are perfectly safe.

This was the third in a series of articles about slow cookers and pressure cookers. The final article in the series will have some recipes for these methods of cooking. Please keep emailing me your favourite recipes for slow cookers and pressure cookers.