How to Prevent and Manage Fireblight in Apples, Pears, and Plums
21.08.2023 - 11:51 / theunconventionalgardener.com / guest
Daniel Brown, Nottingham Trent University
The dark skies of the great outdoors help people to see the wonders of space, either with the naked eye or using telescopes. That’s why observatories are usually placed in high altitudes or remote locations, where there’s often outstanding natural beauty and little light pollution.
A report commissioned by the UK government recommended that every school child should be given the opportunity to spend a night under the stars in such places.
In my research I’ve noticed the awe and wonder that young people feel while watching the stars in dark sky sites such as the stone circle at Callanish in Scotland. The stones here are made from Lewisian Gneiss – the oldest rock in Britain – formed three billion years ago and erected by people more than 5,000 years ago. Here, the immensity of time and our universe can be felt in every fibre of the body.
Exploring the night sky in a national park could be a transformative experience for both young and old. They might see the dust lanes of the Milky Way galaxy for the first time, stretching across the night sky. Learning that this band is made from millions of stars, each not too different to our sun, gives us a new appreciation of the universe and our place within it.
Perhaps they might spot the closest galaxy to ours – Andromeda, 2.5m light years away – and marvel at how the light they’re seeing set off just before our species walked the Earth.
But protecting dark sky sites in national parks is only half the story. It’s a shame that light pollution means these wonderful experiences are only possible far from home. Connecting everyone with the wonders of the universe should be taken up where people live.
In the UK the Dark Sky Discovery partnership – a
How to Prevent and Manage Fireblight in Apples, Pears, and Plums
More and more these days, the media is full of stories of superfoods – usually fruits with high concentrations of antioxidants. The blueberry led the superfood charge, but has been left behind by newer and more exotic rivals, such as acai berries, goji berries and the yumberry.
Outside of the tropics, the only place you’re likely to see a cocoa tree (Theobroma cacao, the trees that give us chocolate) is in a heated greenhouse at the botanical gardens. They can be grown as house plants, and seeds germinate easily when they’re fresh, but their size, their requirement for heat and the fact that you need two plants for pollination means that they’re unlikely to bear fruit. And even if they did, the process of turning cocoa beans into chocolate is a long one.
Mrs Green has set herself a new challenge this spring – she’s aiming to grow her own luffa (or loofah) to use as zero waste pan scrubbers. Never one to shy away from new plant experiences, I’m going to join her!
Header image: <a href=«https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/pink-water-lily-lake-goldfish-142067443?src=» http:>NagyDodo/Shutterstock
Lauren Alex O’ Hagan, Cardiff University
Grafting is a time-honoured technique for growing fruit trees – it allows gardeners and farmers to choose both the variety of fruit they want to grow, and the rootstock they want to grow it on. You can even graft more than one variety of fruit onto one rootstock, giving you a ‘family’ tree that saves space and spreads the harvest time, or gives you both ‘cookers’ and ‘eaters’ from one tree. Grafting vegetables, on the other hand, is something relatively new that has burst onto the home gardening scene in the last few years. Last year T&M gave us the opportunity to grow the TomTato, a tomato plant grafted onto potato roots that grows both tomatoes and potatoes – catchily nicknamed the Ketchup ‘n’ fries plant. This year they have added a new dual-purpose plant to their range: the Egg & Chips plant grows both aubergines (AKA eggplant) and potatoes.
There can’t be a more iconic symbol of Halloween than a witch riding a broomstick. In olden times it wouldn’t have been a problem to wander out into the woodland and cut a stout pole and then find sticks to make the sweeping end, and then you’d have yourself a fine broom, or besom. I suspect most of them were used for more mundane purposes – they are jolly useful things to have to hand.
Header image: Suited up to simulate the conditions of working outside on Mars. Jonathan Clarke (the author, left) with visiting engineer Michael Curtis-Rouse, from UK Space Agency (right). Jonathan Clarke personal collection, Author provided.
Many years ago, long before my gardening obsession began, I spent a season or two living in a ground floor flat in Newbury that had patio doors that opened onto a backwater. Shortly after moving in we made friends with the local duck population, to the point where we bought poultry corn from the pet stall on the market for them – bread not being the best food for ducks.
Alison Tindale tells explains everything you need to know about Chinese artichokes!
Header image: *Psyche Delia*/Flickr, CC BY-NC