Seed trays, modules and pots
21.08.2023 - 11:53 / theunconventionalgardener.com / Emma Doughty
Continuing with my goal of reading one of the unread gardening books on my shelf every month this year, I choose Salad Plants for Your Garden by Roger Phillips and Martyn Rix as my book for May. It has been in my possession for two years since I bought it in a charity shop; it was originally published in 1998.
The book begins by noting (as I did, earlier this year) that our understanding of the word ‘salad’ has evolved in the last few decades, from ‘lettuce, tomato, cucumber’ to something a bit more diverse. It doesn’t attempt to define what a salad is now (or was, in 1998).
According to the introduction:
“The purpose of this book is to present the keen amateur gardener-cum-gourmet with an interesting and fairly comprehensive selection of salad plants that can quite easily be grown in the garden and herb garden or, in many cases, in pots or on windowsills.”
Which made it all the more surprising when I turned the page and saw that it began with that undisputed salad stalwart… cabbage. Then kale, and broccoli – both well-known salad plants. Not.
The introduction continues to explain that the book is divided into five sections: leaves, roots and sprouts, fruits and beans, herbs and flowers. Although divided is a strong word; there are no section headings. You just cross the boundary from one section to the next without noticing. Especially as, within sections, the plants don’t seem to be laid out in any particular order.
The more well-known plants get a page or even two, mentioning some choice varieties as well as a short section on ‘planting help’. The less familiar species get a couple of paragraphs. These are more likely to concentrate on the origins of the plant (and the kind of environments in which it may be found growing
Seed trays, modules and pots
There are many ways you can keep your slug population under control without resorting to toxic slug pellets:
I met the Duke of Edinburgh a few years ago. Shame I was stuck in front of a computer at the time, and not somewhere more exciting like the Chelsea Flower Show. Meeting human royalty might be a rare occurrence for most people, but you can surround yourself with royal plants and get that regal feeling every time you step into the garden. To illustrate my point, let me share with you an old joke….
Apparently more Brits watch gardening programmes than tuned in for Game of Thrones. I can see why – in the penultimate season of GoT the action was so slow that it would have been more interesting to go outside and watch the plants grow. I didn’t bother watching the latest season (but yes, I know who died, thanks).
Every month this year I’ve been trying to read one of the unread books on my shelf, and to then decide whether it gets to keep its spot or needs to be set free to find a new home. For June I chose Nature’s Wild Harvest by Eric Soothill and Michael J. Thomas. It was published in 1983, and has been sitting on my bookshelf for three years, since I bought it in our local secondhand bookshop (which only opens on Wednesdays).
In Jade Pearls and Alien Eyeballs I talk about the journeys plants have made with us – crisscrossing the globe and leaving Earth entirely for missions in space.
Here in the UK it’s traditional to take a couple of weeks off work over the summer and head off to somewhere with better weather – or at least somewhere that you can get away from it all for a little while. It’s one of the ironies of life that this takes you away from the garden at a time when it really could use your help. If you have a gardening neighbour then you can rely on them to take care of your garden while you’re away, but if you don’t and don’t want to come home to dead plants, weeds and giant marrows then there are a few things you can do to prepare your garden for your absence.
You might recall that one of my New Year’s Resolutions was to read one of my unread books every month this year, and to decide whether each one keeps its place on the shelf, or needs to be turned loose to find a new owner. In January I read The Gardener’s Year by Karel Čapek. February’s book was Minding my Peas and Cucumbers, by Kay Sexton – quirky tales of allotment life, it says on the cover. According to my notes it has been on the shelf, unread, since 2011.
Interviewers always seem to ask fiction authors “Where do you get your ideas?” and I suspect they then have to come up with an answer than doesn’t make them look like a loon. Because the truth is that, although inspiration can come out of the blue, once you start writing on a regular basis ideas come thick and fast – there just isn’t enough time or energy to turn them all into stories. Or that’s my experience anyway, writing non-fiction.
A little while ago, I told you about a preliminary experiment that Dr Wieger Wamelink and his team at the University of Wageningen conducted. It demonstrated that it is possible to grow plants in simulated Mars and Moon soils.
As I said, one of my aims for this year is to streamline my gardening library a little bit – not a drastic chopping back, just a little light pruning to keep the shape
If there is one thing I am truly grateful for during this extraordinary time, it’s my garden. Not only is it producing harvests for us and reducing our reliance on our over-stressed food system, but it’s somewhere we can step outside and be surrounded by nature, without having to worry about social distancing.