It feels like something of a miracle that plants will grow through the winter. Certainly, because the temperature is lower, progress is slower. But check out these brassicas which I put out at the start of October.
I had to protect the soil with stones because the Black Cat started digging in there. This is definitely not something you could do at scale!
I was very annoyed to see some of them being nommed. I thought it might be snails, but nightly scopes revealed nothing. Then one afternoon I saw a greedy caterpillar curled up in plain sight at the centre of this plant. Not one of these guys, who I tolerated previously on my nasturtiums, but a Cabbage Looper. Grr.
Probably because of the cats, there are no birds who will venture into the roof garden and eat the caterpillars.
Recently I’ve sprayed them with some soap (Dr Forest’s Wetting Agent). I’m not sure if that will do any good. And in fact, think I will double back and spray with neem oil. However, one of the good things about winter is that pest pressure is much lower. All told, the plants are looking well.
There’s been a lot of support for RFK Jr from unusual quarters in recent weeks. A number of my acquaintances have expressed hopes for his potential role as director of the Department of Health and Human Services in the otherwise dreaded Trump administration.
RFK Jr is Democratic Party royalty. He’s the nephew of assassinated president John F. Kennedy, and son of the assassinated senator and attorney general Robert F. Kennedy. He ran an independent campaign for president, which was successful in swing states like Michigan but, to the disgust of his family, threw his weight behind Donald Trump. And he has bad form for choosing friends in the past too, hanging out with, at various times, Harvey Weinstein, OJ Simpson, Jeffrey Epstein, and Bill Cosby.
RFK Jr, to his chagrin, is mainly known as a COVID vaccine denier. He does temper this position when he’s scrutinised in public forums, claiming that he just wants to see proper trials for vaccines, but in more intimate surroundings it seems to be a different story. His involvement in a measles’ outbreak in Samoa LOOKS pretty bad.
What does pose significant risks to health? Diet. And diet, especially with regard to nutrition, connects us to farming, because biologically-grown food is more nutritious. And this is where it gets complicated because, even if you disagree with RFK Jr’s position on vaccines, he is simultaneously a staunch opponent of processed foods. Here, in a video with 4.3 million views, he is railing against food additives, singling out Tartrazine. Why on earth are food additives like this still allowed?
The platform he shares with Trump is deregulation: Trump for corrupt ends and to give tax breaks to the richest (speciously) in the name of growth; RFK Jr to support small businesses crushed by expensive bureaucracy. However, it’s ironic that the removal of additives from food is largely going to be one requiring… yup, that’s right… regulation. Indeed, he praises the previous Trump administration for making some additives illegal where the Democrats did nothing.
Even firebrand of the left, senator for Vermont (like being the MP for Brighton), Bernie Sanders has recently found common ground with RFK Jr in a shared focus upon obesity and diabetes. Overlooking processed meat and the absence of micronutrients in chemically-grown food, the true enemy, however, is not additives but something far simpler: sugar. Good luck regulating (or deregulating?) that! It’s closer to a society-wide addiction, a social problem like alcoholism, than anything to do with government.
As well as his interesting approach to foods, RFK Jr also has an impressive grasp of the arguments around organic farming. This is on display in this interview he undertakes with legendary progressive farmer Joel Salatin, the star of Michael Pollen’s landmark book, “The Omnivore’s Dilemma.” Salatin, a Republican, talks passionately about his ability to be able to compete with much larger organisations and to be able to leverage technology to reach markets which have been stifled by their local administrations. It is a strategy right out of the small-state play book.
I’ve got to admit that on the back of research I’ve been doing for the past three years, what RFK hints at sounds potentially very interesting. The problem with agriculture in the US and UK is that government subsidies, bolstered by the claim that food security is only possible under the aegis of chemical agriculture, have pumped money into supporting industrial farming. Truthfully, large farms do NOT farm their lands for profit, they farm the government for subsidies. A whole toxic architecture is held in place by these subsidies. This is the principal reason that organic food seems expensive. Yes, their removal would be cataclysmic if it happened quickly. We’ve come so far from the small-farm, local food model, that it’s almost inconceivable that we could turn the clock back. But the current status quo is still a nightmare on many fronts, not least ecologically.
Besides this call for a reduction in state regulation, RFK’s position feels like it ought to be a position taken by a Democrat – and his family background in the blue camp makes sense. However, equally, there is plenty of libertarian anarchism inherent in the idea of growing organic food. The fundamental principle is, after all, that a healthy undisturbed soil creates a healthy plant. That can be construed, as in Sir Albert Howard’s model of the forest manuring itself, or Masanobu Fukuoka’s call for no tillage, as a call for no intervention – a classic right-wing trope. Of course, this ignores the idea and role of composting – which might be equated to lavish state intervention.
Organic cranks have always taken pride in not taking medicines or stimulants, and historically there have been minority elements within the organic movement that have been on the right. Knowing the history, I wouldn’t overemphasise this especially, but it’s a factor.
The libertarian aspect of these ideas have already influenced fringe ecologists such as the beautiful Artist as Family group. This fascinating, radical self-sufficiency collective from Australia who I find entirely enchanting, also, like RFK Jr, adopted an anti-vax position. No, I don’t necessarily agree with them, but unlike so many commentators I’m not fearful of it, and I appreciate the coherency of their logic.
So what’s going to happen as this Trump/RFK Jr saga unfolds? As I understand it, he’s yet to actually secure the nomination. Like the woebegone Pete Hegseth, he might even now fall by the wayside. And if he gets the job, will Trump actually keep him in the role? I can’t see that working. RFK Jr is going to infuriate too many rich and powerful people who the Donald will want to ingratiate. But maybe, just maybe, RFK Jr will hang in there and will have a positive effect! Who would have thought there might be a silver-lining in this dark cloud?
These little guys grown from seed: Brussels sprouts, savoy cabbage, cabbage, and calabrese broccoli. They have had enough time under the grow lights.
They need to go out under the cool autumn sun. It’s amazing how much more light there is outdoors, even on an autumn day, than indoors under lights.
They’re going in here, which is some of the finest topsoil rescued from my raised bed, with added biochar (not stirred in yet).
God bless the little blighters. Just the strongest seedlings which have shown the most vigorous growth. The rest I am going to eat as microgreens for my tea.
All tucked in for the winter. With, I think, plenty of space for them. At least for the time being. If Kiki the cat digs these out, I will throttle her. Or at least swear at her!
I came across these plants in the Medicinal garden of the Royal College of Physicians, besides Regent’s Park.
This is an ephedra plant, a source of ephedrine alkaloids, including ephedrine and pseudoephedrine. Natural speed.
A tobacco plant. The leaves are huge.
Opium poppies.
One datura plant.
And another datura plant. These trumpet-like flowers are enormous – about a foot long.
I don’t use any drugs, but it has occurred to me how relatively easy it would be to grow one’s own. Obviously, marijuana can be grown simply enough, but also coca leaves. With the latter it would be impractical for industrial purposes to grow in the UK. This because of the huge amount of coca leaves needed for a tiny yield of cocaine, the expense of land, and large plantations’ subsequent visibility to law enforcement agencies. But climate-wise, it wouldn’t be a problem. With a greenhouse, you might be able to grow enough coca for your own personal use. You could even just chew the leaves like the South Americans do.
I came across a modern book on Amazon once of some home-counties apothecarist quietly growing his own opium poppies – plant and man getting “heavy” together.
After an exquisite Indian Summer, it seems Autumn is now truly upon us. Consequently, I’m packing up the garden for the year.
It’s bittersweet looking back at it at its height in August in comparison with where it is now below.
The only glimmer of hope is in these seedlings of brussels sprouts, savoy cabbage, cabbage, and calabrese. I thought I would try and get these established and see if I could grow them through the winter outdoors. That might just about be possible.
I had grown a little before November 2021, zinnias from seed and dahlias from bulbs in 2020, but never vegetables or indeed anything with serious intent.
It was a combination of two things, reading Theodore Roszak’s collection of essays “Ecopsychology” (1995) in August 2021, and watching an interview with Eliot Coleman in October 2021, that truly set me on this path. The latter providing maybe the lightning bolt moment.
Immediately before this I had been reading Alfred Adler’s majestic “Understanding Human Nature” (1927), at the tail end of my research after “Retreat” , which carried on quite a long time after the end of that book’s publication in 2020. Indeed, I must have finished “Retreat” in mid 2019 and there I was still working through, not even yet fully integrating, the ideas I had unearthed in that book.
So my journey into gardening had nothing, per se, to do with lockdown, as it did for many people. However, the same etheric conditions that we all experienced in lockdown, the ones which gave rise to other phenomenon like the huge growth in the amount of dreaming recorded in western populations, and the emergence of racial trauma out from the unconscious onto the social canvas, tracked in parallel my own etheric research into the dematerialised highs of LSD and meditation against the backdrop of the counterculture, and that generation’s subsequent post-countercultural integrated fascination with organic farming.
The immediate upshot was that I was keen to get involved somehow in growing food. I’m yet to totally work out how to make that transition in a meaningful way. It is, after all, a massive leap for a music-obsessed animator working in the centre of a city to undertake. A more etheric, less integrated existence it would be hard to devise, perhaps a coder working on a space station would be able to trump me? In consequence, the journey back to earth is harder to make.
Working on my psyche art project, I got in the habit of picking up pieces of wood in the street. Some time in November 2021 I found two huge beautiful huge planks of wood in this skip on Pear Tree Street round the corner from where I live, and decided that they would make the basis of an excellent raised bed.
I cut them to size outside in the street, soaked them in linseed oil to protect them from the weather, and assembled them with beautiful rust-proof, stainless steel screws. The frame looked great already.
Because it was going to be resting on a slate roof, with a base level of large stones beneath the soil, I left a centimetre gap along the bottom to help with drainage. I didn’t want it filling up like a swimming pool and busting through the roof. Accordingly, I rested it straddled on top of a supporting wall which runs beneath the surface.
I designed the bed with a central column, so I could suspend mesh across it. The mesh to protect against insects, slugs, and snails. This worked very well, but was a faff to remove every time. Eventually, when it became clear that the black cat wanted to scramble over the top of it, I built a bamboo frame to rest upon the columns.
I bought a number of bags of a mixture of topsoil and compost. This is where I betrayed my ignorance, indeed none other than Charles Dowding rolled his eyes when I revealed to him that I had been convinced by a garden supplier that it was necessary to have a mix of the two. Compost on its own would have been superior. I mixed a huge bag of perlite in with this – both to lighten the mixture and allow it to drain better. I don’t really like perlite, an industrial product, with the benefit of hindsight biochar would have been better, if more expensive.
And so it was for nearly three years.
Perhaps you’ve seen the pictures I’ve posted of all the things I grew here over the past three years? Carrots, Cabbage, Spinach, Pumpkin, Lettuce, Cavalo Nero, Rocket, and Beetroot. More besides.
But this year it had to come to an end.
I got sick of the rigmarole of removing and replacing the netting. I’m figuring that a small greenhouse, or a cold frame would be more interactive, that I might have more fun with something like that if we stay put.
Also, I needed to tidy up the roof garden because we’ve put the house on the market and, well, it looked too bloody eccentric.
So everything got harvested.
And the whole thing was dismantled. I was surprised how horrible and clay-like the first soil I used was. It came off in large clods. Also, how meagre was the inch-thick topsoil which I had created with fine mulches and biochar. This I bagged up and kept. There was no digging ever on this patch, and I would have liked to have seen more evidence of soil structure. Maybe that’s precisely what I had? Sure, it was productive…
And this is how the space looks now. Like a regular bourgeois roof terrace.
I’ve got to work out the big picture. Sure, I’m dismantling this tiny part of the dream – but I’m working on a much larger and transformative scale these days. Times are very hard in consequence, but that’s to be expected.
As I wrap up growing on my roof garden this year, it’s an opportunity to look back at the food I grew and enjoyed eating at home.
I decided in February that because my raised bed was such a nuisance to remove its protective mesh from, that I wanted to grow something in there that (a) I could plant and leave alone the entire season (b) I really enjoyed eating. This year’s massive beetroot patch was the result.
These seeds were the “Bolivar” variety from Tamar Organics, which I started in seed trays in March. I did weed the bed once or twice, but mainly left them alone. I cropped and thinned them once and then took out the whole bed on the 19th August.
A previous year I pickled these and made a hash of the pickling mixture – way too sharp… This year I worked hard on it, and I’ve been loving these delicious beetroot pickles. One or two a day, sometimes before a meal, a great way to kickstart the tum.
I covered my success with potatoes in a previous post, but never showed what a delicious meal they made. Here, baked and roasted.
These are the “Lady Di” variety runner beans, visible on the top right-hand side, which I grew from last year’s beans. I don’t believe I’ve ever had a nice crop from these, and I have no idea why I have persevered with them. They eat very badly, tasting as though they are run through with bits of hard plastic.
Perhaps the first year’s crop was tender, and I’m forgetting, and that they’ve subsequently shed their characteristics? Never again.
I’ve grown vine tomatoes before – but this year decided I would give the “determinate” bush variety a go.
Growing in containers without much wall space, this made practical sense. I chose the Jani variety which had the advantage of getting going quite quickly in the season. It’s easy to grow something like tomatoes, and suddenly it’s July and one finds they are still green – so that speed in a tomato variety is very valuable.
Practical considerations aside, I have to admit to being disappointed by the flavour in these. I wouldn’t grow them again. Edible, certainly, but…
This rosemary bush has, I believe, grown from seeds started in 2023. I’m so proud of it!
Damn, what a wonderful thing Rosemary is! Green all year round, bees love its beautiful small blue flowers, it’s an amazing medicinal herb (sometimes I just chew on a branch when I am outside in the garden), and it’s really valuable in the kitchen. The potatoes shown above were roasted with it and some garlic.
This Amaranth is now in its third season on the roof garden. Grown from its own seed twice. It loves the sun but more than any other plant needs careful watering, wilting quite quickly without sufficient care. I haven’t yet eaten my own Amaranth, but one day I shall.
Finally, there’s my “Red Drumhead” cabbages. Here showing the twins being united in a single planter with a Comfrey plant between them.
Cabbage takes a long time to grow and in the past I’ve settled for cabbage leaves but no crown. But this year I’ve only gone and smashed it. Check out the head on that whoppa!
