Sick Veg – Page 13

Wormy Truth of Gardens

Post author By Sick Veg
Post date July 6, 2023

At Luke Davis’ poetry book launch last June I met the writer/musician/activist Ben Watson. He is chiefly famous for his artist-endorsed writings on Frank Zappa. Ben has been a friend of Luke’s for a long time. I knew beforehand that Luke and his fellow poet Jim Clarke had participated in Ben’s improvised music events on Friday at lunchtime at the Betsey Trotwood on the Farringdon Road.

AMMAS March 31st at The Betsey Trotwood.

Ben is a force of nature. He’s one of those rare people you encounter in life who is truly an individual. Very friendly, he’s not shy of taking a controversial position. I really enjoy his company even though I don’t feel I bring a tremendous amount to the table having given up being “an expert” on music, being too uptight to drink, and preferring at the times I’ve been along to the Betsey Trotwood to sit in the audience and enjoy the experience rather than participate. They make a tremendous sound at the BT and the collectivity of the action is truly thrilling.

As far as I’m concerned the best thing about improvised music is that it entirely eliminates the need for technical abilities. To talk about famous improvisers is to some extent miss the point. When you do so you are entering the domain of the appreciation of musical virtuosity. That’s ok but maybe it’s not its real value? To some extent that explains the DIY punk edge to AMMAS, Watson’s improvising group.

Since childhood, out of total incompetence, I’ve improvised on a range of instruments: hours tiny at the piano at my grandparents’ house, for many years alone in rooms doing so when I should have been practicing violin (or even in the middle of the second orchestra’s performances at school when I was entirely lost from the score), and on the flute. Then later, more recently, on electronic keyboards, electric guitar, bass guitar, drums. All the while making a horrible racket mainly for my own appreciation. And that’s the way it will stay with me, as a private negotiation. Right now I’m quietly mucking around with a recorder. That seemed like a sufficiently disparaged instrument to want to play. Though, as I now appreciate, there’s a lot to be said for it as an activity you can practice in a group.

Ben is in fact a pretty serious musician, with I believe, some degree of actual musical talent. If you’re curious check out this recent piano improvisation which has garnered well-deserved recognition.

Community Ecology Urban Wilderness

Wild Mitchell Street Destroyed

Post author By Sick Veg
Post date July 5, 2023

In early May I posted about Wild Mitchell Street. I was excited to see at the end of June that things had really run riot. I was poised to return to the space to take some more photos.

However, it seems I was too slow. In their infinite wisdom the council arranged for it all to be cut down. Of course no one entertained the idea of “chop and drop” to at least let the vegetation work as mulch and rebuild the soil – to what end I suppose?

Ecology Growing Urban Wilderness

June Flowers

Post author By Sick Veg
Post date June 26, 2023

The true Permaculture garden is supposed to be nothing but vegetables. And I know that Charles Dowding dismisses growing flowers as child’s play. Dowding does grow a few though.

The thing is I have such a small space that growing vegetables is largely meaningless. I feel I’m actually performing more of a service to the world to grow flowers that insects like. Two of the flowers here, the Wild Rocket and Courgette are actually vegetables of course…

The odd one out here is the Dahlia. My grandmother used to love Dahlias and Mrs. Ingram wanted me to grow them. They do look very ornamental don’t they? But to balance that civilised element out, the Bristly Ox Tongue and Fringed Willowherb are weeds that I have cultivated. I had no idea what they were but the app “Picture This” says that’s what they are.

Until today I was sure the Bristly Ox Tongue was Hyssop, which seeds I sowed there but obviously didn’t germinate. It’s an incredibly exotic weed gotta say. Needless to say Hyssop doesn’t look anything like it.

Health Nutrition Urban

Hay Fever

Post author By Sick Veg
Post date June 22, 2023

Are you suffering from hay fever at the moment? Maybe you are not sniveling and sneezing but still feeling brackish? The pollution load in the city can make matters even worse.

Rather than reaching for an anti-histamine tablet, try taking Vitamin C. It’s extremely effective as an anti-histamine. Right away you will notice a radical improvement in your symptoms. You are also doing yourself a lot of good.

I like these NaturesPlus tablets. They’re food-based. I just take 250mg which is very low. Any Vitamin C tablets would probably be as good. Honestly, try it!

Community Ecology Growing Health Urban

Grey Cat

Post author By Sick Veg
Post date June 21, 2023

This is the second part of the Sick Veg cat series. The first being dedicated to the Black Cat. This to her older frenemy the Grey Cat. I know I shouldn’t really post pictures of my cats. I’m sure it represents some kind of degeneration. I ought to be more preoccupied with my perception of other people’s perception of me.

The cats are my garden helpers. They like nothing more than to hang out with me when I water the plants in the morning. In the case of the Black Cat she also likes it when I am killing slugs by torch light. So exciting. They both love chasing hoverflies.

The Black Cat likes to clamber all over everything. The Grey Cat, who is a lot older, likes to lie in the sun. Also to watch water from the tap. She will come and get me, lead me to the hosepipe, and sit and watch the water trickling over the roof totally transfixed until I turn it off. She might do this two or three times in an afternoon. In the summer they both take as much delight in the garden as me.

Agriculture Food Growing Urban

June Harvest

Post author By Sick Veg
Post date June 16, 2023

It’s been a disappointing year for my broad beans. These were my own kept beans, that much was exciting, but I believe I sowed them in too shallow a container for them to really thrive. It also felt like the slugs and snails weakened them in April. Rather than limp on I decided to pull the plug now and plant something else shortly.

That’s a nice heap of stalks for the compost. And the troughs, no doubt full of leguminous nitrogen, will be good for something else.

I was able to thin out the beetroot a lot. These were multi-sown so I twisted out the larger roots from the clusters of three.

This year I’m going to eat the tops. I’m slightly ashamed that last I threw them away. I’ll chop them up, steam them, and fry them in garlic like I do with kale and cavallo nero.

Here’s everything tidied up before it went into the fridge. We had the broad beans steamed with some basmati rice yesterday for lunch.

At night on the same day I went back for the chamomile. This had grown unruly and the leaves had dipped which meant apparently they were ready for cropping.

You don’t have to wait for them to be dry to turn them into tea. You can just go right on ahead and steep them in boiling water when they are fresh.

Real purty.

Community Ecology Practice Wilderness

Insects

Post author By Sick Veg
Post date June 9, 2023

I’m deadly serious about making home for insects in my roof garden. All of the flowers I’ve planted I have chosen because bugs love them. Over the past couple of months I have been taking (bad) photos of these, my tiny friends, with my cellphone.

Ecology Growing Practice Spirituality Therapy Urban Wilderness

May Flowers

Post author By Sick Veg
Post date May 31, 2023

Food Growing Practice Soil Urban

Repotting

Post author By Sick Veg
Post date May 29, 2023

This morning I was repotting oak seedlings. These were grown from acorns I picked up on Hampstead Heath. Cosmos, and in the foreground courgette, also felt the love.

My own compost is fine for established plants and, well, filler – but you need something proper if you’re cherishing something.

So few of these courgette seedlings survived. I’m not taking any chances with them.

Ecology Growing Organic Practice Soil Urban

Compost

Post author By Sick Veg
Post date May 28, 2023

I don’t like to get into the whole G.A.S. thing with growing like I did around music. Of buying stuff. I have enough. Too much in fact.

Horticulture and agriculture are the same as the music business to some extent. Make no mistake, there’s no end of accessories and toys that are marketed to growers and farmers. To say nothing of the cost of land itself. But nowadays I’m a bit weary of being a consumer, and wary of being targeted as one.

Some products, however, are justifiable purchases. I couldn’t simply heap a load of rotting mulch into a corner of my roof garden. It would be exposed to the elements, stink, and be a magnet for pests. So in October 2022 I bought a Hotbin Mini so as to start my own composting. Here is the inside of the pristine bin which is starting to see a lot of wear and tear now.

It’s an ingenious system which drains leachate to a tank beneath it, is insulated by design (accentuating the thermal generation of the composting process), and it doesn’t require turning. The first thing you do is layer a bunch of sticks into the bottom.

Then you load, in layers, green and brown waste.

As I understand it green waste is: food scraps (uncooked vegetables, no meat) and garden waste (weeds are fine). Brown waste is: cardboard, paper and woodchip. This layering of the two kinds of material means that you preserve aeration. If you are just using green waste it tends to coalesce into a sludge. The technical term for this latter effect is anaerobic composting and it generates a lot of foul-smelling methane.

Your aim is to establish aerobic composting which is seen as being the way to get a superior compost. It evidently wasn’t always so, however, as I have recently been reading some sixties’ gardening books which, suggest t’other over the one.

Here’s a rather fetching full bin at the end of last year. [I don’t think those are flowers I grew actually.]

At the top of the bin there is a thermometer. I have never managed to get my heap to the heady heights of 50 degrees centigrade, but when everything is steaming away I have reached 40 degrees. A compost heap is, essentially, a bonfire…

After a straight sixty days last year, just as we were heading into winter, I pulled the plug on the process so as to download my black gold. [A note in passing: you can see the blue leachate cap here at the bottom. I emptied this liquid out and used it as a plant feed a lot last year – but I wasn’t convinced of its efficacy so this year I haven’t bothered.]

I believe that 2022’s compost broke down anaerobically a lot. Looking at it, it does appear a bit putrid. I had a few bad smells out in the garden which this year I have totally avoided.

However, I still got three large pots of excellent compost out of it. I dressed the surface with a good commercial compost to create a tilth and planted in them. Today these pots have an Ash Tree, a Dahlia, and Amaranth growing in them.

To solve the issue of the anaerobic effect I was having, I reasoned that I needed to get more aeration through the Hotbin. This March I went to a hardware store and bought a measure of plumber’s copper pipe.

This I drilled regularly-spaced holes in.

And sunk it down the middle of my new burgeoning heap.

This must have made a difference to the aeration. There are many accounts of people creating this style of chimney in compost heaps. However, the ones I have read of are created by building heaps around pipes (without holes in them) and then removing the pipe once the heap has reached its summit so as to create a natural cavity. Of course, it is highly unlikely I have pioneered a new technique.

Here is the pipe in situ. Towards the end of March I needed some more compost so I opened the bin up to see what was cooking.

To me this looked like a less noxious concoction than my previous batch. No, it doesn’t have that fine, chocolatey, crumbly, look of professional compost. However, mine is not ground up in any way or dried.

I have looked at grinders but reason that’s just another gadget that would sit on a shelf and only be used twice a year. What counts is its richness and biological liveliness – of which I have no way of measuring.

This time I needed to fill two pots to plant on Calendula seedlings that I had started indoors at the end of winter.

Again, the surface is dressed with commercial compost. Here are the Calendula seedlings, or Marigold as they are sometime called, moved onto my own compost.

This time I only emptied half the Hotbin with a view to keeping it running like a perpetual stew.

Here it is again, more recently, running at full capacity.

The Calendula is thriving off it.