Fallen leaves can be a nuisance in the autumn if you like your lawns and paving to stay neat and clean, and can be slippery in wet weather. But instead of bagging them up for disposal or burning them, they can be turned into leaf mould compost – a wonderful substance that works just like peat. Leaf mould compost (usually just called leafmould) is simply compost made entirely from fallen leaves, and makes a great low-nutrient soil improver or mulch. It is also a vital ingredient in home-made seed compost. It couldn’t be simpler to make: just pile the leaves up in a container or heap and leave them for two years to rot down.

a quick sieve and you're ready to go

Benefits of leaf mould compost

• No effort to make
• Absolutely free
• Good for the soil when applied as a mulch
• A vital ingredient for many seed and potting compost mixes
• Can be used at any time of year
• Is clean and pleasant to handle, and stores indefinitely

How to make leafmould

1. Gather your raw ingredients, namely: fallen autumn leaves. Sweep or rake them up from your own plot, or from local paths and pavements. Try not to take them from busy roads where there may be tyre rubber dust and other contaminants.
2. Heap them up, or (for smaller containers) put them into a container to stop them from blowing away. You can make a dedicated leaf mould bin for them (see picture), make a loop of chicken wire attached to an upright post, or just stuff them into a plastic bag. There’s no need to cover the leaves to keep the rain out, but if you do then check the pile from time to time to make sure it’s still moist.
3. As the leaves start to break down the leaf pile shrinks, and you can add more leaves on top if you like.
4. Leave the pile alone to rot down into leaf mould compost. If you’re using it as a top-dressing or mulch, then one year of rotting is sufficient. If you need it to break down completely for home made seed compost then it really needs two years to break down completely. Rubbing it through a garden seive helps to break down the last few flakes.

Leaves you shouldn’t use in leafmould

Any fallen leaves are fine to use in leafmould, but you shouldn’t use evergreen leaves. These are extremely slow to break down, so small amounts are best composted in a regular compost heap. Larger amounts can be used to make leafmould as above, but take three years or even longer to compost completely. Pine needles are well worth composting alone in this way, as the leafmould that they make is quite acidic – perfect for acid-loving plants like blueberries and heathers.Try not to collect leaves near busy roads because of the risk of environmental contamination. Also, be careful if you are collecting piles or drifts of leaves that have been there for some time. These can often contain sheltering wildlife such as hedgehogs.

Other compost articles

Seed compost courtesy Jay Pettitt, leaf bin courtesy Far Closer.

Leaf mould: making leafmould compost is a post from: Farm In My Pocket

Intelligent and inquisitive, alpacas have become popular with UK smallholders because they are comparatively inexpensive to keep, and you don’t need huge tracts of land to keep them. They can, however, be an expensive purchase – so it pays to be clear about your reasons for buying them. Are they for fleece, for breeding, for stud, or do you just want them as pets… or unusually attractive lawnmowers?

The most common reason to keep alpacas is for fleece. Each animal provides an annual harvest of 3-5kg of luxuriant fleece, and the market for this is steadily improving as breeders achieve better and better fleece quality. Breeding and stud can also be quite lucrative, although naturally there is a lot more to learn, and reputation is everything.

How much work are alpacas?

Alpacas are hardy animals that thrive in the UK, but you should check on them twice a day. Early signs of illness in alpacas are often subtle and easily missed, so a twice daily check gets you used to their individual characteristics, helping you to spot these subtle signs early. If you do need a vet and have trouble in finding someone with alpaca experience in your area, the British Vetinary Camelid Society can help.

Compared with sheep and other stock, alpacas are simple to take care of. Owners usually do their own vaccination, worming and toenail clipping, but for best results shearing is best done professionally. Other than that alpacas have few needs; grass and hay (or haylage, if you make it), some shelter, and access to fresh water. Supplementary feed is advisable to provide nutrients not normally found in British pasture, especially for breeding females and babies, known as ‘cria’.

How much space do alpacas need?

Alpacas are herd animals and become stressed if they are kept singly. Keep at least two or three, for which you need half an acre which has been cleared of plants that are poisonous to alpacas. The animals can be stocked at four to six per acre, as long as there is always adequate grazing available. You will need to enclose the paddock with 4′ sheep stock netting or post-and-rail fencing. Do not use barbed wire because they can get trapped in it by their unusual fleece. For a less permanent solution, electric tape fencing also works well.

Alpacas are happy living outside all year round in the UK but you should provide at least some trees or a substantial hedge for shelter in bad weather. A field shelter is the best option if your budget allows, and will reward you with lower vet bills, healthier animals and top-quality fleece. Having somewhere dry to stand when things get too muddy makes foot rot less likely too, although this is unusual in alpacas.

Alpacas tend to choose particular areas for soiling, eventually resulting in a heap of manure delightfully known as ‘alpaca beans’. Whether or not you practice regular worming, this needs to be removed regularly along with any scattered beans to help prevent parasites building up in the ground. Happily the alpaca beans are much sought after by gardeners and are even sold as ‘alpaca gold’. They are so mild they can be applied directly around plants without fear of burning the foliage (although you should never apply any manure around plants which are eaten raw). The N-P-K value of alpaca beans is normally around 1.5-0.2-1.1.

Alpaca breeds

By far the most popular type of alpaca is the Huacaya, which has a fine, dense fleece and is easiest to look after. The other type of alpaca is the Suri, which has a long, lustrous fleece that makes wonderful fabric. Huacayas are shorn every spring, whereas Suris can be done every other year if you need unusually long fibres or if the animals are for show. The British Alpaca Society maintains a pedigree register. Buying pedigree stock is strongly recommended to be sure that the animals have not been stolen and have sound genetic characteristics.

Breeding alpacas

Stud services are offered by a number of breeders. You can either take your females to the stud animal or have the owners drive the stud to you. The latter is more expensive, but the more females you have the more economic sense it makes. The timing of mating is not crucial, because female alpacas are ‘induced ovulators’: they don’t release an egg until they mate. This effectively means they are always in season.

dyed yarn from alpaca fleece

Alpacas have a long gestation period, with a single cria born 11½ months after mating. Births are normally in the morning and are usually trouble-free although, as always, you need to be on hand in case of complications. The cria are weaned from their mothers at six months, although because of the long gestation you can safely have the mother mated again just one month after giving birth.

Selling alpaca fleece

Alpaca fleece can be sold raw, but isn’t worth much this way. Some shearers tell owners that it is worth nothing and are happy to take it off their hands! To increase the value, you can have it spun into yarn at a dedicated alpaca processing mill (or micro-mill, if you only have a few animals) and either sell this, or use it to produce goods for sale.

Where to learn more about alpacas

A number of breeders in the UK offer beginner courses in alpaca husbandry. These let you learn the basics and ask questions, but more importantly they let you get some ‘hands on’ experience before you go it alone. The British Alpaca Society also offers a number of courses for non-members, but if you’d like to find out more without going to these lengths then Gina Bromage’s book Llamas and Alpacas: A Guide to Management is excellent. Factual and pragmatic, it pulls no punches and really lets you know what you’ll be in for.

A shorn alpaca turns out to be made of pipe cleaners. Who knew?

Alpacas in the UK – an introduction is a post from: Farm In My Pocket

Indoors or outdoors, growing cucumbers is easy provided you take good care of the seedlings. Cucumber seeds can be expensive, but because they produce so many fruits you will probably only need to grow one plant each year. Although some varieties grow well outside in the southern half of the UK, cucumbers do much better in a polytunnel or greenhouse where they will continue to produce fruit until the end of October at least, whereas outdoor plants usually stop fruiting by the middle of September.

There are so many different types of cucumber that deciding which one to buy can be a bit overwhelming for the first-time grower. Before you choose, you need to ask yourself a couple of questions:

1) Where am I going to grow them?
If you’re growing outside, the fruits will be smaller and won’t look as good as the long, slim cucumbers you see in the supermarkets. Growing cucumbers outside is more likely to succeed the further south and west you are in the UK. Make sure you choose a variety suited for growing outdoors, and give it a sheltered and sunny spot with good drainage.

If you’re growing under cover in a greenhouse or polytunnel, you have a much wider range of varieties to choose from, including all-female F1 hybrids. (The advantage of all-female plants is that there are no male flowers to remove.) Cucumbers hate being chilled, so sheltered conditions make a huge difference to both the size of the crop, and the quality. Most important, though, is the length of the harvest: plants under cover start a month earlier than outdoors, and keep going for six weeks after their outdoor cousins have given up.

2) What kind of cucumbers to I want to grow?
Salad types, or pickling? Some cukes are really intended for eating in a salad, while others are picked very small and then pickled. The seed catalogue, or packet, should point you in the right direction as to what to expect.

Cucumbers hide, so make sure you find them all...

Sowing

If you buy an F1 variety the seeds are likely to be among the most expensive you ever buy – sometimes over £1 each. So, you really don’t want things to go wrong. When you plant your seeds, place them standing on their edge about 1.5cms deep in a biodegradable pot. Cucumbers have delicate roots that don’t like being transplanted, and if you can plant the entire pot and forget about it, so much the better. Use a light and (if possible) sterile potting compost. Once planted the seeds should be kept moist and warm, around 20C, or they may rot. Once the seedings appear, move them to a light, warm spot and keep them well watered so they don’t get held back at all.

Cucumbers are considered a delicacy by almost all the vegetable predators around. If you don’t guard your seedlings, you’ll probably find a slug finishing off the tender central growing tip – and that, as they say, is that. A stunted cucumber plant may recover enough to eventually bear fruit, but it will be very late and probably not worth the bother. If this happens there may be no option but to cheat, and buy a plant from a reputable nursery.

Planting out

If you’re growing cucumbers outside, make sure to give them the warmest, sunniest and most sheltered spot you can find. F1 varieties are not generally suitable for outside growing. If you’re under cover, shelter isn’t likely to be a problem – but shade from other plants could be. Make sure they are pampered from day one – plenty of food, plenty of light – or they’ll just sulk.

Shape the soil where you are going to plant the biodegradable pots so that it makes a low mound, and make sure that none of the stems are buried. This prevents the stems from ever being waterlogged, which causes rapid – and fatal – stem rot. To be on the safe side, it’s also a good idea to protect the seedlings with bottle cloches and copper tape and do a few ‘slug patrols’ with a torch in the evenings until the plants are off to a good start.

Protect young seedlings or you won't get any cucumbers!

Growing cucumbers

Cucumbers are vigorous, heavy climbers and need to be trained and tied securely. While the plants put out tendrils to grab onto nearby objects, this can work against you if you allow any crowding to occur. In that case, the side shoots will rapidly hang on to each other – and once that happens, you have a lot of difficult work ahead of you! Training the plants out to the sides avoids this and encourages strong, healthy growth. It also reduces spots where the dreaded grey mould can strike. If you don’t fancy the fuss of training, you can let the side shoots trail but do limit them to five leaves for strong shoots, and two for weaker ones. Nip them out rather than using a blade, as ragged wounds heal faster than clean cuts.

Regarding mould, here’s a tip. Female flowers grow on the end of a small green spike (the future cucumber) whereas male flowers are just small buds. If the plants produce any male flowers, pinch them off as soon as you see them. If you don’t, they’ll wither and die and then turn mouldy. Grey mould spreads fast, and it will easily make the transition from the dead, wilted flower to the healthy stem beneath – and then you’ve lost the whole shoot.

Harvesting

Cucumbers can be harvested at any size, but don’t let them get too big. Cucumber plants are very good at hiding a fruit or two where you’ll only find it if you look very hard. If any of the cucumbers are left to mature, the plant gets the signal that it’s time to develop seeds and stops producing fruit. So keep the plants well picked, and they’ll keep on fruiting. If you see a cucumber start to swell at one end, it means that it has been pollinated and is likely to be bitter, so nip it out as soon as you notice. This can even happen occasionally with F1 all-female plants (which don’t produce male flowers at all), as pollinating insects can travel a very long way.

Cucumbers will continue to produce outside until the weather turns cold and damp in the autumn, although in a polytunnel they can be kept going until winter frosts. In a good year you can get 70+ cucumbers from a single plant, so your friends and neighbours will probably benefit too. Even if you don’t know what to do with the fruit, keep picking it – or the plant will decide it’s time to stop and you won’t get very many more.

Varieties to try:

Growing cucumbers in an unheated polytunnel or greenhouse – F1 Bella
Growing cucumbers outside, especially in the south and west of the UK – Marketmore (Organic seed)

Growing cucumbers is a post from: Farm In My Pocket

If you find yourself wondering what to do with compost that you’ve made, chances are you’ve realised that home made compost just isn’t suitable for potting up plants and seedlings. Being made entirely of rotted plant material, it is too high in nutrients and too easily waterlogged to support tender young roots. To make a potting compost (also known as potting soil), it needs to be blended with other ingredients to make it less rich and drain better.

a sturdy potting riddle

Sieve your compost

To break your compost up into a nice friable texture and get rid of any uncomposted woody chunks, it needs to be seived. You can do this with a potting riddle, raking the compost back and forth with a trowel until only the bigger chunks are left. These then go back into your active compost heap, leaving you with lovely crumbly compost that’s easy to mix with your other ingredients.

If you want to make your potting soil on a much larger scale, make yourself a box frame with a galvanised mesh bottom (6mm works best) and really strong post corners. If you can, make it to just fit your wheelbarrow so that you don’t need to make a bottom section to catch the sieved compost.

Other potting compost ingredients

Loam

Loam gives the compost mix structure and stops it from slumping (reducing in volume) too much. Loam is a type of soil that has sand, silt and clay in fairly equal amounts.  If you lifted any lawn when you were landscaping or making paths, you may have made some by stacking the turves to rot down under a tarpaulin for at least a year; just sieve it before use. If you don’t have any loam but your topsoil is reasonable, you can sieve some of that instead. If your own topsoil is very sandy or has a lot of clay in it, you may need to buy a bag of loam or balanced topsoil.

Leaf mould

Leaf mould is the best ingredient for adding humus to your potting soil, giving bulk without additional nutrients. It’s easy to make your own leaf mould (article to follow September 2012), but if you don’t have any you can use coir or peat-free soil conditioner from the garden centre. Warning: avoid anything that says it has added nutrients.

Making a potting compost mix

Once your three ingredients have been sieved, mix equal volumes of each in a bucket or wheelbarrow. If you want higher nutrient levels (for example, in square foot gardening) add a tablespoonful of fish, blood and bone meal per bucketful. If the mix is very dry, water it lightly from a can with a fine rose but don’t overdo it. Leave it to stand for half an hour before mixing again.

Your blended potting compost mix is best used immediately, but it can be stored in a plastic bag in cool conditions. We recommend not keeping it for longer than three months, because the nutrient levels will gradually fall.

What to do with compost

Once your compost has been sieved and blended you can use it for everything you’d normally use commercial compost for: container growing, potting plants up, topping up raised beds and square foot gardening. Don’t forget that unless your home-made compost was created using the hot method, there are likely to be viable weed seeds, slug eggs and other such undesirables in it. This isn’t the end of the world: it just means that it behaves exactly like regular garden soil. Keep an eye out for trouble, and you’ll be fine.

Potatoes image courtesy of Jo-H; square foot garden image courtesy of Robert Goodwin

What to do with compost: making your own potting soil mix is a post from: Farm In My Pocket

If you don’t protect new seedlings, seed-sowing can be a hit or miss business. Slugs and snails are the biggest problem for young seedlings, but you can protect tender plants from them using copper tape and bottle cloches. These can be re-used, and will work for as long as they are needed – unlike slug pellets! You can make your own cloches easily enough by cutting rings out of old plastic bottles, and wrapping bright copper tape around the upper edge. You can even use a line of these to protect a row of delicate seedlings like carrots, and if the plastic is tall enough they will keep larger pests like mice out too.

Copper tape from Harrod Horticultural

Unless you take steps to protect young plants from slugs and snails, seed sowing can degenerate into keeping your fingers crossed and hoping that a wandering predator doesn’t encounter your plants for several weeks. If one does, you can be sure it will return the following evening – and so on, until you have a serious problem. At the beginning of the gardening season, whatever you sow will quickly become the tastiest thing around, and any predators in the vicinity are sure to gather for a meal. Then you have to re-sow, and re-sow, and maybe re-sow again, until you eventually get a viable crop – but you’ll have lost weeks of valuable growing time.

Keeping slugs and snails off your seedlings

In fact, protecting your plants is easy. Cut the tops and bottoms off plastic bottles to make a tube. If slugs are the particular problem, wrap a piece of sticky-backed copper tape around the tube near one end. Push the other end into the ground around the seedling, and you have a slug-proof barrier. Contact between slug and snail slime and bright (untarnished) copper generates an electrical current which stops them in their tracks, so they never get to eat your seedlings. And, if the cloche is tall enough, mice can’t get in either.

Cut the top and bottom off a plastic bottle, and add copper tape as a slug barrier

Unfortunately, some slugs live beneath the surface of the earth and come up at night – and if one comes up inside the cloche it must be a bit like tunnelling into a 4-star restaurant. So, a slug patrol or two with a torch in the evening is still a good idea until you’re sure that ‘residents’ such as these have been collected and removed.

Sometimes it’s tempting to leave the cloche in place until the seedling is getting quite large – but be careful. If you leave it in place too long, you’ll damage the plant when you try to remove it. To avoid this, you can cut through the plastic ring when you’re making the bottle cloche, so that it can be opened into a C-shape. This means that it can be lifted away more easily. It takes a bit more care to put these in place, as you have to make sure that there are no gaps that slugs and snails can get through, but another benefit of ‘slit’ cloches is that you can use two or even three to create a ‘super cloche’ that can protect much larger seedlings that might still be a tempting meal – squashes, cucumbers and courgettes, for example.

Two or even three cloches can be used to protect a single plant

Carrots and parsnips

Carrots and parsnips spend a long time as small seedlings, and do much better when they are sown directly into the soil bed rather than into modules. This makes them really vulnerable to slugs and snails. Once they’re bigger it doesn’t matter so much, but if anything takes so much as a single bite out of a very new seedling, it’s over. Bottle cloches, with or without a copper strip, are an excellent way of protecting tiny seedlings such as these.

Plant the seeds directly into the beds, in rows. Then push the cloches down, one after another, along the rows with as little space between them as possible. Almost all the seedlings will then come up inside a cloche. Once they’re big enough to keep going on their own – or, if you need to thin the crop – lift the cloches carefully.

Use rows of cloches to protect direct-sown seedlings

Peas and beans

Peas and all types of bean are substantial enough to be less at risk from slugs and snails, but this makes them popular with birds and with rodents, especially mice. A cloche placed around each one allows them to grow undamaged until the remains of the seeds just aren’t worth it any more. As peas and runners will climb quickly, it’s best to use slit cloches so that they can be removed from the plant without disturbing the stems.

After the crop

Once you’re finished with your bottle cloches, store them in a bag until they’re needed the following year. It’s a good idea to wash them at the start of the season, as they tend to get muddy and this will restrict the amount of light getting to your seedlings. Copper tape is only effective against slugs and snails when it is bright (untarnished), so it doesn’t last forever. When it goes dull it will have to be replaced, although giving it a gentle rub with glasspaper (an ultra-fine grade of sandpaper) is sometimes enough. If you’re gardening in a polytunnel or greenhouse, consider putting a strip of copper tape right around the doorframe – or at least, across the threshold and halfway up the sides. This will prevent new slugs and snails coming in from outside.

Slugs and snails: protecting seedlings with copper tape is a post from: Farm In My Pocket

Light, crisp, floral and with the most amazing aroma, elderflower wine is probably the easiest homemade wine for beginners, and one of the most delicious too. If you’ve made elderflower champagne or cordial before, elderflower wine is the next step – and well worth the effort. Elderflower is one of the most captivating flavours of the English hedgerow, and this recipe keeps the wine base very simple to let those floral notes just sing out.

"I'll have the articles mentioned in the text up in good time. If there's anything you don't see, ask!"

First time winemaker?

If this is your first venture into home winemaking, don’t panic: I’ll provide links with examples of equipment and any special techniques, such as racking, in time for you to use them. As for how much wine to make: when you’re making country wines it takes hardly any more effort to make five gallons than it does to make one. If you’re making five gallons (22.5 litres) use a lidded brewing bin: if you’re making one gallon (4.5 litres) use a demijohn with an airlock.

Elderflower wine recipe ingredients

The quantities below are for 5 gallons, with the quantities for 1 gallon brews given in brackets.

• 110 heads of elderflowers (24 heads)
• 1kg of sultanas (200g)
• 75g of citric acid (15g)
• Wine yeast compound (or yeast nutrient and yeast) as per packet instructions
• 5.5kg granulated sugar (1.1kg)
• Stopper/stabiliser powder

If you can’t get fresh elderflowers you can still make this wine using 100g (20g) of dried elderflowers although the flavour is not so fine. If you can pick the flowers but don’t have the time to actually make the wine, trim them as per step 1 in the recipe below and put them in an airtight plastic container for freezing. Use them straight from frozen.

Equipment (for beginners)

• Brew bin with lid, or demijohn and airlock. Having a second container makes straining much easier
• Sterilising powder
• Super wine yeast compound, or yeast and nutrient
• Straining bag
• Campden tablets
• Stopper/stabiliser
• Syphon tube
• 30 (6) 750ml wine bottles; screw type, or with corks and a corker

Harvesting elderflowers

Elder trees (Sambucus nigra) are very common throughout the UK, and flower in May and June. They produce thousands of tiny off-white flowerlets clustered into distinctive ‘heads’, which are quite aromatic. Don’t confuse elder with the invasive weed ground elder, which doesn’t have the same flavour. At a quick glance the leaves and flowers of ground elder are very similar, hence the name, but it doesn’t have a woody stem. If you can’t see a woody trunk, don’t use it.

Pick the flowers on a warm, dry day when they are fully open, but avoid any that have started to go brown as they have an off-putting bitter taste. As you pick them, give them a gentle shake or tap to dislodge any bugs that may be on board. Otherwise, be gentle with them and use them as quickly as you can. Bruise them or leave them for too long, and they’ll develop a peculiar smell often compared to cat pee, although thankfully this doesn’t persist in the wine.

How to make elderflower wine

1. Give each flower head a quick shake to knock off any remaining bugs, then trim the flowerlets off the stems with a pair of scissors into a sterilised brew bin or food grade plastic tub. You should end up with about 1 pint of trimmed flowerlets for every gallon of wine. Don’t be tempted to use more, or the aroma may become unpleasant.
2. Chop the sultanas up a bit with a sharp knife and add them to the brew bin. If you find this too messy, give them a quick blip in batches in a food processor. You’re not aiming to pulp them, just break the skins.
3. Bring 2 gallons (4 pints for the smaller brew) of water to the boil and add the sugar and citric acid. Stir until it has all dissolved, and pour it over the flowers and sultanas. Put the lid on and leave it overnight for the water to extract most of the sugar from the fruit.
4. Next day, add another gallon (2 pints for the smaller brew) of cold water plus the yeast compound powder (or yeast and yeast nutrient) and the tea. Give the bucket a quick stir. Take care to read the instructions on the yeast, as they vary from type to type: most modern yeasts can be added dry but a few need to be made up as a ‘starter bottle’.
5. Leave the brew for four or five days. There will be an intial rush of fermentation which will push some of the flowers and fruit up in an unappetizing yeasty crust. Stir this back in daily using a ladle or similar implement which has been scalded with boiling water. Make sure that you fit the lid snugly again afterwards.
6. Strain the brew into a second container. On a large scale this means using a straining bag, but on a small scale a nylon sieve will do. Feel free to squeeze the pulp to get as much liquid out as you can and then put the pulp in your compost bin, mixed with other materials.
7. Top the liquid up to 5 gallons (1 gallon for the smaller brew). Once it’s sat for a while you’ll see lots of little bubbles rising to the surface as the yeast converts the sugar to alcohol. Leave it to finish fermentation – about six weeks depending on temperature. Some people like to monitor the progress of their wine with a gadget called a hydrometer (article to follow May 2012), and deliberately stop it early for a sweeter wine – but this isn’t essential.
8. Once the bubbles have stopped and the wine begins to look clear at the top, ‘rack’ it by syphoning or pouring it off the yeasty sediment at the bottom (article to follow June 2012).
9. Stop any further fermentation using campden tablets and stabilising tablets, as per the manufacturer’s instructions.
10. Leave the elderflower wine undisturbed in a cool place to clear. This can be as little as two weeks, but it’s fine to leave it for longer if needs be.
11. Rack the wine again and pour or syphon it into sterilised bottles, and close with the sterilised caps, stoppers or corks (article to follow June 2012). Then label the bottles so you don’t mix it up with future brews.

Your elderflower wine should be ready to drink by Christmas, but like most homebrew wines it needs to be left for a while to develop character. It will be at its best next summer, served ice cold – if any of it survives for long enough!

Other elderflower articles
Other homebrew and winemaking articles

Featured image courtesy of Girl Interrupted Eating on Flickr

Elderflower wine recipe – one step beyond champagne and cordial is a post from: Farm In My Pocket

If you’d to grow strawberries for a fresh, juicy crop a month or even six weeks before they’re ripe outside, try growing some in a polytunnel. While most strawberries are referred to as ‘June-bearers’ as that’s when they fruit, you can be eating them in May – or even April!

If the last few wet summers have made a dent in your anticipated strawberry crop, so that instead of harvesting nice ripe berries you find blobs of grey mould instead, it’s definitely time to think of a polytunnel or greenhouse. That way, you control the rain – and you get a seriously extended strawberry growing season.

Picked on April 21 - our first strawberry of the year

Order the plants

For the very earliest strawberries

If your goal is to produce the earliest possible harvest, try ‘Mae’, available from Unwins. Considered to be the earliest fruiting variety on the market today, they’re very, very tasty, too. Plant them in September so that they establish a really good root system before things cool down too much, following the planting guide below. If you’re determined to push the envelope even further, plant them in the spring but don’t let them flower at all in their first year. By the following spring they’ll be really well developed and raring to go!

For an extended strawberry season

Strawberries grown under cover are far more reliable than outdoor fruits in a bad summer. If you want to grow strawberries for the longest possible time, you also need a mid- to late-season cropper. ‘Cambridge Favourite’, also available from Unwins, does well under a wide range of conditions and is an excellent choice for a maincrop.

And, to extend the crop…

Finally, if you have the space, put in some ‘day neutral’ plants. These are also known as ‘everbearers’ and although the taste and texture aren’t quite as good as regular strawberries, they’ll crop on and off until the frosts. Unwins ‘Finesse’ will fruit right through until early September. Flower stems on everbearer plants should be removed until early June, after which they can be left to develop fruit. Finesse produces very few runners, so more of the energy gets diverted into fruit production.

Preparing the ground

Strawberries prefer a well drained somewhat acidic soil but will tolerate the same pH level that many other vegetables thrive in. Just don’t add lime or wood ash. Add compost at least a couple of weeks before planting, and top-water it regularly to help incorporate it into the existing soil.

How to grow strawberries

It’s so easy to grow strawberries, and they’re just so delicious that even a few plants are well worth it. If you plant strawberries in autumn, you will get a crop the following year. If you have to plant in the spring, then it’s best to clip off the flower stems to divert energy to the root system, otherwise you risk exhausting the plant. If you remove the flowers you won’t get any berries that year, but the following year you’ll have loads – and they’ll start slightly earlier than on plants set out the previous autumn.

Strawberries have a ‘crown’, where the roots meet. They somehow remind me of a squid – a mass of tentacles, and a body. Ideally, create a small cone-shaped mound in the bed, the peak of which should be at ground level. Spread the roots around the cone, then fill it in so that the crown itself is neither buried, nor higher than the surrounding earth.

A mulch – straw is ideal – should be spread around each plant as it grows, but before fruit begins to develop. This will prevent excessive water loss in warmer weather – particularly important when growing in a polytunnel – and also stop the berries from coming into contact with the ground which may cause them to mould before becoming ripe enough to pick.

A straw mulch means less watering and more fruit!

For the same reason, take care to only water around the plants rather than directly on them, and let them dry before picking any fruit. Otherwise you risk spreading mould spores.

Pollination is key

If the flowers don’t get pollinated, you don’t get fruit. Make sure pollinating insects such as bees and hover flies can get in to the polytunnel. A net across the door with a mesh of around 1.5cms will keep butterflies out, while allowing the good guys inside – and back out again.

While you can pollinate the flowers with a paintbrush, you really don't want to

The harvest

While it’s tempting to pick the fruit as soon as it begins to turn red, the sugar content soars if they’re left to become…perfect. So, try to resist the temptation. The difference a day makes is well worth it – just make sure the plants are dry when you pick.

Propagation

Propagating strawberries is so easy that you shouldn’t need to buy them more than once. They are perennials and should give a much bigger harvest in years two and three, after which the level drops.

However, strawberries put out runners – lots of runners – on which are tiny plants. In doing so, they divert energy away from the parent plant. So, in year three, allow one or two runners to develop on the best plants, but only let them bear a single plantlet on each runner. This should be rooted in a pot while still attached to the parent, and only separated when it’s able to grow on by itself. Then you can plant them in the autumn in a fresh bed.

Cut the rest of the runners off regularly, or you’ll have a very difficult task cleaning up the bed later in the year.

After the harvest

Once the crop is finished, cut the leaves down to around 5cms then gather and dispose of the cuttings. This helps reduce the level of mould, and any other diseases, in the following year. It also means you can pull back the mulch (which should be replaced annually) without damaging anything, allowing you to add some compost around the plants well before the next crop is due.

Storage

Strawberries should be eaten fresh, and preferably without refrigerating them. While they don’t store as fresh fruit, they can be processed into jam, dried, canned or frozen.

Here’s one to try: put some in a blender, add a little lemon juice (and sugar if needed) and…blend them to a sludge! Then freeze in ‘ice lolly’ moulds, complete with sticks. Kids will love them! You can also add banana, apple or any other fruit you like.

More soon…

Here in Wales we’re hoping for a crop that puts those of last year (and the year before that!) in the shade. We’ll keep track of how things go and post the results on FIMP. So, if you’re interested in finding out more about a year in the life of a new strawberry crop in a polytunnel, why not follow us on Facebook?

Grow strawberries in a polytunnel for really early crops is a post from: Farm In My Pocket

Choosing the right compost bin can be confusing, simply because there are so many of them. To simplify things, ask yourself ‘How much will I be composting at a time?’ ‘Do I need to hot-compost?’ and ‘Do I want to compost food waste?’ and then take a look at the popular bin types below.

Dalek compost bins – simple, low-cost composting

If you only have a small plot and are content to make cold compost, a dalek bin may be for you. These get their nickname from their shape and black colour (although there are square and rectangular versions around too), and are the most common type of compost bin in the UK. Dalek bins are so cheap to make that councils have been known to give them away free, or offer them at a special low rate. You can find out if your council has an offer on by visiting DirectGov.

Dalek bins come with or without sliding front access hatches, but frankly it makes no difference – getting compost out of the little door is extremely fiddly. Since there’s no bottom on these bins and they weigh hardly anything, it’s usually easier to lift the whole thing off the ground leaving the compost behind.

Unless you set it up on hard standing or provide a mesh base, rats or mice may temporarily set up home in them, especially in winter. However, provided you stay clear of the ‘do not compost’ items, they shouldn’t stay for long. Just get the mix right, put the material in in layers, and leave it alone. As composting gets under way the material in the bin gradually shrinks, leaving more room for you to add fresh material on top. Once it is full, lift the bin off and put it down in a suitable spot nearby. Fork any uncomposted material off the top of the exposed heap into the bin to start the new heap.

By the way, if your council runs a ‘free dalek bin’ offer, do get one. Even if it’s not suitable for your composting needs, dalek bins are perfect for making leaf mould.

Green Johannas and other large simple compost bins

If you produce a bit too much composting material to use a dalek bin, larger versions exist too. Some of these come with a base to make them rodent-proof, which means that you can compost cooked food waste in them too. A good example is the Green Johanna, which is quite a bit bigger than most bins and has a strong perforated base plate, making it completely rodent proof. The larger size means that it can be used for hot composting as well as cold, and you can buy an optional (but pricey) insulating ‘duvet’ if you want to keep your compost going during the winter. The one drawback to a Green Johanna is that you can’t lift it out of the way like a dalek bin – you have to use the hatch to get the compost out, which is quite fiddly.

New Zealand compost boxes

New Zealand boxes are a clever variation of a large simple composting bin that make composting large volumes of material very practical. They are actually two or three box-shaped lidded bins, usually made of wood, joined together with removable boards making up the front side.

The New Zealand box works like a compost conveyor belt. You start your compost heap at one end, adding material in layers as usual, and when it is time to turn it you just shovel everything into the next bin. This is made easier because you can remove the boards at the front one at a time. When the contents of the second chamber are ready to turn again you shovel them into the third bin, by which time they should have cooled down and can be left there to mature.

New Zealand boxes can be bought ready-made and are very simple to put together, but you can also make your own. There are some rather confusing composter plans at Garden Organic, and a much more robust version on the Food For Health Scotland website (which sadly omits the need for lids). Whatever you do DON’T buy a box made from treated timber. Manufacturers are keen to deliver a long-lasting product, and aren’t too bothered about what toxins may end up in the compost you make.

Tumbler compost bins

A compost tumbler is a box or barrel-shaped container raised up on a framework that allows it to be rotated. It is designed specifically for hot composting. You add ingredients in the same mixture as usual, but you don’t need to worry about layering them. Just spin the bin a few times every day, and it mixes the compost for you making sure that there are no dry edges or unmixed corners. This may seem like a lot of work, but it’s MUCH easier than turning a heap with a fork! Tumblers are also vermin proof, so you can add cooked food without worrying about it.

Tumbler compost bins are used to take a batch of compost through the hot phase of the process in as little as three weeks. At the end of this process you empty the bin, ready for the next batch to go in. Made properly, the compost it produces should be free of viable weed seeds and diseases, but it’s still not finished. It needs to rest for a few months to allow worms, fungi and minibeasts to turn it into the lovely crumbly material we’re all used to seeing. This means putting it into a regular compost bin, with a lid or cover to keep the rain out, for a few months. Alternatively, immature compost can be spread on the surface of the soil as a mulch so that it can finish composting there, but it shouldn’t be dug in.

Compost tumblers are not always the easiest things to load or empty, so take a good look at the design before you buy – you need a good, wide opening that isn’t too high to load into. It’s also worth mentioning that although tumblers are only used for hot compost, most of the ones on the market are not insulated. This is fine in high summer, but most of them don’t hold enough compost to stay really hot at cooler times of the year. This seriously limits their use, so make sure you get one that’s described as insulated or double-walled. If not, you will need to buy or make an insulating compost jacket (also called a compost duvet) to compost in cooler conditions.

Bokashi compost bins

Bokashi bins are not a complete composting solution, but they are a good strategy to cope with kitchen waste if space is limited. They are very popular with urban homesteaders, and with people who want to compost their kitchen waste but don’t want the work of making hot compost.

Bokashi bin, with tap to remove liquor

The basic idea is that you sprinkle ‘Bokashi mix’ (bran, inoculated with a patented ‘Effective Microorganism’ culture) over your food waste in a small bin, the size of a compost caddy. Over the next several weeks the food, instead of rotting, undergoes a controlled fermentation right there in the bin. Each time you produce more waste it is added to the top and sprinkled with more of the Bokashi mix, and when the bin is full you put it away for a couple of weeks to finish fermenting. You need a second bin to use in the meantime. When the Bokashi bins have rested for two weeks they won’t contain finished compost, but the food will have broken down to the point where it will no longer attract vermin. This means that it can safely be buried or added to your regular compost heap.

Bokashi bins have a yeasty, fruity odour which is evident whenever you lift the lid to add more material. The smell should never be unpleasant, but problems can occur if you don’t follow the instructions carefully. The crucial point to avoid bad smells is that the food waste should be chopped up, and then pressed down fully to compact it so that the air can’t get at it.

Bokashi systems can be expensive to start with, but you can also make your own out of food grade plastic tubs, such as ice cream containers or food grade buckets.

Worm bins

Worm bins are an alternative means of turning food waste into highly concentrated compost. The amount of material they can deal with depends on the size of the bin. For a simple version that is free to make, visit our tyre stack composter article.

Other compost articles

Compost bins compared: which type is best for you? is a post from: Farm In My Pocket

Garlic is easy to grow and virtually pest-free, so it’s well worth giving it some space – especially in a polytunnel or greenhouse. Elephant garlic in particular is an excellent ‘cash crop’ which can fetch around £5 for a single bulb. You can save some of your harvest to plant again for next year, so don’t be put off by the price from suppliers. Supermarket garlic may not grow so well in the UK climate, and you risk bringing pests or disease into your garden.

Elephant garlic is not a true garlic but more closely related to leeks, even though it’s almost identical to garlic in terms of appearance – but much, much bigger! A good bulb can weigh close to a kilo.

Garlic and elephant garlic can be grown outside in the UK, but it’s no coincidence that most of the domestic garlic that you’ll find for sale in gardening catalogues comes from the Isle of Wight. This, of course, is because of the climate. The problem is that if the plants get too much water at the wrong time then instead of ‘bulbing up’ they begin to grow again, forming a clump of small, crowded plants like chives.

However, in a polytunnel or greenhouse, you control the watering. And, as both give you an extended gardening season, garlic grown under cover will be harvested in plenty of time to replant the beds for winter.

Two rows of elephant garlic in a polytunnel, early spring

Don’t plant garlic bought on your shopping trips. It’s always a bad idea to grow shop-bought produce for a variety of reasons, chief among these being the potential for bringing pest or disease problems into your garden. Also, shop-bought garlic varieties may not be suitable for the UK climate.

Planting garlic

Individual cloves of garlic or elephant garlic should be planted in late October or November, so that they can get going before the serious frosts arrive. Garlic can be planted in spring too, but it won’t grow as big or be ready as early as overwintered plants. The soil in your garlic bed should be well drained and reasonably fertile. Garlic loves the sun, so plant them where they will get as much as possible. As garlic doesn’t take up much space, it can be used as a ‘filler’ crop here and there, where its scent may confuse and deter pests searching for other crops such as carrots.

Plant individual cloves of elephant garlic 15-20cms apart, in rows 20cm apart. ‘Regular’ garlic is done the same way, but 8-10cms apart in rows 10cms apart. Don’t push them into the earth as this compacts the soil where the roots are going to develop. Instead, dig a small hole with a fork and place the clove into it, leaving just the tip poking out of the ground. Don’t rub off any more of the papery covering than you have to, as it protects the bulb while growth gets going.  After planting, give the bed a sprinkle of bonemeal to encourage strong root development, and check the bed every few days in case birds have uprooted any of the cloves.

Growing garlic

Elephant garlic will put out a flower stem (or ‘scape’) in May and these should be snapped off as soon as they’re recognized – and then turned in to pesto! Regular garlic is much less likely to flower, but if it does, give it the same treatment. Flower development takes a lot of energy, and you want it all to go into the bulbs.

Towards June, both varieties will begin to die back. It’s important to reduce watering from this point on. The leaves will turn yellow as their energy is drawn down into the development of nice, fat cloves. Elephant garlic dies back less, and the bulbs should usually be lifted before the leaves have died back very substantially. If you wait too long, the plant will be off and growing again. Lift them by carefully levering them out with a fork.

Harvesting and storing garlic

Harvest garlic and elephant garlic in June in a polytunnel or greenhouse, and July or August outside. Cut off the main stem a few centimeters above the bulb and leave it to cure in the same way as onions, i.e. in a warm, dry environment. Any residual moisture may cause them to rot in storage, but properly cured garlic can last for a year or even longer. Don’t forget to keep some of your biggest, fattest cloves to plant again in the autumn for next year’s crop. Garlic, especialy elephant garlic, is something that you should only have to buy once!

Bulbs should be allowed to cure until completely dry, or they will rot in storage

The flavour of regular garlic needs no introduction. Although similar, elephant garlic is much milder and sweeter, and should be added to dishes towards the end cooking. For a real treat, roast whole cloves in their paper jackets, nip off the tops and squeeze them out onto fresh bread like toothpaste. Or, strip the paper off and roast them whole alongside other root veg until they are caramelised and delicious. Allow a couple of cloves per person – you won’t be disappointed!

Pests and diseases

Like onions, garlic is prone to rust which can become worse each season. Don’t allow any volunteer plants to grow in an affected area, and don’t grow any alliums in an infected bed for at least three years. In the shelter of a tunnel or greenhouse, onion fly is unlikely to be a problem.

Garlic and Elephant Garlic is a post from: Farm In My Pocket

Nettle beer has been a popular country drink for centuries. There are two basic recipe types – with malt, and without – so here are good examples of each, kept simple for beginners. This is the first home brew of spring made from fresh ingredients, and a welcome reminder that warm weather is on the way.

Harvesting nettles

You need quite large quantities of nettles to make nettle beer, but thankfully they’re a common weed so there is never any shortage of them. They become bitter when they’re well established, so for the best taste pick only the young tips – just two sets of leaves and the growing point. There’s no need to remove the stalks. The nettles should be gathered in the middle of spring, just as the weather warms up, wearing rubber gloves to prevent stings. Because weighing them is difficult (if not downright hazardous) I’ve stuck to the common measure of quantity – the plastic carrier bag full.

unmalted nettle beer

Nettle beer – unmalted version

Technically this brew isn’t a beer at all (because there’s no malt in it), but it’s very easy to make and thus more popular than the malted version. The result is a crisp-tasting light green brew not unlike cider, best served cold, that is ready to drink in just a couple of weeks. I like to add a little root ginger to bring out the flavour, but it isn’t essential.

To make one gallon (4.5L) of nettle beer:

• 1 carrier bag nearly full of nettle tips
• 600g sugar
• one lemon
• 20g cream of tartar
• a sachet of beer yeast
• 10g root ginger, chopped and bruised (optional)

Put the nettle tips into a large saucepan along with the root ginger and the juice and grated rind of the lemon. Pour over 7 pints (4 litres) of water, and bring it to the boil. Simmer the liquid for about 30 minutes, and then leave it until it is cool enough to handle. Strain off the nettles – a straining bag is good for this but you can just lift out most of the leaves with tongs and then pour it through a colander if you prefer.

Add the sugar and cream of tartar to the liquid and heat it gently, stirring all the time, until the sugar has dissolved. Pour it into a sterilised brew bin or clean, food grade plastic tub, top it up to one gallon (4.5L) with cold water. Leave it until it has cooled down to around 20°C before adding the yeast. Some yeasts have to be ‘activated’ in sugar water beforehand, but some can just be scattered on the surface of the brew. The instructions should be on the pack.

Stand the brew in a warm place for three or four days to get going, and then skim off any froth before pouring it into sterilised bottles, as described in our elderflower champagne recipe. Keep an eye on the pressure, and your nettle beer should be ready to drink in as little as seven days – just chill it when you think the sweetness is about right.

Nettle beer – malted version

A bit messier to make than the unmalted version, and amber rather than green in the glass. The taste is warm, rounded and malty with a fine nettle finish and distinctive herby aroma. Once again, best served cold. By the way you can use ordinary malt extract which is available from health stores and high street pharmacies, but make sure you buy the one without cod liver oil. If you like the brew and decide to scale up, it’s well worth buying brewing malt extracts, which have a superior flavour.

malted nettle beer

To make one gallon (4.5L) of nettle beer:

• 1 carrier bag nearly full of nettle tips
• 450g (1lb) malt extract
• 225g (½lb) sugar
• a sachet of beer yeast

History of nettle beer

These days almost all beers are flavoured with hops, but you might be surprised to learn that it wasn’t always so. In fact, hopped beer has only been popular in the UK for the last five hundred years – less than a quarter of the time that we’ve been brewing. Before hops took hold, beers were flavoured with herb mixes known as ‘gruit’ which could contain any number of things, including bog myrtle, mugwort, heather, ground ivy and henbane. The Celts may have used nettles for making nettle beer as far back as the Bronze Age but there’s no way to know, since they didn’t keep written records!

Nettle beer: celtic home brew for beginners is a post from: Farm In My Pocket