Last week I attended the Fountainbridge/Craiglockhart Green group meeting with guest speaker Melissa Viguier, waste aware education officer in the council.
Yesterday, the RBGE practical horticulture course covered propagation by seed. Didn’t seem to warrant a whole day, and we were away by 3:30. Saw demonstrations of how to sow seed in trays, cleaned seed from a lucky dip (bad news is that I go viburnum, but did get some Iris from another student), planted out some peas in the student beds. Best thing learned: how to make a seed envelope. Neither of these seed envelopes is the one I learned.
Which reminds me: Went to the NVA/RBGE spirit show on Friday night and learned to fold a chrysanthemum. Highly recommended — it’s on until the start of March.
Last bit of paper folding: a newspaper planter for seeds that grow tall, like beans.
Edward Tufte does it again! In Elegant water drainage methods, he states that the physics of drainage revolve around the hard fact that the erosive power of water is proportional to the fifth power of the water’s velocity. A couple of nice photos too.
SG and CEC and flood protection …
Can’t recall why I started getting interested in seaweed as a green manure, although it came up in conversation on Monday night. One of my colleagues was talking about taking a cycle ride along the seafront from Edinburgh out to Seaton Sands, which opens up the possibility for doing a run out to collect a trailerful of the stuff.
Seaweeds and their uses, Chapman and Chapman. CEC Central Lending Library, shelfmark QK567. Technical book; reporting and links to research; graphs and tables; relatively old.
Mostly brown algae, wracks and oarweed has been used as manure. Driftweed or cut rockweed. It’s mainly used close to the coast as seaweed is approx. 90 percent water. High potash content (K) so good for plants that require high K: roots and fruit, esp. blackcurrants. Low in phosphate so must add it if seaweed used exclusively for long time.
| N | Phosphoric acid | K | Salt | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| wet weed | 11 | 2 | 27 | 35 |
| manure | 11 | 6 | 15 | - |
Advantage of being free from weeds and fungi.
Seasonal variation: research shows higher content of minerals around March; lowest around October.
So … it’s actually seaweed as a brown manure. Quite different from getting well-rotted manure from Gorgie City Farm at £2 per bag. Telephone 0131 337 4202.
Organic Gardening; Plant life of Edinburgh and the Lothians; A Scot’s Herbal; Joy Larkom: all these references seem to indicate that seaweed is full of trace elements and so is useful for poor soil but doesn’t make much difference on good soil.
Blackcurrants are going well: 5 pounds and counting, and I was talking with a neighbour today who reckoned that the 3 bushes could provide 40 lbs if managed well. I’ve left it too late this year and there’s a lot of currants that have fallen on the ground, so here’s to next year.
Still been able to eat blackcurrants fresh in fruit salad and with ice cream. Made a great cordial, some compote and I’ve frozen some currants whole.
Everything you want to know about powered juicers, from Ethical Juicers. and their recommendation is to use a low-speed gear juicer, or a go-juice manual juicer.
Have been removing some of the planks and other furniture bit at a time. Lifted one reclaimed uPVC window frame and stacked it by the entrance, and a couple of minutes later a frog popped out of the void at one end. Another one popped out when I examined the piece. I’m pleased I hadn’t immediately thrown the frames in the big wheelie bin, and I guess this is the same throughout the whole garden. Those frogs were happily hidden in the frame and now they’ll move back up the plot. Next time I clear a metre of allotment, they’ll head a little further back. Now if I had just strimmed the whole lot…
