Unearthing edible treasures on the plot | Allan Jenkins

A return to the allotment after a few weeks’ absence gives a chance to take stock and revel in the sense of calm

The prodigal returns after five weeks away. The plot’s thickened. Saturday, 6am, I am relieved and contrite, but feeling guilty. No matter what my (good) reasons, I have neglected this place. And at peak summer growing time, too. I am concerned the plot will punish me, won’t understand. My theory is that what works with a vegetable garden is sustained attention. With meadow and some flowering spaces less so.

I turn a corner and there it is. In all its low-sun, high-summer splendour. The sunflowers are tall, the red orache towering, the chicories have bolted and branched into blue flower. I am mostly here to say hello, but also to lift the potatoes. I need the bed for chicories, late-summer salads and hardy leaf.

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Eight top tips for off-grid living Nottingham Estate Agents

Living off-grid is that great dream of self-sufficiency which burns strongly in many people. Here, OnTheMarket looks at how you can make it a reality. Off-grid living explained Why be reliant on state-run utilities for water and electricity when, with a bit of effort, you can generate your own? Why drive to a supermarket to […]

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The Observer view on Tory fantasies about planning | Observer editorial

Robert Jenrick’s white paper will do little to solve the housing shortage

With the Town and Country Planning Act 1947, the Attlee government nationalised development rights. That is, whatever benefits that might come from developing land belong in principle to the public. When planning permission is granted, a portion of those rights is transferred to a landowner.

This gives government a lever that can be used for the public good. A vast quantity of latent wealth comes from the fact that planning consent can increase the value of land – according to one study, by a stupendous 275 times. The most realistic way of funding the genuinely affordable housing that this country needs is from sharing this windfall.

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How to control aphids in your garden | Alys Fowler

Hoverfly larvae devour blackfly, so welcome them by planting the umbels they love

I’m not sure about your garden, but mine has been awash with blackfly (Aphis fabae) this year. They started on their namesake, the broad beans, hopped over the nasturtiums and are now having fun on the runner beans and numerous flowers, from chrysanthemums to dahlias. I’ve been patiently waiting for the ladybird larvae to deal with them, but they are late this year; I assume the wet winter decimated overwinter adults.

Thus my joy at finding hoverfly larvae hoovering up aphids is palpable. The larvae of the pretty, gossamer-winged hoverfly are a broad church of diners. Some like to eat plants and others are predatory, feeding on micromoth larvae, plant lice and scale insects. However, about 40% of the UK species (there are 165) like to eat a lot of aphids.

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Don't add water: be inspired to plant a beautiful dry garden

As temperatures rise, could gravel gardens, such as Derek Jarman’s pioneering creation in Dungeness, be the answer to long, dry spells?

In the summer of 1990, Britain’s two most influential gardeners, the late Beth Chatto and Christopher Lloyd, were picnicking on the sun-baked coast of Dungeness, when they stumbled into a garden. It had no boundary: wildflowers drifted in like flotsam from the tide, arranged enticingly around a tarred timber cottage in the company of shimmering helichrysum and cotton lavender. “I made a beeline for that colour,” Lloyd later reflected, and the two wandered through, elated, scribbling notes and marvelling at plants thriving in the scorched shingle. “How surprised we were when the door opened and Derek Jarman stepped out,” Lloyd wrote. The film-maker, who lived at Dungeness until his death in 1994, was equally surprised by his esteemed trespassers, and welcomed them into Prospect Cottage.

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How to control aphids in your garden | Alys Fowler

Hoverfly larvae devour blackfly, so welcome them by planting the umbels they love

I’m not sure about your garden, but mine has been awash with blackfly (Aphis fabae) this year. They started on their namesake, the broad beans, hopped over the nasturtiums and are now having fun on the runner beans and numerous flowers, from chrysanthemums to dahlias. I’ve been patiently waiting for the ladybird larvae to deal with them, but they are late this year; I assume the wet winter decimated overwinter adults.

Thus my joy at finding hoverfly larvae hoovering up aphids is palpable. The larvae of the pretty, gossamer-winged hoverfly are a broad church of diners. Some like to eat plants and others are predatory, feeding on micromoth larvae, plant lice and scale insects. However, about 40% of the UK species (there are 165) like to eat a lot of aphids.

Continue reading...

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Don't add water: be inspired to plant a beautiful dry garden

As temperatures rise, could gravel gardens, such as Derek Jarman’s pioneering creation in Dungeness, be the answer to long, dry spells?

In the summer of 1990, Britain’s two most influential gardeners, the late Beth Chatto and Christopher Lloyd, were picnicking on the sun-baked coast of Dungeness, when they stumbled into a garden. It had no boundary: wildflowers drifted in like flotsam from the tide, arranged enticingly around a tarred timber cottage in the company of shimmering helichrysum and cotton lavender. “I made a beeline for that colour,” Lloyd later reflected, and the two wandered through, elated, scribbling notes and marvelling at plants thriving in the scorched shingle. “How surprised we were when the door opened and Derek Jarman stepped out,” Lloyd wrote. The film-maker, who lived at Dungeness until his death in 1994, was equally surprised by his esteemed trespassers, and welcomed them into Prospect Cottage.

Continue reading...

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