Book review: The Deckchair Gardener

The Deckchair Gardener: an improper gardening manual, Anne Wareham.

As someone who is now trying to garden with a chronic illness (ME), I'm always on the lookout for ideas on how I might reduced what I need to do in the garden, so I can just focus my very limited energy on what I enjoy. So when I heard about Anne Wareham's new book, The Deckchair Gardener, which says that it is for:

gardening avoidance and sensible advice on your realistic chances of getting away with it

I thought it sounded like might have some useful pointers. And it does.

The introduction describes how to become a deckchair gardener, including the difficult but necessary need to unlearn the 'rules' of gardening. The rest of the book is then split up into the four seasons, 'what not to do in Spring', etc, giving examples of so-called gardening advice and truisms and then challenging them.

Anne questions the many 'gardening jobs' we are told to do, whether in garden magazines or on gardening programmes such as Gardeners World. This is a really good point. Do we really need to do all these tasks? Cleaning out pots*, aerating the lawn, deadheading daffodils, hardening plants off, raking dead leaves off the lawn, the list goes on. Oh, a special mention for the 'expert' suggestion that you should dig up your parsnips and leeks in winter, only to just to move them to a trench in another bed by a convenient path. What?! One, no. Two, plan your veg garden so that all the paths are convenient. Three, no.

Anne advocates that lazy is good. And there is a lot of smarts about being 'lazy' and cutting out unnecessary work. For instance, deadheading daffodils. Anne points out that none of the daffodil flowers in the countryside are ever deadheaded, yet they continue to flower profusely year after year. I'd not thought of it that way before, and this is well observed. It was a struggle to not deadhead my daffodils this year, as I'm so used to doing it. So I compromised and only deadheaded those in pots, not those in the ground. I hope to graduate to no deadheading of all daffodils next year.

Hardening plants off is another good example of Anne's challenges. I've never done this because I couldn't be bothered, even in my pre-ME days. But I also felt guilty about not doing it because the experts were always telling us we should. Yes, guilty even though I never had any problems with plants that went straight from the greenhouse to the soil! That's the power of experts. Anne reminds us that the weather isn't predictable, it doesn't just slowly get warm, rather is warm, cool, frosty, warm etc, and that therefore constantly moving plants outside and then back inside is a lot of work. Instead, don't grow tender plants and if you do, just have some fleece on standby for a frosty night. Much less work. No more guilt.

What made me laugh frequently when reading the book, was Anne's ongoing fervour for mulching. Basically, if in doubt, mulch. Generally with woodchip, but gravel also works. Yes, our favourite garden enemy might like to 'hide' woodchips, but I know from experience that slugs will 'hide' anywhere. Including up the walls on onto my trays of young plants, munching them down to a tiny remaining stalk. You won't stop them by not mulching. The benefits of mulching outweigh any concerns though. Because mulching reduces weeds and watering, two time and energy consuming tasks. Anne is right, mulching makes sense and is the deckchair-loving way to go.

As well as challenging conventional 'wisdom', Anne offers a couple of suggestions for specialist gardens that I think could be really useful for those who would like to garden, but are limited by an illness or disability. One was a grasses garden, limiting yourself to one variety of grass, along with adding bulbs for Spring interest, which is when grasses have been cut back and waiting to regrow. But the one I really liked was the gravel garden.

Now, anyone following my blog will know that in my previous garden, for the kitchen garden I had put in raised beds, laid down membrane and added shale to the paths, so I didn't have to do any path weed maintenance (it worked). So why was it a gravel garden that particularly caught my attention, given that's pretty much what I had been doing? Because I only thought of it in relation to paths, not in relation to a garden as a whole.

I seem to always end up with gardens that have heavy clay. The standard view is to dig and add in good compost etc. Do some more digging, add more and more compost. Repeat for 20 years. Anne spoke to Derry Watkins of Special Plants who has a gravel garden. Plants are added straight from their pots, with all the compost attached, into about 20cms deep of gravel. That's it. Now that is low energy practical lazy gardening if you ask me. If someone running a successful nursery can do it, we all can.

Anne advocates 'no dig' gardening, as does Charles Dowding who has been experimenting with dig vs no dig for several years. I've been a fan of no dig for years. Just thinking about digging is exhausting. No dig gravel gardening, it's the way to go.

This is just a few of the many examples of what not to do in the garden so you can instead enjoy your deckchair. Or how to do the least and get away with it. One of the most important points Anne makes is to 'be skeptical', including of what she says. Question everything you read or are told you are supposed to do. Is it just creating more work? From the perspective of someone with a limited energy for her garden, this has been a really useful reminder.

There are some areas where we part company. I would never use glyphosate or any weedkiller in the garden. It poisons the soil, gets into the ecosystem, rivers etc. I'd stick to Anne's mulch idea, only first put down good quality mypex (permeable membrane), mulch with something heavy like shale or gravel, then cut holes to plant through it. This is a case where a bit more work is warranted, and gravel/shale fits into Anne's gravel garden idea, so it's not far off being lazy!

This aside, I loved this book. I started reading this book about six weeks ago. It's an easy read, but because I wanted to write a review, it took me more time and energy (coz ME) to do so. What I have noticed is that since I started reading it, I've found myself questioning many gardening tasks. Quite a number have been removed from my to do list. I gained a lot from this book, but my number one take-away from the book, 'do I have to?' has become my mantra. I'm now much more bolshie about not bothering with all these so-called essential tasks. I think that's a pretty good indication on how useful I found this book.

At the beginning of the book Anne says that it isn't for 'proper gardeners'. I disagree. I think proper gardeners could learn a thing or two from Anne's wisdom. I'd add that this is a really useful book for those who would like to garden, but who have limitations such as a chronic illness. It helps you focus on what is essential, so you use your limited energy wisely.

Anne's book gives you 'permission' to be a lazy gardener. I say huzzah! Bring out the deckchairs.


*I had already been freed from this task after reading Charles Dowding's Gardening Myths and Misconceptions.


Disclaimer: I 'know' Anne via Twitter, but purchased this book myself as it appeared to cover a topic I was interested in.

Book review: The Small Harvest Notebook. Volume 1.

Emma Cooper, author of several gardening books including The Alternative Kitchen Garden, an A-Z and Jade Peals and Alien Eyeballs, as well as her informative blog The Unconventional Gardener, has just published her latest book, The Small Harvest Notebook (volume 1).

The book is refreshing in several ways. First and foremost, it does not assume you have acres, a walled garden, or even an allotment. In fact it's raison d'etre is that it assumes you only have a small garden, maybe even only a couple of window sills. It understands that with gardens becoming increasingly smaller, they are often required to meet several needs within a limited space. Not just a space to grow, but also a space to relax, to enjoy wildlife, and even allow room for children to play football.

This is also a very easy to read book and you don't need to read the whole thing in one go, rather you can dip into the relevant month for some inspiration. There is also a chapter on the Lost Crops of the Incas, introducing us to several new, old crops, such as Oca, Ulluco, Mashua and Yacón.

The aim of book is to encourage people to not feel the need to grow for self-sufficiency and gluts, but to eat seasonally and grow for diversity and interest. It breaks each month of the year into a season, such as January - mid Winter, February - late Winter, etc. It then discusses a crop to consider growing for that month/season, as well as offering some alternatives. It does not aim to be a comprehensive book, listing every single fruit, vegetable or herb that can be grown in each period; there are plenty of gardening books that already go into this detail. Rather, it offers a glimpse of the edible growing possibilities, and encourages you to think about what you really like and might want to grow.

So May (late Spring) focuses on sprouting Broccoli, then offers alternatives such as wok brocc, perennial broccoli and oriental broccoli. June (early Summer) highlights Beetroot, reminding us that you can eat both the leaf (like chard) and the roots, and suggests red-veined sorrel or Ulluco if you want to try something different. October (mid Autumn) discusses garlic (my favourite!) and introduced me to an alternative, Society Garlic, Tulbaghia violacea, which I now just have to try. Apparently the stems and flower heads offer a sweet, roasted garlic flavour, and it sounds like something I'd like to throw into a stir fry.

I only have a couple of minor quibbles with the book. Firstly, and maybe this is my age showing, but I thought the font could be slightly larger. It fits a lot in a 78-page book, and as Emma has self-published it, perhaps a smaller font was a way to reduce costs. If there was a way to not expensively increase the font in the next volume, well that would be grand.

The book contains chapters on 'Seed sowing basics', 'Planning a garden on a budget' and 'Small harvest techniques'. These are really helpful chapters, but for some reason they are mixed in between Late Winter and Early Spring, Late Summer and Early Autumn and Late Autumn and Early Winter respectively. I felt they would have been better included at the start of the book, to help set the scene when growing for small harvests. However, these are minor points, and in no way detract from the usefulness and inspiration that the book offers.

Who is it for? Obviously it's for those new to gardening and growing their own food. But it's also a useful book for helping experienced gardeners who want or need to downsize (me!), or whom have only grown ornamentals until now and want to explore options for adding edibles into the mix. And it also offers experienced growers an alternative perspective on what you might grow and why.

The book is a well-written and engaging introduction to growing small. It's a sampler to whet the appetite, to encourage you to sit back a think about how you can grow edibles in a small space, rather than make you feel you need to rush off to try and become self-sufficient within a year.

At the moment the book is only available on Amazon in paperback, as there are limited options when you are self-publishing. So this meant I had to break my general Amazon boycott. But it was worth it. This is the first volume in a series, and I look forward to reading the next book.


* * * * *
Disclosure: although I 'know' Emma on Twitter and through her blog, and we have often chatted about a number of gardening topics, I purchased the book and undertook this review without her knowledge, as an interested fellow gardener.

Reflections: Gardening Myths and Misconceptions

Gardening Myths and Misconceptions, by Charles Dowding

The following is not so much a book review as some reflections from reading this book. I recommend you visit Helen over at Patient Gardener, who has written a very insightful review of this book. It is what encouraged me to purchase this book in the first place.

What I wanted to do instead, was pick out a few things from the book that I found particularly useful to me, and explain why I think this book is a 'must read' for every gardener.

When I first became interested in gardening, I will admit that I did take 'expert' opinions to heart. Whether it was advice from Gardeners World TV show or magazine, or from other gardeners on my allotment site, I assumed that they all knew better than me. So when I was told to space my seed sowings to the 'correct' centimetre, or that I really must use bordeaux mixture to prevent mildew on my tomatoes, I did follow the 'rules' and their advice. But when several of 'the old guys' tried to convince me that double-digging was the only way to go, thankfully I took a step back and questioned this.

I admit I questioned it at first because it sounded like a lot of damn hard work, and well, ouch, my back. But then I decided to do a bit of research and found that not only was double-digging going out of fashion(!), but that it might do more damage to the soil than other methods.

The reason why I think this is a must-read for every gardener, whether you are a beginner or have been gardening for 40 years, is because it's a reminder to us all that no-one has all the answers. Questioning what you hear on TV or down at the allotment, or what you read in books and online, is the key learning point from this book. Charles urges us to have the courage to question.

So when you are told, as I was, that you should thin your carrot and parsnip seedlings, well fine if you want to, but don't throw the extras away, plant them elsewhere. I've been doing this for a few years, first out of curiosity to see what would happen, and then deliberately as I found, contrary to most advice, that the carrots and parsnips grew just as well in this manner. To my great delight, Charles mentions this very point in his book, page 24.

You know how you've been told that watering in sunlight damages the leaves of plants... Not true. That manure can make the soil acidic? Also not true. That potatoes clean the soil - only partly true - much of the work you have already done has cleaned the soil, not the potatoes.

Perhaps the most interesting learning point for me is that it is often untrue that you need to strictly rotate your crops, particularly in a small garden. I have spent a lot of time learning about crop rotations (yes, reading and listening to 'experts'), and I was very careful with the design of my Sheffield kitchen garden to include 4-year crop rotations in the plans. Charles suggests we can be more relaxed about the 'rules' of vegetable rotations and that you should grow what you like. As he says, in small gardens vegetable families are planted quite closely together anyway, and disease could potentially meet at the edges, "although they often don't".

This is something I had been thinking about when planning my beds and rotations. My kitchen garden and the beds cover a small space, c. 5m x 5m. Charles is right, the different vegetable families will be growing close together; I could throw my crop rotations onto the compost heap. However, it doesn't hurt to use crop rotations, if you are so inclined, and I am. I'm also a bit of a nerd when it comes to things like planning crop rotations and I actually enjoy putting them together (in an Excel spreadsheet, of course), like a puzzle that needs solving. It was a revelation though, to realise I didn't have to be quite so exacting.

But bloody hell, I wish I questioned the myth about cleaning (to sterilise) all your pots years ago. You don't need to, see page 22*. I'm too frightened to think of how much time and water I wasted on one of the crappiest jobs in the garden. I'm not going to do it anymore. Let's move on.

This book does talk about myths predominantly in relation to vegetable growing. However, many of the topics, sowing and planting, watering, manuring and fertilising, making and using compost, and soil structure and care, are just as relevant to ornamental growing. Perhaps one of the best things about the book is that the myths it busts will also relieve vegetable and ornamental gardeners alike, of many unnecessary and boring tasks, giving us more time to do the things we like to to, like planting and harvesting crops.

My only 'niggles' about the book is the font size - why is it so small?! Yes, I was using my glasses... And although the leafy page numbers are pretty, they are also hard to read. So if the book is revised or republished in future, I hope the publishers will increase the font size and make it easier to read.

It's my view that one of the great things about gardening is that there is always something new to learn, and that I'll end my life still needing to learn more. Gardening Myths and Misconceptions is a 'must read'. It might be a small book, but it has a lot of big, and sometimes challenging, ideas. It prompts you to really think about why you do things the way you do in the garden or on the allotment. It will lead to lots of questioning, probably some experimenting, and plenty of trial and error. It will also help you become a better gardener.



*ok, I'll tell you - it is unlikely that any diseases young plant might get will have anything to do with the materials (pots) you use. It's more likely to come from other factors, such as damping off, or to much watering. See page 22 for full explanation.

A gardening book I won't read

I was just wandering around the gardening and cookbook section at Waterstones today (they are next to each other) and out of the corner of my eye I saw the words 'girls' and 'dirty'. Swinging back to take a closer look I came across this: The Girl's Guide to Growing Your Own: How to Grow Fruit and Vegetables Without Getting Your Hands Too Dirty.

huh? You can garden without getting too dirty? Can I just say, if you garden without getting too dirty, you are probably not really gardening.

But what offended me the most was the word 'girls'. When I took a closer look I discovered, as I suspected, that it was aimed to "appeal to 20- and 30-something working women everywhere who have busy lives, but still want to grow their own produce without spending all weekend digging". And whom they insultingly titled 'girls'.

This pisses me off as a gardener and a women, hey, as a woman gardener, if I have to be labelled as such. I prefer just gardener thanks, why should my gender matter? At 42 (ok, I'm not 20-30 but I'm cross on behalf of my younger self), I'm not a fricken girl and am insulted some idiot publisher out there, or even the author, thinks that this might make me think I would pick the book up if they put the word 'girl' in the title. Furthermore, they are clearly aiming at some mythical women who they think like to be called girls and wear short fashionable skirts when gardening. Oh and a heap of other mythical female-gender crap that I'm too annoyed to even be able to express.

Frankly, if there is a women (girl?) out there who thinks the book might be a good idea, then please, DON'T GARDEN. You have to do some digging, you have to get dirty (and not just your hands), and it makes the most sense to wear grotty old clothes where you don't look in the least bit fashionable.

If you are a 20- and 30-something working woman with a busy life (and who isn't) that wants learn about gardening, please read something sensible, I list a couple of books I refer to regularly below for various aspect of gardening. And accept it, ya gonna get dirty.

 * * * * * * * * * *

Grow your own vegetables - Joy Larkam's classic. No pictures, just straight-forward information on growing veggies.

The edible container garden - showing how much you can grow in small spaces. Practical info and presented in an inspiring manner.

Gardening on a Bed System - all you need to know about raised beds and plant rotations.

Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening - useful reference book.

Pests - how to control them - need I say more?

The Vegetable & Herb Expert - not organic, but good for beginners, and not-beginners (I refer to it regularly). Really useful veggie growing info set out so you can easily find the section you want. Please, ignore any reference to chemical though. Don't use chemicals...

RHS Fruit and Vegetable Gardening - again, not organic (one of my bug-bears about the RHS, they still recommend chemicals), but is a useful reference book. Includes pest problems.

How to Store Your Garden Produce - The Key to Self-Sufficiency - um, does what it says on the tin. Straight-forward, anyone can do it.