WDM conference & 40th, and a walk in the Peak

Kevin and I were in Sheffield on the weekend, at the WDM Campaigner Convention and AGM. It's also WDM's 40th year. Yay WDM! The picture is of a celebratory cake made for a recent Oxford WDM group 40th celebration. Made from Fairtrade ingredients of course!

 
The best part of the conference for me was the launch of the new campaign on food commodities speculation, Stop Betting on Hunger. The gist of the campaign is that investment banks, like Goldman Sachs, are betting on the price of staple foods, like wheat, maize and soya. This is causing food prices to rise and making people go hungry. Betting on food was one of the things that lead to the food riots in 2008. The new WDM campaign will be calling on the UK government to stop food commodity speculation.I'll write more about the campaign at a later date, but in the meantime, go to WDM's website to take action.

On Sunday, Kevin and I joined a large group of WDMers for a 5-mile walk in the Peak District, walking between Hope and Edale, passing Mam Tor. It was a stunningly beautiful day and great company. I'll let the pictures do most of the talking...

The peak looming over Castleton.

From a field of buttercups to Mam Tor.

shadows and light

(WDM) Group photo!

I made it to the top. Hollins Cross, on the ridge between Hope and Edale.

Kevin striding towards Edale. "We have a train to catch, stop taking pictures Gwenfar".

Happy Gwenfar. And thanks to Sarah from WDM Sheffield for organising such a beautiful walk.

More pictures on my web album.

Of broad beans and black fly

As mentioned previously, I'm experimenting with not pinching out the tips of broad beans this year to see if it makes any difference with black fly. So far my experiement is going well. I've had some black fly on a couple of plants, but after spraying with my steely soapy water squirter, the black fly have died and my beans continue to grow very nicely. The ones in the front garden are about 4 ft high!

Someone mentioned to me that the other reason for pinching out tips of broad beans is it encourages the beans lower down to grow. Well, so far the beans lower down are growning just fine. I expect next week I'll have my first harvest of broad beans.

I don't know how representative this year is of every other summer when it comes to my small experiment. It's warm, but with cooling winds quite a bit, so maybe not humid enough for the black fly to really take off. So I'll continue with my experiment this year, and try the same again next year and see what happens.

In the meantime, only a week to go (roughly!) for my first broad bean harvest. yum yum yum - my taste buds are tingling just thinking about it!

Digitalis 'Pam's Choice'

My favourite flower in the garden at the moment.

What's growing down at the lottie?

It was unbelieveably hot last weekend. Still, the taties just HAD to go in, so Kevin and I slapped on sun factor 50 lotion and silly hats, and went down to the lottie. Mark (co-lottie partner) and Jenny (Mark's partner) were already there when we arrived getting their taties in. Nice to know I'm not the only late one.

I gave my silly hat to Jenny to wear for a while. Stylish huh.

We sweated away in the burning sun, but darn it, we got those taties in. Finally.

I got a bit of a shock really, because I've not been down to the lottie for a couple of weeks. Everything had grown. Just look at the garlic! Oh, and Kevin in his silly hat.

The red veg is a red Romano lettuce. It's a great colour, and stays crunchy even a day or two after you have picked it and made up a large bowl of salad. Bonus.

Because of the warm weather, the spinach is now bolting, so I need to pull it up and sow some more. Once it bolts it becomes bitter. It's like the plant is protecting itself and saying, hey, I want to set seed so to stop the bloody human from constantly picking my leaves I'm going to make myself less tempting. Well, that's fine spinach, it's lettuce eating time anyway. So there.

The bit of empty earth is where I'm going to sow some carrots and parsnips. I was going to sow them on Sunday, but the heat got just too much and we were wilting, and decided heading home for a cool drink was a better move. Before we left, we finished off giving some of the plants a drink too. As you can see, I'm quite the fashion statement at the lottie. Oh yeah.

Where to old clothes go when they are dying? Down the lottie.

Damsons and broad beans

I'm very excited because my Damson, Shropshire Prune, not only flowered this year, but has it's first fruits now growing! I did see lots of bees around the blossoms in April but didn't really expect to get fruit as the tree is only 2-3 years old, and was just planted in this place in the cold of January this year.

Damson jam is my favourite, and it isn't always easy to buy, so I figured I'll grow my own damsons and then I'll always have my own jam. Well, the growing part has started.

I'm also experimenting with a kind of forest garden concept, also imspired by Alys Fowlers' Edible Garden, and am growing broad beans under the damson tree this year.

As the Damson is young it's root system isn't that deep or far. It is a fairly sunny and protected, so rather than just putting perennials underneath the tree, I thought whilst the tree is small, I'd try veg. These broad beans are Masterpiece Green Longpod, I'm trying them for the first time this year. They are growing really well so far, so both tree and beans are working ok to this point. Will be interesting to see how they continue to grow and fruit.

The other little 'experiment' I'm trying is NOT pinching out the tips of the broad beans. Every year I diligently pinch out the tips of the broad beans, as this is supposed to stop black fly. So all the garden books and experts say. Well it bloody doesn't! They still rampage all over my broad beans and I have to fight them with my deadly washing-up liquid squirter. Usually they get half and I get half. Ok, maybe the squirter isn't that deadly. To add insult to injruy, by pinching out the tips I loose potential beans too. So this year I'm not going to pinch out the tips and see what happens. I suspect I'll still need my not-so-deadly squirter...