[walltoall]

Hi OGP and greetings to the rebel county

http://www.whatsthiscaterpillar.co.uk/plates.htm

Scroll down to the VERY LAST plate at this address and view the gooseberry sawfly. Left click on the plate to make it big. My lads are plum sawflies. When they have stuffed theirselves silly, they drop to the ground, burrow in, make a cocoon and over-winter. That's why you need to pick them off the leaves one by one. They hold onto the leaf like a vicegrip with their teeth. Sometimes I clip off a whole leaf and murder about ten of them in one go. At this end of the season it's ok to sacrifice leaves as the plants will be shortly be going beddy-byes for the winter anyway.

PS: This is a later edit. I used a scissors to cut off all affected leaves into a plastic bowl and micro-waved the bowl for 20 seconds. Emptied bowl into compost bin. Howsat for ecological Hawh? They will be recycled as dahlias next year

[medieval knievel]

[janelee]

[inishindie]

FORGET THE CRUNCH - GROW YOUR LUNCH

I am enjoying a fabulous autumn sunset in a pretty English village, not far from the town of Grantham (famous for Margaret Thatcher and being voted the most boring town in England). The village, however is very pretty, boasting a picture postcard church and red-bricked cottages with sweetly scented roses growing around their doorways. I am out taking an evening stroll to one of the three immaculately tended allotment sites in the village to visit my old friend Stan.



We are sitting next to his wood burning stove in the makeshift shed cluttered from floor to ceiling in things that might come in useful one day. (I am not quite sure what use a pogo stick will be in the garden, but you never know). We are sitting on old threadbare armchairs, enjoying a bit of warmth as the heat goes out of the day. The subject is composting. “If you get your old straw or manure from somewhere that has been using chemicals, you could be asking for all sorts of problems.” Stan is a devoted organic vegetable grower and is very careful about what he puts into the soil. “If you are into organics, you need to check out your sources,” he tells me “I wouldn’t eat carrots that were grown with chemicals and I don’t want the chemicals in the soil of my allotment.”

Stan retired nearly twenty years ago because of ill health; he spent too long in the coalmines and the coal dust collected in his lungs. You wouldn’t guess now though. He started on the allotments soon after finishing work to get out into the fresh air and keep active. It has worked wonders for him -he is fitter than me.

“Do you think that there are any financial benefits to growing your own vegetables? I ask Stan. “The credit crunch has sparked loads of interest in growing your own. I wonder if you could put a price on it?”

I take a grimy cup of hot liquid from Stan who just poured it from a kettle on the stove. “If you put a price on it then it turns into economics.” Stan hands me a soil- covered biscuit and puts the kettle back on the plate, which keeps it boiling. “Let’s imagine that you would put a price on what I do here on the allotment. At the very least I will come here about one hour a day, that’s to grow and care for enough fruit and veg for the wife and I. That’s 365 hours a year, which is pretty manageable. Say I charge about €50 an hour.” I splutter at the thought of getting such a reward for my labour and my half eaten biscuit ends up on the floor.

“This is just it you see, you can’t put a price on these things. But that’s what I would charge. You would be looking at a cost of 15 and a half thousand a year. That’s not taking into consideration tools, seeds and feed. You could add a few hundred a year onto the amount.”

“Tomatoes are always really cheap in the shops when mine are ripe.” I add supporting his theory. “Mind you,” Stan says thoughtfully,” With the global market and discount shops, fruit and veg are cheap enough all year round really.” He turns to open the door of the shed. The steam from the kettle wafts out, and the musty smell of his new delivery of horse muck creeps in. “I grow my crops because I know what has gone into producing them. The taste is far superior to anything you would buy. I love gardening. It’s my life. It keeps me active and the social scene here at the allotments is great. There are about twenty-five of us and we help each other out when we can and share our surplus when we can’t get through it all.” Stan pauses to flick a drowning woodlouse out of his cup. “Did you know that some onions that you buy in the shops could be two years old?”

“I didn’t.” I say, not surprised. “There’s nothing tastier than a nice lump of cheese to go with a freshly dug onion, I used to take the odd one from allotments when I was a kid.” I confess.

“We grow extra on the allotments to allow for pests.” Stan continues giving me a disapproving look. “You can keep your costs down when you are growing your own. There doesn’t have to be a big cash outlay. All you need are some planks for raised beds and some good soil to put the seeds in. The secret is to start small, with just a few plants and not spend a lot of money. If you were really thrifty you could get the seeds from other growers, we swop a lot of seeds here, and young plants too. My carrots were grown from seed that I saved last year.” Stan handed me a freshly dug one from a bunch sitting in his rusty wheelbarrow. “Here taste this.” I wiped the soil off and bit through the silty deposits still on the flesh. It was delicious and went well with the biscuit.

“There are NO financial advantages to growing your own and feeding yourself. ” Stan says conclusively. “It can be a hard slog; bad weather such as drought and floods can destroy all of your hard work. All of the crops can be devastated by pests and disease.”

I am almost feeling sorry for Stan when there’s a knock on the shed door.

Hi Stan.” It’s Dan and Susan from the adjoining allotment. “We’ve got couple of bottles of last years gooseberry wine, fancy a taste? Without hesitation the dust is blown off four of Stan’s cleanest jam jars and are put out on the worktop. The cork is pulled, the wine poured and the ritual of tasting begins. Stan is right. You can’t put a price on this.

Cheers

Ian

[walltoall]

Ian, a chara ghoill, yer blood's worth bottlin' Here am I beyant in Thurrock (about 100 mile south of Stan's place) laughin' me head off. Stan has the economics of growin' yer own well sorted. The word is PRICELESS. And for all the reasons he gives and you subscribe to. Stan and I could do business and either of us could educate that wee lass from the paper. I've noted that Stan has got his health back or at least stabilised it after putting in an hour a day in the Lincolnshire fresh air. What price could you put on good health? I'm glad to see Stan has a hard head for business and would put 50 euros an hour on his time and a seven hour week. Enjoy reality while you can.
Shaun

[Organicgrowingpains]

Hi Inishindie, I am laughing my head off here in Cork too! Great post ,says it all with tongue in cheek.I hope Stan enjoys many more years on his allotment.

[Michael196]

Carissas artricle is in todays Irish independent

[Michael196]

I wonder is tyhat Carissa on the picture ???

[anchoress]

"Bostoon: is a new one ?

I stopped panicking re sawfly on gooseberries when i checked on the web. They don't eat the fruit. One report said that it damaged next year's leaves, but the next year's crop was fine.

One of the joys of growing yoor own is that you can grow things that are rarely in the shops.

[walltoall]

'bastúin' is Irish and means a clumsy oaf [and lots of other similar things in that language]. The Anglicised "bostoon" can be applied in delicate company to anybody, or by extension any living creature, that one finds tiresome, tedious or annoying. I find magpies very much all three and give them no quarter. Magpies are among the few birds that add little or nothing to nature. Not only are they carrion scavengers, but in Spring they eat birds' eggs and young fledglings straight out of the nest and will take free running baby chickens at any chance. Magpies is bad news.

Sawflies fall in a similar category as magpies. Sawfly eat the leaves needed for the plant to grow vigourously. Without a good furnishing of leaves on a gooseberry bush, it finds it hard to support lots of fruit. The sawfly cycle means that if you don't get rid of it it will in time get rid of your gooseberry. Its cycle is from plant to ground for overwintering and back to plant to lay eggs which grow into larvae which eat the leaves and the more flies that survive the winter the more eggs they can lay and the more leaves they can strip.

Sawflies is bad news.

[anchoress]

Thank you; and i totally agree re the magpies. Dreadful creatures. Almost as bad as the black backed gulls... same colours too.

well; I left the sawflies and had a huge crop of gooseberries the next year and no sawfly.

Maybe the birds helped out



[quote="walltoall"]'bastúin' is Irish and means a clumsy oaf [and lots of other similar things in that language]. The Anglicised "bostoon" can be applied in delicate company to anybody, or by extension any living creature, that one finds tiresome, tedious or annoying. I find magpies very much all three and give them no quarter. Magpies are among the few birds that add little or nothing to nature. Not only are they carrion scavengers, but in Spring they eat birds' eggs and young fledglings straight out of the nest and will take free running baby chickens at any chance. Magpies is bad news.

Sawflies fall in a similar category as magpies. Sawfly eat the leaves needed for the plant to grow vigourously. Without a good furnishing of leaves on a gooseberry bush, it finds it hard to support lots of fruit. The sawfly cycle means that if you don't get rid of it it will in time get rid of your gooseberry. Its cycle is from plant to ground for overwintering and back to plant to lay eggs which grow into larvae which eat the leaves and the more flies that survive the winter the more eggs they can lay and the more leaves they can strip.

Sawflies is bad news.[/quote]

[Liparis]

[medieval knievel]

[walltoall]

Greetings and good cheer, Liparis. You should look up my personal details to get a background on who you are ranting about so early in the year. I am Irish and very proud of it. But I live in a semi-rural setting in Essex, where agriculture is hanging on by it's finger-tips. At almost any given moment in daylight, in an area say 100 metres radius of my house I will be likely to count between 3 and 6 magpies. In fact from my desk right now without even moving my head I can see a magpie near the top of a poplar tree no more than 60' away. And I still say he is contributing nothing to the surrounding fauna or flora.

As for other birds, I will defend them all even to the end. And my local fox too who actively helps my recycling programme by eating all the meat and bone I give him. Blue tits diligently decimate my aphid colony every year, competing with lady-birds and various warblers. Robins, dunnocks, wrens, sparrows, blackbirds, starlings and wagtails are all welcome visitors. Magpies no. And I had no time for them when I was gardening in Doon or Ballyvaughan or Shannon or Lusk or Rathfarnham either so don't think I just have it in for English magpies.

I note you have been a professional gardener for 35 years. Well! I have been a country dweller for 60. On and off over those six decades I have grown vegetables for the table, the shop and the market and I can tell you there is no way a private gardener can grow vegetables 'for nothing'. Gardening for most people is an excuse to provide themselves with good quality vegetables (and sometimes eggs and sometimes fowl for the table) irrespective of cost. We price our vegetables in the aching backs and weight reduction through hard work digging raking and forking over.

Many people including myself suspect we are being slowly poisoned by food we buy in supermarkets and I suspect many subscribers to this site share my suspicions. Maybe you yourself as a professional gardener have views on this aspect of gardening you might like to share with the many watchers and listeners here who will be waiting with bated breath to see where this thread may go? And, Medieval Knieval you are more that welcome to join us.edited 20/2/0930

Happy New Year to you guys/gals and let's have an exciting 2009.
I'm r'arin' to go.
WallToAll

[James Kilkelly, was GPI.]

Ok folks, looks like the "media" has got us all whipped up.
Well I have learned one thing from this thread and that is I will have to amend the forums welcome email for new members.

New addition.