Crazy

Winter is the time when gardeners show their crazy side, which is normally kept entertained by actually gardening. This is when they flick through umpteen catalogues and pick the weirdest things on the menu to grow next season. It's already a matter of record that I am planning on growing achocha this year, but I had that idea back in the autumn and the crazy keeps on coming.

Over Christmas it occurred to me that a Bokashi compost bin might be the perfect container for making comfrey liquid in over the summer. Comfrey liquid (basically comfrey leaves rotted under water for a couple of weeks) is powerful stuff, a fabulous plant food and THE WORST SMELLING THING EVER. After about 10 days it will smell like you have a malfunctioning sewage works at the end of your garden. Fortunately the source of the smell will be hard to spot, so the neighbours might not realise it's you.... Anyway, it occurred to me that adding EM to the mix might encourage it to do it's thing without stinking the place up, so I might try that later in the year. It may not work and it may stain the bin green, but life is all about experimentation, is it not?

This morning I thought about growing Jerusalem artichokes, since we have now tried them and quite like them. In theory they have flowers like small sunflowers, but I think you're supposed to take those off if you want high yields, so my plan of growing these things in a container in the drive way might not be as attractive to the neighbours as I thought. They're big plants, so container growing might not suit them, and the Organic Catalogue sells the tubers in packs of 15, which sounds a little excessive for a trial run. So I put the idea on the back burner for all of about 15 minutes before I thought about the tubers that we have in the fridge, courtesy of Abel & Cole. I reckon I could plant a couple of those up in big plant pots, put them outside and see what happens.

And the good news here is that I won't even have to sneak about to do it, since hubby already knows about the crazy gardening monster and how it needs to be fed regularly :o)

New carrier bags used (this year): 6
New carrier bags avoided (this year): 20