Piecing It Together-Tips And Tricks-UK47 by Garden Culture Magazine

UK EDITION · ISSUE 47 · 2022 · FREE COPY

Piecing it

together

Essential Grower’s

Tips’nTricks GCMAG.CO

PPF

e B t ’ n o D ! Mis

So what should growers consider when choosing an LED grow light? The first place

matters!

to look is the total amount of plant-usable photons a lighting fixture generates during one second. This is referred to as Photosynthetic Photon Flux or PPF. Remember,

light is the first order of life—it provides the crucial “input energy” for all your plants’ metabolic processes. As long as there is sufficient water, nutrients and carbon

dioxide, it’s PPF that is the true driver of yield. Don’t be overly swayed by high PPE numbers (efficiency) . Growers need to consider the PPF (total light output) and spectrum as this is what drives growth and yield.

What does “μmol/s” mean? Side notes / bubbles:

What does “μmol/J” mean?

(PPF)

µmol/s stands for “micromoles per second“ and is the amount of light (photons or particles of light) that drives photosynthesis.

(Plant growth)

(PPE)

μmol/J stands for “micromoles per joule” and is a measure of the efficiency of a light source.

Put simply: how much light does a fixture produce for a given amount of electrical energy.

PPF

matters!

Sure—it’s tempting, as a consumer, to distil all the

complexities of LED lighting into a single number—but if an LED grow light manufacturer is crowing on and on about

efficiency and little else, you should take those figures with a healthy pinch of salt and not allow yourself to be distracted from the truly important metrics:

spectrum and output!

PPFrs!

matte

TOTAL OUTPUT

(PPF)

is What Really Matters

FULL

SPECTRUM

DAYLIGHT

Total Output (PPF)

300W

750

μmol/s

PRO

DAYLIGHT

Total Output (PPF)

660W

1782 μmol/s

PRO

DAYLIGHT

Total Output (PPF)

1030W

2782 μmol/s

PRO

PPF IS THE TRUE DRIVER OF YIELD Scan to learn more:

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CONTENTS

SUGAR, SUGAR...

THE TRUTH BEHIND SIMPLE CARB SUPPLEMENTS

THE POWER OF FUNGI

AND THE MYSTERY OF MUSHROOMS

MARKETpLACE

The Great

hydro store

LOCAL GROWERS 95

2020

THE GREAT UK HYDRO STORE SURVEY 22 I N THIS ISSU E O F

GA R D EN C U LT U R E :

TEAM EFFORT

11 Foreword

66 The Invisible Harvest

13 Author Spotlight

72 Words Of Gardening Wisdom

15 Marketplace

75 Rich’s Top 5 Indoor Growing Tips

22 The Great UK Hydro Store Survey

78 Autumn Prep For A Healthier Spring

30 The Way The World Works Doesn’t Work

84 The Power of Fungi and the Mystery of Mushrooms

36 The History Of Food Preservation 46 Tips For Balancing Your Soil’s pH

88 TEAM Effort: How a Topdressing of Easily Accessible Mycelium Can Raise Your Growing Game

52 Water Activity & Food Preservation

95 Local Growers

54 Don’t Press The Snooze Button On Garden Data Collection

99 Betty Green’s Top 5 Organic Gardening Tips

58 Sugar, Sugar… The Truth Behind Simple Carb Supplements

103 Sweden Takes On Climate Change With Wooden Buildings

62 Growing In Space Buckets

104 5 Cool Ways Gardening Experts Harvest Their Plants

FOREWORD & CREDITS

CREDITS

FOREWORD

ho doesn’t want to improve their gardening game? We asked some of our writers to share their top growing tips, and they delivered.

The topics are varied, from Av Singh offering advice on

UK EDITION · ISSUE 47 · 2022 · FREE COPY

CU LTU R E

explaining how to balance soil pH. A green thumb often isn’t

PRESIDENT Eric Coulombe The gods eric@gardenculturemagazine.com must be crazy +1-514-233-1539

G A R D E N

putting garden beds to sleep in the Autumn to Anne Gibson

SPECI A L TH A N KS TO: Anne Gibson, Av Singh, Betty Green, Dr Callie Seaman, Catherine Sherriffs, Eric Coulombe, Evan Folds, Jennifer Cole, Jesse Singer, Joanna Berg, Martin Osis, Martyna Krol, Rich Hamilton, and Xavi Kief.

kingdom in his documentary film, Fantastic Fungi. There is so much to learn! The relationship between fungi, plants and our planet is undeniable. The healthiest soils are teaming with life. A better understanding of the symbiotic relationship between plants and fungi can make you a better grower. If you decide to grow them yourself and eat them, you will be a healthier person. A win, win. Last but not least, another edition of The Great UK Hydro Store Survey gives a brief overview of what is going on in the UK market from the perspective of progressive grow shops. Which products or companies are on the way up or out? It is an ever-evolving world, but gardening is cer tainly here to stay! Happy Growing!

The Great

Eric 3

hydro store 2020

together

WWW.GARDENCULTUREMAGAZINE.COM

opened the world’s eyes to the impor tance of the mushroom

CANNAUK_CMP_DBLOCK_GC_ADV.indd 2

I S SU E 47

cover the magical world of mushrooms. In 2019, Paul Stamets

ED I TO R Catherine Sherriffs canna-uk.com cat@gardenculturemagazine.com

Piecing it

We are pleased to introduce Mar tin Osis and Xavi Kief; they will

ED I TO R Celia Sayers celia@gardenculturemagazine.com +1-514-754-1539

UK EDITION

and knowledge.

THE ART OF GROWING

The gods EXECUTIVE must be crazy plants. Making informed decisions comes from experience enough when creating the perfect environment for your

Essential Grower’s

Tips’nTricks GCMAG.CO

10-09-21 17:43

DESIGN Job Hugenholtz job@gardenculturemagazine.com D I G I TA L & SO CI A L M A R K E T I N G social@gardenculturemagazine.com ADVERTISING ads@gardenculturemagazine.com PUBLISHER 325 Media INC 44 Hyde Rd., Mille-Isles QC, Canada J0R 1A0 GardenCultureMagazine.com ISSN 2562-3540 (Print) ISSN 2562-3559 (Online) Garden Culture is published six times a year, both in print and online.

@GardenCulture

@GardenCultureMagazine

@Garden_Culture

D I ST R I B U T I O N PA R T N ER S • Maxigrow • One Love Inc • Nutriculture • Highlight Horticultur e

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without prior permission in writing from 325 Media Inc.

GA R D EN CU LT U R E M AGA Z I N E.CO M

DARING TO BE DIFFERENT HIGH QUALITY SUBSTRATES AT SURPRISING PRICES

@ATAMI.UK

FIND OUT MORE!

AUTHOR SPOTLIGHT

Mad respect for those who work day in and day out in an indoor grow, but the great outdoors is awe-inspiring for me.

Author Spotlight

AV SINGH

e will all be better growers now that we have ar ticles by Av Singh to read! Av is one of Garden Culture’s newest

contributors, and we are so thrilled that he’s willing to share his knowledge and exper tise with us. An exper t in regenerative organic agriculture, Dr Singh lives and grows in beautiful Nova Scotia, Canada, but has travelled around the world spreading the good word about holistic growing practices. Welcome aboard, Av!

What’s your growing motto? Whether it’s living or growing, Tagore’s quote on life being service and service being joy will always ground me and remind me that there is meaning in our work. Finding meaning and purpose in what we do, especially as growers of medicine, has to bring us joy.

What is your favourite plant to grow? If cannabis, what cultivar? Cannabis is by far the smartest plant I have ever grown, and I keep learning from her. With the cool late summers in Mi’kma’ki (where Nova Scotia is located), BC Bud Depot’s The Black is my favourite strain (although consuming it knocks me on my ass).

Do you prefer growing indoors or outdoors? Mad respect for those who work day in and day out in an indoor grow, but the great outdoors is awe-inspiring for me. To watch your plant grow 6-inches in a day after a lightning storm or to see the amazing colours and smell the aromas as you approach your garden defines summer for me.

How would you convince other gardeners to grow regenerative/organic? Ask them just to observe Nature. Witness how well plants grow in cooperation with other plants, how the soil is always covered, how insects are always buzzing or crawling around, and yet plants remain

untouched. Witness how waxy, thick, and lush leaf growth is -- that’s usually enough to convince folks that the plant, the soil, and the microbes have got this figured out, and we’re just here to lend a helping hand.

What is your favourite food? Chole bhature. It’s the only street food that I will stop at every dhaba in India until I find some. Chole (channa masala) is a spicy chickpea (garbanzo) dish, and bhature is a deep-fried leavened bread made with white flour.

What do you love to do outside of work? These are things that I do love to do and should do more, but I tend to geek out about work too much. Blessed with an amazing family, it’s nice to just hang out, enjoy good food, laugh and play games, and perhaps watch some rugby union with a single-malt in hand while some Bob Dylan is playing in the background. 3

Are you interested in writing for Garden Culture Magazine? We’d love to hear from you! Send us an email introducing yourself with a sample of your work. editor@gardenculturemagazine.com

As used by 13-time RHS Chelsea Gold Medal Winner Medwyn Williams

WY MEofDAngleseyN’S

Chillies fed and watered by AutoPot Auto8, at Plantasia, Oxfordshire

Packing A Punch Maximise productivity in minimal space with Auto8 - automated, power-free watering for multiple pots Auto8 irrigates and feeds eight pots in a single tray and lid assembly, 100% power-free with no need for running water. Footprint is reduced and fewer lights are needed for more closely arranged plants. With an Auto8 you can even switch between 8.5L and 15L pots, allowing you to house plants at all stages of growth.

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Terra Grow DAYLIGHT 1030W LED & 1030W LED PRO The DAYLIGHT 1030W and 1030W PRO LEDs are their most powerful LEDs to date, the PRO having an impressive total light output (PPF) of 2781 µmol/s, and the standard version packing an ample total light output (PPF) of 2369 µmol/s. The 10-bar system gives highly uniform coverage (PPFD) across the canopy, ideal for areas from 1.5m x 1.5m up to 1.8m x 1.8m. Packed with all of the features you have come to love about DAYLIGHT’s LED fixtures, including a remote dimmer, IP65 protection for water tight performance, iLink compatibility, slim-line, lightweight design, and easy clip-on bars. If you’re looking for the ultimate in LED technology and want to add even more power to your grow room, look no fur ther than DAYLIGHT 1030W LEDs. Contact Maxigrow for more details or visit GrowWithDaylight.co.uk

Atami Kilomix Kilomix is a heavily fertilised substrate, ensuring you don’t need to add any nutrient solution during the first few weeks. Perlite is a key ingredient, helping create an airy substrate ideal for root development. Atami Kilomix contains everything plants need limiting the risk of shortages to almost zero. Due to the fertiliser ratio being professionally composed, there is a constant supply of essential nutrients over a more extended period. Plants have everything they need to develop on such a rich substrate! Learn more: Atami.com

Terra Grow is a mineral fertiliser that provides optimum nutrition during the growth phase. The roots of your plant directly absorb mineral fertilisers without needing conversion by the soil life first. Your plant will therefore grow faster and produce a higher yield. There’s also a well-balanced proportion of nitrogen in there. Nitrogen is essential for cell division and elongation, as well as the creation of chlorophyll. In addition, nitrogen is vital for the formation of essential proteins and enzymes. Terra Grow can be used in conjunction with all liquid soil mixes, fertilisers and additives. Check out Plagron.com for the complete line.

Terra Aquatica Fulvic Enhanced Nutrient Access And Root Growth, Low(Er) Carbon Input Fulvic acids act fast, forming chelated complexes with nutrients, improving availability. Beneficial for plant biology, Fulvic can be applied from pre-germination seed soak through to harvest. It also has notable effects on root and root hair growth, making it an extremely efficient root stimulator which is why TA’s recommended default application ends at flowering. Recent peer-reviewed research has shown that Fulvic acid can be particularly effective when applied as a foliar spray. TA Fulvic can be used weekly or more often if desired: perfect as a general tonic and health enhancer for houseplants and as a low(er) carbon input than Humic acids for hydroponics. Check out the entire range: TerraAquatica.com

DAYLIGHT 660W & 660W PRO LED If you are after the pinnacle of grow-light technology, look no further. The DAYLIGHT 660W LED fixtures are arguably the best LEDs currently available.The 660W Pro version packs a Total Light Output of 1782 μmol/s compared to the standard fixture’s ample 1518 μmol/s, delivering results that genuinely rival their HPS cousins. With IP65-rated ingress protection for watertight performance, iLink compatibility, slimline design, easy clip-on bars, and packaged in an easily maneuverable box, DAYLIGHT 660W LEDs offer an undeniably attractive option for your next new grow light. Affordability and high-end performance, all rolled into one. Visit GrowWithDaylight.co.uk for more information.

Mills Start-R A predominantly organic, incredibly complex biostimulant for use with seedlings, vegetatively growing plants, and plants in early bloom. Start-R gives plants rapid recovery from transplant shock, helps develop a strong root zone, and improves media structure and nutrient uptake. Start-R contains two forms of nitrogen that, when used in harmony with Mills Basis A&B, give your plants the correct high nitrogen NPK ratio for the vegetative phase. Start-R also contains Humic and Fulvic acids, L-amino acids, and a rootenhancing Bio-Stimulant derived from auxin and cytokinin-rich Atlantic kelp. Start-R promotes a healthy root system in vegetative and early flowering leading to larger yields during harvest. Give your plants the best Start-R with Mills!

PACKS PROTECT

Steel Vaults Packs Protect Steel Vaults are a convenient and secure way to ® store your tobacco, spices and herbs. Manufactured from highquality 18/8 stainless steel, your Packs Protect “Vault” gives you food-grade storage quality, preserving flavour and freshness for as long as possible. The airtight seal offers protection against the elements that could degrade the contents of your Vault, namely; light, moisture and air. Packs Protect Vaults are dishwasher proof and should last you for years when treated with the TLC they deserve. There are three sizes available to meet your needs. For all trade enquiries, visit CreationWholesale.co.uk

To learn more, follow @MillsPaysTheBills_UK on Insta.

Terra Bloom Terra Bloom is an essential mineral nutrient for use during the flowering phase. Directly absorbed by the roots of your plant without needing conversion by the soil life first, your plant will grow faster and produce a higher yield. Phosphorus stimulates root development and the growth of flowers and fruit. Potassium is a nutrient that increases plant firmness and improves the quality of taste and smell. Because of the balanced proportion of both elements, Terra Bloom ensures vigorous flowering and a high yield. Terra Bloom can be used with all soil mixes, liquid fertilisers and additives. Check out Plagron.com for the complete line.

BudBox PRO White XXL plus-HL Grow Tent 150x300x220cm / 5’x10’x7’4’’ Equipped with two main front doors, one front access door and two side access doors. With 12 port options in four sizes, two micro-mesh passive filters, and one night vision window, the PRO White XXL plus-HL Grow Tent is adaptable to all growing needs. It is built to last with 25mm powder-coated tempered steel poles and 1mm thick walls. It has practical metal push/click connectors and four roof hanging bars with silicone pads. With the main door clips, clear floor area, double cuff vents, 20% oversized vents for acoustic ducting and double stitched seams, PRO White has every detail worked out to maximise your grow space. Independent testing results using scientific methodology show that PRO White offers up to 106% MORE PAR reflectivity than mylar or silver. Award-winning grow tents. Grow PRO. Grow BudBox PRO. Visit BudBoxGrowTents.com to find the right model for you.

DAYLIGHT 480W LED & 480W Pro LED The DAYLIGHT 480W and 480W PRO LEDs have the same super-efficient Lumiled/LUMLED and Osram chips found in their 660W bigger brothers, offering a grower the same high-end quality of light but in a slightly smaller unit. Measuring 941.6 x 900mm, they fit perfectly into a 1.2-metre square grow tent (or growing area), allowing you to achieve the ideal light coverage in ‘smaller’ locations. They retain all the incredible technology and features of the 660W units: easy clip-on bars, lightweight and slim-line design, and remote dimmer, all wrapped up in a price point that makes them extremely appealing.The switch to LEDs couldn’t be any more tempting! Contact Maxigrow for more details or visit GrowWithDaylight.co.uk

U-Go Helps You Grow From the makers of “Phresh” and “Hyperfan” comes a new name in top-end ventilation products. Good ventilation will extract hot, stale, CO2-depleted, humid air from your grow room while pulling fresh air full of CO2 in. With fans, silenced fans, and carbon filters in various sizes, U-Go has the solution for whatever your grow room needs. U-Go fans come packed with features to make your life easier and your yields bigger.That is the U-Go difference. • Detachable, fully variable digital twin fan speed controller in every fan box • High fan efficiency at 7.85 CFM per WATT • High linear airflow output • High static pressure output • Robust steel housing and Abec 7 ball bearings • 0-10V controller compatible VIA RJ9 or RJ11 cable • Four fan sizes ranging from 6” to 12.5.” Distributed by Creation Wholesale. For more information, go to UgoVentilation.com

REAL GROWERS REAL RESULTS

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DAYLIGHT 100W LED Bar As more people experience the positives of growing with LEDs, they are swiftly taking over the market. LEDs are known not only for their high/uniform outputs of rich PAR spectrums but also for their versatility. This single 100W DAYLIGHT LED strip light is no exception to that rule. Being a slim-line, stand-alone unit, it makes for an easy installation as a supplemental light to an existing LED fixture or even amongst traditional HID set-ups. Whatever your use, it gives a total light output (263 μmol/s) which will help to boost the yield of almost any crop! Head down to your local store, or contact Maxigrow for more information

AutoPot XXL

Sensi Professional Series Hit the vital “Shift” and take your crop to its fullest potential. Featuring both Sensi Grow™ Part A&B Professional Series and Sensi Bloom™ Part A&B Professional Series, this four-part base nutrient system is designed to increase cannabinoids, yields, and overall crop value. Unlike generic ag water-soluble fertilisers, the Sensi Professional Series delivers precise ratios of micronutrients for each phase of plant development. During the grow phase, your plants will absorb more calcium, iron, manganese and boron, and LESS nitrogen, potassium, zinc, and phosphorus. And for a bloom phase packed with floral productivity, they’ll uptake MORE nitrogen, potassium, and zinc (and a tad more phosphorus) and LESS calcium, iron, manganese, and boron. Only our water-soluble fertilisers hit this shift to unleash peak performance in your crops. With three forms of chelated iron and urea for an acidic rhizosphere, the Sensi Professional Series delivers a steady stream of readily available nutrients to your plants. Support their development with this cannabis-specific formulation, and they’ll reward you with predictable heavy yields packed with swelling, crystal-coated buds. Visit AdvancedNutrients.com for more details.

Know no limits. XXL opens up a new world of hor ticultural possibility for AutoPot growers, backed by technology that’s proven to make the wildest, most fantastical, most fruitful plants a reality. An ingenious enlargement of the ever-popular XL module, XXL is suitable for indoor or outdoor growing and features an adaptive collar allowing growers to switch between 35 L and 50 L BPA-free, Lead-free fabric pots as required. Cultivating big plants, whether one or many, requires time and technique. XXL brings ultra-low maintenance, plantcontrolled AQUAvalve5 irrigation into the realm of giant growing - giving you the oppor tunity and head space to hone your hor ticultural skills. Visit AutoPot.co.uk for more information.

BY ERIC COULOMBE

PRODUCTION

L ABOR ATORY

PRODUCTION PL ANT

FACTORY

RETAIL

GROW PRODUCTS

H YGRO EC-VA L UE .............

INDOOR GA RDEN

G ROW SHOP

GROW STORE

The Great

hydro store 2022

Thank you so much to all the stores participating in the 2022 survey. It is always such a pleasure getting to know all of you. You have opened up to us about your businesses and personal lives, and in the end, I feel more connected to our market than ever. You can all be proud of the community you have built! This year, I contacted 120 shops, many of whom have never done the survey. In case you don’t know, this is the fourth time GC has done the UK survey. It is fun to look back and see what has changed, what hasn’t, and what is new and exciting in the world of UK hydro. Since I completed the last one, the UK market has been the world’s biggest roller coaster. Shortly after Covid began, so

did the panic buying. Not just in the UK but in every market around the globe. Stores (the ones that stayed open or had e-commerce already on the go), manufacturers, and wholesalers all saw record growth in 2021. In some cases, two or three times more than the previous year! That bump was more like a plateau; record sales continued for almost a year, and the downward trend began at the beginning of 2022.

UK HYDRO SURVEY 2022

One interesting change is the number of stores. In 2018, there were an estimated 400-500 shops, much more than in 2015 when I first did the survey. In 2020, the number hadn’t changed. Here we are in 2022, and that number is shrinking. Today, there are an estimated 350-450 shops. Will the market rebound, continue to contract, or will another factor change the game completely? Only time will tell.

product, strong sales staff, memorable marketing, Pawski, and a likeable leader and salesforce. Add these things to years of pounding the pavement, and there is your recipe for success. Coming in third place is Shogun, often snubbed by shops in the past due to their exclusive distribution with Growell. Last year, Shogun severed all official ties with Growell and has opened it up to the whole country. Shogun is finding success for many of the same reasons that Mills is; they share similar traits, reliable product lines, a strong sales staff, and aggressive marketing. Shogun is UK-made, and the woman PhD chemist who developed it has many superhero qualities! Her name is Dr Callie Seaman, a regular contributor to our pages. Nineteen brands make up the remaining 30%: DutchPro, Hydrotops, and T.A. all came in with 4%. When a grower has good results with a nutrient brand, the hardest thing to do is get them to change up. Canna works well, but is it the best? I believe there is no best, but they sure are popular in this case.

Question #1 How has business been in the past two years? Historically, the general consensus has always been that business is good or very good. But this time was different; the shops are slower than normal, even the busy ones. Others are shutting down, and some good ones too. Several factors fuel the problem, like too many stores, price wars, end user overstock caused by Covid panic buying, Brexit, the war, conservative banks, and newcomers to the market changing the landscape. In business, there are always obstacles; it seems that right now, there are more of them, and they are bigger.

Question #2 What is your shop’s most sold nutrient brand? Canna 50% Mills 12% Shogun 8% 19 Other Brands 30% Up from 45% in 2020, Canna has not skipped a beat! Indeed, many stores are unhappy with price increases or the ultra-competitive retail prices forced on them, but end-users continue to choose Canna. In second place for the second time in a row is Mills. A real success story, Mills has made a name for themselves with an excellent

Question #3 What is your favourite nutrient brand? Mills 19% Monkey 9% T.A. 7% Shogun 7% Biobizz 6% 32 Other Brands 52% This story hasn’t changed since the first survey. Canna dominates in sales, but when it comes to the bottom line, other brands sell with higher margins. I do not believe that Canna is to blame for this at all. Price wars at the retail level have eroded margins to the point of no return. Meanwhile, every other nutrient manufacturer has been trying to capture more market share. Coming in first is Mills! This isn’t exactly a David and Goliath story because Canna is nice, but the idea of competing against them, never mind beating them, is equally as daunting. Over the past seven years, Mills has created a solid and trusted brand for itself and continues to grow. Coming in third, and one of the big surprises is Monkey Nutrients, one of the newest companies to enter the nutrient market in the UK. They have made a bigger splash in two years than any other company in recent memory! Watch closely to see if they continue to win the hearts of shops and growers. With 6%, Biobizz gets a noticeable mention. They are the UK’s top organic brand and came up in many conversations. Not the biggest seller, but it is the go-to for organic beginners.

Question #4 What is your most sold supplement? Canna 36% Mills 8% House and Garden 6% Roots excelurator 6% Superthrive 5% 29 Other Brands 43% It’s not a surprise that Canna Boost won the majority of the votes in this category. Some products work so well that they can’t be duplicated (especially ferments and other proprietary goodness). Coming in second place is Mills Vitalize, which offers a unique product that brought the wonders of mono silicic acid (MSA) to many UK growers for the first time. James will be the first to tell you that it is much more than just MSA. Either way, it has regularly made its way to the top of this list and continues to be a strong seller across the UK. Mills has the entire package, and I can’t wait to see what’s next! House and Garden’s Roots Excelurator takes third place. This surprised me, as they have been quiet in the past couple of years. I remember 15 years ago when I was a sales rep touring California when H&G launched that product. Something about the aluminium bottle and the gold label caught everyone’s attention. It also worked well and was one of those lightning-in-a-bottle scenarios. It was on every shelf in California and all the good states within six months. Despite H&G’s difficulties with the Dutch government or its sale to California-based Humboldt Wholesale before being sold again to Hydrofarm in May of 2021, the brand is still popular. They have lost many steps as a nutrient line, but their star has not. Abandoned on the front lines, Roots Excelurator continues to fight its way to the top.

Question #5 What is your favourite supplement/additive? Mills Vitalize 12% Canna 6% Grow Genius MSA 6% H&G Roots Excelurator 5% Evoponics 5% 43 Other Brands 66% Mills takes #1 again! Making it to the top is hard enough, but staying there is much harder. Mills’ popularity is with the entire range, but Vitalize is its star and earned its place as the UK’s favourite additive. Mills has been the main competitor to Canna and continues to grow its brand with the hopes of one day being #1.

Question #6 What is your shop’s most-sold type of lighting system? Maxibright Daylight 660 37% Lumatek Zeus LED 17% Gavita 9% Sanlight Evo 8% Cheap ’n Cheerful 12% 11 Other Brands 17%

The big story here is the rise of LED and how Maxibright and Lumatek have dominated the market. Only 18% of the total vote was for HPS! In 2015, HPS made up approximately 85% of total lighting sales. The classic HPS kit has been even more discounted than Canna. Some stores told me they have to sell five HPS kits to make the same money they make on one LED. Today, HPS sales are mainly for large-scale growers who do not want to invest in LED. The overwhelming majority of home growers are buying LED. As LED prices drop and quality improves, I do not predict a bright future for HPS. It is no wonder Maxibright has the top-selling LED. They have always been the UK’s best lighting manufacturer/wholesaler. In the first survey, they won with the ole green plastic 600 HPS. They won by a bigger margin in 2018, with a combo of their 600 W digital kit and the 315 Daylight CMH, and then again in 2020 by an even bigger margin with the same light that won again this year. Lumatek has always been a strong brand in the UK, but until the launch of the Zeus LED, never came up on the survey. Up from 12% in 2020, Lumatek Zeus will only continue to grow. Gavita has always been synonymous with quality. As frugal as some UK growers can be, there is still a large group who only want premium products. Gavita remains one of the most popular brands despite extreme competition and a slurry of less expensive options. When it comes to HPS, Cheap ‘n Cheerful were the words I heard the most. No more brand loyalty! Stores are almost giving away these systems, and the margins are razor thin, so every pound counts.

Canna consistently impresses growers; the great prices many can find on Boost help out too. Grow Genius is the little company that fought its way to the podium, just squeaking out some of the biggest names in the UK. GG is a unique mono silicic acid product developed by an ag science company in the UK; this is a true next-generation product. Alone in its category, it boasts an impressive 1ml per 33ml dilution rate and does not affect pH.

UK HYDRO SURVEY 2022

Question #7 What is your favourite LED? Maxibright Daylight 660 45% Lumatek Zeus 14% Sanlight/Gavita 9% Adjust-A-Wings Hellion LED 5% 14 Other Brands 17% In stark contrast to the nutrient questions, the top sellers are the favourites too! Hmmmmm. Customers come in asking for these products, stores sell them and make a fair profit, and people love them and buy more.

Question #8 What is your most sold grow tent? I used to ask what was the most sold and favourite, but the answers were almost always the same, so now I ask one question.

Budbux 38% Century Bloomroom 10% Gorilla / Secret Jardin 9% Mammoth 7% Cheap ’n Cheerful 8% 8 Other Brands 26% This is the third #1 in a row in this category for Budbox! With an impressive 38% of the vote (27% in 2018, 24% in 2020), Budbox has been around for over 20 years and has always focused on an ultra-premium product. From zips and poles to reflective capability, Budbox always shoots for the best. That and the fact that it is a UK brand with an amazing team has made them the top choice. Bloomroom, Century’s house brand, has always made the top three. Not premium and not quite budget, Bloomroom has been the reliable and affordable alternative to the more expensive products. As was Gorilla, Highlight’s house brand. Piggybacking on Highlight’s success, Gorilla has proven itself and has become a trusted brand.

Question #9 What is your most sold carbon filter? Carboair - GAS 33% Can 20% Rhino 15% Mountain Air 15% 7 Other Brands 17% GAS is the King of Carbon, distributing brands that make up a whopping 54% of the total vote - Carboair (33%), Rhino (15%), and Phresh (6%)! If a carbon filter is not made properly, it can cause major problems, so consistency of quality is critical. The top four brands continue to make products their customers can trust. I used to ask about the breakdown of different growing techniques. What percentage grows in soil (containing organics), coco, peat, and all the various hydroponic systems. The traditional ‘Hydroponic” (DWC, NFT, and Rockwool) have vanished in the past three surveys. In 2015, it was 50%; 2018, 33%, and in 2020, 7%. Today, it is almost 0. That doesn’t mean no one grows this way; these methods are no longer popular, and perhaps one out of every 20 growers is not using coco or peat-based substrates. I did ask how they grow, and after about 40 similar answers, I stopped. Almost everyone said hand-fed, coco in pots. They start with a plug, move to a two-litre plastic pot, and finish in a larger felt pot. They use some automation, but almost none. The old KISS (keep it simple stupid) method has won. So, what’s in those pots?

Question #10 What is your most sold substrate? Canna 38% Gold Label 21% Biobizz 16% Plagron 11% 8 Other Brands 14% A popular nutrient doesn’t mean the substrate will be or vice versa. It’s got to consistently work. Canna coco checks both those boxes. Canna is a super solid company that prides itself on quality. With their nutrients’ popularity and early entry into the market, it’s no wonder they’re #1. Gold Label comes in second again. Another Dutch brand, Gold Label lives up to its name. Only the best quality coir and pebbles make it into their bags. RHP and Kiwa certified can assure the grower that they are buying a premium product. In this category, a strong third for Biobizz and a notable fourth for Plagron at 11%. 25

Check our new feed schedules:

Discover the complete organic liquid range thanks to the new GK-Organics® Florizon! 100% organic fertilizers • www.gk-organics.nl

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UK HYDRO SURVEY 2022

Q u e s t i o n # 11 Do you sell more cloth or plastic pots? The answer was overwhelmingly in favour of cloth. Some shops still have not fully embraced them yet, but only a few. Unfortunately, what I have discovered is that the majority of the pots get thrown away. Good for retailers, I guess, but very wasteful.

Question #14 Who is your favourite distributor?

Question #12 What percentage of your customers grow organically? Some things don’t change; the answer has been 12% in the last three surveys. Most growers don’t go organic because they think it will be more work, headaches, and a smaller harvest in more time. Those are all good reasons to stick with the mineral nutrients. But all the organic growers have a different story. They build rich soil and only water with water. They will tell you it is less work, fewer headaches, and produces the best quality. Will the organic movement ever become mainstream? I hope so.

Highlight Horticulture 44% Maxigrow 9% Creation 6% Nutriculture 6% Growth Tech 6% Hydrogarden 5% 13 Others 24% There is no contesting this one. Highlight has been #1 three times in a row and is up by ten points. That’s huge! Not the most polished company, Highlight has won over so many stores with their friendly service and broad product offering. The market continues to choose cool and competent over corporate professionalism. Maxigrow is down five points but still holds on to the second spot. Over a decade of being the UK’s top lighting wholesaler has helped Maxi be a top three pick in the last three surveys. Plastics and systems have been the mainstay of Nutriculture’s line and continue to help differentiate them from the crowd.

Question #13 What is your favourite pH - EC meter? Bluelab 68% Essentials 14% ETI 9% 5 Other Brands 9%

One of the big stories here is Creation Wholesale. It has been only five years since Creation opened its doors. In that short time, it has managed to beat out some massive companies. The shops all say Creation is hard-working, honest, and likeable. They don’t have the most products, lowest prices, or biggest sales staff. But they are relatable, something I heard eight years ago about an up-and-coming wholesaler called Highlight.

The biggest winner in the survey, Bluelab continues to dominate! Based out of New Zealand, this company is quite impressive. It was a double winner at the 2021 New Zealand International Business Awards, including the Supreme award. Great products, great service, great company, and nice people. Hard to compete with that. Essentials comes in second with a reasonably priced pH pen.

UK HYDRO SURVEY 2022

Question #15 What is your favourite new product? Monkey Nutrients 10% Grow Genius (Mono Silicic Acid) 9% Maxibright LED 8% Evoponics 7% NOTHING 15% 30 Other Brands 51%

Monkey with a second place spot in favourite nutrient and now favourite new product. This is a super impressive start for this young company, doing what other companies couldn’t achieve in two decades in two years.

Well, that’s it for this one. Remember, this is not supposed to be a market share report; it is meant to detect trends in the industry. You need to read between the lines to understand what is going on out there. Many external forces influence the market, and most are impossible to predict. It is true that the market is down, but do not despair; it will rebound. Still, don’t think that it will ever be back to normal. In this industry, change is as inevitable as the sunrise. How we adapt to our new reality will determine if we survive and flourish or if we crash and burn. Good luck and be smart. 3

Grow Genius launched around the same time as Monkey. Unlike Monkey, which has an entire nutrient range, Grow Genius has one mono silicic acid (MSA). Boasting an impressive 1 ml / 33L, no other MSA comes close. The 2020 winner was Maxi’s Daylight LED. Not new, but still new to some stores and growers. LEDs are taking over and won’t be “new” to anyone for long.

The Great

hydro store

A notable mention to Evoponics. Really interesting line of nutrients and supplements different from what is out there. Also, a UK brand run by great guys.

2022

In this survey, 15% said they couldn’t think of anything new that grabbed their attention, up from 6% in 2018. Covid wasn’t the best time to launch new products.

Check out the past surveys:

GCMAG.CO/2020

GCMAG.CO/2018

GCMAG.CO/2015

BY EVAN FOLDS

The Way The World Works

doesn´t

work

EARTH CRISIS

How is it that we put so much energy and resources into fixing things, yet they seem to get worse?

n easy example is health care, where the United States spends nearly twice as much on health per person as comparable countries yet has increasingly higher rates of disease. People call it sick care for a reason; we treat symptoms with massive amounts of pharmaceuticals and misguided assumptions about how the body

works while not considering the root cause. Ultimately, all cynicism aside, this is good for business and bad for people.

More Of The Same The business model is essentially the same for conventional lawn care, food, war, agriculture, etc. Status quo and conventional wisdom sell us on convenience and scarcity, then attempt to control the narrative to capitalise on the fear that this induces. In so many ways, our social software needs a reboot. We are capable of love and abundance but believe it backwards.

What is known is that humans are resilient; we will rise from the ashes as we have in the past, but with a new purpose and in new and exciting ways

The mechanism of control is corporatism – a marriage of business and government – that manipulates and coerces people into customers who collectively do not understand the value of what they buy. The industries built around this trickery are enormous and powerful, so when considering this, if our purpose is to seek truth and hopefully a way towards fixing the systems that sustain us, we must ask who benefits?

This is a big question built on top of an important reality – the modern world is stuck within a dying socioeconomic system that uses consolidation and control to pillage the Earth in the name of profit. This cradle-to-grave approach is unsustainable, built on extraction and subsidies. It results in what Vandana Shiva calls “fake cheap”, where a quarter-pound cheeseburger that would cost $12 without federal subsidies is somehow moulded to a price point that has the masses nourishing themselves in a way that results in countless sick care customers. Cynical? We are living in a Ponzi scheme of corporatist capitalisation. What happens when it unravels is anyone’s guess and more a metric of how many of us come to grips with what is coming before it gets here than a situation where we can individually do anything about it. What is known is that humans are resilient; we will rise from the ashes as we have in the past, but with a new purpose and in new and exciting ways.

Our Health And Safety At Risk Through its almost total control over the media, health care, big business, and government, the system is flailing for influence and generating massive collateral damage to the health

and safety of the general public. The level of fear used as a full-court press on our physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual bodies has reached epic and epidemic proportions. It is tearing communities and families apart, and we are left with a serious question – when will enough be enough?

The public policies enacted during the Covid Moment to protect people have mostly done the opposite. We have given our agency over to others for so long that we don’t know what it looks like to stand up for ourselves. As a result, the world has been split into two. The system has shown its cards; we are being presented with an opportunity to choose – those who believe in the system or believe in themselves. We are not talking about conspiracy theories and personalities playing puppet master here. We are talking about social and economic systems sucking the life out of the planet in a race to the bottom line at all costs. The system is not broken; it works exactly as it was designed. Coming to terms with this reality is the challenge of our times.

Seeing The Light So how do we change the system? Buckminster Fuller recommended building a new one that makes the existing system obsolete. This is happening rapidly worldwide; thousands and maybe millions of people are actively building a “New Earth”, seeking freedom from the systems that bind us, putting people before profit, and choosing to come home to themselves and the community. Many are showing up for the first time to engage at local political meetings. Others are exiting the system entirely, but what is clear is that the system is failing people. This impulse to reorganise society is being facilitated by tools such as private membership associations, cryptocurrency, and other disruptive technologies that decentralise control from traditional power channels to help build a new foundation for sovereignty and freedom.

GA R D EN CU LT U R E M AGA Z I N E.CO M

EARTH CRISIS

In so many ways, our social software needs a reboot.

Decentralised communities are cropping up in all regions of the world, focused on fundamentals such as agriculture, skill-sharing, and more. This is happening on large and small scales. One leading organisation in the space with two global locations in Ecuador and Mexico describes itself as “a member-owned network of conscious co-living communities that combine the value of owning a home, the freedom of renting, and a sense of belonging wherever you go.”

Decentralised communities are cropping up in all regions of the world, focused on fundamentals such as agriculture, skillsharing, and more

Soul Searching Work People are seeking a new way of living, and rightfully so, given the pain and turmoil alive in the world right now. Sadly, the way the world works doesn’t work for most people. Humans are recalibrating their lives on an unprecedented level. Some are waking up, others have already checked out, but the dynamics of the moment are stirring penetrating and often uncomfortable questions for everyone. Can we trust the experts? Does capitalism have a conscience? Is the government working for us or against us? Do I have power, and where can I find it? This sort of soul searching is understandable given the conditions of the modern world. The wealthiest 1% of people own 50% of the world’s wealth. Three men have as much money as the bottom 50% of Americans, yet more than half a million people are homeless. We live on a water planet, yet more than 3.5 million people – the equivalent of a jumbo jet crashing every hour – die globally from water-related diseases yearly. The world grows enough food for 10 billion people, yet 1 in 5 children in my county struggle with hunger. The list goes on.

What A World The status quo wants business as usual, and those capable of making up their own minds are dangerous to business as usual. The unprecedented censorship seen through the Covid Moment by traditional and social media may be the clearest signal of how desperate the status quo is to retain control of our culture and how easy it is to manipulate the masses. Can we not think for ourselves? Censorship limits diversity and makes us weaker, not stronger.

If we do not make up our own minds, someone else will do it for us. When this happens, it results in things we would not want if we were asked. Food is no longer our medicine, most farmland is not family-owned, we practice perpetual wars, and we try to solve natural problems with synthetic solutions. So we double down, again and again, hoping for different results, and it is crippling us. When tyranny and toxic rescue chemistry are applied, rather than focusing on nourishment and reinforcing the natural principles of balance and diversity, the result is a false reliance on government and industry to save the day, and they are playing on the same team – against us.

False Promises Consider a homeowner hiring a conventional lawn care company. Government regulations allow them to spray carcinogens on landscapes that cost homeowners in more ways than one; then, they can make false promises that generate the problems they propose to solve. Generally, the average homeowner hiring a lawn care company has been conditioned

GA R D EN CU LT U R E M AGA Z I N E.CO M

EARTH CRISIS

to want green grass with no weeds. But, do you think they realise that the approach of trying to grow the grass with artificial fertilisers and herbicides damages soil health, pollutes the environment, poisons people, and ultimately stimulates more weeds?

The Way Forward

The gift of consciousness brings great power and responsibility, and we are being called to rise to this challenge

The healthy and more successful longterm approach is to grow the soil with biodiversity, living roots, and the work of the microbes of the soil food web so that the plants that the soil supports can thrive. Then, just like the microbiome in the human body, the soil is teeming with life and ready to perform miraculous functions that deliver tremendous value to the homeowner, such as saving money, better plants, reducing irrigation, a safer environment, and more. A forest grows trees with no fertiliser; the compost pile is the gut of the landscape. The natural world is much simpler than we have made it, and the parallels are life. The strength of the soil food web, the gut microbiome, or the forest is in diversity. There is a great lesson here: censorship, the corporate nature of our health care, the artificiality and monoculture of conventional agriculture, and at almost every other point of opportunity we have to encourage diversity on a large scale, we choose the opposite.

We are so much more than this if we decide to be. We are spiritual beings of light living in the shadows, but in the spirit of our coming cultural renaissance, the shadow shows us the light. We seem to be in denial about the sources and merits of what helps us thrive. But as humans, we can change our minds and put our will into action in new ways.

This impulse to build a “New Earth” is important. We are facing circumstances never before seen on our planet, and the impulse represents an attempt to build community in a new way. The gift of consciousness brings great power and responsibility, and we are being called to rise to this challenge. In doing this, we must focus on regional development, leverage technology for abundance, and listen to indigenous cultures which retain the wisdom of how to live with the land. People do not need to be saved or rescued; we need to connect with the Earth and know our power and how to put it into play. When this happens, we move mountains. Are we going to do what we are told within the confines of what we used to think? Or are we going to think critically, feel vulnerable, and will deeply into a new world that we all know is possible? The time for gurus is over. In the end, no one is going to save us but ourselves. 3

Evan Folds is a regenerative agricultural consultant with a background across every facet of the farming and gardening spectrum. He has founded and operated many businesses over the years - including a retail hydroponics store he operated for over 14 years, a wholesale company that formulated beyond organic products and vortex-style compost tea brewers, an organic lawn care company, and a commercial organic wheatgrass growing operation.

Bio

He now works as a consultant in his new project Be Agriculture where he helps new and seasoned growers take their agronomy to the next level.What we think, we grow! Contact Evan at www.BeAgriculture.com or on Facebook and Instagram @beagriculture 34

BY JESSE SINGER

the History of

Food Preservation

Food is critical to our survival. As important as it’s been to grow or find our food - preserving it is just as essential and has been something humans have strived to master for tens of thousands of years. From the sun to the refrigerator, man’s quest for food preservation excellence has seen us try it all. Here’s a timeline of food preservation methods and landmark moments throughout history.

FOOD PRESERVATION - A TIMELINE

12,000 BC sun drying

Prehistoric man didn’t have any fancy technology, but they had the sun! So they would use it to dry out various fruits and foods. The evaporation of the water in the food helped prevent the growth of bacteria.

Credit: -Ayman-Damarany

11,000 BC ‘World’s Oldest Brewery’ In 2018, researchers found beer residue dating back 13,000 years in a cave in Israel.

3,150 BC Fermenting in Egypt Evidence suggests that the Ancient Egyptians were fermenting alcoholic drinks.

3000 BC Mesopotamia To store and save food for times of scarcity, the Mesopotamians would preserve cooked fish and meat in sesame oil, drying and salting it.

1000 BC Harvesting Ice & Snow Passages from the Chinese poetry collection, known as Shijing, refer to religious ceremonies regarding the filling and emptying of ice cellars.

Jam & Jelly

500 BC

The ancient Greeks would preserve fruit by immersing them in honey and packing them into jars. The Romans went one step further and would cook the fruit and honey before packing.

400 BC Yakhchāl

Ancient Iranian engineers invented these domed structures in the desert with storage space below ground for ice - and sometimes food.

160 BC De Agri Cultura (On Farming or On Agriculture) Written by a Roman soldier, senator and historian, Cato the Elder. The work - On Farming or On Agriculture - contains the first written recipe for dry-cured meat.

Bibliotheca historica

36 to 30 BC

In Diodorus Siculus’ work of universal history, the Bibliotheca historica (completed sometime between 36 and 30 BC), he writes about how the nomadic Cosséens in the Persian mountains would salt the flesh of carnivorous animals.

400-1400 Confit Today, confit is thought of as a method of food preparation, but the term originated as referring to food cooked for a long time in a liquid as a means of preservation. In the Middle Ages, meat would be cooked, cooled and sealed in its own fat. Stored in a cool place, the meat would remain good for months.

Brining 1400 Around this time, we see the origins of the brining method of food preservation - particularly for meats. The technique involved submerging the meat in a salt solution (brine), activating osmosis, and thus pulling water from the meat.

1478-1618 Tamonin-nikki The Japanese diary, written by monks between 14781618, documents how wine is heated to preserve it.

FOOD PRESERVATION - A TIMELINE

18th Century: Root Cellars Taking advantage of the consistently cool temperatures below the frost line, root cellars were a popular form of food preservation from the 18th Century until the advent of refrigeration.

1756 Artificial Refrigeration In Edinburgh, Scottish physician William Cullen provided the first documented demonstration of artificial refrigeration.

1768 Lazzaro Spallanzani Spallanzani was an Italian priest and a scientist whose experiments with boiling and then sealing meat in a container showed that thermal actions could sterilise foodstuff.

1795 Nicolas Appert (the “father” of Food Science) Appert was a French chef who, in 1795, began his experiments in food preservation which involved sealing food in jars and placing them in boiling water.

-12,000 Francs 1795 The amount of the cash prize offered up by the French military for a new way to preserve food.

1803 Butter Box Thomas Moore gets a patent for his box used to transport butter. The wooden box had a metal insert with ice to fill the gaps.

FOOD PRESERVATION - A TIMELINE

1804 La Maison Appert

Appert

For The Win

The factory, started by Nicolas Appert, became the world’s first canning/jarring factory.

1851 Pressure Canner

1810

After years of experimenting and perfecting his work, Appert submits his canning invention to the French military and claims the 12,000 Franc prize.

Raymond Chevalier-Appert, the son of Nicolas Appert, got a patent for his pressure retort (canner), which would can at temperatures above 212°F.

Mason Jar 1858 John L Mason patents the iconic Mason Jars with the threaded screw-top and airtight seal. These easy-touse and reusable jars were a major influence in the rising popularity of home canning.

1862 Pasteurisation Named after famed French scientist Louis Pasteur, who did his first experiments with Pasteurisation in 1962. However, it would be decades before we would use the method.

Canning 1864 Understood Although the canning process had been around for decades (thanks to Appert), it wasn’t fully understood until 1864, when Louis Pasteur proved that heat kills bacteria. Before that, it was believed that the exclusion of air preserved food.

1913 DOMELRE American Fred W. Wolf invents the first refrigerator for use at home. Called the DOMELRE (Domestic Electric Refrigerator), it was a unit you would mount on top of your icebox, and it sold for $900.

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FOOD PRESERVATION - A TIMELINE

1918 Refrigerator Mass Production -The Frigidaire company buys the idea for a fridge with a compressor on the bottom from electrical engineer Alfred Mellowes and begins mass production.

-The Kelvinator Company bought a different idea from Nathaniel B. Wales and began their own mass production of the first fridge with automatic temperature control

1922 Birdseye Seafoods Inc. Clarence Birdseye, the man often credited with creating the modern frozen food industry, conducted successful fish freezing experiments and started his company, Birdseye Seafoods Inc.

Fast-Freeze Fish

While his company quickly went bankrupt, Birdseye expanded on his research and developed a new, commercially-viable means of fast-freezing fish, starting another company, General Seafood Corporation.

Has your garden been ridiculously successful this year? Of course it has! Enjoy the fruits of your labour all year round by using some modern day preservation techniques. Consider pickling your peppers and cucumbers, making and freezing hearty tomato sauce, and turning your berries into sweet jam. Learn the ins and outs of fermentation and dehydration, and if you want, take a step back in time and use the old fashioned root cellar to keep crops like potatoes and garlic throughout the winter. Food preservation will help you eat well and cut down on waste! 3

Sources: • • • • • • • • •

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_preservation dehydratorlab.com/history-of-food-preservation MSU Extension: The History of Preserving Food at Home (bit.ly/3PpW2ib) History of Food Processing (bit.ly/3lkhvv3) whirlpool.com/blog/kitchen/history-of-the-refrigerator.html historyofrefrigeration.com/refrigeration-history/history-of-refrigerator National Center for Home Food Preservation (bit.ly/3Mt5hvW) virdex.it: Cato the elder and his dry-cured meats (bit.ly/3FYkrXW) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Appert

1924

• • • • • • • •

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Foods Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Association: Root Cellar (bit.ly/3NoZBU6) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pasteurization en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Landis_Mason en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classic_of_Poetry en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refrigeration en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curing_(food_preservation) bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-45534133

BIO

Jesse grew up obsessed with movies and so it only makes sense that he graduated from McGill University with a degree in Political Science. He then put that degree to good use with a job at a video store. After that, he spent months backpacking around Europe - a continent that he has been back to visit many times since. Jesse is super curious and loves to learn and explore new subjects. For the last 15+ years, he has been writing online for a number of different sites and publications covering everything from film and television to website reviews, dating and culture, history, news, and sports. He’s worn many hats - which is ironic because he actually loves wearing hats and he has many different ones.

FAST. RESPONSIVE. BESPOKE.

WEB DESIGN

Designer A person who takes a problem and creates a solution. Developer Takes a design solution and builds a web experience. Business Is what comes to those who sell an experience.

WWW.NPK.MEDIA

@NPK_MEDIA

MARKET

PLACE PRODUCT SPOTLIGHTS

See what’s new in the growers MARKETPLACE

visit: GCmag.co/Product-Spotlight

BY ANNE GIBSON

Tips For

Balancing Your

Soil’s

Many common garden problems are due to soil pH imbalances, so it’s vital to test, monitor and adjust the soil to maintain it within the optimal range

BALANCING SOIL PH

oil pH (or hydrogen ion concentration) indicates how acid or alkaline our soil or growing medium is. It is measured in pH units to show on a scale of 0 to 14 whether the soil is neutral, acidic or alkaline. Soils with a pH value of 6.5 to 7.5 are considered neutral. Over 7.5 indicates an alkaline soil pH, whereas below 6.5 is acidic.

The basic rules are to add compost, mulch and apply compost teas Why Testing Your Soil pH Is Important

Soils with a pH value of 6.5 to

Soil pH directly affects the availability and uptake of nutrients and chemicals soluble in soil water by plant roots. The further from neutral the soil pH is, the less total nutrient uptake occurs, leading to nutrient deficiencies. However, the maximum mineral nutrient availability occurs between pH 6.5-7.5. In Australia, our native soils vary widely. Coastal lime soils tend to be alkaline. Volcanic acid soils, compacted poor quality ‘fill’ soil in urban new housing areas, and those with higher organic matter, like compost, influence soil pH. Other factors that impact pH include soil type (sandy, clay or loam), temperature and high rainfall. Commercial blends of potting soils are pH tested, so consumers are confident they are getting a reasonably balanced input. Many common garden problems are due to soil pH imbalances, so it’s vital to test, monitor and adjust the soil to maintain it within the optimal range. This also applies to working with a potting or seed-raising mix. I recently worked with a client who amended her potting medium with several ingredients, including coir peat, compost and vermiculite. She had poor seed germination and seedling failures. When testing the pH of the mix, we found it to be highly alkaline at 8.5. I suggested she test the individual inputs to see where the problem lay, and surprisingly, the compost supplier was the culprit! It was a good lesson in testing every batch and understanding the imbalances and negative consequences.

Soil pH Impacts Nutrients, Minerals and Growth Plants obtain 14 of the 17 essential nutrients in a dissolved form in soil water. Highly acidic soils (pH 4.0-5.0) can contain toxic concentrations of minerals like aluminium, manganese and iron that can affect plant growth. Beneficial soil bacteria that perform a vital role in decomposing organic materials are hampered in highly acidic soils. This impacts the breakdown and availability of nutrients, especially nitrogen. Essential minerals become ‘locked up’. So, a balanced pH is a key to plant and soil health, including the biology.

7.5 are considered neutral. Over 7.5 indicates an alkaline soil pH, whereas below 6.5 is acidic

Tips for Taking a Soil Test using a Kit An accurate method of determining the soil pH is by using a pH meter. This is simply inserted into the soil, and a reading is taken. Another easy method uses special indicators or dyes that are matched against a colour chart. The steps are quite simple: • • •

•

• •

•

You may need to test multiple soil samples individually for the best results if you have many garden beds and pots. I test each zone and batch of the potting mix to know if there are any pH issues I need to address. If you want an average pH of your garden soil, you can take multiple samples and combine them for testing. However, you may risk missing an issue in one area that could need remediation to correct a strongly acidic or alkaline soil. If you are collecting soil from a sizeable in-ground garden bed, dig a hole down to 10 cm from the surface. Take at least five labelled samples from different parts of the bed. Test each separately; this will provide you with data to compare. If all samples are pretty close in pH values, you can make any soil amendments to the entire area. If one or more of the samples are significantly different, you can treat them individually. Remove any fibrous organic materials or stones by hand or sieve before testing. When testing potting mix – either homemade or commercial – thoroughly mix the blend before taking an average sample. I’ve found results vary considerably by missing this step! For small potted plants, remove the plant from the pot. Take a sample of the potting mix immediately around the rootball. For potting mix in large tubs where you can’t remove the plant, take a sample as deep as possible around the rootball. Use a sharp trowel to dig down along the inside wall of the tub to collect the sample and blend it thoroughly before testing.

Kit directions are easy to follow: • • • •

Add a flat teaspoon of the soil or potting mix sample to the test plate surface. Squeeze a few drops of the purple dye indicator liquid onto it and mix well into a thick paste. Dust the white powder over the paste and wait about one minute for the colour to change. Use the colour card with pH values from acidic to alkaline to match as closely as possible to your sample. Compare the soil sample in natural light for an accurate colour match.

I record my pH tests in a Garden Journal. This provides accurate data to work with if any amendments need to be added to adjust soil pH. Keeping a record is so valuable. You can look back to compare the pH and any improvements over time. An annual soil test will reveal any action you may need to take. If it’s within your budget, start with a professional soil test. Lab results provide you with exact inputs to correct the pH and avoid any potential nutrient deficiencies.

If the soil is too acidic: less than 6.5 = low pH (most common for Australian soils): •

The quickest solution is to add high-quality organic matter in the form of compost with a neutral pH, so you can start planting ASAP. Adding humus (broken down compost) is the best way of changing pH naturally. Let the soil biology do the work!

• •

Acidic soils tend to attract fungi and may be fungally dominant. Make a ‘compost tea’ with a handful of compost in an old sock or stocking dangled over a bucket. You can add a small lid of liquid seaweed, fish emulsion, worm leachate from a worm farm and a tablespoon of molasses to help feed beneficial microbes. Ideally, use a pump to aerate the compost tea for 12-18 hours and use immediately. Dilute and water in or spray over your soil and plants.

You can also plant into ‘pockets’ of compost or potting mix while you remediate a larger area of the garden. Simply dig a hole bigger and deeper than the plant you want to grow, and fill this with your compost or potting mix. This strategy will enable you to keep growing while improving the soil in your garden. As the plant establishes, its roots will use the balanced nutrients and moisture in the potting mix or compost so it won’t suffer while you work on the surrounding soil. If you are not getting a professional soil test done, it may be appropriate to add agricultural lime, not builder’s lime, to raise the pH if it’s too acidic. As a guide, carefully apply 100g/metre. The most accurate way to apply lime is after a professional soil test analysis, which will show you which minerals are deficient or in surplus. Again, it will take a while to increase the pH when you amend the soil using lime. You could expect to see a change in the pH within six months.

BALANCING SOIL PH

Test your soil annually to know your garden’s nutritional requirements If soil is too alkaline: greater than 7.5 = high pH: • •

• •

•

This soil will be harder to rebalance than acidic soil (<6.5) and likely contain more bacteria than fungi. The quickest solution is to add high-quality organic matter in the form of compost with a neutral pH so you can start planting ASAP. Adding humus (broken down compost) is the best way of changing pH. Again, let soil biology do the work! You can also plant into ‘pockets’ of compost or potting mix while you remediate a larger area of the garden. Add green manure crops every season to improve soil health, organic matter content and increase microbial activity. In an extreme situation, you could use powdered sulphur. However, this option has pros and cons! Be careful, as sulphur is anti-microbial and can kill off your biology if applied regularly. You could take the approach of making an initial application by using one handful/square metre and again annually after testing if still needed. Unfortunately, adding sulphur to the soil is a slow method of adjusting the pH and is affected by moisture and soil life. In highly alkaline soil, it’s likely you would not notice a change in the soil pH for about six months.

When a plant expends energy adjusting the pH inside its cells and outside in the soil, its overall growth suffers. This is why we sometimes have to step in to adjust the pH to create a more balanced environment for our plants to grow. But ultimately, plants are in control! As Jeff Lowenfels, author of ‘Teaming with Microbes’ explains, “Plants synthesize and release exudates of various components that adjust the pH to where it should be.” Now and then, though, we can give them a helping hand for a healthier, thriving garden. The basic rules are to add compost, mulch and apply compost teas. These steps will help improve your soil pH, increase soil biology (fungi, bacteria and worms) and create a buffer for both acidic and alkaline soil types. 3

BIO

Anne Gibson, The Micro Gardener, is an author, speaker and urban garden community educator on the Sunshine Coast, in Queensland, Australia. Anne is passionate about inspiring people to improve health and wellbeing, by growing nutrient-dense food gardens in creative containers and small spaces. Anne regularly presents workshops, speaks at sustainable living events, coaches private clients and teaches community education classes about organic gardening and ways to live sustainably. She has authored several eBooks and gardening guides. Anne shares organic gardening tips and tutorials to save time, money and energy on her popular website - TheMicroGardener.com.

BY DR CALLIE SEAMAN

Water Activity & Food Preservation

This article will certainly make you question everything you thought you knew about water.The following technique revolutionises the safety of food and dry flower products sold for human consumption but has been used for decades in the food industry.

ne of the biggest issues growers face is keeping their beautiful produce from spoiling and becoming ravaged by microbes. This ‘takeover’ happens in the form of fungal or bacterial growth or increased enzyme activity, causing the breakdown of the structures. The appearance,

taste, and smell are affected by this spoilage; some biomass and essential compounds are also lost. These can be nutritionally and medically significant compounds, depending on the plant. But, most impor tantly, the safety of the product for consumption is compromised.

WATER ACTIVITY

What Causes Spoilage The water present causes this spoilage and reduced shelf life in the plant; the higher the water content, the increased risk of microbial attack. But why do some foods take longer to begin this process?

One of the biggest issues growers face is keeping their beautiful produce from spoiling and becoming ravaged by microbes

When water is in an equilibrium state, it moves from a liquid/aqueous state to a gasses/vapour state. Water is also classed as a solvent, and it will happily hold salts and sugars along with many other constituents known as solutes. The addition of solutes to water alters the equilibrium state and its behaviour. Not only that, but its temperature also has an effect. Food has many different solutes at differing concentrations. When the water is removed, these concentrations increase and help boost the food’s shelf life.

Various Food Preservation Techniques Salts and syrups have been used for many years to preserve food. Radiation is another methodology that has been employed, killing anything present on the surface of the produce. However, these methods can be detrimental to some volatile compounds, reducing their nutritional and beneficial properties. Ozone and steam are also food preservation techniques. However, the damage caused to delicate fruit is more problematic than the solution it creates. Understanding the chemistry behind why food spoils is essential. It allows us to develop a more tailored methodology of preservation rather than just adding substances or using treatments that will have anti-microbial effects.

What Is Water Activity? Water activity is a concept that has been around for over 50 years and has helped with food safety, product design, and shelf-life guarantees. Lowering the water activity of a food substance helps prevent the growth of microbes; it is not classed as a kill step, as cells are viable in powdered milk but never grow. The strict definition of water activity (aw) is the partial vapour pressure of water in a solution (p) divided by the standard state partial vapour pressure of water (p*). aw = p/p*

the better its capacity to support life. The relative humidity of the air surrounding that water also plays an important role.

Distilled water has an aw of 1, giving it the greatest capacity to support life. On the other hand, dried fruit has an aw of 0.6, reducing the chance of microbial colonisation and spoilage. If this dried fruit is exposed to dry air with an aw of 0.5, the water will migrate from the fruit into the air, preserving it further. However, with an aw of 0.8, humidity results in the fruit absorbing the humid air and spoiling faster—the lower the aw of a substance, the less chance of microbial growth due to desiccation.

How To Measure Water There are a couple of ways to measure water, either by using a resistive electrolytic hygrometer, a capacitance hygrometer, or a dew point hygrometer. The first of the above methods follows the principle of resistance. There are electrolytes in the glass rods of the meter that change resistance directly proportional to the relative humidity. The second method involves water being absorbed into a membrane, increasing its ability to hold a charge, which we can then measure. The fastest and most accurate method is the dew point method, which involves the cooling of a mirror until the dew point and measuring this with an optical sensor. So, what is the best aw when curing and preventing mould growth? Remember, it is not just about the aw of the product you are preserving; it is also the relative humidity of the surrounding air. Using airtight containers and desiccating crystal sachets are perfect ways to gently aid the migration of the water from the cells. An aw of 0.6 is ideal when drying fruit and herbs before placing them into the seal storage vessel where you can control the humidity. Below 0.6, no microbes can proliferate. Do not rush the curing process if you want to preserve the flavours of your produce. At the same time, insufficient drying can result in loss through decomposition of the biomass. Although it may seem complicated, using water activity to help prolong shelf life and prevent mould is something all serious growers should try. 3

But what does this mean in simple terms?

References It is the thermodynamic activity of the water, also known as the energy the water has as a solvent (p) and the relative humidity of the surrounding air (p*). As the temperature increases, so does the aw because it has greater energy. The more energy the water has,

2. 3. 4.

Rahman, M.S. and Labuza, T.P., 2007. Water activity and food preservation. In Handbook of food preservation (pp. 465-494). CRC Press. Mathlouthi, M., 2001. Water content, water activity, water structure and the stability of foodstuffs. Food control, 12(7), pp.409-417. Troller, J., 2012. Water activity and food. Elsevier. Barbosa-Cánovas, G.V., Fontana Jr, A.J., Schmidt, S.J. and Labuza, T.P. eds., 2020. Water activity in foods: fundamentals and applications. John Wiley & Sons.

BIO Dr Callie Seaman is a leading expert of the UK hydroponic industry and became passionate about medicinal cannabis when she was diagnosed with epilepsy over 20 years ago.After obtaining a Biomedical Sciences degree at Sheffield Hallam University, she completed a PhD titled “Investigating Nutrient Solutions for Hydroponic Growth

of Plants”. During her PhD, she became a founding director of Aqua Labouratories Ltd – a formulator and producer of specialist hydroponic nutrients. In October 2018, Callie became a non-executive director of a home office licenced medicinal cannabis facility within the UK. She consults with a wide range of other licensed producers worldwide as they look to set up their facilities.With numerous scientific articles, book chapters and peer-reviewed papers to her name, Callie is an experienced professional in the field of medicinal cannabis, cultivation and fertiliser science. @dr.callieseaman

@DrCallieSeaman

@dr_CallieSeaman

linkedin.com/in/dr-callieseaman Web: aqualabs-uk.com & cbdhempire.co.uk

BY JOANNA BERG

Garden Data

Collection G

athering and examining data on your growing environment can have a powerful impact on understanding how various factors influence plant yield or the

expression of their genetic traits. Data is information that will put your finger on the pulse of your garden or farm, and gathering it doesn’t have to be a daunting high-tech solution. Don’t immediately leap to greenhouse computer brains and field sensors.

DATA COLLECTION

SCIE NTIF IC CL NAM E

SS SCIE NTIF IC CLA NAM E

My great-grandmother kept a simple log of our family farm, noting the daily weather, farm activities, crop issues, and other significant events, including the births of the children in our family. I treasure that journal to this day. So, get excited about gathering data! Connect with your plants on a deeper level, and, who knows; maybe you’re leaving a family legacy. Here are some tips and tricks on collecting great data and leveraging that information to grow healthy, beautiful plants.

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When do the Japanese beetles start attacking your roses? When do the cucumber beetles arrive to shred up your leaves? When does your squash get powdery mildew in the fall? Knowing when a pest or disease shows up is paramount to preventing them in the future. Log who you see and when they show up to inform future pest forecasting.

Daily Temperature, Humidity, and Weather Events

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Connect with your plants on a deeper level, and, who knows; maybe you’re leaving a family legacy

Not every year will have the same weather at the same time, but documenting and learning the temperature and weather patterns will help you predict the arrival of pest and disease pressures in the future. For example, how many days of 10 oC weather does it take before I see cucumber beetles attacking my plants? If you note these environmental variables, you can begin to correlate them with a pest presence. Once you know you’ve hit the environmental window that favours the life cycle of your pest or disease, you can take a preventative approach to management. Crushing a problem before it begins is much easier than reacting to an acute problem.

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Soil and Plant Tissue Testing

Many home gardeners do not want to carry the expense of lab testing. The stakes are lower for the hobby gardener, but if you are a commercial producer of any kind, you will want to understand how your nutrient regimen affects your crop. Getting a side-by-side soil saturated media extract (SME) test along with a plant sap or plant tissue test can be powerful in unlocking your understanding of the soil-plant interface, crop performance, and fertiliser utilisation.

Sticky Traps for Pest Population Monitoring These sticky traps are commonly misused to control flying insects such as aphids, leaf miners, fungus gnats, thrips, white flies, black flies, midges, and other flying plant insects. Although they may do a good bit of population reduction, sticky traps are more than just a trap! They are there to catch insects so you can identify who they are and how many are in your garden. Often, you will see sticky traps with a little grid printed on the trap; this is for counting. If you count the number of insects weekly and subtract the previous counts from the most recent count, you can tell how severe an infestation is and if a pest population is increasing or decreasing over time. This can help you understand if a treatment you might have tried is working. Also, sticky traps won’t necessarily solve your pest problem. For example, if you have a fungus gnat issue, sticky traps won’t solve your problem if you are not addressing soil moisture levels. Do not rely on them to obliterate a pest issue. Think holistically about the pest life cycle and attack them where they are vulnerable.

A CHOICE AS CLEAR AS THE VISION.

M YKOSWP

DATA COLLECTION

Over-collecting data is a very easy mistake to make

Soil pH, Moisture, and Soil Electrical Conductivity (EC) You can gather these data points in the field in a low-tech approach with relatively inexpensive store-bought meters or send a sample to a lab for measurement. Hobby gardeners and commercial producers will get a firm understanding of field conditions with these data points, which is essential because these variables dictate the ability of a crop to properly uptake the nutrients.

Crushing a problem before it begins is much easier than reacting to an acute problem

Don’t Over Collect Data Meaningful data but less data is better than tons of useless information. Over-collecting data is a very easy mistake to make. This habit can be a waste of time and can get overwhelming. Instead, approach your data collection with a strategic attitude. Know why you are collecting a particular piece of information and have a plan on how you are going to use it. How will you aggregate the data to see patterns? How will you look back and analyse trends over time? These questions will help dial in your method of documentation. Is it a spreadsheet, a journal, or a bunch of notes scribbled on a calendar? Any of these methods will work as long as you have a clear plan on which data you need and how you intend to access that information in the future.

Bio

I know data collection can sound like a snorefest or feel cumbersome, but I believe it can be empowering and informative. Farmers have always thrived on their observations because it connects them more deeply with their production. Data can be a powerful anchor to your observations and provide vital information. So unleash your garden nerd and document your amazing observations because it will pay off! 3

Joanna Berg is a Certified Professional Soil Scientist specialising in pest and disease diagnosis and integrated crop management solutions through her firm in Northern California, Dirty Business Soil, LLC. 57

Sugar, Sugar… BY AV SINGH

The Truth Behind Simple Carb Supplements

SUGAR

ld Wives’ Tale? Bro-Science? Snake Oil? Or Magic Bullet? The use of simple sugars in the garden predates the fancy bottles of “candy” and “sweeteners” that you see lined up in grow shops and garden centres. For hundreds of years, Natural Farming techniques have used honey, molasses, maple syrup,

and other natural sugar sources to benefit crop production -- but why?

Recent research reveals that these simple sugars are more than microbial foods Well, here’s the truth. The truth is -- we don’t exactly know why. So many varying factors like soil pH, soil organic matter, and soil microbial life, coupled with our still limited understanding of what actually goes on around the rhizosphere and the root cell membrane, leave us with several potential modes of action of why free sugars benefit plant growth.

For hundreds of years, Natural Farming techniques have used honey, molasses, maple syrup, and other natural sugar sources to benefit crop production -- but why?

Sceptics argue that the whole purpose of photosynthesis is to produce glucose, some of which is used as energy for plant growth, while much of it is exuded into the rhizosphere to feed or attract microbial populations. They contend that supplemental sugars will only attract more microbial species that benefit from an excess of simple sugars and that the practice of sugar supplementation disrupts the natural selection of microbial species that the plant needs; this is true. Exogenous sources of simple sugars will preferentially favour those microbes that see glucose, fructose, and sucrose as food, and their populations will rise as a result. However, recent research reveals that these simple sugars are more than microbial foods.

Most plant physiology textbooks will note that complex organic molecules need to be digested by microbes before being absorbed into the plant. So, essentially, supplemental sugars are not food for plants; they are microbial foods. In contrast, recent research has identified that the relatively impermeable plant cell membrane has Sugar Transpor t Proteins (STPs), which have a strong affinity for simple sugars and can actively transpor t them into the plant through roots and other plant organs. So, what is the benefit of this “free” sugar, considering the plant can already make the stuff ? For the longest time,

our one-track perception of sugars within the plant was to view them as sources of energy or building blocks for amino acids and other complex molecules. However, sugars play a critical role in modulating plant growth. The simple monosaccharides, sucrose and glucose, function as signalling molecules that aid the growth and development of plant tissues. This relatively new understanding of the role of sugar in plants can provide added information on the timing of sugar supplementation.

Continually applying “free” sugars to a plant throughout its life cycle may not be the best approach because it will provide significant selection pressure only to allow certain microbial species to thrive. Growers must know that the goal of a healthy soil food web is to have as many actors present on the stage at all times. If concentrated with only bacteria and fungi, nutrients can get tied up and not cycle to the plant. Therefore, sugar supplementation should be strategic and application timings motivated by specific end goals. As with all things in life, moderation is key.

Kickstart Seedling Growth Or Clone Root Development From the hypocotyl development of the seed to the root extension of your developing clone, exogenous sugars will signal cell elongation and division at the root tip. Both sucrose and glucose have been linked to increased auxin biosynthesis. Auxins are a class of phytohormones that are sugar magnets and are primarily responsible for growth (e.g., the highest concentrations are in the apical and root meristem). Also, a spoonful of sugar helps the mycorrhizae go up. Studies have shown increased mycorrhizal infection rates when soils are supplemented with some fructose.

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SUGAR

Crop Steering Using A Little Glucose Boost Giving your plants a little break from sugars during veg may allow them to establish a more diverse microbial population around the rhizosphere. As a plant is approaching generative growth (flowering), a switch in the form of nitrogen (N) can help maintain optimal plant health and make the transition more fluid. Nitrate (NO3-) is an excellent form of N for growth, but in flowering, plants will be better off with ammonium (NH 4+) or amino acids as their source of N. Exogenous glucose has shown to inhibit the uptake of nitrate N and favours the uptake of amino acids like glycine.

A little extra postharvest sugar feeding can provide microbial populations with a much-needed boost for the coming winter when food sources may be slim

Finish With A Sugary Treat For Root Health A significant hormonal shift happens within a plant in the latter stages of flower or after entering fruit fill. Sugar magnet hormones, auxins, begin to concentrate in flowers and fruits and as a result, so does the majority of photosynthate (i.e., glucose from photosynthesis). Who misses out? The roots. With roots no longer getting their fair share of sugar, root health decreases, and plants become more susceptible to root diseases. Some

Growers must know that the goal of a healthy soil food web is to have as many actors present on the stage at all times

timely applications of sugar in the last couple of weeks before harvest can help stave off root-related plant disease. This late-feeding of the rhizosphere can help maintain microbial populations that can continue to produce secondary metabolites like flavonoids, terpenoids, vitamins, and other antioxidants for the developing fruit or flower. Moreover, a little extra post-harvest sugar watering feeding can provide microbial populations with a much-needed boost for the coming winter when food sources may be slim. The increased activity can help break down potential overwintering sites for pests and pathogens. This age-old practice works, yet we will continue to better understand why. The one cer tain truth - the more we know reveals just how little we know about the plant:soil:microbe interface. 3

BY RICH HAMILTON

Growing In

space Buckets

Buckets 62

SPACE BUCKETS

pace buckets are an excellent solution if you don’t have much room or money but still want to grow some plants like herbs or spices. The best par t? You can quickly put one together yourself with inexpensive materials found at most hardware stores.

It offers room for a handful of small plants such as microgreens and herbs and even slightly larger veg such as cherry tomatoes, carrots, and onions This trend has taken off in recent years as people look to become more self-sufficient, whether they live in a house or a flat with no garden. Anyone can nurture a space bucket and enjoy the satisfaction of cultivating their micro-climates.

What Is A Space Bucket? A space bucket incorporates all the essential elements of a grow room into a self-contained climate. It offers room for a handful of small plants such as microgreens and herbs and even slightly larger veg such as cherry tomatoes, carrots, and onions. This growing solution also has LED lighting, ventilation fans, and a power supply wrapped up in a bucket with a lid. Like terrariums, once you understand the method, the only limit is your imagination and available space!

Easy on The Wallet Space buckets are affordable to make. A grow room can cost thousands of dollars, but this microenvironment is relatively cheap. You probably already have most of the items you’ll need around the house! Anything you don’t have is easily found at a supermarket or hardware store.

A Space Saver The clue is in the name; space bucket refers to the low space requirement!. They are the perfect growing option for apartments, dorm rooms, or shared houses. You can put it in the corner of your closet, in the garage, or even under the kitchen sink. It is discreet because no one will see the lights once the bucket is closed. The only thing that might draw attention is the fan’s hum.

Environmental Control Most space bucket enthusiasts enjoy the challenge of seeing what they can achieve in such a limited space. In addition, these sealed micro-climates offer complete control of overgrowth. However, there are still some risks.

Anyone can nurture a space bucket and enjoy the satisfaction of cultivating their micro-climates 63

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SPACE BUCKETS

A grow room can cost thousands of dollars, but this microenvironment is relatively cheap

Making a space bucket may seem technical, but it’s easy! This guide will help you get started: Materials • Three 5-gallon buckets • One 5-gallon bucket lid • One roll of black duct tape • One bottle of super glue • One roll of reflective Mylar • Two 12-volt, 80-mm computer fans • One 12-volt power supply • Four wire nuts • One pack of small zip ties • Three bolts and nuts • One 4-socket light fixture • Four 23-watt compact fluorescent bulbs 1: Use the glue and coat the bucket’s interior with reflective Mylar. Drill drainage holes in the bottom of the bucket and four small holes in the side. These will be used to run zip ties through and attach the 12-volt power supply.

Any small problem you may be able to rectify in a large grow room quickly might be magnified in a space bucket. Unfortunately, these issues can kill your plants. However, if you are organised, systematic, and consistent in light, feed, and pH levels, you may find that you can play around with the controls and achieve more out of your mini-environment. For example, you could set up two or more space buckets to grow the same plant under differing conditions. You may choose to go to bloom early or switch up your nutrients. The better method will stand out, and you can carry this information forward to your next space bucket project.

2: Cut two holes in the wall of the same bucket for fans. Drill a small hole near each fan opening to run zip ties through and attach the fans to the bucket. One works as an intake fan and the other as an exhaust. Connect your fans to the power supply using the wire nuts. 3: Take two more buckets and cut the bottoms off. These spacers will add height when your plant outgrows its initial first bucket. The buckets should nest perfectly so no light can escape when the buckets are fitted together. 4: Cut the bottom of the fourth bucket and duct-tape the lid to the top. Cut a hole in the lid in the shape of your light fixture. Next, duct-tape the light fixture to the lid so that the bulbs fit inside. Finally, wrap the exterior in duct tape to keep light from escaping.

Are Space Buckets For Me? Space buckets are low cost, convenient and discreet. They are also an excellent training tool if you want to work toward building a more standard grow room. It will give you time to learn about the importance of water, feed, the environment, and what your plants need. So, if you feel like dipping your toe into indoor gardening or want to try something different, give it a go! Small spaces can offer tremendous results. 3

BIO An industry veteran with over 20 years of experience in a variety of roles, Rich is currently a business development manager for a large UK hydroponics distributor. The author of the Growers Guide book series, Rich also writes on all aspects of indoor gardening. He is also an independent industry consultant, working closely with hydroponic businesses worldwide.

BY JENNIFER COLE

Urban Foraging From British Columbia, Canada to Christchurch, New Zealand, foraging connects people back to nature and changes how food is harvested.

URBAN FORAGING

very August, the crab apple trees on David Quinton’s residential street in Vancouver, Canada, are laden with fresh fruit. People come with ladders and long poles to reach the highest branches where the ripest apples hide. Others wait until they fall to the ground, then fill their buckets.

This is foraging. Different from a harvest of leafy greens, basil, or radishes garnered from a cultivated vegetable patch or community garden, foragers harvest food growing unhindered by human intervention in urban areas, suburban side streets, and along riverbanks, seashores and remote forested regions. Throughout history, foraging has always been part of the human experience. However, the advent of industrialised agriculture and improved logistics in transporting goods changed the idea of going into the forest to look for wild asparagus. Why bother when we can find it with little to no effort at the grocery store? The price was worth the convenience until now.

Foragers harvest food growing unhindered by human intervention in urban areas, suburban side streets, and along riverbanks, seashores and remote forested regions

The Guardian newspaper [1] reports that, in New Zealand, where inflation impacts food costs, increasing numbers of people are foraging to supplement the contents in their pantries. It’s nature’s bounty offered at no charge but invisible to those who don’t know where to look or what foods are edible.

meadows across the region. Many of those areas have since been developed, and Toronto City Parks has a bylaw forbidding foraging to help preserve the area’s delicate biodiversity. The law also prevents the over-harvesting of the edibles found growing in the ravines denoted by the city as environmentally significant areas.

Learning About The Wild Side The founder of Swallow Tail Canada [2], Robin Kort, is a trained chef and foraging enthusiast. She knows all the best places in British Columbia’s southern coastal rainforest to find wild edibles such as fiddlehead and liquorice ferns, big leaf maple flowers, and oyster mushrooms. Kort says the pandemic caused people to think twice about travelling, and as a result, they have become more connected to their local environments. Her company offers online courses and foraging field trips throughout Metro Vancouver that educate participants on how to gather and prepare fresh kelp or trap a Dungeness crab without leaving the shore. She says that people want to learn where to find local food and are excited about harvesting the green pinecones of British Columbia’s infamous Douglas Fir tree to make syrup. The company’s website, swallowtail.ca, provides resources on what’s in season and is also clear that foraging is not about overindulgence. For example, if Kort is at the beach and only spots two pieces of kelp instead of ten, she won’t take any. She believes those two pieces are better served as part of the ecosystem than on her dinner plate.

A keen environmentalist, Forbes believes people will pay more attention to the natural world and learn how to take care of it sustainably if they develop a relationship with it through food. So in 1998, he started Forbes Wild Foods[4] to generate that awareness. Expert foragers across Canada gather edibles for the company. Milkweed pods, cattail hearts, and even spruce tips are preserved and sold to restaurants, hotels, gift shops, food and health stores, and individuals. Only foods growing in natural abundance are harvested. The company prides itself in ensuring the foraging is done sustainably, encouraging harvesters to look at what they are taking as a pie. That means only cutting a slice of what is available each year so that nature can replenish the stock. The company also works to reintroduce wild foods to lands needing remedial attention, such as overgrazed woodlots and pastures. Adding native plants to a landscape helps repair the soil and enhance the ecosystem.

Gathering fresh kelp

Foraging Equals Sustainability For Jonathan Forbes, foraging has always been about sustainability. His family lived in Toronto during the 1950s, and he remembers going out with his mother, a keen forager, to gather mushrooms, ginger, and leeks from the ravines, wetlands, and

Dungeness crab 67

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URBAN FORAGING

Why bother when we can find it with little to no effort at the grocery store? The price was worth the convenience until now

Fulfilling A Collective Need In 2010 and 2011, Christchurch, New Zealand, experienced destructive earthquakes; large swaths of the city were demolished. The red zone, a ribbon of land stretching from the coastline to the inner city, was designated too unstable to rebuild, and 8,000 houses were destroyed[5]. However, vegetation, including fruit and nut-producing trees, remains in the area. Eleven years after the quakes, it has become a favourite spot for foraging, making a dramatic difference to Joanna Wildish’s household food costs. So she’s created Otautahi Urban Foraging[6], a shared resource for people in Christchurch to find plants, berries, and other supplies like firewood, pinecones, and seaweed. Although wild foods have become trendy for restaurants that pay foragers to gather for them, Wildish says that practice is the opposite of what foraging is all about. She views foraging as a local community experience with a collective focus on sharing and maintaining nature’s abundance. She’d like to see foraging areas developed like food forests, as places people can go to supplement edible needs.

In New Zealand, Wildish says foraging is about leaving as much as possible, not only for other people but for animals, birds, bugs, and reseeding. I’m conscious of this as I fill my buckets with apples in Vancouver. I’ll share what I don’t use to make crab apple jelly with neighbours or take it to a community cupboard or fridge. Summer in Canada is winter in New Zealand. As I harvest crab apples, Wildish is bundled up and is also out and about harvesting nutrient-rich purple nettle, dandelion, and onion weed. But it’s more than a free harvest of chickweed that makes foraging worthwhile. Being in nature, Wildish says, gives her a strong sense of inner resilience and belonging to the earth; this can serve as an inspiration to us all as we go about our harvests. 3

Sources: • • • • • •

Foraging takes hold in New Zealand’s wild places | New Zealand | The Guardian (bit. ly/3A6ueds) About Us | Swallow Tail Canada (swallowtail.ca) Foraging prohibited by Toronto bylaw, city warns | CTV News (bit.ly/3y2m0jR) About - Forbes Wild Foods (wildfoods.ca) Residential red zone - Wikipedia (bit.ly/3bosAcH) Otautahi Urban Foraging | Facebook (facebook.com/Otautahi.Urban.Foraging)

A Bountiful Harvest In More Ways Than One Back in Vancouver, the crab apple harvest is in full swing. The normally quiet residential street is a hive of activity. A few years ago, the city came to chop the trees down, but after Quinton told them how people harvested the fruit, they went away and haven’t come back, he says. As a result, the ripe apples are everywhere, including on the ground and hanging from lower branches. What’s left after the human frenzy will be eaten by urban wildlife, like raccoons, skunks, and coyotes.

Wild foraged green salad with red dead nettle, miners lettuce, jasmine flowers, dandelion and chickweed

Joanna Wildish foraging

BIO Jennifer Cole is a writer and garden enthusiast with a

bachelor’s degree focused on history from Simon Fraser University, and a freelance writing career spanning two and half decades, Jennifer lives in Vancouver British Columbia. Her by-lines have regularly appeared in the opinion section of the Toronto Star and her portfolio includes articles in various newspapers, magazines, and websites across Canada. When not writing her own blog or visiting local garden centres, you can find her puttering, planting, and nourishing her own urban garden oasis.

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BY MARTYNA KROL

words of gardening

wisdom

e should never stop learning, for no one can have all the knowledge. From clean-fingernailed novices to grizzled

spade-leaners, all growers should be on the lookout for valuable and competent tips and advice from those who have walked the path before us. Detailed and gritty information is there for the taking these days, but I thought it might be helpful to share some of the more general tips that I’ve come to lean on.

GARDENING WISDOM

Never Give Up! Think of failures as lessons; if you let them, every obstacle on the road can teach you something. It used to be yearly around midsummer when I wondered WTF I was doing. So many things went wrong, from terrible weather (I live in the North of England) or slugs that had eaten all my veg to an early crop-killing frost, a polytunnel picked up by the wind, and stolen strawberries. You get the idea.

Gardening is a game; we can’t win every time, but we try new strategies and adapt

This year, I have a resident mole, vole, and a rabbit that has taken care of most of my outdoor planted seedlings. Was I angry? Hell, yes. Will I give up? Not a bloody chance. These days, whenever I encounter an ‘oh-my-God-I-give-up’ moment, I just breathe deeply (sometimes for a long while) and reconfigure it to a challenge. Gardening is a game; we can’t win every time, but we try new strategies and adapt. Once we can handle one scenario, a new lesson arrives. Rome wasn’t built in a day... or without a lot of swearing.

Establish Routine! Be it your farm, grow room or house plants, work on a routine to help you manage it smoothly. Take house plants, for example. Depending on the volume of your indoor jungle, it may be hard to remember which plants need watering and when. I like to bring all my pots together on a slow Saturday morning and place them in a bath filled with a few inches of water plus a bit of feed or a nutrient enhancer. They slowly soak up what they need, and I can go about my morning. The plants return to their spot in the house once the pots feel heavy. Similarly, if you’re managing a greenhouse or a growing space, it’s worth having a routine walk where you check all areas. Are the compost bays covered, and have the volunteers left the taps closed? Are your timers and irrigation systems set correctly with no leaks? Checking those points becomes second nature in no time and helps you go about with the new tasks that will undoubtedly arise.

Stop Apologising! This speaks to many aspects of life, largely thanks to social media. Unfortunately, a weird shame over our ordinariness and a desire to maintain a specific image has crept into the gardening world. So many of my clients will begin the garden tour with apologies for the weeds or overgrowth. Stop! Nobody should be judging your space; if they are, kick them

out. We all have lives to maintain and other hobbies and chores on the to-do list. So get this perfect image of Monty Don’s garden out of your head unless you have an unlimited budget and an infinite army of volunteers.

More importantly, be grateful for the space you have, whether a 2m x 2m ‘yarden’ (as we call the Yorkshire-stone paved front yards of terraced houses of the North), access to a community garden, or the most beautiful and wildlife-filled fields and forests. It’s not a competition! Even one pot that brings one bee to its nectar or a smile to your face is a call for celebration.

Keep Learning Until You Drop Dead! I am so happy that growing and gardening tasks are now considered cool! There are many incredible teachers out there with an immense amount of knowledge just waiting to be shared. From permaculture specialists, soil experts, and hot and cold climate gardeners to urban farmers and small space designers, there is a wealth of knowledge at our fingertips. The world of growing is constantly evolving, with new gardens being built and various methods trialled and tested on different soils. We live in an extraordinary time! I remember when I was closing Incredible Aquagarden’s Instagram as the project ended; there were no followers on the platform interested in plants or soil. Little did I know how the internet would change, and to this day, I take inspiration from many growers across the globe, listen to my favourite podcasts and keep watching webinars that routinely blow my mind, even when I start to think I’ve seen it all.

Have Fun! This one doesn’t need explaining. Do you like to lie in a hammock all day with weeds around you? Good, because weeds are better than bare ground. Do you work in the garden non-stop from sunrise to sunset? Good, you should own your energy. Whatever is fun for you, please do it. What is the point otherwise? 3

BIO Martyna Krol is a vegetable grower, natural bee-

keeper, and edible spaces designer. She is a lover of all soil and urban farming techniques and is the former head of growing at Incredible Aquagarden.

INDOOR GROWING

BY RICH HAMILTON

RICH’S

T0p TOP5

Indoor Growing Tips

’m Rich Hamilton, and I have been growing indoors for many years. Like all growers, I have encountered many mistakes and problems. However, these have only made me a better gardener in the long run. I could share countless tips with you, but these five will likely have the most positive impact on your growing game.

Keep a Grow Diary

There are many ways to keep notes! Write them on a pad, log them on your phone, or use a wallchart. Just make sure you do it! I cannot stress enough how much being able to track my cultivation history has helped me learn and succeed as a grower. Writing down a brief list of everything you do and when you do it will help you spot mistakes, successes, and growth patterns. Before long, you will have a tried and tested foundation of knowledge upon which to build.

Prevention Is Better Than Cure

Indoor grow rooms are ideal places for insects to thrive. They love the hot, humid climate and the abundance of tasty plants. An infestation of bugs like aphids, spider mites, and thrip can be devastating. Pest infestations often snowball quickly; the reproduction rate is remarkably high, especially in warm conditions. For example, a female aphid can produce up to 12 offspring a day, which will reach adulthood and start reproducing themselves after only a week!

Writing down a brief list of everything you do and when you do it will help you spot mistakes, successes, and growth patterns

Using my three-day pest checklist religiously means that you will spot the signs of any infestation while you still have a chance to control and eradicate it. It will also remind you to ensure the environment is suitable for your plants and not in a zone attractive to insects.

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INDOOR GROWING

Reservoir Recommendation

When using a system with a tank or reservoir to feed plants, you should change it completely every seven days, regardless of what nutrients have been used. Plants do not consume nutrients and water equally. Therefore, the nutrient strength in the hydroponic reservoir will fluctuate. Do not just top up the feed! If you do and then take the EC measurement, and it comes out correct, it does not mean that what is in the tank is what your plants need. The EC reading only tells you the level of salts present in the water. It cannot tell you the levels of individual elements. Nutrients can also start to dissolve or calcify after a few days, which will change the properties of your nutrient solution. By fully draining and cleaning your tank every seven days, you will be replenishing your plants with fresh, accurately-dosed feed in a clean environment. It will prevent any problems before they start. Regular cleaning also helps prevent water from stagnating and developing fungi and bacteria.

Keep Your Grow Room Clean

Think of the grow room as a restaurant kitchen. It’s your workroom and place of creation. Suppose it is clean, sanitary, and well organised. In that case, you can get much more out of it at a better-quality rate than messy, cluttered and unclean. Inadequate hygiene standards increase the chances of a pest infestation or an attack of mould or mildew. Space also equals safety in a grow room; the combination of running electrics, hot lights, and water could quickly become a recipe for disaster. So, ensure the cables are tidy and not covered and that everything is appropriately spaced. As a result, your plants will be happier and healthier, and you will find a more desirable working environment produces better results.

T h r e e - d ay C h e ck lis t 1.

2. 3. 4. 5.

Examine leaves from a sample of plants for signs of insect damage, including bugs, residue, tracks, holes, or eggs. Remove any dead, dying, or damaged leaves. Turn each plant 900 ̊ to distribute light and airflow evenly. Maintain good housekeeping and hygiene standards. Check that temperature and humidity levels are correct.

Buy The Best You Can Afford

Money talks, and never is this more accurate than in indoor gardening. When it comes to equipment, 99% of the time, you get what you pay for. This does not mean that you must buy the top range, but cer tainly do not buy the cheapest. Cheap nutrients will be full of cheap industrial-grade elements, and inexpensive lights won’t give you the actual outputs of PAR or PPFD. Unfor tunately, there are too many unscrupulous firms out there that are only concerned with making money.

Buying quality also ensures your safety and peace of mind with warranties, guarantees and customer service

The more technology and quality equipment present in your grow room, such as fan speed controllers or LED lights, the easier and more manageable you will find things and the better results. Buying quality also ensures your safety and peace of mind with warranties, guarantees and customer service. Budget brands are ok for amateur small grow projects. But they are not generally reliable enough for anything more significant or long-term. They will often cost you more in lost yields and other problems. So buy quality and get it right the first time. 3

BY AV SINGH

Autumn Prep For A Healthier Spring

It Ain’t Over ‘til The Garden Bed Is Asleep

POST-HARVEST LAND PREPARATION

t’s been a long season. As you lop off the last plants and fruits for hang drying or fresh-frozen storage, your thought dreams drift you to a more relaxing oasis away from the arduous tasks performed for the last six to eight months. But, you’re so not finished. Post-harvest land preparation is arguably the most important work you can do on the

farm for profitability and environmental sustainability.

Regenerative Prep Regenerative growers, whether following organic, biodynamic, or natural farming techniques, are blossoming worldwide. Placing a regenerative agricultural lens on growing helps shape some integral practices that can help stave off some of the common challenges annual crops face (e.g., cereal grains, oilseeds, corn, etc.). These challenges include bare soil, soil compaction, poor water retention and infiltration, increased weed pressure, and pests and pathogens.

Disease-Suppressive Soil What defines a disease-suppressive soil? First, it does not mean the absence of disease or the virulent pathogen; rather, it refers to the soil’s ability to render the pathogen benign or keep it from gaining a stronghold in the soil community. Chemical and physical characteristics can create a diseasesuppressive environment, but the microbial community does most of the work. At present, there is no definitive explanation as to what is happening in these soil communities, but, in large part, potential pathogens are held back in three ways:

Post-harvest land preparation is arguably the most important work you can do on the farm for profitability and environmental sustainability

As regenerative farmers, hopefully, notions like the use of green manures, insectaries (i.e., refugia areas with companion plants to attract beneficial insects), cover crops, mulches, compost teas, and fermented extracts, etc. were not foreign practices during the growing season. Using these farming methods should have the land pretty well set for just some minor tweaks to get your beds ready for next year’s crop. Ideally, most annual crops, should undergo crop rotation and not be planted in the same field for three to four years to help address weed, pest, and disease issues. However, for many growers, the infrastructure for these plants parallels that of perennial crops like grapes, hops, and fruit trees and, therefore, are managed more like an orchard or vineyard as a permanent bed system. A lack of rotation will create severe selection pressure, and viruses, viroids, fungal diseases, and insects will prosper. As a result, the primary goal for fall preparation is to create or maintain a “disease suppressive” soil to combat any future pest or pathogen.

1) Competition - plant beneficial microbes are more populous than pathogenic ones and out-compete them for resources, especially Carbon (C) and Iron (Fe). 2) Production of an antibiotic - of course, microbes are the source of many antibiotics used in humans; these same microbes can create molecules that kill other microbes. 3) Production of volatiles - interestingly, many of the terpenes that are sought after in our plants are the same molecules that can inhibit pathogen growth.

POST-HARVEST LAND PREPARATION

Preparing your beds in the fall should not be confused with applying soluble fertilisers. Soluble fertilisers will leach out of the soil with winter precipitation

More Post-Harvest Prep Tips Many of the regenerative farming practices mentioned above are foundational in creating a disease-suppressive soil, but here are some steps to follow post-harvest to help prepare for spring planting: •

Remove all plastic mulch (not recommended for sustainability reasons) or landscape fabric. Hopefully, soon there will be more non-petroleum-based biodegradable mulches, maybe even hemp-based!

•

Mow or shred any leaf, stalk, or exposed root-ball material; this increases the surface area of these materials, boosting their opportunity to decompose quicker, thereby not being a suitable host for overwintering pests or pathogens. Ideally, you have left some rows with natural vegetation (e.g., weed refugia) to provide homes for overwintering beneficial insects.

•

If there is a window (i.e., how many days before frost) to plant a cover crop, choose an appropriate cover to meet your needs (e.g., nutrient scavenger vs. weed suppression vs. increase organic matter vs. break soil compaction, etc.). Some growers will carefully scatter cover crop seeds a few weeks before ‘Croptober’ to help establish cover before cold temperatures set in. Based on soil tests, you may want to add some soil amendments that require significant weathering to become plant available, like limestone, gypsum, rock phosphate, rock powders like Azomite, greensand, glacial or basalt rock dust. Remember to ensure that heavy metals like Arsenic (As), Cadmium (Cd), Lead (Pb), and Mercury (Hg) are sufficiently low.

•

Feed your soil with microbial foods and microbes. During the winter months when plants aren’t actively growing, very little food is being offered to soil life. The use of compost, compost teas, compost extracts, and fermented teas can not only help keep some bare soil more aggregated but can boost microbial populations. Some growers using organic fertilisers with a high C:N ratio (Carbon:Nitrogen) like alfalfa meal or insect frass will include extra food for the microbes. Over winter, these will become plant available and ready for plant uptake when something is actively growing on the bed.

•

Lastly, many growers add special ingredients to their fall elixirs like kelp extract, humic acid, sea minerals, fish hydrolysate, and even simple sugars like molasses. Chock full of vitamins, amino acids, and trace minerals, these soil drenches create an active microbial community that surpasses what is witnessed during the growing months.

Preparing your beds in the fall should not be confused with applying soluble fertilisers. Soluble fertilisers will leach out of the soil with winter precipitation. Proper fall preparation involves the use of microbes and microbial foods that will help make nutrients plant available when the need arises, and more importantly, help make the soil more disease suppressive, securing another favourable crop. 3

BI O

Av Singh, PhD, PAg advocates regenerative organic agriculture serving various organisations, including Regeneration Canada, Navdanya, and the Canadian Organic Growers.

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Pioneering References

m a m a p u b li s h i n g. co m

BY MARTIN OSIS

The Power of

Fungi and the Mystery of

It is striking how intolerant humans can be at times. But when it comes to mushrooms, we should be very accepting

Mushrooms The sudden appearance of a mushroom almost always elicits a response. One moment the mushrooms are there, and often, nearly as fast, they are gone. Like an unexpected visitor, an old friend you have not seen in years or just a dodgylooking character standing at your door, the response is often surprise and suspicion.

A wild portobello (Agaricus sp.) is a delicious dinner guest.

FUNGI

When people are trying to identify mushrooms, they typically want to know what the species is and whether it is poisonous or edible. Often, they also want to know how to eradicate it from their properties. It is striking how intolerant humans can be at times. But when it comes to mushrooms, we should be very accepting. While sometimes they can be poisonous, like plants, mushrooms can range from gourmet delicacies to powerful medicines. They also do a world of good for the planet.

What Are Mushrooms? Mushrooms are just the fruiting body or the reproductive stage of fungi. Fungi are not just ubiquitous; they are long-lived, nearimmortal organisms that can grow as long as the habitat provides them sustenance. Many believe that fungi were some of the first terrestrial life on the planet when conditions were extreme. They quickly developed relationships with bacteria, algae, and plants to survive, creating living biomass where all these organisms could exist and eventually thrive. Fungi are made up of living threads called hyphae, and once a network has been established, it becomes known as mycelium. This mycelium interacts with the plants, plant debris, bacteria, protozoa, insects, and woody debris to create what is now known as the soil food web. This is the living substrate from which life on this planet springs and thrives.

Essential To Life These fungi play many roles, including being a saprophyte, breaking down and recycling the organic debris from the plant kingdom and the carcasses of the animal kingdom. Without fungi, we would be buried under piles of debris! This process is at the heart of what we are coming to know as mycoremediation. We try to harness this force to clean up our messes no matter how nasty, including spills of gas, oil, diesel, fertiliser (chemical or natural), and glyphosate.

At times, these three roles blend into a give-and-take relationship. This is the crucial part of what fungi do, and it generally goes unseen unless one takes the effort to observe.

Ultimate Conditions The mushroom is the reproductive organ in the fungal life cycle. Adequate amounts of water are essential for fungi to choose to produce mushrooms. Fungi are about 80-90% water, but more critically, they need moist ground for their spores to land and germinate. Temperature is also vital to prevent excess drying and promote condensation since both the spores and young hyphal growth are incredibly vulnerable. Fungi are not risk-takers; conditions have to be just perfect for them to expend the effort to produce the mushrooms. However, all bets are off when the fungi’s habitat is threatened. Cut down a tree, build a road through the forest, or set a fire, and the fungi turn all their resources into fruiting mushrooms. Morels are especially famous for this, with many specific morel species evolving to only rely on that mechanism. Fire morels occur in conifer forests that have evolved in a rhythm of regular burn cycles.

Behind The Scenes So when we see mushrooms popping up around our yards and in our gardens, we know that the fungi have been working away unseen, often for a long time. Some of these mushrooms show up almost every year, others once a decade or only once in our lifetimes. Yet, seen or unseen, the fungal mycelium is still on the job, cycling nutrients, supporting plant growth, and balancing bacteria, other microbes, and insects. The healthier this balance is, the healthier the habitat you are tending and creating. 3

The disturbing looking Dog Stinkhorn (Mutinus caninus) distributes its spores by attracting flies through a slimy pungent faecal aroma.

Fungi also create symbiotic relationships with plants, especially woody plants and trees. This is called mycorrhiza, translating from the Latin word for fungi “Myco” and the Latin word for roots “rhiza”. These fungi use a couple of different methods to interact with the roots of plants, exchanging water and a variety of nutrients and minerals for carbohydrates that the plants are adept at manufacturing. This pool of valuable resources is held in the fungal mycelium and is doled out at need throughout this interconnected network. The breath of fresh air plants provide is just a waste product of this process. Fungi also play the critical role of a parasite, keeping the whole system in a dynamic balance. This fungal parasitism covers all aspects of life, including plants, animals, insects and other fungi.

Bio

Martin Osis is an amateur mycologist who has been entertaining and educating mushroom enthusiasts for decades. Contact: Martin@MartinOnMushrooms.com

INFUSED HERBAL VINEGAR

Preserve Your Harvest With

Infused Herbal Vinegar! A re you looking to preserve some of your precious herbs for the cooler months? Infused herbal vinegar will help you enjoy your garden’s yield throughout the winter! Your homemade concoction can be added to salad

dressings, poured over cooked greens, used as a marinade, incorporated into a daily tonic, and even offered

as gifts to family and friends! The suggestions and recipe below are courtesy of Abby Artemisia, author of The Herbal Handbook For Homesteaders: Farmed and Foraged Herbal Remedies and Recipes.

Infused herbal vinegar will help you enjoy your garden’s yield throughout the winter!

Suggested Herbs For Infused Vinegar

How To Make An Infused Herbal Vinegar

• • • •

Basil Bee balm Oregano Thyme

•

• • • •

Chives Garlic Hot Peppers Onions

• • • •

Chickweed Garlic mustard Violet Wild Onion

• • • •

Calendula Evergreen needles (pine, fir, spruce) Nasturtium Rose

• •

•

Pack about two cups of herbs loosely in a ½-gallon (1.9L) Mason jar. Pour apple cider vinegar, wine vinegar, or rice vinegar over the herbs, making sure it covers the plants by about an inch. Place some parchment or wax paper over the jar and seal the lid. Store out of direct sunlight for two weeks, shaking daily. Strain the vinegar and discard the greens. Return the vinegar to the jar, label it, and store it in a cool, dark place to prevent mould. Use within a few months. 3

N IO T C E T O R P T N A L P NATURAL

MILLS PROUDLY PRESENTS

NT E M D N E AM L I O S & ND TE

TRA S B U S M SILICIU

TS A N A L P YOUR OWTH. F O S L L WAL FLOWER GR L E C R D TE DIA. TRATE. N U E A O M T E G O H NS T PTIMUM RO OWIN UR SUBS E R H T G G R N OU ANCE YO Y STRE ROMOTES O O T N DI P ENH THE N

BLEN WAY TO Y L P SIM BETTER Y URALL

BY XAVI KIEF

Team Effort How a Topdressing of Easily Accessible Mycelium Can Raise Your Growing Game

TEAM EFFORT

ushroom mycelia are everywhere; with a little search, it’s relatively easy to get your hands on some commercial spent substrate or to buy “grow your own” kits, ready to fruit or expand onto bulk growing media. Often composed of already-repurposed agricultural byproducts like woodchips, seed husks or hulls, you’re doing a

sustainability service by returning carbon and other necessary ingredients to the soil, feeding future generations of plants. When sent into a living ecosystem, this TEAM, whether in a controlled indoor grow, urban planter, raised beds, or low or no-till field of any scale, from backyard plot to commercial acreage, can improve the quality of the microclimate below and above the soil surface. In addition, it will encourage the harmonious self-management of existing pest pressures and begin lasting cocultivation relationships, opening opportunities for value-added nutritional and medicinal mushroom harvests.

Often composed of already-repurposed agricultural byproducts like woodchips, seed husks or hulls, you’re doing a sustainability service by returning carbon and other necessary ingredients to the soil, feeding future generations of plants

To take advantage of this simple technique, break apart the spent substrate into a chunky mulch and spread it around the base of existing plants. The more you have to work with, the greater area you can cover – aim for an inch of thickness or more, and if possible, incorporate a lasagna-style layering technique, alternating with plain corrugated cardboard or woodchips. If you have a very dense source of healthy mycelium, you may find it can be cut into slabs with a serrated knife and laid out like tiles, which, under favourable conditions, can grow back together and fruit again.

Oyster mushrooms, the easiest and most common mushroom you’re likely to find as a tabletop “fruit your own” kit, enjoy eating up all the landscaping woodchips, straw, or shredded cardboard you can give them, and are well suited to this purpose. Perpetuating your TEAM may be as basic and low-tech as refreshing the vibrant existing ‘mycelial mat’ you created in a previous year with a fresh source of fungi food. If this is your goal, simulate the natural environment of wood-decaying mushrooms by covering this layer with a protective layer of nontoxic paper or cardboard (forming a penetrable “bark”), and maintain Figure 1 its moisture with regular waterings as you go about tending the companion plants. Seams, punctures and around the edges of this layer are where you’ll be able to observe whether the mycelium is regrowing and are the places to look for fresh fungi on a rainy day. With regular attendance to this valued resource, you can revel in the regenerative joys of plucking a meal’s worth of ‘bonus’ mushrooms numerous times throughout the peak harvest period in the same way you might tend a ‘cut and come again’ plot of salad greens. When afforded the opportunity to make direct contact with the earth, your TEAM will attract worms to populate the soil hosting your plants, benefiting their rootzones with improved aeration and, by their rapid digestion, enacting a form of micro-manuring right where your garden can use it best. The

myceliated mulch naturally retains moisture, protects the topsoil from sunburn, and suppresses the growth of unintended intercrops (a nice name for what some might call “weeds”). In addition, if the spawn is living and active, it may retain or even raise the temperature of the surrounding ground and lengthen or stabilise your growing season by fending off late and early frosts.

Go, TEAM, Go! Living colonies of fungi naturally release carbon dioxide as part of their own digestive processes, and plants will be more than happy to take advantage of any supplemental source of this valuable gas you can provide, whether directly below the leaf line at surface level or by allowing it to naturally feed the roots in well-aerated soils.

credit: Xavi Kief

How The TEAM Works

Oyster Mushrooms, traditionally forming cascading clusters on bagged substrates or logs, grow vertically and are easily hand-harvested among wood shavings in a TEAM application

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credit: Xavi Kief

TEAM EFFORT

A common garden slug (Arion subfuscus) devours mushrooms fruiting in the TEAM-enriched environment.]

Your TEAM can also extend its nutritional and medicinal qualities to the localised ecosystem of pollinators and other beneficial insects and animals. For example, bees are known to visit exposed sources of mycelium, improving their individual and hive immunity against otherwise potentially devastating viruses. Birds, frogs, and toads attracted to the earthworms and beetles munching on partially mushroom-devoured substrates can also help reduce populations of moths With regular attendance to this and their yield-reducing burrowing larvae (corn earvalued resource, you can revel in worms, for example).

Off-Season Conditioning

the regenerative joys of plucking a meal’s worth of ‘bonus’ mushrooms numerous times throughout the peak harvest period in the same way you might tend a ‘cut and come again’ plot of salad greens

While regenerative agriculture doesn’t ever really “end”, most growers will consider at least part of the year their “off-season”. This is the perfect time to evaluate the tenacity of your TEAM and consider diversifying your roster. This may include introducing variety in the types of fungi represented (experimenting with different mushroom cultivars that run and fruit under a range of temperature conditions, for example), learning to raise your own mycelium from spores or cultures, and scouting and “spring training” local indigenous fungi species using techniques inspired by Korean Natural Farming or similar methodologies. Finding an edible variety that is hearty and can survive in your climate through all four seasons might be difficult, but it’s a good reason to make friends with your local farmers’ market mushroom purveyors. However, don’t be surprised if these wise farmers are already putting this resource to good use in their own regenerative cycle; in this case, you’ll need to come up with something of value to offer in exchange. Consider starting a mutual aid arrangement with them, whether a trade for fresh produce, mushroom substrate provision, or skills-sharing (if you’re not inclined to farm labour, consider market-day childcare, digital promotion, and design services). This relationship may bring about a deeper connection to the land, intersecting the wild and tended areas so many species depend on for our common survival. Like the best managers and coaches, you’ll learn to spot and utilise the talents of your TEAM through observation, practise, and experimentation. So dig in, and use TEAMwork to make your wildest dreams work!

Often imitated, never equalled

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TEAM EFFORT

Finding an edible variety that is hearty and can survive in your climate through all four seasons might be difficult, but it’s a good reason to make friends with your local farmers’ market mushroom purveyors

Words to the Wise: Cautions and Parameters for Selection of Species and Spawn Types Depending on your interests and access to resources, indoor TEAMwork might flow naturally from the production of jar, tub, or other container-based fruitings of mushroom species like cordyceps militaris. Contaminated or otherwise unsuccessful attempts, thankfully, can be good sources of vigorous fungi-decomposing-fungi (commonly, green moulds) which, although frustrating when fungi are the target harvest, aid in the rapid composting of pre-existing dead plant matter (old roots and leaf litter, for example) and play their own role in nutrient cycling. Remember that once you’ve allowed for these species to take hold, however, they are likely to produce more spores and will be perpetual in your growing environment. It’s a good idea to take these TEAMS farther afield, and consider them your lineup for “away games” only. If manufacturing your own TEAM from scratch using a spore syringe or liquid culture, be aware that a substrate with a high ratio of protein-rich grain may attract small mammals to your growing environment. Instead, expand this type spawn to cardboard, straw, or woodchips before sending in your TEAM. If you’re

successful in fruiting mushrooms from your mycelium before using it as a topdressing, the grain will most likely be digested well enough by the fungi not to pose a significant threat. Remember to inoculate responsibly; consider that you may unintentionally introduce an aggressive fungus developed for commercial purposes that could ‘escape’ your garden and outcompete existing wild populations. A good tactic to avoid this is to use an already-localised varietal of a common species, like Turkey Tail, an aggressive decomposer of wood and a potent medicinal mushroom for humans (and many of their companions!). Learn to identify Turkey Tail growing in a nearby forest, and (with appropriate permission, if needed) break up some fallen tree limbs into nice-sized chunks, partially burying them among your plants. Suppose you’re on a homestead or woodlot. In that case, you can use longer branches or trunks full of mycelium as natural borders or rafts, “topdressing” the soil horizon around or below raised beds to retain their structure and create a hugelkultur-inspired seasonal source of readily-accessible, hand-pickable mushrooms. 3

Bio

Xavi Kief is a writer, researcher, and lifelong learner with their hands in the dir t and their imagination traversing the universe. Seeking always to deepen and integrate their connection with the living planet and its diverse inhabitants, Xavi finds joy by infusing their practical and playful approach to cultivation with a healthy dose of science. They grow food and medicine for their family and community on their Nor thEast Coast homestead.

GREAT FLOWER COMES FROM POWDER

CRAFT POWDER BASE NUTRIENTS & ADITIVES

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BY MARTYNA KROL

Local

Growers

in the U Kreland

WHO’S GROWING WHAT WHERE

& I

1. Galway, Ireland

Credit: Chloe Winters

Chloe Winters

For many growers, it seems like Mother Nature is there for us when we struggle the hardest; the gentle healing experience of being amongst the leaves and fruits is a powerful therapy. When Chloe’s beloved dog passed away, diving deep into gardening books brought relief and a new hobby. Three years later, her garden is blooming with organic produce that she shares with family and friends. While she describes herself as previously not keen on the flavour of tomatoes (or rather the absence of it in the supermarket ones), now snacking on various heirloom varieties as she goes about her day is common. A glance through Chloe’s Instagram pictures shows her familiarity with the sensational effects of working with nature’s gifts; she’s developed impressive bodybuilding muscles alongside her greener achievements! Chloe firmly believes that using natural nutrients and pest deterrents is more beneficial in the long run and that wildlife thrives with a balanced ecosystem. When nature provides an abundance of plants that can be used this way, there’s no need to buy analogues from a bottle. At only 23 years old, Chloe wants to inspire the younger generation to take up gardening and educate people on the harmful effects of weed killers and pesticides on the environment. Amen to that. Learn more:

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2. Newcastle upon Tyne It seems the farther North one tries to grow, the more challenges one encounters, but as Nietzsche said, “that which does not kill us makes us stronger”. Logically then, Hannah Reid, known as Ginger Grows, must be amongst the strongest of all of us. Her allotmenteering story has unfolded almost as far North as it’s possible to go in England in Newcastle-uponTyne. Through her four years of growing, she’s shared tips, favourite varieties (zombie squash, anyone?), and her journey with fermenting and preserving her own food. Hannah loves nurturing and devouring her produce, but she’s also motivated by the environment. She places great value on understanding and positively contributing toward her carbon footprint, food miles, and greenhouse gas production. Composting returns the goodness to the Earth, which then circulates again through her plants. Connection to the seasons is also central to her appreciation for the growing cycle. Hannah recently took over the growing spaces of By The River Brew Co in Newcastle, delivering lush produce to feed the Geordie bellies with zero food miles or fertilisers involved. Whether it’s the allotment or this pro setup, Hannah believes that more businesses need to focus on sustainability and play their part, regardless of size. Learn more:

credit: Hannah Reid

Hannah Reid

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GA R D EN CU LT U R E M AGA Z I N E.CO M

Years

GROWING TOGETHER

WHAT’S GROWING ON

Local

Growers WHO’S GROWING WHAT WHERE 3. Edenbridge, Kent

in the U Kreland & I

Thomas Skinner

Learn more:

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4. Ipswitch, Suffolk

Credit: Chris Wiley

Credit: Thomas Skinner

Most of us grow plants to feed animals (i.e. ourselves), but Tom Skinner grows plants that feed on animals. When we spoke in June, Tom’s plants were hitting the spring vigour stage, forming psychedelic colours in time for summer. Sarracenia is a genus of several species originating from North America. It attracts insects with secretions from extrafloral nectaries on their jug-shaped leaves, creating a slippery slope for the unsuspecting victim before being digested by the plant’s enzymes. Despite only a few existing species, Tom says they hybridise easily, with thousands of variations. His obsession started when he was eight years old after killing his first Venus Fly Trap. The next one came with a guidebook, and Tom was determined to keep it alive. At 14, he met Simon, an expert grower of Trumpet Pitchers, who blew Tom’s mind with his Sarracenia collection - much larger, more vibrant and more exciting than the poor specimens to be seen on the shop shelves. The plant’s behaviour is also fascinating, one example being their tendency to get indigestion if they overeat! Their leaves go a little crusty, and they slow their growth, only to explode with flowers the following season. Sarracenia’s root system is similar to irises - the rhizomes store food for future developments, so no nutrients go to waste. Naturally, I was curious to ask whether they are good for home insect control. Drosera and Pinguicula are excellent at eliminating fungus gnats en masse. I know what I’m asking Santa for this Christmas!

Chris Wiley

Chris Wiley is a man in touch with his mentors. Both his parents were agriculturalists, but he speaks of time spent with his grandparents as a child as the driving influence on his interest in flowers and vegetables. Suffolk is a place not short on green fingers, and he even shared his grandfather’s allotment as a schoolchild, which he describes as his ‘happy place’. Could one be more immersed in the greenery? Later, he was apprenticed to a local nursery specialising in rare and unusual plants and had his first taste of exhibitions, including the Chelsea Flower Show. The firm’s owner encouraged him to reach out to other organisations, which led to plant trials with a major seed firm, and finally to branching out on his own. He now runs the independent plant and product trials and grows his own plants for flower shows and seed production. The latest in his series of mentors was world-renowned gardening writer and broadcaster Peter Seabrook (of Gardener’s World fame). Such was his impact that upon Peter’s death in March, Chris continued his legacy, handing a posy of specially-bred Sweet Peas called ‘Peter Seabrook’ to the Queen, as Peter had done for many years prior. As Chris says, “it was only right to continue his tradition for one last time, in his memory and to say thank you.” The lesson here is to look for teachers wherever you can find them. Learn more: sow-successful.com

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ORGANIC GARDENING TIPS

BY BETTY GREEN

Betty Green’s

The organic queen, Betty Green, offers her top five most effective tips for blissful and all-natural

Organic Gardening Tips 1

gardening.

Soil is Everything

The soil provides your plant’s roots with an anchor, nutrients, water, and beneficial bacteria and microbes. You can transform even the most challenging, barren ground into prospering soil by adding organic matter, which will break down over time to create a rich loam soil. Use compost, mulches, manure, mycorrhizae, and green manure. There are a million ways to enrich your soil, so get researching. Many of them you can do at home for next to no cost. The health of your soil is essential for success.

Grow What You Know

Growing produce that you and your family enjoy eating is rewarding, especially when following organic practices. Beyond nourishing your body with nutritious food, organic gardening is excellent for the environment. Many beginner gardeners will grow certain crops just because they are easy, but you won’t like growing them if you don’t enjoy eating them. Pick three to five of your favourite plants that will thrive in your location and make them the priority.

ORGANIC SMALL GROW GARDENING ROOM TIPS

You can transform even the most challenging, barren ground into prospering soil by adding organic matter, which will break down over time to create a rich loam soil

Epsom Salts

Otherwise known as magnesium sulfate, this cheap household product has been used as a natural fertiliser that can have excellent results on your plants for over a hundred years. Some vegetables, including tomatoes and capsicums, grow better with consistent extra magnesium. A magnesium additive allows for better absorption of nitrogen and phosphorous. Epsom Salts can help fix a magnesium deficiency, signs of which include leaf curling, yellowing, and stunted growth. Add one cup of Epsom salts to every 100 square feet of soil at the beginning of the season. Do not add more than this, as you could inadvertently have a magnesium toxicity problem. For veggies, spread one tablespoon of Epsom granules around the base of each plant. You can also mix two tablespoons per gallon of water and apply it once per month as a foliar spray for quick magnesium uptake.

Recycle Cooking Water

Tipping away cooking water is madness for so many reasons! The water you’ve boiled veggies in offers a fantastic nutritional supplement for your plants. You are also living sustainably by using the pot of water for more than one thing. Different nutritional elements will filter your water depending on what you are cooking. For example, if you are boiling eggs, there will be an excess of calcium in the water. After cooking green veggies, you will have some iron content in that water. Let the water cool before offering it to your plants. You can also use the cooking water from potatoes and pasta; the starch will provoke the release of more nutrients in the soil. Never use salted water on your plants!

Clean Produce After Harvest

Although organic gardening is excellent on many levels, you don’t want to eat many of those inputs. So don’t forget to look after your harvest to keep it in tip-top condition for use in cooking or selling. Cleaning after picking will keep bugs and pests away from your food. It will also stop any spread of bacteria from one plant to another, reducing the risk of your produce going bad quickly. Always wash your fruit and veg well before using them for cooking, especially if you have young children or anyone with an immune deficiency who may be more susceptible to germs. You can buy vegetable wash, but water and vinegar work just as well. 3

BIO

Betty Green has two passions in life: plants and food, which is perfect considering the two go hand in hand. Betty is a dedicated gardener and selftaught cook who is big on organic produce and sustainability. With a large family of four children to feed, she has been slowly increasing her portfolio of garden produce for her growing repertoire of delicious recipes. Betty loves writing about plants, cooking, and sustainability.

101 101

CLIMATE CHANGE

BY JESSE SINGER

Sweden Takes On Climate Change With Wooden Buildings

here are many social and cultural advantages to living in cities. However, there’s also no denying the devastating environmental impact of the urban landscape on our planet.

According to UN Habitat, cities make up less than 2% of the earth’s surface, yet they “consume 78 per cent of the world’s energy and produce more than 60 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions.”

Unlike cement, which emits CO2 into the environment, wood sucks it in and stores it forever. The pollution cities put into our air comes from various sources. But construction and building work are responsible for more than one-third of global energy-related carbon emissions, with cement leading the way as the largest single industrial emitter of CO2 . So, how has Skelleftea, a town in Sweden, decided to take on this climate catastrophe? By building with wood, of course!

However, it also means taking better care of our forests and practising climate-smart forestry to have the wood we need to build ecofriendly buildings.

While some fear this will damage forests, exper ts believe we have enough wood to satisfy this growing construction method worldwide. However, it also means taking better care of our forests and practising climate-smar t forestry to have the wood we need to build eco-friendly buildings. 3

The Sara Cultural Centre in Skelleftea is a 20-story building housing theatre stages, a library, ar t galleries, and a hotel. It was built using 12,000 cubic metres of wood! Unlike cement, which emits CO2 into the environment, wood sucks it in and stores it forever. According to the building architects, the cultural centre should imprison upwards of 9 million kilograms of CO2 throughout its lifetime (a tree will absorb about 21 kilograms of CO2 annually)! The good news is that this wasn’t the first building of its kind. Skelleftea has been using timber for larger construction projects since the 1800s; the trend is spreading to other cities in Europe and even the United States. The Sara Cultural Centre is only the second tallest wooden tower in the world. The tallest, completed in 2019, is the Mjøstårnet building in Brumunddal, Norway.

The Sara Cultural Centre in Skelleftea

Sources: Ear th.org: Sweden’s Wooden Skyscraper Is the Perfect Example of How Sustainable Buildings Can Tackle Climate Change (ear th.org/ sweden-sustainable-buildings) Dezeen.com: Mjøstårnet in Norway becomes world’s tallest timber tower (bit.ly/2UQDvi4) United Nations: (bit.ly/3uWJPc4)

103

BY CATHERINE SHERRIFFS

WAYS

Gardening Experts Harvest Their Plants You’ve worked hard in the garden this season, nurturing your plant babies from seed to harvest! We hope you’ve gathered many valuable tips and tricks in this edition of Garden Culture to help you as you get ready to gather your homegrown crops. But before you get picking in the garden, here are a few last words of advice in our list of 5 Cool Ways Gardening Experts Harvest Their Plants. Happy Harvesting!

The Right Tools

Harvesting plants doesn’t have to be complicated; carefully using your hands is all it takes to get the job done. But a few tools on the market can make foraging more efficient and fun! Abby Artemisia - botanist, herbalist, and professional forager - knows a thing or two about harvesting plants! In her book, The Herbal Handbook for Homesteaders: Farmed and Foraged Herbal Remedies and Recipes, she recommends a fixed blade knife or pocketknife that can be safely stowed in a sheath on your belt. Her favourite tool is a Japanese digging knife (also known as a Hori Hori) because it’s like a trowel and knife in one and makes many garden tasks much easier. A good set of pruners are another go-to, and she suggests trying a few different pairs until you find some that fit well and feel comfortable in your hand. Of course, no serious gardener should go without gloves, and for those days where you might be harvesting out in the hot sun for a couple of hours, a cooler and some ice packs are ideal.

No Diggity

If you’re a fan of no-dig gardening methods, you know that keeping precious soil life intact is essential through all stages of growth, including harvest! Charlie Nardozzi, gardening expert and the author of The Complete Guide to NoDig Gardening: Grow beautiful vegetables, herbs, and flowers - the easy way! recommends that gardeners adjust their technique when it comes to harvesting certain crops. For example, when it’s time to pick greens such as spinach, lettuce, and bok choi, cutting the plants at the soil line leaves the earth undisturbed.The same rule applies to cauliflower and cabbage.This way, the root system stays in the ground and feeds the soil as it decomposes.With root crops, things get a little trickier, but Nardozzi says a healthy garden bed with plenty of compost allows for easier pulling. He recommends gently tugging on carrots, beets, and parsnips by hand to remove them from the ground; after harvest, cover the bed with mulch to keep weeds from germinating.

104

GREEN ADVICE

Sage Advice

Harvesting fresh herbs throughout the summer for your meals is lovely, but when the first frost looms, you hate to see your basil, rosemary, and chives go to waste. Luckily, there are many ways you can pick and preserve your herbs so you can enjoy them throughout the colder months! Master Gardener, Susan Betz, recommends snipping bunches of herbs at the soil line and air-drying them. After harvest, tie the base of the herbs together with a rubber band to make bunches, then hang them in an area of your home with good cross ventilation. Drying time should take anywhere from two days to a few weeks; you’ll know they’re ready when they’re crispy to the touch. Store the dried herbs in clean glass jars for the best flavour and fragrance. Another way to preserve your herbal harvest is to freeze the plants while they’re fresh. Betz suggests chopping the herbs first; they store well in containers in the freezer for up to eight months.You can also turn your harvest into pestos, butter, and herbal vinegar. For more herb garden tips, check out Betz’s book, Herbal Houseplants: Grow beautiful herbs - indoors!

Bugs Happen

There’s nothing better than knowing how your food was grown and where it comes from, but that doesn’t mean your harvest won’t be dirty and come with a bug or two. Sometimes, a quick rinse doesn’t do the trick, especially with food with crevices or hiding spots. So what’s a home gardener to do? Don’t freak out, says Jessica Sowards of Roots and Refuge Farm. Although an excellent source of protein, perhaps you’re just not ready for caterpillars on your dinner plate. Sowards suggests dissolving 3 tablespoons of table salt in a large bowl of cool water. Soak veggies like cauliflower, broccoli, and leafy greens for about 20 minutes. After the salt water bath, all of the insects should be gone. Rinse the plants and enjoy them, bug-free, for dinner. For more fantastic gardening tips from Sowards, check out her book, The First-Time Gardener: Growing Vegetables - All The Know-How And Encouragement You Need To Grow And Fall In Love With Your Brand New Food Garden.

Seed Saving

Last but certainly not least, let’s talk about seed saving, which we can all do to save money in the garden. But harvesting seeds is an art. JulieThompson-Adolf, writer and blogger of Garden Delights, says it’s essential to consider your plants when harvesting seeds. Are they super productive or riddled with pests and disease? Are they quick to produce fruit, or has your hair gone grey waiting for harvest? The only way to select desirable plants is to observe them throughout the growing season and take notes on how they perform. For best results in the garden, save seeds from mature plants that are healthy, productive, droughttolerant, and disease-resistant. Another tip? In Starting & Saving Seeds: Grow The Perfect Vegetables, Fruits, Herbs, And Flowers For Your Garden, Thompson-Adolf says bigger is better. She says the largest seeds from your harvest will generally produce the most vigorous plants. Don’t forget to properly process and label the seeds in a packet, storing them in a cool, dry place until you’re ready to use them. 3

105

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