Ac Baker

Thank you.  There's a lot of stuff I feel is too much to say to almost anyone .. argh.

(Besides gardening therapy, I have had some good counselling experiences: where you trust your counsellor, you get out things rattling around in your head, knowing they have professional support too.)

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We got the word out a little further today, and it was fun too.

We had a little article in a couple of local magazines recently.  This intrigued a couple of neighbours, who got together about half-a-dozen people who wanted a visit.

So I did the tour today, with some context about how we're 'cloding the loop' for local veg & fruit growing & sharing, plus some history, plant chat, Q&A etc.  Lots of fun, and really good initial feedback too.

Better still, our visitors went & enthused to their friends.  So I may be doing another run of the tour in a couple of weeks time.

Best of all, a couple of the visitors are interested in finding out about getting actively involved.  Fingers crossed!

Although it was very difficult to germinate from saved seed, I'm having better results with transplanted local hop clover (also, I think, a Medicago).

It's gone through the winter well, and is now well grown & flowering for me.

I'm also seeing decent results with locally collected red & white clover seed as an overwinter cover crop.

So I'm hoping to expand the beds I'm using them in, this year

Corn salad is working well as a combined crop & winter cover for me too.

Polycultures & year-round or self-seeding cover crops are my current way of thinking.

The new composting bay is commissioned: before and after.  The black plastic is recovered, so keeps out excessive rain plus helps to heat up the contents for hot composting.

We should be able to fill this bay within two months at the current rate!

Last autumn, all we had was the fresh autumn leaves to mulch the beds.  We did have a bit of trouble with the wind blowing them around.  Also, visitors beyond the human type, digging in them and scattering them around.  So, I think 'all of the above' might be the way forward, with leaf mould (which I believe takes about two years to mature if appropriately moist) being just one of the useful applications!

Yes, it's lovely how much support we're getting from the wider community.  When we explain that it's a 'circular system', with prepared food distribution to anyone who asks through our local Black-led Mutual Aid, linked with the scrapped veg & fruit from our local Muslim-run mini-market, and the allotments community, plus local shops starting to donate excess stock to the Mutual Aid too, that really interests quite a lot of people!

Bonus: our friends who got the grant for our accessible bench, built us a new pallet compost bin in two hours flat today!  I'd already done a couple of hours of steady gentle gardening when they unexpectedly arrived with the pallets, brackets & screws.  It had been too hot to clear the site last week.  So they just threw themselves into it.  I mostly passed things back and forth (armfuls of brambles, screws, brackets!) and picked up the considerable quantity of accumulated spalled brick, plastic, glass & other debris that had accumulated under the brambles.  

I'm so grateful!  This was an unexpected contribution.  Importantly, this means we can carry on collecting the scrapped off veg & fruit from the local greengrocer to compost in the expanded space.  I guesstimate this could equate to a tonne (cubic metre, m3) of rich compost over 12 months!  

Our community allotment plot is what's considered a 'standard size' garden for allotments, 250 m2.   So we'll put the compost where it's most needed e.g. 'heavy feeding' crops such as tomatoes and potatoes.  We're hoping to get another donation of c. 5 m3 of mixed sycamore and oak leaves each the autumn, so we'll have an ongoing supply of leaf mould as a more general soil improver.

Looking really lovely!  I've also planted my tomatoes (although outdoors), fed & watered them in, and we're due to get a good rain tomorrow.

Thank you! No pictures today, but we've successfully brought our potatoes through late frosts in mid-May by covering with donated fine horticultural mesh.

We've also been struggling with the hottest days ever recorded here for May (35 C) for much of the second half of the month.

But we've been eating salsify shoots & flowers (which I find delicious lightly steamed).  We've been planting out runner beans grown from our own saved seeds, and donated tomato plants from two kind sources too.  

Plus, articles in a couple of hyper-local (ward & parish level) magazines have inspired interest in several neighbours (one family whole immediately visited & donated tomato plants, see above).

We've also increased our collection rate of compostables from the local independent mini-supermarket. We've secured donations of pallets to expand our compost bin array to accommodate this.  The compostables donated over the winter are already sufficiently worked to trench for the runner beans.

Another volunteer who has supported us from the start is getting ready to install guttering on the community plot shed.  Plus we have started moving a donation of 2 m3 of partly worked leaf-mould, and shredded conifer, to the site.  We want to grow blueberries!

Unfortunately, the pigeons plus the heatwave have knocked almost all the fruitlets off our huge cherry tree.  So we may not find out this year if it's worth grafting.  Better news, the two pear trees we're treating mechanically (sheet mulching & removal of fruitlets) for pear midge, are covered in very healthy green leaf growth.

So lots to be happy about!

Nancy Reading wrote:
I found a useful site that has collected some research together on alkaloid concentration in comfrey here giving references. There seems to be inconsistent results between studies, but most agree that the roots contain more alkaloids than the leaves (possibly by 2 orders of magnitude).

Many thanks for these posts!  One of those links has sources for some different ways of measurement:

"The total amount of pyrrolizidine alkaloids given by different authors varies from 0.013% to 1.2% based on the analytical methods used (Tittel et al., 1979; Brauchli et al., 1982; Neidhardt, 1982; Stengl et al., 1982; Gracza et al., 1985; Vollmer et al., 1987; Mütterlein and Arnold, 1993)."

Large businesses can outsource this testing for EU regulatory compliance:

"In 2022, the European Union established [PA] limits for several products, such as teas, infusions, supplements and herbs. It currently covers 21 alkaloids, including 14 compounds that co-elute [overlap in chromatography analysis], which makes individual analytical quantification impossible under current methodologies."
https://www.sgs.com/en/services/pyrrolizidine-alkaloids

Comfrey: A Clinical Overview
Staiger C 2012, Phytotherapy Research
https://doi.org/10.1002/ptr.4612
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ptr.4612

The EU has concluded that there is not enough evidence of safety to permit, "‘comfrey steeping’ as a basic substance to be used as an insect repellent and plant elicitor in fruit trees, grass and vegetables." ..

"the available information on the fermented extract from leaves of Symphytum officinale L. did not allow the Authority to finalise a non-dietary exposure risk assessment and the assessment of the risk to consumers.

"Furthermore, there was not sufficient information available regarding environmental exposure and the risks to non-target organisms."

Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2021/809 of 20 May 2021 concerning the non-approval of fermented extract from leaves of Symphytum officinale L. (comfrey) as a basic substance in accordance with Regulation (EC) No 1107/2009 of the European Parliament and of the Council concerning the placing of plant protection products on the market (Text with EEA relevance), 2021
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/ALL/?uri=CELEX:32021R0809

All rather inconclusive ..

Exciting! The Italian millet is an interesting thought.