How Author Charlotte Mendelson Transformed Her Patio Into A Garden Larder

If you are a frustrated enthusiast-in-waiting, with only a tiny growing space, or nothing at all; if other people’s gardens, let alone gardening books, intimidate you; or if your only interest in plants is in eating them, you are not alone. This is my confession: my comically small town garden, a mere six square metres of urban soil and a few pots, is not a scented idyll of rambling roses, or an elegant, if overstyled, space in which to drink prosecco. It is a larder in which I grow more than 100 things to eat, including, in an ordinary year, eight or nine types of tomato; five varieties of kale; three kinds of raspberry, red and gold; various sorrels; globe, Jerusalem and Chinese artichokes; 10 kinds of lettuce and chicory, and another 10 of Asian greens; seven or eight types of climbing bean, mostly Italian; about 50 herbs and a few flowers, all edible. I make salads with 20 or 30 different leaves; and I harvest, sometimes by the teaspoonful, juneberries, wild strawberries, tame strawberries, blackberries, wineberries, blueberries, loganberries, gooseberries, cherries, grapes, rhubarb, apples, figs, quinces and every conceivable currant.

With variable success, and modest yields, this minute area is a wildly uneconomical experiment in extreme allotmenteering – a city jungle, green and bountiful, combining edible cultivation with natural beauty but, sadly, little room to sit. Yes, I do mind that there is no space for a nut tree, or just a couple of small sheep, but, despite this, it is a source of infinite happiness and deep peace. How could it not be? Try this whitecurrant. Look at the way the evening sunlight dapples the bean leaves. Listen to the hum of all those bees. Visitors tend to laugh. It looks completely bonkers, yet I am in love with it.

I didn’t mean to become an edible gardener. One minute, I had acquired a garden full of happy shrubbery and ardent ground cover, easy to tend, a pleasure to look upon; a few months later, I was tearing most of it out and, despite total ignorance, laboriously raising from seed dozens of things I wanted to eat.

Here’s a little of what I’ve learned:

The perils of containers

Around this time of year, what container-grower is not moved almost to tears by her folly? I have more than 70 pots, excluding all the temporary seedling homes, the 10 succulents and house plants holidaying outside, and the 20 containers at the front.

Watering is a delicate process, which non-gardeners fail to understand. “Why,” ask the unwary, “not save yourself some time? Give them a going-over with the hosepipe and let them get on with it? Treat them mean!”

Containers dry out so quickly. Only with a watering can one ensure that the water truly reaches the roots, instead of pooling like quicksilver on the dusty soil surface before trickling over the lip of the container and filling the saucer, convincing the careless locum gardener that the plant has drunk its fill.

Proper, individual watering is like a home visit by a kindly family doctor: is all well? Are there interesting sicknesses: magnesium issues? A problem with boron? How are they in themselves? And so watering even my laughably tiny garden is a slow, but delicious-smelling, process. When I can no longer lug a watering can, I will totter outside with a milk bottle, a mug, a thimble-full. It is a chore, but I could not live without those whiffs of cool mint and spicy tomato leaves. The garden and I are keeping each other alive.

The joy of tomatoes

I love my tomato plants, a little too much. In the infinitely seductive world of vegetables, they have rare power. Merely their names are enough to quicken the pulse: ‘Merveilles des Marchés’, ‘Black Opal’, ‘Harbinger’, ‘Cherokee Purple’, ‘Indigo Beauty’, ‘Moonglow’, ‘Bloody Butcher’. Those of us who are vulnerable to a really good name can be manipulated mercilessly; we’d buy ping-pong balls if the right noun and colour were combined.

Part of the joy of tomato-growing is that one’s work is never done. This is why I prefer the varieties that grow as vines or cordons, not bush tomatoes, the drearily named determinates, which quickly become a thicket of criss-crossing stems. A cordon requires effort, and plenty of it: planting the seedling deeply in its pot to encourage opportunistic roots; staking it gently; hand-pollinating every last flower; pinching out the side shoots. The smell is glorious; the prospect of warm, home-grown fruit, fragrant and magnificently showy-offy, is irresistible.

What to grow when you can’t grow lemons

Lemon balm is almost the perfect plant: fragrant, edible, adaptable, easy to grow. Unfortunately, it is also revolting. Why does no one admit this? There is something unspeakable in its scent: a syrupy sweetness beside the tang, artificial as furniture polish or car sweets. Its taste is worse: like a squirt of bathroom-freshener. It is vile. Treat it as a weed and rip it out.

Lemon thyme: every year you disappoint me. Why do we keep pretending you’ll stick around? You make these promises and I keep trying to please you: more grit, less water, less fuss. It isn’t fuss; it’s love. But, every winter, you leave me. When will I learn?

Lemongrass is easy; you simply shove two unpromising supermarket stalks into a jar of water and wait for roots. It’s magical: the 21st-century sophisticate’s equivalent of cress on kitchen towel. However, all that you produce is a couple of leafy stems that, once you have planted them out, will be less useful than the original stalk; and, much more worrying, they won’t survive the winter. Don’t even try.

Which leaves us with lemon verbena, a reputedly tricky plant. I have been lucky with mine, perhaps because I fleece it thoroughly in winter and for the rest of the year treat it meanly, never transplanting it to a larger pot. The scent is fabulous: a resinous sherbety zest, exactly as one might hope a lemon tree’s bark might taste. Its most obvious glory is as tea. Culinarily, try it whenever you might include lemon zest or thyme..

Earliest Plants Are Responsible For Modern Day Oxygen Levels

While oxygen first appeared in Earth's atmosphere 2.4 billion years ago, it took another two billion years to reach the levels we breath in today.

Now a researchers believe they have identified what helped lead to this dramatic increase in oxygen on our planet - moss.

Scientists at the University of Exeter suggest moss-like plants were among the first to colonise the land and triggered oxygen in the atmosphere to increase.

The first plants are thought to have colonised the land from the oceans around 470 million years ago.

These first terrestrial plants were non-vascular plants, known as bryophytes, which include moss.

They say that the emergence of these plants increased the intake of organic carbon into sedimentary rocks – the primary source of atmospheric oxygen.

The scientists calculated that Earth's early plant biosphere could have produced roughly 30 per cent of the modern carbon take up from the atmosphere on land by around 445 million years ago.

This drove up oxygen levels and established a new, stable oxygen cycle.

The researchers estimate that within 50 million years of this, oxygen levels had reached modern levels.

Profesor Tim Lenton, who led the study, said: 'It's exciting to think that without the evolution of the humble moss, none of us would be here today.'

The earliest plants on earth were bryophytes - plants such as moss - which are non-vascular, meaning they do not have vein-like systems to move water and minerals around the plant.

The researchers used computer simulations to estimate when oxygen levels reached that of modern day.

What Do Yellow Roses Represent?

What do yellow roses represent is a question asked by people interested in yellow roses and before purchasing these beautiful roses.

Yellow roses were found growing in the Middle East around the 18th century. Wild roses from Afghanistan and Southwest Asia bloomed in pale yellow and a deep sulfur color. They were immediately renounced and grew quickly in popularity. The yellow rose at that time had no fragrant and although extremely beautiful this was a drawback. Also about this time techniques were being introduced in the field of rose cross-breeding and hybridization. As these techniques evolved they were able to add a pleasant aroma to the yellow rose.

In the beginning the yellow rose was associated two ways. The first was a negative connotation as a symbol of jealously and dying love. The positive symbolism was associated more with the color. The color yellow is related to the sun. The sun is known as a source of light and warmth an integral to life on Earth. As time passed the yellow rose was connected more to the color yellow rather than to the negative symbolism. Now they are related to joy and friendship and get well soon.

Yellow roses have different flower shapes. The globular is a bloom possessing many petals forming a ball-like arrangement with a closed center. An open-cupped is a bloom possessing many petals forming a cup-like arrangement with an open center. The quartered has inner petals folded into 4 distinct sections rather than forming a cone.

Yellow roses are available in several varieties. There are seven groups of roses. The classic rose is a long, pointed bud which opens to reveal many velvety or satin-like petals.


The Alpine Sunset is a yellow English bred rose. The flowers are very large and the fragrance is outstanding. These are great for cutting.

The Elina another yellow rose is the healthiest of Hybrid Teas. The flowers are borne singly on strong stems. Pointed buds open to produce porcelain-like flowers. These stand open well to poor weather.

Freedom has yellow pedals that do not fade with age and they fall cleanly. The scent is pleasant and the leaves are abundant.

Goldstar won top honors at The Hague. It has a special appeal for flower arrangers as the blooms are borne on long straight stems. The pure yellow blooms appear freely and the color does not fade with age.

Grandpa Dickson is regarded as the best pale yellow Hybrid Tea. Rose books sing its praises. Superbly formed blooms with long petals. It addition, its good rain resistance, freedom of flowering and late-season blooming makes it an excellent bedding variety.

King's Ransom has straggly growth but has non-fading blooms that are high-centered and rain-resistant. They are beautifully shaped and excellent for cutting.

There are several other yellow roses available should you decide to grow your own.

A bouquet of yellow roses will absolutely bring a smile to the receiver of this exquisite rose.

What do yellow roses represent? They represent warmth and happiness and sunny cheerful feelings. Yellow roses can send the message of appreciation or platonic love. P These are perfect to be given to a great friend either as a bouquet or a plant for the garden.

Plantwatch: Acorn crop dips as climate changes

Oak leaves in Britain are still mostly green. The oak is one of the last trees to change colour in autumn, although many have already dropped their acorns. But the days of finding lots of big acorns may be drawing to a close since they are falling victim to climate change.

A study of acorns has revealed that the warmer the weather the smaller the crop of acorns. Tim Sparks, a professor at Coventry University, has examined more than 160,000 observations of oaks and found that the more the first dates of flowering vary in springtime the poorer the acorn crop. In warmer springs the oak trees flower in a less synchronised fashion over a longer period and this gives a smaller crop of acorns in autumn, a drop of about 20%.

In cooler springs the oak flowers within a shorter period and the blooming is more synchronised, allowing more successful cross-pollination.

These days acorns are ripening about 13 days earlier than they did 10 years ago, a phenomenon that matches a widespread earlier shift in fruit and nuts ripening on British trees.

Another sign of the changes is autumn tree-leaf colours tending to appear later in the year and leaves staying on the trees longer; oak leaves now seem to lose their leaves about a week later than was the case 30 years ago.

The observations of the oaks and other trees came from a yearly survey of spring and autumn called Nature’s Calendar, run by the Woodland Trust. Each year the public is asked to record signs of those seasons in the natural world. It has built up into an invaluable, and timed, record.

Nearly a third of world's cacti face extinction, says IUCN

Nearly a third of the world’s cacti are facing the threat of extinction, according to a shocking global assessment of the effects that illegal trade and other human activities are having on the species.

 Cacti are a critical provider of food and water to desert wildlife ranging from coyotes and deer to lizards, tortoises, bats and hummingbirds, and these fauna spread the plants’ seeds in return.

But the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN)‘s first worldwide health check of the plants, published today in the journal Nature Plants, says that they are coming under unprecedented pressure from human activities such as land use conversions, commercial and residential developments and shrimp farming.

But the paper said the main driver of cacti species extinction was the: “unscrupulous collection of live plants and seeds for horticultural trade and private ornamental collections, smallholder livestock ranching and smallholder annual agriculture.”

The findings were described as “disturbing” by Inger Andersen, the IUCN’s director-general. “They confirm that the scale of the illegal wildlife trade – including the trade in plants – is much greater than we had previously thought, and that wildlife trafficking concerns many more species than the charismatic rhinos and elephants which tend to receive global attention.”

The conservation group now judges cacti the fifth most threatened species on its red list of endangered flora and fauna, and is calling for an urgent ramping up of international efforts to tackle the illegal wildlife trade. Three of the IUCN’s five most threatened species to date are plants.

Cacti are almost always succulents but unlike most others, they store water in their stems alone, enabling them to survive extreme droughts. The plants can be as small as one centimetre in diameter and grow above 19 metres in height. Well over half of the species are used by humans for display ornamentation, food or medicine.

Almost 1,500 types of cactus were surveyed by the IUCN specialists over a five-year period, mostly in the Americas, where the plant is endemic.

Some, like the once-ubiquitous Echinopsis pampana, have seen population drops of at least 50% in Peru, due to plunder for the ornamental plant trade. The species is now listed as endangered.

“The results of this assessment came as a shock to us,” said Barbara Goettsch, the study’s lead author. “We did not expect cacti to be so highly threatened and for illegal trade to be such an important driver of their decline.”

Cacti are often dug up and exported off the books to Europe and Asia where rare species such as Ariocarpus can sell at prices of up to $1,000 (£660) a plant, Goettsch said.

Tackling the smugglers is a daunting task as the prickly cargo can be smuggled in suitcases or even socks. While countries such as Peru have made progress in blocking the illicit trade, the IUCN is calling for stricter implementation of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) in the ‘hotspots’ of Uruguay, Brazil and Chile. Mexico has made advances but still has work to do, according to Goettsch.

Despite their charismatic flowers, and iconic status in popular culture, cacti are often overlooked in conservation planning. The report calls for a broadening of arid land protection to deal with human activities such as construction, quarrying and aquaculture.

Exeter University’s Professor Kevin Gaston, who co-led the assessment, said that the results showed how important funding for further scientific assessments is. “Only by so doing will we gain the overall picture of what is happening to them at a time when, as evidenced by the cacti, they may be under immense human pressures.”