Bath Organic Group

Newsletter November 2004

Affiliated to

HDRA the organic organisation,

Ryton Organic Gardens, Coventry CV8 3LG

and

The Soil Association,

Bristol House, 40-56 Victoria Street, Bristol BS1 6BY

Dear friends - A plea

Last month some people got into the Organic Garden on the Lower Common Allotments and set fire to the polytunnel. It was completely destroyed together with the chairs, tables, display boards and a raft of other stuff. Fortunately the structure of the tunnel has remained sound. We have not been able to get insurance for anything in the garden so the whole loss is down to Bath Organic Group.

We would like to replace the cover and contents and rather than dip into our perilously small reserves we thought we would ask Bath Organic Group members, their friends and the citizens of Bath if they could contribute to a special 'Polytunnel Fund'.

If each member could donate £3 and get a friend, neighbour or colleague to do the same we will be able to recover the tunnel and replace the contents.

So, if you feel able to help please send 3 pound coins or a cheque payable to Bath Organic Group to myself at the below address:

All contributors will be invited to the grand reopening of the polytunnel and their names printed in the newsletter.

I do hope you will be able to help.

Yours organically

Peter Andrews (Acting Chair)

Many thanks to the following who have already given generously as a result of our email appeal:

Every Saturday, whatever the weather, the community garden is open from 10-1. There is always work to be done and every little bit helps. There is a list of tasks to be done, such as soil cultivation, seed sowing, weeding, propagation of herbaceous plants etc. Come along and make some new friends, feel like you have earned your lunch or enjoy a long tea break in the polytunnel.

The AGM will be held at envolve (underneath the market in Green Park Station) on Saturday 4^th December shared lunch from 1pm for meeting at 2pm. The agenda is printed on the back cover of this newsletter.

The annual seed swap and cake-fest will be held on Sunday 2^nd February 2005 from 3 - 5 pm at envolve in Green Park Station – see later.

The next committee meeting will be at envolve on Tuesday 25^th January 2005, from 7.30pm. A group of about eight meet regularly to discuss funding, the market, how to get more people involved, the future, etc etc. Come along and find out what goes on – we would be very pleased to see you.

Management Committee

Peter Andrews, Acting Chair

Tim Baines, Treasurer

Sheila Blethyn, Membership Secretary

Sylvia Hudnott, Miniting Secretary

Marjorie Gibbon, Newsletter Editor

Our illustrious, part-time, temporary acting chair, Peter Andrews, is only keeping the BOG chair warm at the moment, waiting for the right person to oust him. I’m sure he would confirm that it is a fairly comfortable chair, and would be more than welcome to discuss the seat with anyone interested in moving into it.

Editor’s space

Many, many thanks to everyone who has contributed to this very hefty newsletter. I hope you like it. Please let me know if I am missing anything out, or you have something to include – be it cuttings, articles, recipes, anecdotes or advice. There must be something you want to tell the organic gardeners of Bath about! The next newsletter is due in early spring.

Theodore Roethke

This poem is from a very enjoyable collection ‘Poems for Gardeners’, edited by Germaine Greer.

After consulting the entrails of the largest squash in my garden and studying the flight of eagles over the allotment it has been deemed propitious that the first social event of the New Year the 'BOG Seed Swap and Cakefest' be held on SUNDAY 2ND FEBRUARY from 3 - 5 PM at envolve in Green Park Station.

The event will follow the time honoured and extremely successful format. All are welcome, there will be a small charge of £1 to BOG members £2 to non members to help defray the costs of the event. There will be a £1 surcharge for those who arrive without cake to share. Here’s what to do:

Arrive with seeds you have to swap, and cake you have to share Lay out seeds on the tables, place cake as directed on the cake table. Retire to the refreshment area, drink tea, eat cake and chat to your friends and fellow seed swappers After a short talk my a minor celebrity (TBA or possibly not) the seed swap will be declared open.

Take what seed you need from, year on year, an ever increasing choice Retire to the refreshment area for more tea, cake and socialising Help the organiser clear up.

Go home happy in the knowledge that you are at the forefront of a minor social revolution because:

Should anyone care to help at this splendid event I would be very pleased to accept their assistance - just call Peter Andrews.

Bath Organic Group came to life in 1986, as an offshoot of Avon Organic Group, when John Brooke and a small band of organic gardeners in Bath set up a voluntary group. Over the last 18 years a great deal has happened in the Group and the organic world generally. Tim Baines recalls the history and identifies the need for creating a new vision for BOG in 2004.

Bath Organic Group has been at the forefront of the organic movement ever since it was set up. Veronica Phillips, a founder member and secretary until she died in 1993, was a formidable activist with the Soil Association (SA) and a longstanding friend of Lawrence Hills, who established the Henry Doubleday Research Association (HDRA).

In 1986 organic gardening was regarded with some incredulity by people who used herbicides, pesticides and artificial fertilisers as a matter of course. After all the cheap food policy post-Second World War, sustained by agri-chemicals, had increased UK farm production significantly and provided a hungry population with fresh, cheap food. This philosophy lingered through to the ‘80’s though concerns about the polluting effects of these chemicals on the planet were being raised by that time.

Against this background BOG was set up with the following objectives:

1. the advancement of the aims and objectives of HDRA and SA and support for their charitable activities
2. the bringing together of like-minded people to help each other in furthering the aims of both HDRA and SA
3. the promotion of knowledge of organic methods by means of meetings, lectures and other means deemed suitable by the committee

At the Annual General Meeting in 1989 it was suggested that BOG should practice what it preached. Vacant allotments on Lower Common were taken up and became the Organic Demonstration Garden in 1990. This project allowed the Group to demonstrate organic techniques and to develop practical volunteering opportunities for people wanting to learn about organic gardening. In 2001 the project was renamed Bath Organic Community Garden to reflect its changing role – a community resource, an informal meeting place, an outdoor classroom, a place to visit and a diverse habitat. The Garden has become the prime focus for the Group.

BOG was instrumental in establishing the resurgence of a Farmers’ Market in Bath. We have maintained a presence there on a regular basis ever since it started. Produce from the Community Garden and members’ surplus is sold to provide income to help run the Group’s activities.

The organic world has changed enormously over the last 18 years. HDRA has become Europe’s largest membership organisation (over 30,000). SA leads the UK organic industry with its certification scheme for producers, processors and retailers, which guarantees the authenticity of ‘organic’ status. Gardeners have been encouraged to tend their growing spaces organically by TV personalities and journalists. Fresh organic food is now available at farmers’ markets, shops, supermarkets and delivered to the doorstep across the nation.

Tim Baines

Become an eBOGger

We promise not to sell or pass on your address to anyone else. Personally I have nothing against the right sort of spam. My new much expanded member and it's Vi*g-ra enhanced performance (very kindly paid for by Mr Mziki Mwambe) has brought nothing but great joy and pleasure to my new mail order bride Nadia Klozoff.

Gathering wisdom

The morning had been a busy one. A number of guests had visited the garden and Thisbe had been given the responsibility for giving them some sense of its flavours. She took the guests on winding routes and on each journey she made sure that they would visit ‘that’ tree. Each time she brought a group of guests to the tree, she would take a moment to look at it marvelling, before making a formal introduction. As ever at this time of year, its fruits were present for all to see.

She suggested to the groups that they might like to taste the berries. After a little searching amongst the lower branches she found one or two crimson-coloured berries for the guests and one for herself. Invariably, the tree had played its usual trickery on her, hiding the darkest and juiciest berries in the shadows of its deep green, leafy underskirts. She had felt disappointed that she only managed to give the guests a veiled glimpse of the delights to be had there. Delights such as she had experienced on that first encounter…

Thisbe recalled her introduction to the tree’s black-red fruits. When she had been given that first dark coloured berry and put it in her mouth, it had burst under the gentle pressure from her tongue with a rush of flavour that astounded her. A moment or two later, after her senses had recovered a little she had noticed a calm pool of thin red juice on her forefinger and thumb. Although often repeated, that first encounter was one she did not forget.

Later in the afternoon, when things were quieter, she made her way gingerly through the tool shed. She was beginning to wonder whether her idea was such a good one. Before she managed to get far with the doubting she spotted what she was looking for - a small stepladder hidden away in the far corner. She managed to extract the ladder from its corner without being attacked by the numerous the hoard of hoes, spades and forks and reversed her way back out of the shed.

As she walked through the garden she noticed that no one was asking her why she had picked out the ladder or where she was taking it.

When she approached the tree and stood a couple of yards away, she could see quite clearly a number of berries beckoning from branches. Yet, as ever, when she approached the tree to pick the darkest berries they all seemed to vanish. She found herself stepping back and forth trying to keep her eyes focused, yet each time the same trick would fool her. She got right inside the tree, under its branches and here the tree played its most enigmatic deceit. Standing just underneath the boughs, she could see any number of dark berries at eye level, but each of them dangled down on branches on the other side of the tree, just out of arms reach. She knew the tree’s game and didn’t even bother to try and walk around to the other side to find the berries.

It was time for the ladder.

She opened it out along the side of the tree and climbed up the three steps. Suddenly she was within reaching distance of a whole trove of juicy treasure. She picked out the first dark berry she could see, popped it in her mouth and waited for the familiar flavour. She was slightly disappointed when the sensation didn’t come and picked out another berry. Then another. And another. The ladder wobbled slightly, but Thisbe kept her balance. She picked out another couple of berries and stepped down the ladder, somewhat unfulfilled. She reasoned that perhaps the berries on that side of the tree hadn’t got the right amount of sun. She moved the ladder over to the other side and climbed up to discover yet more dark-coloured droplets for her raid. She picked out two berries and laid them in her palm. Her hands had by now become a mendhi-style patchwork of red. Perhaps two berries together might do the trick. As soon as she put them in her mouth she was looking around for more, still unsatisfied, still waiting for that sensation to return in some form….

Just then she heard the familiar whistle that had so often punctuated days in the garden. Thisbe looked down from her perch and was relieved to have a reason to down. As she walked over to the small gathering and heard their voices she realised exactly what had been missing from her little raid.

We left from outside the Community Garden on a rainy Saturday in June in our hired minibus. Due to a navigational difficulty going round Cheltenham several times instead of the usual Fosse Way route we were rather late in arriving.

After a welcome cuppa in the newly vamped Garden Café we set off to view the gardens. Through the herb garden with its plants for cooking, medicine, perfume and dyeing, numerous thymes, comfreys and sea hollies we inspected the many vegetable plots.

One idea I liked was to insert a flower garden of companion planting between the veggie beds.

Then on to the netted fruit garden with rows of luscious soft fruit, apples pears, cherries, quinces and medlars. A paradise garden created in memory of Geoff Hamilton had butterflies galore.

Following the border walk the large conservation area with wildlife garden is surrounded by native shrubs and trees and borders the lake. Children are well catered for with a willow tunnel, playhouse, turfed bench and table, a raised walled pond and a wooden sheep.

The sun clock – not working due to weather conditions – will give accurate month and time.

The lovely rose garden was in full bloom and the scent followed me around a spectacularly beautiful round pink corncockle and blue cornflower area centred by the biggest flower pot in the world.

Rain was falling again by the time I reached the new interactive Vegetable Kingdom, full of buttons and flashing lights, then to the newly extended shop where everything from expensive toiletries to seeds, vegetable and fruit, and garden necessities were available.

A brief look at the new living green roof of low growing sedums and sempervirens made me wonder if we could cover the BOG sheds and compost loo with them. Is anyone prepared to grow these varieteis forus?

A truly inspiring and enjoyable visit.

Sheila Blethyn

So I have been looking at my rotation and have drawn up a chart and hope that if I keep to it, things will be better this year. I start off with good intention but then tend to bung things in wherever I have a space.

So the bed that will have cabbages this year had some garden compost in the late autumn, a good few handfuls of lime a few weeks ago and then later on I will feed it. However, I came across a table of pH values for various crops and saw that cabbages, turnips & swedes all require 5.4, roughly in the middle of vegetables that I have no problem growing - for example outdoor tomatoes 5.1 [if blight doesn’t get to them before ripening], parsnips 5.4, onions 5.7, spinach 5.8, peas & beans 6.0, lettuce 6.1. So I wonder if I have done the right thing.

Apparently you must not apply manure and lime together as the lime stimulates the breakdown of the organic matter and releases ammonia into the air and soluble nitrogen products may be washed away and pollute waterways. Allow at least a month between liming and manuring and don’t lime too early in the autumn as heavy rain, which is after all normal, can wash it straight through.

Perhaps next year I’ll just dig a little lime in the soil as I put each plant in, which would be more simple.

Sylvia Hudnott

I’ve gained enormously in the past few years by stepping into that place of risk: choosing from a list of entries; arriving, settling in, joining in meals, talking. And then there is the work: I’ve been surprised to find what one can manage if the pace is steady and the spirit is willing. A repetitive job is very satisfying if I have no other pressures. I can give myself to the moment. The calming experience of flow comes into it. I can see the results of what I’ve done. I feel useful. I have few responsibilities except to do the job given as well as I can. Some humour comes into it. It has to when you’re turning compost sometimes! Working with others brings an extra dimension into it, but I personally do not mind working alone. I listen to the radio in a polytunnel or shed while painting or potting or carding; while outside I sometimes have a radio or I just listen to the birds, enjoy the silence and my own quiet thoughts. Often a pet will join me. Teabreak or lunch brings company, often as not.

For me, the conversations, the bookshelves, the new ideas, are all what Wwoofing is about, and I enjoy finding my latent skills to work out logistical problems. It’s both a challenge and a pleasure, and if I can do it as a pensioner, so can you!

If anybody would like a talk about my experiences as a Wwoofer both in the UK and abroad, I have some slides (a few) and all my photos are on CD but I lack a projector and/or laptop.

Verona Bass

A wallet sized list of fish to eat and fish to avoid is available free on receipt of a SAE to Marine Conservation Society Unit 3 Wolf Business Park Alton Rd Ross on Wye HR9 5NB.

Our native plants represent a wealth of diversity within the distinctive character of the wildlife habitats that we all appreciate. Many species have been introduced over the centuries from Roman times to the great Victorian collectors, and we live today with the consequences. Many of these species have thrived in our environment. In recent times the rate of such introductions has increased dramatically with the explosion of hobby gardening and the garden centres that supply and feed its appetite.

Many of the modem introductions are associated with water and once released into the environment they thrive only too well, raising the threat of destruction and replacement of a range of familiar native plants by a few dominant species.

They are grouped under the banner of invasive weeds, and a number of them are becoming established on or near the route of the canal.

One example already evident is the massive Giant Hogweed with large umbrella-shaped flower heads. The stems, edges and undersides of the leaves bear small hairs coated with a poisonous sap which can cause persistent and painful skin blisters. This can occur up to 48 hours after contact and can progress to dermatitis, so the plants need to be treated with respect.

Also common is Himalayan Balsam with bright pink flowers on tall stems, dominating bankside areas and spreading rapidly. It poses no risk to us, but quickly suppresses native grasses and other plants, when it dies back in the autumn the bank is left bare and liable to erosion. Control is possible by regular cutting over a 3 year period. Failure to limit the plant will result in the loss of almost all other species by overgrowth, leaving little or no diversity.

There are actions that we can all take to reduce the risk of future introductions of invasive weeds. They include avoiding their presence in our own gardens, taking great care when disposing of garden waste so that it doesn't get into the environment and seeking more information on any unfamiliar plants in garden centres.

The Environment Agency publish a free booklet "Guidance for the control of invasive weeds in or near fresh water" (ISBN 1844320839) from which this information was gleaned, and copies can be obtained via their general enquiries line on 0845 9333111 or by e-mail enquiries@environment-agency.gov.uk

Tony Pratt - Conservation Officer

Himalayan balsam can hurl its seeds up to 12 metres.

Many thanks to Bill Brown who passed me this article from Wey South, the bulletin of the Wey and Arun Canal Trust.

COMMUNITY GARDEN COMPETITION

We arrived at the Show in good time to have a look around, drink tea and prepare our Victory Speech! It seemed that every finalist had a large number of supporters and we felt a little lost, there just being the three of us.

Like all award ceremonies there was the usual re-run of the filming which had been shown on Points West, and this made us realise that competition had been strong, so when we came fourth in our category - Community Gardens - we felt we should congratulate ourselves.

We were told by the Organisers that there had been very many entries and that they had been very impressed with the BOG Community Garden.

Unfortunately the competition will not be run again next year. If it had, I feel sure we would have won it. It's a great garden with a real sense of community.

So here's our Victory Speech which we were not asked to read:

We are here on behalf of the Volunteers who work so hard to make the garden possible, and particularly Tim Baines whose vision this is, and who holds it altogether.

The garden is always open on Saturday mornings from 10 - 1pm and volunteers are always welcome, and they also get the chance to take away some produce from the garden as a reward for their efforts.

Excess vegetables, fruit, flowers etc are sold at Bath Farmers' Market on the first Saturday of every month from April to December. All profit is returned to help maintain the garden.

We would like to thank the organisers of this Competition, and all those who voted for us for making this Award possible.

Margaret Hall

Wildlife Watch is the junior branch of The Wildlife Trusts, the national network of local trusts which work to protect wildlife in town and country. With more than 22000 members, in hundreds of local groups run by trained volunteers, it harnesses the imagination and energy of children in initiatives to explore, understand and improve their environments, and encourages a caring attitude towards wildlife.

Nicolette Scource

Zac Goldsmith, Editor of The Ecologist, exposes the true costs of shopping at the supermarket

I'm often asked why I hate supermarkets with their economy, variety and convenience. The answer is that these things are an illusion.

Is it really variety you are offered behind the plastic packaging, or homogeneity? Consider that two-thirds of UK farmers say supermarket demands for conformity have led them to give up on otherwise productive varieties of fruit. So, for example, 94 per cent of eating pears grown in the UK consist of just three varieties. Yet there are 550 varieties of pears native to Britain. To achieve cosmetically perfect fruit cheaply, bucketloads of pesticides and fertilisers are necessary. Any part of the crop that fails to meet these pointless standards is wasted. Out-of- season Coxes are transported 14,000 miles from New Zealand during our growing season, while our own apples lie rotting on the ground.

But beyond issues of diversity, the cost is enormous. Each year a typical UK family of four generates 4.2 tonnes of carbon dioxide from their house, 4.4 tonnes from their car and 8 tonnes from the production, processing and packaging of the food they eat. Supermarket demands for imports of fresh food mean UK airfreight is growing at around 7 per cent a year. Add it all up and a Sunday lunch bought at a supermarket could have travelled more than 26,000 miles.

For the environment then, supermarkets are bad news. But still, we are told, they are merely accommodating consumer demand for cheap food. That too is an illusion. There's nothing cheap about supermarket produce. The packaging alone costs the average household £470 a year - almost a sixth of their food expenditure. And if supermarkets are good at anything, they're expert at getting people to buy more than they need. In 2001 Tesco raised its prices in the weeks before it began a public price-cutting campaign. Supermarkets use "loss leaders", kept at an artificially low price to entice customers, yet other products can often be found more cheaply in local, independent shops. Friends of the Earth found that organic food in farmers' markets is 33-37 per cent cheaper than the supermarket equivalent.

Even where people are paying less for produce in a supermarket than they would at a farmers' market for instance, many consumers are not aware that they have already paid for that produce through their taxes. The supermarket regime depends on all kinds of hidden and less hidden subsidies, without which it would not be nearly as economic as it currently is. For one thing, intensive agriculture itself, the lynchpin of supermarket trade, is propped up with generous subsidies. Professor Jules Pretty has calculated that the taxpayer forks out £2.4 billion each year to cover the indirect costs associated with intensive farming in Britain. Beyond that, there is the infrastructure that enables Safeway's, for example, to send all its dairy produce through a single distribution point in Warwickshire. Again, it is the taxpayer who stumps up for roads.

But the greatest cost that supermarkets don't tell us about is the cost to the community. Eight local independent stores closed each day between 1986 and 1996. More than 600 local chemists will close over the next five years as supermarkets undermine their business. By incorporating newsagents, pharmacies and dry-cleaners as well as music, clothes and petrol retailers, £14.5 billion was spent on non-food items in supermarkets in 2000.

Ironically, given the Government's fondness for the giant retailers, some of the best research into the negative effects of supermarkets was conducted by the same Government in 1998. Its unambiguous conclusion was that supermarkets destroy jobs, shops, rural livelihoods and local economies.

This is the reality that confronts us when we walk down our high street – but what is happening to farmers is worse still. Every week 1,000 farmers and farm workers leave the land. Yet in 2001 Tesco and Sainsbury's profits were greater than the income of every farmer in the UK. We aren't told when we buy a pint of milk for 35 pence that the farmer is paid only 9 pence to produce it. The tragedy is that farmers, who are the first to be crushed beneath the feet of the supermarkets, cannot complain. With nearly 70 per cent of all food being sold through just four retailers, a farmer, no matter how big their farm, has zero bargaining power and can be deleted with minimal effort.

Fortunately, consumers are waking up to the ugly truth about supermarkets and there is the beginning of a return to a local food economy. The UK went from having no farmers' markets at all in the mid-1990s to more than 270 at the end of the decade. At one, in Winchester, it was found that local shops reported 30 per cent greater takings on days when the market was open for business.

It is time for us all to disabuse ourselves of the notion that the supermarket is our friend. Farmers know only too well what the supermarkets' notion of loyalty is. It's time we all cut up our loyalty cards.

From Earthmatters, Friends of the Earth’s supporter magazine issue 56 Autumn 2003

Friends of the Earth's briefing Super markets or corporate bullies? can be downloaded free from www.foe.co.uk/resource/briefings/super_markets_corporate_bullies.pdf, or get a copy by calling Freephone 0808 800 1111.

Make Pete your bedfellow

Raised beds had always seemed a good idea, but too expensive — before Pete. Now I realise what I was missing.

It’s not that my soil is heavy or badly drained, two of the reasons often given for raising the soil level, just that I liked the idea of having a few no-dig beds for things like salad crops, carrots and so on. Cabbages, potatoes, beans and lots of veg that take up most of the garden could be grown in open ground leaving the raised beds for no-dig gardening.

But if you are going to make a raised bed to the recommended size, about ten feet by four feet, you will need a lot of edging material, about 20 square feet if it is eight or nine inches tall and the cost of that is prohibitive in most of the suitable materials. Recycled wood could have been the answer but it’s difficult to get that much matching wood and if I am going to put all that effort into gardening each year I want to be able to see my crops growing in something that looks half-decent.

You’ll find Pete in a yard near Windsor Bridge, just by the gasholders. He is the maintenance man at S&N Scaffolding and it is his job to go over all the equipment as it comes back to the yard weeding out all the damaged bits and either mending it or disposing of it.

When I went to see him I was offered a range of planks in various stages of damage, most of them 10 feet long. The rejects are often sound apart from a bit of damage where, for instance, someone has used a grinding wheel and scored the wood, or a piece has been taken out to make the plank fit round an obstruction. More often they will be rejected because there are indications of splitting which would spread down the plank in time.

They cost from £1 for a ten foot length, nine inches wide and about one and a half thick. The cheapest are likely to have a split in one part and you would pay more for the sound planks with just a small fault. The ends, which have metal strips which protect against splitting, will be sawn off before you buy them, which is a pity.

I bought 30 £1 planks, and, with delivery that cost me £45 or 15p a foot. The delivery charge would have been the same however many I had wanted. The wood is substantial and although it is unlikely to last more than four or five years I now have four raised beds and plan to build another one or two before spring sowing time.

The output from the beds has been much greater than I would have expected from open ground and the ability to create a compost-rich environment and meaningful protection with fleece (stapling it to the wooden sides) has meant that I had a much better environment for earlier crops and could protect against pests much more effectively. Initially the slugs and snails ignored them entirely but by July they had sussed the idea that if the climbed the wooden wall they would be in a bit of heaven.

If I were starting again I would go for the more expensive planks, on the basis that I had to reject some of the ones I bought because they had already started to split. I would also look more closely than I did at the ones that were being delivered and rejected any that seemed to be poor value. Thirdly I would have reinvented that metal strip the real scaffolding planks have at either end and nailed on a strip of metal (from a can perhaps) when I was building the beds to ensure that any splitting was delayed.

The planks would also make an economical compost bin, though with the same limited life. It might be possible to fix plastic sheeting to the soil side to prevent rotting.

If you want to raise your game call S&N and ask for Pete. Better still go to the yard and see what’s on offer.

Geoff Andrews

BATH ORGANIC GROUP

Notice of Annual General Meeting

A light lunch with tea or coffee ~ please bring food to share

If you feel you would like to join the committee please phone Sylvia Hudnott.

Nominations are invited for Chair. Peter Andrews has been Acting Chair for more than a year. If anyone is interested in this position, please speak to Peter Andrews for more information

• How to develop the potential of Bath Organic Group.
• Discussion on continuation of the Farmers Market

1. Close of Meeting

Please also make a note of our next committee meeting, which is open to all members, will take place on