Vegetable Growing Month by Month & the NVS

I’ve mentioned not getting down to the plot because I’ve been working really hard on a project and it’s wonderful to be able to say I’ve finished it. Now it’s done I can go and get some jobs done on the plot and spend a bit more time on the web site as well.

The project, by the way, was my first and only book – Growing Vegetables Month by Month. It’s due to be published in March 2008.

I was very unsure if I should do it at all because there are some pretty good books out there and I wanted to make a positive contribution, not just another book on growing vegetables.

Grwoing Vegetables Month by MonthWell, I hope it will be an easy to read and useful book. I’ve covered the basics and avoided those wonderful counsels of perfection that you find in many gardening books.

The reason I say only book is that is was far more work than I ever expected it to be. If I make an error on a web page it’s not that big a deal, someone will tell me and I can change it. Not so easy when something is in print. So lots of double checking and triple checking. Even then things slip through and Val kindly went through it for me, pointing out the odd silly that had crept in.

It will be in the bookshops but I’m planning on selling through the web site as well. Incidentally, unless you have written something like Harry Potter or can write lots of books, making it rich through being an author is pretty unlikely. I reckon my earning rate has been £2.50 an hour! Maybe I’ll get rich if they sell the film rights.

There is one little problem with the book, it was supposed to be 192 pages but it’s ended up about 20% bigger than planned. Quite how this is going to be handled, I’m not sure. It’s not a coffee table, pretty picture production. Just straightforward growing information.

National Vegetable Society Meeting

You have to celebrate things, so I took Val to a talk on fertilisers. Despite the kind advice some of our lady forum members sent me, she thoroughly enjoyed it. It was given by David Thornton who is the national secretary and as well as being a fellow of the society, he’s just got his MSc. A very knowledgeable chap.

It was a bit sad that we had a quiet night, just 14 turned up. I’m actually quite disgusted with some of the allotment reps in the area. When the idea of the NVS opening a local branch was put to them they were all in favour. The chairman of Crewe & Nantwich Allotment Association turned up at the inaugural meeting of the NVS and even stood for chairman. He didn’t get elected and has managed to show up for one meeting since.

What’s really got me is that some of the allotment site reps couldn’t even be bothered to put up a notice of the meeting we sent them. What a bunch of expletive deleted. Where else could you get an hour of in depth discussion on fertilisers? Not to mention being able to ask questions of someone who has really studied the subject of plant nutrition.

It wasn’t all geared to non-organic growers either. There was discussion about the NPK content of manures and organic fertilisers.

Some of what he covered I already knew but some things were real eye-openers. For example, the amount of fertilisers applied by farmers to various crops. That’s spurred me into undertaking my own research and I feel an article coming on.

Another thing he went over was the oxygen content of the soil. Now I knew that plants needed air in the soil and waterlogged soil would drown plants but I hadn’t realised that you could measure oxygen content in the soil and adjust it.

Apparently if there is too much oxygen the humus will deplete quickly as well. He mentioned the use of hydrogen peroxide to add oxygen to the soil. I must admit to visions of spending many hours in a dark cell trying to convince some hard bitten security service of why I’ve bought 100 gallons of the stuff! Or worse still, the SAS undertaking a controlled explosion of my shed.

He also briefly covered a fertiliser Perlkathat contains calcium cyanamide. By this point I had visions of the senior members of the NVS being issued with capsules of it in case of capture by the RHS!

Seriously, it was a really interesting talk and I think it will help everyone who was there grow better, whatever their level.

Posted in Allotment Garden Diary
3 comments on “Vegetable Growing Month by Month & the NVS
  1. shaun says:

    nice one john well done
    ps put me down for a copy

  2. James Dougan says:

    Good luck with the book, I’ll get a copy in March.

  3. John says:

    Thanks for the kind comments!
    Would have been nice to have had it out for Christmas but lead times are a bit longer than than for web sites 🙂

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