Toxic Plants

As you may know, the British Prime Minister recently announced that a General Election would be held in the UK on 4 July. Campaigning here is ramping up, so I am going to depart from our usual gardening theme this month and look at some of the policies (or lack of them) up for debate (or not). For non-UK readers, here is a brief summary of UK politics. For over 100 years, UK governments have been formed by either the Labour Party or the Conservative Party. The current government is Conservative; the predicted result of the upcoming election is a swing to Labour. The Conservative Party is right-leaning and is somewhat comparable to the US Republicans; the Labour Party is left-leaning and is somewhat comparable to the US Democrats. There are several minority parties who have no realistic prospect of winning a majority or forming a government; however, they may hold the balance of power in a “hung Parliament” where no party has an overall majority. Minority parties contesting this el...

Strawberry Popcorn drying This month we are taking a break from our core topic of toxic plants and looking at the cradle-to-grave life cycle of a plant which is very much non-toxic and edible, namely popcorn, better known as flint corn.  I grew this as a fun plant to try to get my teenage son interested in food production (he loves popcorn).  Not much success getting my son interested so far, but our manic dog Maple shows great enthusiasm for gardening.  When I dig, she digs (although not always in the right place).  When I pull things up, she pulls things up.  When I get my gardening tools out, she thinks they are for her and runs off with them.    I just need to focus her enthusiasm a bit better.   Maple helping with the gardening But seriously, knowing how to produce food will become increasingly important in the years to come, because it’s my belief - which I realise is still only shared by a minority of people, and no politicians - that ...