Which apple?

How many varieties of apples can you name?

Probably just a handful.

But despite the limited selection available commercially, there are in fact around 2000 different kinds in the UK, and fifty of those grown in West London were on display at a recent harvest celebration at Turnham Green (left). They had wonderful names like Lane’s Prince Albert, Ellison’s Orange, D’Arcy Spice, Laxton’s Fortune, Newton Wonder, Lord Lambourne and Howgate Wonder. The oldest was the small, red, flattish Court Pendu Plat, cultivated since 1613, though probably enjoyed by the Romans.

Some visitors to the event brought with them apples to be identified by expert Steve Oram. He immediately recognised the one I had as a Blenheim Orange, an 18th c variety good for eating or cooking (left).

The day was organised by Abundance London. http://www.abundancelondon.com/
Over the past few weeks, with the help of local school children, its volunteers have picked around two tons of fruit which would otherwise have gone to waste. Some was on sale at the event, either fresh from the tree or transformed into jam, chutney, cakes, crumble and juice. Delicious!

A reminder that Apple Day - a celebration of this fruit - is on October 21. More details of events at http://www.england-in-particular.info/cg/appleday/index.html

Fresh from the press!

Visitors to the Queens Park Day in north-west London this afternoon had a chance to see how good freshly-pressed apple juice can taste. As part of the festival, a quarter of a ton of apples were peeled, chopped and processed by helpers from the Transition Kensal to Kilburn group, including David Young (pictured).  The press attracted a stream of fascinated onlookers and by the end of the afternoon, it had produced an incredible 450 glasses of juice. The apples came from local gardens as part of the nation-wide Abundance scheme, through which garden owners offer their surplus fruit to be picked by volunteers and given to good causes. Before Abundance came along, most of these apples, pears, etc would have been left to ripen, fall and rot. Now, through the efforts of local groups of fruit harvesters, it's getting to people who will enjoy it.

Abundance Sheffield has produced a guide to setting up a harvesting group: http://www.growsheffield.com/pages/groshefhandb.html

Take one pot of basil....

I saw this tip for a continuing supply of free basil in a newspaper and was amazed to find  a) it worked for me and b) how fast it was, compared with growing.plants from seed.

Take one supermarket pot of basil, cut off a stem or two at the base and put in a glass of water. Within days there’ll be a mass of tiny roots. Pop the cuttings in compost and they will become new plants, ready to take over when the original one is finished. When these start to get too tall, pinch out the tops and they'll produce sideshoots and become bushy. Keep on taking cuttings whenever the plants look like flagging and you’ll have free basil constantly at hand on your windowsill, ready to toss into salads and sauces.
Here you can see the original plant (back) with the rooted cuttings and a new plant. Magic!

Carnival Colour

The Notting Hill Carnival, held in west London over two days at the end of August, is Europe's biggest street festival. It attracts up to a million people with its steel bands, massive sound systems,  floats and dozens of stalls selling everything from jerk chicken to corn on the cob. This year's costumes were as eye-catching as ever - a blaze of colour on a rather grey day. Here are some of my favourites.

I'm hoping we'll see some of these again at the Thames Festival's  Night Carnival on Sept 11 - another spectacular event.

http://www.thamesfestival.org/weekend/detail/night_carnival2/

How Prince Charles's old curtains went shopping

Claire Morsman is a woman with a mission: to get us to swap our plastic carrier bags for reuseable cloth ones.
I met her last year at the “Garden Party to Make a Difference” – a festival of ideas to encourage sustainable living, organised by Prince Charles’s Start organisation and held in the gardens adjoining his London home, Clarence House.
She was there with her sewing machine, showing people how to make simple shopping bags from unwanted fabric such as old curtains – including some donated by the Prince (pictured).
Now she’s back at the 2011 Start festival, being held over the August bank holiday weekend at Kew Gardens, in SW London – and has more royal curtains to turn into bags for visitors.
The idea of creating reuseable carriers from unwanted material came when Claire saw how plastic bags were clogging up the water and killing marine life around the houseboat where she lives. With the help of her mother, she designed a simple bag pattern which her husband put on the internet, and began encouraging people to sew their own. Each bag takes around 15 – 20 minutes, and folds down to a small square which can be kept in a handbag or pocket. She sent one to Prince Charles. He liked the idea, invited her to the Start festival, and donated some curtains to be transformed. Bag-making groups have now sprung up all over the world. Claire keeps track of the number of times the pattern is downloaded, and it’s thought that the 100,000th Morsbag will be sewn up this autumn. The bags are given away free to shoppers (something she calls “sociable guerrilla bagging”) and have potentially stopped millions of plastic ones from going into circulation.
More details, and the pattern, are at http://www.morsbags.com/html/
Start@Kew, with family entertainment and dozens of demonstrations of simple, sustainable living ideas, runs until August 29. Admission is included in the Kew entrance ticket. See: http://www.startuk.org/

Harvest time again

The fruit harvesting season has arrived. So far we’re seeing bumper crops of plums, pears and apples – perhaps because so many pests were killed off by the cold winter. But in urban areas, much of the fruit often goes unpicked because the owners either can't reach it or have too much. To counter this, a network of voluntary fruit-picking groups has sprung up, all with different names, but part of an umbrella movement called Abundance. They gather the fruit, then redistribute it to charities, schools and community cafes on a non-profit basis. It's a very sociable activity - this morning  in NW London, half a dozen of us collected more than 80kg of eating apples from two gardens.

We also try to keep in touch with nearby groups - it's so useful to share experiences.  Earlier this month, pickers from across London gathered for a picnic in St James Park. We sampled each other’s jams, including kumquat and hedgerow, tried fruit leather, and enjoyed a salad with home-grown courgettes and beetroot, Two members also recounted their experiences with organised foraging expeditions for wild food such as samphire and mushrooms.
If you’d like to start your own local fruit-picking group, Abundance Sheffield has produced an on-line handbook:
 http://www.cityfarmer.info/2009/07/11/the-abundance-handbook-a-guide-to-urban-fruit-harvesting/

Buried treasure - Billingsgate Roman House and Baths

Few visitors to London, walking along Lower Thames Street, would realise that some of the City’s best Roman remains lie beneath their feet. The Billingsgate Roman House and Baths, in the basement of a 1970’s office building, are not usually open to the public. But during the recent Festival of British Archaeology, experts were on hand to welcome the public to this rare, hidden treasure (left).





The house was possibly an inn or private residence and dates from the 2nd century AD. The baths were added later, perhaps because of customer demand. It’s a rare example of a building in use until the early 5th century AD. Being by the Thames, it was probably frequented by sailors, traders and visitors. Bathers would alternate between cold, warm and hot rooms before cooling down with cold water and massaging oils into their skin, then scraping off the excess. It seems to have been a budget, rather than a luxury, establishment – the floors were covered with basic tiles, not costly mosaics.

After the Roman legions withdrew in 410 AD, business declined. The buildings were eventually abandoned and gradually disappeared from view. They were rediscovered in 1848 by workmen building the new Coal Exchange, and the complex became one of the country’s first scheduled monuments. It wasn’t excavated properly until the late 1960s, when the road was widened and the current office block built on the site. This summer work has been going on to prevent further damage from water in the sub-soil and stabilize the remains. On the two days the site was open, a steady stream of visitors descended the narrow staircase to the basement, where a viewing platform provided a good view of what has been uncovered: the baths and the north and east wing sections of the house.

At first, under the glare of fluorescent lights, it was hard to distinguish the different features among the jumble of bricks and stones, but a model (above) showed the baths as they were.

And archaeologists who’d worked on the project, such as Jane Sidell (left) were there to explain the layout and what had been achieved.  It’s hoped more people will be able to visit the site in the future - when the present building is demolished, its replacement is likely to allow better access to this fascinating glimpse of the past. In the meantime, the complex may be opening during Open House Weekend on Sept 17 and 18.

There’s a blog about the excavation: http://billingsgatebathhouse.wordpress.com/