Crouchended
Life in Crouch End, bikes, trying to be green and other randomnessArchive for May, 2007
Crouch Hill Squatters
For a while I wondered why there were regular car boot sales at the Mountview theatre, and why there were continuous vans going in and out of the building that I’d not seen open since I moved to the area….. the answer is that the building is now occupied by an arts collective called Project 104.
Despite being open for 3 weeks I’d fail to twig until I started getting traffic finding this blog by looking for “Crouch End Squat” on Google. That picked up a separate story from my RSS feed about squatters at the TUC centre on CrouchEnd Hill, that also mentioned the Mountview Squat.
I can’t find any information about why the original building was left empty for so long. It is due to be turned into a school for autistic children, and Project 104 are quoted as saying “we’re not obstructing plans for the redevelopment. We don’t mind leaving when it’s time.”
The Mountview Academy moved to Wood Green some time ago – but I did find an obituary of the founder Peter Coxhead.
Container Vegetables
A challenge in a small urban space is to make the most of the area you have available for growing. This means growing things up walls, on widow sills, or improvising something else completely. Hanging baskets hang from the most suprising places, and they have the added advantage of not getting too cold – at my last flat we had no outside space, but there was a dead satellite dish that was adept at carrying 2 hanging baskets without breaking sweat.
Here’s some of the things i’ve been trying:
This is a basket with a big bush tomato (Smadar i think – although annoyingly Garden organic don’t list them at the moment so i can’t link), a Hungarian Hot Wax pepper, severely nibbled by a slug the somehow managed to get into the mini bottle clotch (there’s a little shoot or recovery but it is slow progress). There’s also a little Cinnamon Basil seedling, this should help add some flavour to the tomato, and the three plants together are complimentary.
This Butternut squash seedling in a patio pot is protected from snails with the copper tape around the base of the pot. The canes are for training the plant up. Amazingly butternut squashes are supposed to be good climbers, I only realised this last year when in a fit of boredom i had a look at the types of squash you can grow to eat…. last year the plants went in the soil, snaking between flower beds. The slugs and snails had a field day.
This is a window box of salad. Quite excited about this because last year just a tiny pot of cut and come again salads produced loads of leaves, and this year we have about 3 of these on the go – plus some odds and sods elsewhere. The leaves in this one are Rocket, Miznou, Corn Salad, and Giant Red Mustard. The thing that impressed me is how much more flavour the leaves have than shop or grocer bought.
Lastly the potatoes, they have come along somewht since the last picture – i’m now having to remove flower buds from the top of the ones in the black bucket, so that they work more on producing tubers than flowers… not long until the first new potatoes – <fingers crossed very tight> 
Hornsey Road Baths
I was inspired to dig a bit deeper after seeing this picture come up on my Flickr feed of the Haringey Flikr picture pool (which has some severe reflection on it if you look closely!). It’s a photo of a painting that has been sat in a painting shop in Crouch End for about a year, and i’ve often stopped to look at it. The actual state of Hornsey baths is less impressive, in fact the painting alludes to the bath’s heyday whereas now they look much like this shot from Derelict London, and if you sit on the top deck of the 91 bus coming north you can get a good look at the site on the right hand side of the road as you begin the climb up Hornsey Rise.
A bit more digging reveals that the baths are due to be turned into flats – despite some campaigning to keep them as a leisure facility.
Cider Update
Oh Happy Day!
The Kings Head on the Broadway has started selling Weston’s Organic Cider on hand pump – they also have Addlestones on tap. They’ve probably had it for ages but i’ve not been in for a while….
Chew on this! – Ben Wilson displays in Crouch End
Although the work was done a few weeks ago, residents of Crouch End can still find works by Ben Wilson on the Broadway. There are four works outside Budgens, and one more at the base of the Clocktower. There may be more around but it’s not obvious where they are….
Ben’s medium is chewing gum – he is a pavement artist, but at some point in time Ben became aware that painting on the pavement is illegal, whereas you can do whatever you like to chewing gum that is stuck to it – at least that’s what I overheard Ben saying to some teenagers who seemed completely captivated by what he was doing.
Ben lives in Muswell Hill and is a bit of a local celebrity of sorts – there’s a fair few articles about him in the local press, next time i see him working I’ll ask if he can create something just for me.
What Ales thee?
My current favorite beer is St Peter’s Brewery’s Old Style Porter and their Cream Stout – both of which are locally available from Crouch End Budgens, but also from a stall at Borough Market. The beer comes in a distinctive flask style bottle, but more than this being a gimmick, the beers focus on a traditional taste (thus the excellent Porter and Stout) rather than catering for the modern sweeter palate.
The beer I see most often is their Organic Ale, which is a pleasant mild flavored hoppy bitter. What I didn’t realize until i checked out thier website is that the Jerusalem Tavern in Clerkenwell is run by the Brewery – i think it has to be worth a visit!
12 Things to do with the vegetable patch in May
The Guardian allotment blog has a new post suggesting a 12 Step Plan from Gardening Guru Caroline Foley for making the most out of May. To my joy we’ve already got some of these things underway – hurrah! Others will be a bit more tricky…..
Here’s what she she suggests and what we have done,
1. Prepare the ground by warming it for a couple of weeks with black plastic ready for sowing French and runner beans and the Cucurbits, or cucumber family. Marrows, courgettes, outdoor cucumbers and pumpkins can be sown in situ in May- or a little later depending on your precise location. Err on the cautious side as they won’t survive the smallest whiff of frost. If there is an unexpected chill, cover them with newspaper or fleece at night.
We have already got the baby courgette plants in the ground, they are ready to go into pots and under the Fig tree this weekend.
Constanza beans: photo Howard Sooley2. Check out interesting varieties. Try black or yellow French beans or the ‘Fire tongue’ bean -the classic speckled Italian bean for drying – ‘Barlotto Lingua di Fuoco nano’. For stockist. French beans do a triple act – they turn from green bean to haricot and have a final flourish as a flageolet bean.
Our climbing beans are Barlotto Lingua di Fuoco and Neckar Gold varieties – i’m quite exited about the possibility that they might cross and make something really weird. There are some dwarf yellow beans as well that should be good.
3. Try salsify – an intriguing vegetable. It tastes like oysters and is pretty enough for the flower border. To get straight roots, use a trick of the show bench and make funnel shaped holes with an iron bar. Fill with the sandy soil before sowing.
No salsify …..
4. Sow maincrop beetroot and leeks, winter cabbage, sprouting broccoli, kale, swedes and Swiss chard now for winter eating.
I’ve got calabrese, cabbages, and swiss chard ready to go into beds.
5. To beat the drought and to get enough water down to the roots economically, saw off the bottoms of plastic soft drinks bottles with a serrated knife (or get hold of short sections of plastic pipe) and sink them along the row so you can target the water accurately.
This is cunning, although i’m not entirely sure of what she means, I’m protecting the small seedlings with bottle cloches to fend off birds and slugs.
6. Get going on cut-and-come-again salads and stir-fry leaves. This can save you a fortune and is so easy to do. Look for many different mixes – Italian, French, oriental etc. etc. Sprinkle a few seeds every couple of weeks for non-stop production. For non-organic culinary herbal mixes i.e. ‘Nice ‘n’ Spicy’, ‘Meek ‘n’ Mild’and ‘Cut ‘n’ Cook’. Organic growers should check here.
I’ve got a whole load of seed from last year of salad greens i got from Woolworths, there’s a good mix of leaves, home grown Rocket seems to have twice the taste. It’s going into window boxes at the weekend – going to be a busy one….
7. Tuck straw (preferably barley straw) under strawberries and cut off all but a few of the runners so the plants can put their energy into the fruits.
We have 3 Strawberry plants in hanging baskets, they’ve not got any runners I can see yet but i’ll be sure to cut them off if i find them.
8. Nip off the tender top shoots of broad beans where the blackfly loves to assemble.
No broad beans this year, although they were really easy to grow last year.
9. Plant rosemary and thyme. They confuse pests that go by smell with their pungent volatile oils.
Missing both of these except for a woody rosemary bush in one corner.
10. Sow the seed of the old-fashioned cottage garden plants – love-in-a-mist, bee balm nasturtiums, marigolds, the poached egg plant and cornflowers. They will brighten up your plot, provide camouflage and draw in friendly predators.
We’re trying Marigolds, Nasturtiums… but we’d love to have ….
11. Make predators even more at home by providing insect hotels, bug boxes and habitat towers. Examples to copy or to buy can be seen on www.harrodhorticultural.com Click on ‘Caring for Nature’.
A bug box! I can never quite justify the expense.
12. Net all fruits unless you are happy to share them with the birds. Put up bird feeders instead.
The birds have our cats to fear more than i fear the birds nabbing our strawberries – they’ve not brought anything larger than a bee into the house yet, it can only be a matter of time.
Crouchended 