What do you want me to write?
There are countless articles, essays and more importantly books I have sketched out and not got round to writing yet, - I can’t do them all immediately, so here are some projects, which ones are you most interested in? Give me some feedback using the poll opposite and I’ll work on the most popular first.
Growing more fertile
making your soil, crops and then yourself more so, from green manuring, composting and garden fertility to concerns improving human health and fertility, such as diet and other factors.
Cutting out the cr@p
Feasting not fasting or Live-it not Die-t. You really are what you eat- the Organic /life/ lifestyle, first hand thirty years experience, includes growing suggestions and recipes.
Growing under Cover
How and what to grow in your greenhouse, conservatory and polytunnel. Different places favour different plants. The structural alternatives, the ancillary equipment (heaters, soil warming cable, artificial light, ventilation etc.) The cultural methods and plants.
Coping with Climate change
How we may adapt our gardening methods to even more erratic weather and crisis such as drought and flood.
Harvey Lodge-
the story of my Norfolk garden. A three quarter living laboratory. How this has been planned, changed and evolved over thirty plus years of constant observation. The reasoning behind the planning and positioning for each area explained, includes planting lists.
How Organics came from nowhere to conquer the supermarkets
Flowerdew's Folly or Not Turnip Townsend but Bananas Bob
Me in my garden over a third of a century; the why, how and what when showing evolution of organic methods and philosophy as Organics came from nowhere to conquer the supermarkets.
Flowerdew on Columella
edition of Latin horticultural classic, maybe either a facsimile from my 1745 copy or similar or a word processed (viz swap fff's and ss's) and edited version, accompanied by my own learned footnotes and/or appendices + illustrations
The encyclopaedia of useful plants and their associations
Alphabetical listing of plant uses, associations with other plants and forms of life. Companion effects; interactions with other plants, insects or micro-life, which we may employ to our benefit. But also Edible (does not infer tasty), Economic or Useful.
Magic in the Garden or Planting by UFO-light
My thoughts on a plethora of quasi scientific aspects that may affect our gardening.
Talking hoarse, Fawlty towers exists.
An introduction to the English hostility, oops sorry, hospitality industry. Anecdotel libels of a much travelled speaker; contains no horticultural information whatsoever and an awful lot on hotels to avoid.
Bob's tips and bodges
A lifetime collection of handy hints and snippets of advice to make everyday gardening tasks and chores easier. As the song says “it’s not what you do but the way that you do it”
Autobybobraphy part 1.
1953-73 My road to Damask roses. born in one of last Medieval homes in England -no water, no electricity, no phone, no toilet, no bath, no shower, no central heating, farm horses and corn still cut, stooked and threshed; the steam age to the moon and computers in a life.
Autobybobraphy part 2.
1973-93 Sex, drugs and violets or Up and down with the decades, the next twenty years, as we lived then, and how! Names changed to protect the guilty.
Autobybobraphy part 3.
1993-2013 le plus ca change
Foreign fare -fodder, flowers or food?
what you will see, eat and bump into when you travel. Identification guide of plants, flowers and foods found landscaping hotels and in produce markets and local shops. Possibly two editions for warmer and hotter countries.
Poems from the potting shed
My poems and songs, with photos of my carvings, sculpture and paintings, yes you may groan now… still to be fair there are worse!
Why did it die?
a, humorously put, series of Sherlock Holmes come Hercule Poirot come Socrates reasonings as to the commoner ways that novice gardeners get it wrong. ie teaching gardening techniques by the effects of their absence whilst poking fun at what others have done.
Don't listen to the experts they get it all wrong
garden advice turned on it's head showing how experts aim at different results to the home gardener so making an enjoyable and productive hobby into hard work.
Essays
The myriad idiosyncratic and possibly even batty thoughts of Chairman Bob on non horticultural subjects.
The lisp in early English pronunciation.
A threat to us all. Beware the water cooler, the air line seat, radioactive vegetables, the broken thermometer, grandad’s watch and lighter, or train toilets may get us before WWIII. Even more things to worry about. Salt, a salt free diet as punishment? Salting the land to punish enemies? - when salt was paid as salary?? Sport, a sacred cow overdue at the abbatoir. Now exercise may be good but sport is on the whole, bad. Beekeeping, ossified and in need of an overhaul. Radical ideas for a new methodology. A real Lead balloon. The brothel token in post Roman Britain. A six stroke engine cycle The di-cycle. Reforms to parliament they'll never consider. Living in glass houses. Not USA but the improved USB; United States of Britain. Climatic adaptations of Germanic and Latin root languages. Pay your fines in blood. Euthanasia by the bookies door. Save the earth- the last thing you could do. Mad ways round crazy planning rules. Horses for courses; a better saddle. Which system of justice works? Bring back the Stocks and other less liberal ideas, not proposed in any way only explored intellectually…