Grow Write Guild #2 My Dream Garden

* Read about the Grow Write Guild writing prompts here.

My dream garden is lush and moist and has many canopies. There is very little manicured grass. It is on an incline, with rocky parts, and some scattered small flat areas. There are lots of native Irish trees and a massive Scots Pine. There are other Scots Pines in the neighbouring lands, which are not my responsibility, but they are teeming with red squirrels, which will visit my garden on occasion. It is a place of refuge for the local wildlife but the variety of species keeps a healthy balance in the garden. I don’t kill the slugs but the resident thrushes help to keep their numbers down. The nasturtiums give me a place to relocate the caterpillars that I have removed from the broccoli. My two cats take care of any rats or mice that come close to the house.This garden is difficult to cultivate certain plants on, but is nonetheless lush with beautiful growth. There is enough space for containers to widen my choices. It is not an easy terrain designed by a human but a landscape cut out by time and weather. I have a small glasshouse that I have crammed with healthy flowers, vegetables, fruit and herbs. There is a sheltered area which is a suntrap and completely private. I have a bench here. I have a small patio area just outside my back door which has some chairs and a small table. Apart from these little areas of space for human use, it is beautifully wild. A small stream runs down the incline just inside the outermost boundary of one side of the property. The sounds of nature are loud.

Grow Write Guild #1 My First Plant

* Read about the Grow Write Guild writing prompts here.

My first plant was a 35 year old cactus that was gifted to me by my father, a relic of my grandmother’s decades spanning collection. It was akin to adopting an adult in the place of a child - an imposing specimen, unmoving and deadly to the touch. In fact I once accidentally drove one of the spikes through my fingernail and had to patiently allow my nail to slowly grow to a sufficient length to allow me to cut the spike away. The reason for enduring this injury-afflicting plant on my kitchen windowsill, always threatening to harm me with a misplaced brush of my hand, was that once a year, around April, it would bloom an incredible large white and pale pink heavily scented flower, seemingly out of nothing. The flower would last a day, delighting my olfactory system while washing the dishes, and then turn flaccid and withered where upon I would carefully pluck it from the cactus and throw it in the compost. The cactus would also regularly sprout baby cacti from its motherboard and I could remove and pot them on. They made wonderful gifts, whether people wanted them or not and if you are reading this story, I would wager that you have been the lucky recipient of one in the past.

Garden Writing Challenge

I've always been drawn to writing. I will never avoid a chance to consciously communicate with the written word, whether it's something as simple as a grammatically correct text message, as technical as proof reading CVs for my family or as indulgent as long contemplative emails to long distance friends. But right now I am looking for something more creative and intense and direct - a step above blog posts about my home and garden. My kitchen table is inviting though messy, I have a nice lamp, a map of my local Cork harbour and a my much loved globe. The stove is lighting regularly and I am extremely comfortable.

I started searching for garden writing prompts and found a perfect challenge - the Grow Write Guild challenge on a wonderful looking website You Grow Girl. The challenge is a few years old now but each post has loads of comments and links to other gardening blogs. So I've started writing little stories built around the prompts and am hoping to post one every week here. Hopefully some of you will join in too or add links to similar challenges in the comments.

Garden Diary: 26th October 2020

 My outdoor nursery looks like this:

It contains mainly flowers with lots of calendula and wallflowers in red, white and purple:

I have pak choi in pots:

Because the ones I put in the ground ended up like this:

The vegetable plot looks like this at the moment:

We are eating spinach, carrots, various herbs and leeks:

The leeks are not as long as I'd hoped, I obviously didn't earth them up as much as I should have.

My purple sprouting broccoli was decimated by the caterpillars of the White butterfly but they have come back nicely so I am hopeful of a harvest:

This week I've planted some of my garlic, Iberian Wright and Messidrome. This patch was previously used for peas, and I've been adding seaweed and compost from emptied pots since the peas were removed. The soil is looking really nice, with tons of earthworms. Garlic is a hungry plant. I still have quite a bit to plant. I won't do it all together, but will interplant among all the beds. I find a polyculture bed, which mixes varieties of veg, herbs, fruits and flowers goes a long way to reduce pest damage, as it increases the likelyhood of the presence of predatory insects. It also looks great.

Getting ready:

In place:

Covered back over and fallen branches used to make a boundary so I know where to weed:

Covered with my own hay from my grass meadow:

 

And topped off with a thick layer of seaweed. This will protect the soil and prevent it from washing away and leeching minerals. It will also decompose slowly adding organic matter to the soil.

I've also planted some broad beans in two different beds. I had great success with my beans this year, not least because of the hard work I put into them.

In the front garden I have done a lot of work which is completely unseen at this stage. I have planted loads of spring bulbs and wildflower seeds and will let the grass grow long around them. I have also made a little structure using stones and soil and have planted a little cutting of campanula. Here is what it looks like presently, but I am anticipating success by next spring/summer:

And that's all folks. Till next time..

Garden Diary: 4th October 2020

 Really need to do this more often...

Final tomatoes are ripening on the plant in the sunny porch. I am very happy with my harvest this year considering I only planted my seeds at the end of May. It was not by choice as seeds were hard to come by, but it was much easier than planting on a propagating mat in February and minding them like babies for months. The most satisfying thing about the tomatoes was having enough ripe ones, all at the same time, to bring a little lunchbox full when visiting my family. I grew sungold this year, which are nice, but next year I want to do big red lumpy tomatoes and forego the cherries.

I grew a very flamboyant carrot! The variety is Autumn King and they are very tasty. I also grew Rodelika, which I found to be a little soapy in taste, but still palatable and they gave me nice long carrots.  Bonus points for the Rodelika is that they came from organically grown Irish seeds (Brown Envelope Seeds) and I think origin is as important as taste. I planted far too few carrots however. I took my time preparing the ground before sowing (although the photo would say otherwise) but totally underestimated how many carrots we consume. I don't like to completely plant a bed full of the one crop, and rather mix all types of plants together. This reduces pest and disease but leads me to underplant as it is more difficult to keep track of what you are planting, and you end up losing crops to shade from overhanging vegetables. Better design is needed next year.

I am happy with my leeks. I make sure to earth them up regularly and applied plenty of seaweed. They took a battering in one of the storms but have much recovered, since taking this photo. They look spectacular on a frosty day so I am not dreading the winter at all, thinking about how they will look. 

I planted a mix of salad leaves, mizuna, little gem and both a green and a red variety of pak choi, at the end of August, and they are doing excellent. I've been pulling leaves off for my sandwiches and burgers and am not getting slug damage. I use no pellets or pesticides of any sort.

I've preserved my cooking apples and beetroot into various jars including spiced apply chutney, apple sauce, beetroot and apple chutney and pickled beetroot. This is really the main reason I grow fruit and veg. I love relishes and chutneys and anything vinegary. I've lots of recipes under the Preserving/Canning tab at the top of the page.

A lot of my energy is now going into growing flowers for next year. In the last month I have sown lots of wildflowers (poppies, cornflower, calendula, yellow rattle, scabious...) among my grass. I have also sown sweet peas, Californian poppies, delphiniums, black eyed Susan, verbena, wallflowers and others in pots and will overwinter in my porch. I really have to get a table as I will not have enough floor space. I've lots of spring bulbs planted in the ground and in pots and cannot wait to see how they look as I really tried to create designful combinations. It's hard when you are arranging bulbs and trying to envision them as flowers. So exciting and full of expectations though.

That's the most of it. I am awaiting my delivery of seed garlic and onions and have a bed prepared for them. I am also anticipating bare root tree season so I can add about 10 trees to the garden, a mix of fruit and native including but not limited to hazel, hawthorn, pear, cherry and apple.

Till next time (hopefully within a month!)

Garden Diary: 23rd July 2020

Today is a beautiful day. It rained last night but was dry when I rose, so it was nice to not have to worry about watering my outdoor plants. It got warmer and warmer to scorching at parts of the evening. I got a lot of gardening jobs done, plus a walk to the beach while listening to my current favourite podcast Permaculture Voices.

Indoor plants did need watering. Here is the current condition of my porch:

My tomatoes are doing great. The variety is Sungold and I received the seeds for free from a GIY Ireland project. They were only planted at the end of May and are just starting to set fruit. I'll start feeding them now, once a week. I've bought a bottle of tomato feed and they are the only crop that I will feed with a shop bought fertiliser. Everything in the garden is sustained with homemade compost, locally collected seaweed mulch, chopped up pea and bean pods, and a liquid feed I made from steeping perennial weeds in water.

Also in the porch is the garlic I harvested today:

It is a small harvest but I'm amazed that I got any garlic at all. I planted it much too late (end of March I think) and used poor quality seed garlic. I'll be very disappointed with myself if I don't have a big harvest next year. I'll be aiming for about 40 heads, with some of that to be kept as seed for the following year. My aim is to slowly become self sufficient with my seeds.

Speaking of seed saving, so far this year I have saved seed from chives, lupins, delphiniums, scots pine tree, and poppies. I have them stored in a biscuit tin in the fridge, in labelled white envelopes. I'm hoping to add as many flowers as I can, including calendula and sunflower, as I have a lot of room to fill in the front garden.

A major job today was digging a large hole so I could move a cherry tree from a pot into the ground. The variety is Regina. I have two and must transplant the second one soon. First the blister on my thumb must heal... I put a layer of seaweed in the bottom of the hole and mixed in fresh compost with the existing compost in the pot and garden soil.

This morning I threw together a few flowers for the vase on the kitchen window, a collection which I named Rise and Shine (Calendula Indian Prince, Californian poppy and yarrow):

We've been eating plenty of delicious Queen's potatoes. I wish I'd planted twice as much.

Also lots of peas, courgettes and the odd carrot:

And that's pretty much it for today. Till next time!

Garden Diary: 5th July 2020

Today was one of my most satisfying days in the garden. I cut out all my broad bean plants and harvested the remaining beans, blanched and froze them.

I've been freezing beans the past month and have a lovely stock now. These will go into soups, stir fries and curries.

The broad bean plant is well utilised in my garden. I left the roots in the ground, just digging them in, as they have nitrogen stores that the soil will absorb. I chopped up the stripped plants and put them in my compost heap.

In the empty space left after removing the beans, I planted my purple sprouting broccoli which have been in pots up to now and are itching to get into the ground. Then I mulched them with the empty bean pods, which I chopped up with a scissors.

The pots freed up from the broccolis have been given to my tomato plants that needed a bigger pot.

This cyclical garden system gives me extreme satisfaction. I want a garden that works for itself and sustains itself, something bigger than just growing food. It truly was a productive day.

I also planted some flower seeds in pots including lupin, cosmos, nigella and sweet sultan.

I cut a few blooms from the garden to brighten up my kitchen windowsill - lavender, yarrow and geum.

My Long Grass

I say grass, you say.....green? Here are a selection of grasses from my garden.

I've left quite a few wild patches in the lower back garden, where I have my vegetables.

You can find nice things in there like this 7 spot ladybird:

I get a lot of birds feeding from the seeds, including goldfinches and sparrows. Not so easy to get a photo of that.

Flowers From Seed: Lupins

I love lupins for many reasons. 

1. They are easy to grow from seed.

2. As you can see from the photo above, they are insect pollinated.

3. They are biennials so they do not flower until their second year. However the leaves are so attractive that even alone they aesthetically earn their place in the garden in the first year, and when they do flower in the second year, it is massively rewarding. They are tough enough in that first year to overwinter in the garden.

4. The flower spikes are majestic. They are reminiscent of the lovely foxglove and delphinium.

4. They often come in a mixed colour selection so waiting to see what shade blooms after a year is like waiting to find out the sex of your baby....kind of, a little.

5. They are legumes, like peas and beans, and like their frequently tinned relatives, they can take nitrogen from the atmosphere and secure it into the soil. Nitrogen is one of the three main nutrients required for healthy plant growth, along with phosphorus and potassium. This is a great reason to grow them in your vegetable beds, particularly with nitrogen loving plants like spinach, cabbage and broccoli.

Get growing lupins!

Flowers From Seed: Calendula

If you are going to raise one flower from seed in your garden, may I suggest Calendula. They grow very easily from seed and are tough as nails despite their other-worldly incandescence. I planted this "Indian Prince" variety last Spring. They are not in a flower bed but in a mass of long grass and thistles and regenerated themselves after winter looking better than anything you could buy in a garden centre. Considering the price of the seeds and potting compost, these flowers probably cost a few cents to bring into existence. They are nectar and pollen rich so useful to insects, which should be the main purpose of a flower. They last ages as cut flowers too. They are used widely in herbal medicine and skincare products so you could awaken the inner alchemist inside you and brew up some tinctures and teas.

 

I didn't use any filters, they really look this good, especially against the grassy background.

Pea Day Battle

Peas are supposed to be easy to grow - and they are - but they can also be difficult! These difficulties, namely stolen seeds (I am watching you pigeons), are easily overcome but I still found myself with an entire row of seeds disappeared. Now before I completely blame the wildlife, I also had seeds that rotted in containers and I'm not sure why. Over-wet conditions is the obvious reasons. I had read that pea seeds need a lot of moisture to germinate but perhaps that is not accurate. The seeds were only a year old so should still have life in them.

Anyway I purchased fresh seeds (Irish Green Pea and Sugar Snap - not easy to obtain with the massive demand at the moment) and sowed another batch outside in a window box which I wrapped in netting. They came up beautifully. This week, when the plants were about 2.5 inches high, I planted them in the same spot as the evaporated seeds and covered them again with the netting by securing it on to the wire frame support that they will grow against.

Then I planted another batch of seeds in the now empty window box and made a protection run for them using another wire frame resting against the already standing one flanked with my potted cherry trees and held in place with containers of potatoes. 

I can just imagine a few hens running in and out that wire run - perhaps the next step for me.

Garden Diary: 2nd May 2020

The food garden is picking up. It's mainly beans, potatoes and raspberries showing significant growth.The big plant to the front is a flower, Yarrow, which will be good for pollinating insects, who in turn will hopefully repay me by eating the aphids that are certain to attack the beans.

For the longest time it was too early to plant anything outside and all of a sudden, it's May! I planted some peas today and when I was writing the label I noticed the month and thought, finally parsnip time! I had a spot reserved in the same bed as potatoes, carrots and beetroot and I spent a bit of time breaking the soil down to crumbs before sowing the seeds. In a few weeks I'll do another sowing.


Back to the peas, my pea seeds are disappearing. I know birds are a major pest outdoors but even my indoor sowings seems to be evaporating. I'm reading now and wondering if I need to water them more. Anyway the seeds I sowed today (Irish green pea from Brown Envelope Seeds) were put in a window box with an net wrapped around it so if these fail, I'm out of ideas.


I am spotting new carrot seedlings every day, thankfully. I was starting to get worried about my 5 year old seeds.


Beetroot is coming up fine and I successfully transplanted some from seed trays but I fear how much damage the slugs will do. We have a ton of brambles in the garden, I might try laying some down to block easy access. Actually, no time like the present. Be right back......

Okay I did it, beetroot protectors that look like satanic symbols:





My pak choi and wong bok never materialised but I have more planted in seed trays so all is not lost yet. I also have purple sprouting broccoli, leeks, courgettes and cauliflower in trays, slowly germinating.

That's all I can think of. Happy gardening.