Grow Write Guild #5 What Does Your Garden Sound Like?

My garden is loud with the sound of birds. Not just the wild birds but the big flock of ducks, chickens and geese in the small farm that is right next door to me. I have made videos of my children in the garden and during playback realised the symphonic avian soundtrack that I have become so used to.

There is a small lane that runs parallel to the end of our garden and very occasionally a small, old tractor passes. I hear the engine starting and the tractor slowly rolling to a move before I see it through the thick cypress trees.

The road to the front of the house is quiet and I hear the chatting voices of the pairs of walkers approaching the house, or the barking from the neighbour's garden letting me know that someone is walking a dog. 

In the summer, particularly in the lower half of the garden, insect sound levels rise, primarily bees and flies. I left loads of ragwort bloom last summer and it was the star of the floral show when it came to attracting invertebrates.

I love the sound of my garden.

Grow Write Guild #4 Write about your Garden Mentor or Muse

 You may notice that I have skipped the third prompt - Describe Your Garden Right Now. My last post pretty much did that and I am bored of writing about my own garden, which is why I started using these prompts. Onwards!

I started gardening in 2012, after doing pretty much no growing of any sort before this. I think it coincided with the beginning of a natural inclination to nest (I had my first baby the following year), an addiction to the self-sufficiency promoting TV series, River Cottage, and a throwaway comment by a person I admired saying that they grew their own veg.

As my interest grew and I started to check out gardening books from the library, I became  acquainted with Joy Larkcom whose books I now own and who I even met in person which she gave a talk in my local GIY (Grow It Yourself) group. I loved her story of taking her husband and children on a year long campervan tour of Europe in the 70's to research vegetables, bringing new seed varieties and growing/harvesting/cooking techniques back to England. I was also encouraged to hear that she took time out of work to raise her kids, and then returned to have an important, creative career. Any story of parents who go on to have interesting careers after spending time out of work to raise their kids makes me excited as I am currently in the staying-at-home stage (well I guess plenty people are in 2020 with the covid lockdown but my housebound state has been going on for four and a half years).

Another element of growing food that gets me excited is seed production and saving. The previously mentioned GIY group also held a talk with Madaline McKeever who owns Brown Envelope Seeds in Skibbereen, one of only two places in Ireland raising and harvesting their own seeds (the other place is Seed Savers in Co Clare). Again, she was a woman who had raised her family and had changed careers when she switched from dairy farming to seed production. The idea of having a business that concentrates on a micro element (micro in focus, not in importance or workload) of food production draws me in far more than an expansive endeavour.

Writing this post makes me miss educational talks incredibly! There are plenty more people whose work and contributions I admire, especially local people whose gardens I see and hear about. And it is the local gardens that are really sustaining me at the moment as I walk the roads again and again and again….

Purchases Made for the Growing Season 2021

I made three deliciously satisfying orders in the last two weeks and now I must stop. I purchased the seeds from Green Vegetable Seeds, which is the business of Klaus Laitenberger who is very knowledgeable and sensitive to the particulars of the Irish climate. The rest were bought in Future Forests in Bantry, which is the most wonderful business and I will go no further than them for any of my trees, fruit and shrubs going forward. A lot of my existing seeds were grown and harvested in Skibbereen by Brown Envelope Seeds and others were generously free from GIY Ireland. Enjoy reading my additions to my inventory.

Trees

I focused on fruit and native trees and purchased everything bare root, which is cheaper and easier to transport.

1 x Irish Peach apple tree (I already have 1 x Bramley Seedling and 1 x Beauty of Bath)

2 x pear trees (1 x Concorde and 1 x Doyenne du Comice)

1 x Stella cherry tree (I already have 2 x Reginas)

2 x Hazel

2 x Hawthorn

2 x Sessile Oak

2 x Rowan

Shrubs

3 x honeysuckle

4 x holly

2 x wild rose

2 x dog rose

We have a lot of trees and shrubs in our garden but not many to be overly excited about. The Elder trees are extremely important and can be used by us, as well as the wildlife. We have some crab apple trees that haven't done too well the last two years we have lived here but last Spring was quite dry and windy so it might have affected the blossoming. Other trees did poorly last year also. We have lots of tall conifers (I think Leyland Cypress) which are great for privacy and wind protection as we are quite high and there is a (lightly used) lane running behind our garden. The view would be fabulous without them but I have to thank them for giving me an extremely sheltered area to grow food. There are lots of gaps and dead trees (conifers that were severely pruned before we came along) to one side of the garden and this is where I am concentrating on. I want to create a mixed native hedge that is good for wildlife. We have contoneaster in the front garden which supplies the bees with flowers in the summer and then produces berries in the winter that are very popular with blackbirds.

Soft Fruit

10 x Glen Ample raspberry canes (I already have 2 x Autumn Bliss)

10 x Elsanta strawberry crowns

1 x rhubarb

Vegetable Seeds/Tubers

Potatoes - Miranda for first earlies and Pink Fir Apple for maincrop

Tomato - Kalavrita

Spring onion - Ishikura Bunching

Parsnip - Javelin F1

Carrot - Chantenay Red Cored

Kale - Nero di Toscano

Courgette - Nero di Milano

Jerusalem Artichokes

Cucumber - Passandra F1

I already have garlic, broad beans and purple sprouting broccoli growing. 

My existing seed collection contains:

Leek - Solaise Blue

Pak choi - F1 Rubi and F1 Yuushou

Peas - Sugar Snap and Irish Green Pea

Carrot - Rodelika and Autumn King. I wasn't impressed with the flavour of my carrots this year so I am changing variety

Tomato - Sungold

Lettuce - Baby Gem and Mizuna

Beetroot - Detroit Globe 

Squash - no idea of variety, I harvested the seeds from a squash I bought at our local farm stall.

New Zealand Spinach - this was a staple of our meals all through the summer, autumn and early winter, until the frost killed it. It will grow as a perennial in mild climates. It is a very fleshy leaf that has to be cooked before eating as it contains oxalic acid. The reason I chose it over standard spinach that can be eaten raw is that it is the one spinach variety I can buy that is bred in Ireland, by Brown Envelope Seeds. Sacrifices for keeping it local!

So I have a lot of work ahead of me this year. I have been gardening long enough to know just how much work is involved in growing a wide range of vegetables. I won't be planting everything at the same time. I think I'll keep the details of the sowing times I have in mind for another post.