tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-71876404581897806752024-03-19T05:07:42.731+00:00The Carrigaline CrustyThis blog is called The Carrigaline Crusty as I began it while living in a town in Cork, Ireland called... Carrigaline. I wanted to show how you can grow and forage your own food in a town. Well now I live more rural, near the coast in East Cork. I'm still doing the same things but I have a bigger garden and taller ambitions. I hope you find the posts interesting and useful.Oliviahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14876669981981034407noreply@blogger.comBlogger197125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7187640458189780675.post-53822790682529481242021-11-20T20:44:00.002+00:002021-11-20T21:01:10.038+00:00Full Circle GarlicOne of my gardening ambitions is to become self sufficient in as many areas of growing as I can, closing the loop to reduce the amount of inputs my garden needs. This year I grew peas and many different flowers from my own saved seed, and this week I have added garlic to the list. I bought in my garlic last Autumn and after a very good crop, I have replanted my own cloves for next year's harvest.Oliviahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14876669981981034407noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7187640458189780675.post-28258394152360300742021-03-22T14:23:00.000+00:002021-03-22T14:23:14.783+00:00Garden Diary 22nd March 2021I am slowly expanding my growing space for edibles by layering any cardboard that enters the house, and covering with compost. I've also used empty compost bags, spread open, to cover bare soil as protection from the elements and to warm it up. I like doing this gradually as it gives me time to work out best positions for sun and wind shelter, as well as considering the location of plants in Oliviahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14876669981981034407noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7187640458189780675.post-47634472774368963532021-02-13T19:58:00.000+00:002021-02-13T19:58:22.044+00:00New Fruit BedsI've been doing quite a bit of work in the garden the last week, mainly digging out compost from the big heap. Some of this stuff has been sitting there for years and is almost black. It looks good and I hope it's not full of weed seeds, although it probably is. I have a lot of new perennial plants for the garden, largely trees and hedging (you can see a list here) and ordering is so easy Oliviahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14876669981981034407noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7187640458189780675.post-33143450909073026662021-01-31T00:14:00.000+00:002021-01-31T00:14:21.993+00:00Grow 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, Oliviahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14876669981981034407noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7187640458189780675.post-30721223281217733672021-01-28T10:36:00.001+00:002021-01-28T10:36:21.805+00:00Grow 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 Oliviahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14876669981981034407noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7187640458189780675.post-37847038225821724102021-01-27T23:55:00.001+00:002021-01-27T23:55:18.093+00:00Purchases Made for the Growing Season 2021I 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 Oliviahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14876669981981034407noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7187640458189780675.post-5972185290984500512020-12-28T23:12:00.004+00:002020-12-28T23:22:19.453+00:00Grow 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 Oliviahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14876669981981034407noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7187640458189780675.post-55681196909917398852020-12-18T13:11:00.002+00:002020-12-28T23:22:45.166+00:00Grow 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 Oliviahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14876669981981034407noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7187640458189780675.post-52432362960895536822020-12-18T10:37:00.000+00:002020-12-18T13:11:58.655+00:00Garden Writing ChallengeI'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 Oliviahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14876669981981034407noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7187640458189780675.post-58511888776859101232020-10-26T15:51:00.000+00:002020-10-26T15:51:56.930+00:00Garden 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 Oliviahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14876669981981034407noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7187640458189780675.post-77599386356074254952020-10-05T00:04:00.000+01:002020-10-05T00:04:31.865+01:00Garden 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 Oliviahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14876669981981034407noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7187640458189780675.post-9621903742212765162020-07-23T21:04:00.001+01:002020-07-23T21:06:23.991+01:00Garden Diary: 23rd July 2020Today 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 ofOliviahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14876669981981034407noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7187640458189780675.post-32342908871779749562020-07-05T23:54:00.001+01:002020-07-05T23:54:34.829+01:00Garden Diary: 5th July 2020Today 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 Oliviahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14876669981981034407noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7187640458189780675.post-37401709365284877372020-06-20T11:11:00.001+01:002020-06-20T11:11:16.775+01:00My Long GrassI 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.Oliviahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14876669981981034407noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7187640458189780675.post-31877948953770279522020-05-26T23:07:00.001+01:002020-05-26T23:07:51.151+01:00Flowers From Seed: LupinsI 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 rewardingOliviahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14876669981981034407noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7187640458189780675.post-48907128186052609272020-05-26T00:13:00.001+01:002020-05-26T00:13:13.548+01:00Flowers From Seed: CalendulaIf 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 Oliviahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14876669981981034407noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7187640458189780675.post-50517757953146226222020-05-21T18:43:00.000+01:002020-05-21T18:43:12.582+01:00Pea Day BattlePeas 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 hadOliviahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14876669981981034407noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7187640458189780675.post-29464838917180671252020-05-06T15:39:00.004+01:002020-07-06T00:03:40.376+01:00Garden 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 Oliviahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14876669981981034407noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7187640458189780675.post-83013310241705000022020-04-12T11:52:00.000+01:002020-04-12T11:52:35.118+01:00Garden Diary: 9th April 2020It has been very warm and dry lately. The late evenings and nights can still get cold, but tonight was the first time when I did not feel any bit of cold approaching with darkness. It's the second night this year that I did not light a fire. It's all over the news now and goes without saying, but should you be reading this years down the line I'll have to point out that we are in a lockdown at Oliviahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14876669981981034407noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7187640458189780675.post-69661232489445163492020-03-17T17:51:00.000+00:002020-03-17T17:51:12.261+00:00Garden Diary: 16th March 2020
I've taken over the front porch for my seedlings and instructed everyone to use the backdoor. Last year I planted my indoor seeds on the south facing window sill of the garage but it was too much sunlight for the delicate baby plants and the spiders, christ the spiders that made their homes in and around the module trays. I am a friend of arachnids and very respectful but there are specimensOliviahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14876669981981034407noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7187640458189780675.post-74495875228542006282020-01-06T22:06:00.000+00:002020-01-06T22:06:36.737+00:00Beach Stones for Vegetable Bed EdgingToday was a day I was looking forward to, and dreading at the same time. It was the first day back to school after the Christmas holidays, a break which has the magical ability to absolutely destroy any sense of routine. We haven't been poking our toes out of bed until 9am at the earliest for the last two weeks. We woke to torrential rain and strong wind, which wasn't a great welcome, but by 11amOliviahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14876669981981034407noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7187640458189780675.post-27997372579727758882020-01-04T23:30:00.000+00:002020-01-07T11:52:14.353+00:00In Defence of FliesIt took me until last year to realise it was okay to like flies. I'm not referring to the pretty flies like dragonflies, damselflies, butterflies and the likes which are part of different orders of insects, I mean true Diptera flies like blow flies and craneflies (aka Daddy Longlegs - although I believe some use this name for the cellar spider/Pholcidae).
As you can tell from the photos I have Oliviahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14876669981981034407noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7187640458189780675.post-20705047565512983252019-11-23T22:59:00.001+00:002020-01-06T22:07:02.345+00:00Using Seaweed in the Garden
Early Winter is a great time to put fresh seaweed on your empty beds. I just gather the wet seaweed that washes up on the beach (not the stuff still growing attached to rocks) and lay it out on the beds and let the rain wash it clean. By Spring it will have decomposed into the bed. It can get a bit glutinous and unappealing during this process but unless you are hoping to have quality time Oliviahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14876669981981034407noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7187640458189780675.post-40763837069012329972019-09-23T23:06:00.001+01:002019-09-23T23:06:07.859+01:00Dolycoris baccarum or Hairy Shield Bug or Sloe Bug
This shield bug has a distinct purple colour in the summer, which fades to brown for the winter. I took this photo mid September. These are common bugs but it was my first time noticing one. It is framed beautifully by my sunflower.
Oliviahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14876669981981034407noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7187640458189780675.post-65903873664260244502019-09-20T00:39:00.000+01:002019-09-25T12:28:39.453+01:00An Irish SummerI am a champion of the Irish climate. I cannot understand the tired jokes and utterances about our terrible weather. They can only be made by people who reserve their outdoor activities for a small window of time in the week. We have a temperate climate, rarely too hot or too cold, making it mostly optimum temperature for growing grass which, combined with our healthy rainfall, sustains a rich Oliviahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14876669981981034407noreply@blogger.com0