Vegetables as Flowers

I had my finest specimens of Pak choi ever this year and they tasted...well I haven't a clue. In case you haven't read my recent posts, we bought a house last year so this is my first gardening season in our new home. We have just over half an acre of garden including a large secluded sheltered sunny area - perfect for gardening except for the septic tank. I have no idea if any part of the area is safe for growing veg. It's a big space but I'd only be guessing where the pipes run and I'm not brave enough. I am planning raised beds even though some sources recommend not putting any structures on the leach field of a septic tank. We'll see.

Anyway, my Pak choi. Big beautiful unblemished plants.

They got a lot bigger than that but annoyingly I neglected to take a photo of them before they flowered, which is what I want to talk about. The only reason I let them go to flower is because I was afraid to eat them and was enjoying looking at them so much. Here is a photo of my pak choi blooming it's long flower stalks full of small sunny yellow blooms:

Pak choi is a brassica so I was immediately reminded of my purple sprouting broccoli plants of yore. This is a photo of some of my 2015 plants:

One reason you might let a vegetable plant go to flower is to collect the seed that will eventually come from the flower. To do this, using broccoli as an example, you do not harvest all the broccoli but allow some of the heads to stay on the plant. Eventually the tightly packed purple heads will burst into flower. When the flower dies you will be left with a seed pod containing green seeds. Allow the pods to dry on the plant and the seed is now dark grey/black and is ready to be harvested. The seed can be stored and planted to grow new vegetables and it is at that level of gardening that you get supreme satisfaction.

Another reason to let veg flower is, as I have discovered this year, they are excellent hosts to beneficial insects. I noticed last week that my pak choi flowers are swarming with the well-known pollinators hoverflies. Here are some pics:

A darker coloured one:

And today I snapped numerous red soldier beetles, or Rhagonycha fulva. This is their mating season and I was happy to read that the adults feed on aphids while their larvae prey on slugs and snails. This might be the most perfect insect I've ever met!

I am now really excited to experiment with more vegetables to see what flowers they produce and what insects they bring to the garden. It is almost as thrilling as eating them.

In Search of Satisfication

I have spent about €100 on plants this year. That's much more than I would usually spend. So I got all these beautiful healthy plants that were already in flower or just about to come in to flower. Instant colour and effect. So I put them in the ground, after spending a lot of time preparing the soil and then....deflation! It was utterly unsatisfying. It was too easy.

What I am excited about is the cornflowers and chamomile seeds I've planted along the edges, the lupins that won't flower until next year, the sunflowers I raised from seed that are slowly coming along and the wildflower seed bombs I have scattered.

I planted many flower seeds that didn't germinate but a few stragglers are hanging in there and I am ecstatic that this Dianthus that I sowed at the end of April has survived it's failed companions. Its tiny and weak looking but the joy it is giving me is immense! What's even more exciting is that I cannot remember what variety of Dianthus it is. I have Sweet William but I have a vague memory of another packet of a white variety that I may have planted. No idea! I won't get flowers until next year but I have lots of patience.

Similarly the Echinacea pow wow wild berry seeds I've planted are starting to germinate. I bought a pack of ten seeds for €5, which is expensive (although it is a perennial plant) and then a few days later I saw that Lidl had them as plants for about €4 each I think. I was momentarily annoyed but then I remembered that ready made plants were not filling any void for me and reminded myself that if I get even two plants from my seeds, I'll have saved money and earned satisfaction:

Other flower seeds I have planted that have successfully germinated include the following (some mentioned above):

Other plants in my nursery include courgette and squash as photographed below. I've far more flowers than vegetables this year as I am deliberating where to position the edibles, taking the septic tank into consideration:

That's it for today!

I'm Making A Flower Border

As I write a gardening blog you might think that I am an adept gardener but sadly it is not true. I can manage little spots of beauty in the garden but I can never seem to accomplish that wave of flowers or vegetables that I see in other gardens. I probably sow too many annual seeds without concentrating on perennials, and now that we have moved house, any perennials I had have been left behind. Except for my raspberry bushes which I moved. My big regret is not bringing my two pear trees but digging them up was at the bottom of a very long list of things to do, and it never got done. Happily, a friend bought us two apple trees as a house warming gift and they are now in the ground near my raspberries.


So in an effort to bulk up the garden in the floral sense I have spent a lot of money on a mix of plants, mainly perennial, and am slowly digging up a strip of grass on the left hand side of the front garden, running alongside a low wall which happily has the lovely structural shrub Cotoneaster horizontalis growing over it, which gives me a lovely backdrop fulls of bees.

A close up of the shrub:

The plants I have added so far are a tall white Delphinium, Salvia ember wish, Lavender, Sweet William, Calceolaria (yellow slipper flower,) scented stock, Lupin, Geranium, Dianthus kahori and silver star, Linaria  fairy bouquet and Verbascum. All but the lupin, which I grew from seed, were bought. Some were purchased in the frameyard in Fota gardens at a much better price and better heritage than a garden centre. I've also planted some wildflower seed bombs which I received from a friend working with the national pollinator plan in her city council. There's definitely germination happening and I am very interested to see how they develop.

The rest of the bed is still grass, which I have banned my other half from mowing and it is turning into the most wonderful wild patch so I am loathe to turn it completely into a flower bed:

Right now I am thinking of ways to put an attractive border between the "formal" (in the loosest sense of the word) side and the wild side that isn't too structural and blends nicely. I am also going to make a "managed for wildlife" sign to put in the long grass for the craic and to make it look like I am doing something important.

I actually interrupted the composition of this post for a few hours by browsing the National Biodiversity Data Centre which is full of interesting documents to read. And then I went looking for courses I could do and down the rabbit hole that is the internet.....but I came back finally. Now what was I saying?

Garden Diary 5th May 2019

I had resigned myself to holding off on a lot of planting until May as there is really no point in trying too early unless you have a really good setup with artificial heat, but I'm starting to panic that Im too slow and conservative with my seed sowing. Any way, I am proud of a few things.

I am terrible at seeing things through to the end, with a few shortcuts on the way, so I was delighted to make a decent go at planting my peas as shown in the following photo:

In the photo you can see that I have erected a metre high wooden frame covered in wire by hammering wooden stakes to it and burying them in the ground. Some of the wood I used was cut offs from our laminate floor which was no fun to hammer a nail through. Good indication of the quality of our flooring, bad for my poor index finger on my right hand which got injured in the process. This standing frame will act as support for the greenshaft peas I have planted. Old scratched dvds have been hung on string from the top of the support to act as bird scarers as they blow around and glimmer in the sun. I have planted the peas in a zig zag line and stuck sticks in to the soil where the peas are planted to try to prevent birds from landing and picking out the seeds. It is pigeon country here so I will have to be vigilant with my legumes as I know they love them.

Another view of the support:

 

I'm pleased with that. 

As I mentioned in my last post we have bought a house and have a massive expanse of grass to plant on. It is overwhelming. So I started by laying down three rectangular pieces of carpet, about 2 metres by 1 metre, to kill the grass. After a few months I dug over the soil. The first bed had about two bags of multi purpose compost added to it and is now hosting beetroot seedlings, slowly germinating carrot seeds and tiny pak choi plants that I started from seed on the inside window of the garage. I've surrounded these oriental salads with a ring of crushed egg shells.

To the second bed I added a bag of farmyard manure, purchased in a garden centre. Height of human madness paying money for bags of shit but hopefully it will be a worthy investment. In this bed are my peas and the MAGIC BEANS (broad beans) that my 5yo planted, and space for something else. I'm thinking parsnips will be next.

The third bed is tossed virgin soil waiting to be impregnated with a big fat seed. Or a tiny seed. Great things come from big and small!

So that's where we stand at the moment. I have leeks on the window sill but only one germinated so far. I need to plant courgettes. Purple sprouting broccoli also. I'm forgetting something obvious I know.

Ok bye and happy gardening.

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT

So technically I'm not living in Carrigaline any longer. I debated (with silent mouth movements to myself, usually late at night) starting a whole new blog from scratch but I've put so many years of effort in to this one that I think it a foolish folly to just walk away into the arms of a virgin blog, as tantalising as that sounds. Well this blog has been fairly inactive the last two years but lazy online life means busy physical world life. We bought our first house at the end of last year. It's rural, near the beach and has .6 of an acre garden. It's fabulous and I feel like I am on holiday. The house is a late 1970's bungalow. It's fairly simple in design but has wonderful big arched windows in the living room and a big ass kitchen that I am currently painting in teal. It has a big garage so I have lots of space for seedlings. But the vegetable garden will have to start from scratch. I've learned a lot from my little patches in Carrigaline so my main focus is to build up the fertility and structure of the beds for the next few years. I also want to establish perennials in the garden, particularly fruit trees.

End of announcement

Oh yeah p.s we're further east now, near Aghada and Whitegate. I can walk to Inch beach in 30 mins, yippee.

What Inspires My Garden

Gardening has become an outlet for me when I want to feel useful or creative. I've become to think of my gardening space as a big blank canvas that I must slowly fill. It's February now and it is especially during this time of year that I must remind myself not to wait till spring or summer to feel full of life. There is always something I could be doing. Right now I am cleaning up the debris that has amassed over winter, clearing away dead plants, getting excited over new life emerging, planning for the planting season and moving plants. It's also a time to reflect on what I want from my garden and how to achieve it. This is why I am thinking about gardening as an artistic project, to keep me looking for inspiration and thinking about aesthetics. I loved art in school but I don't think I was ever suited to the mediums of paint or ceramics etc. I knew I wanted to create but didn't know my niche. I've always loved writing and keeping a gardening blog turned out to be extremely satisfying, not least because gardening suits me as a person who loves solitude and staying at home but wants to be out in nature. So now I'm thinking about what inspires my gardening ways.

The Sea

We have great stony beaches nearby. I've never enjoyed the sandy sunny beach days of high summer but I love the tactile experience of a rough coast line littered with interesting stones, shells, seaweed and rock pools. I use beach stones and shells for decoration in the garden and harvest dead seaweed for mulch. I love art and jewellery that uses found beach material. Even driftwood is full of possibilities.

Polyculture

I started gardening because I wanted to try growing something to eat. I never felt interested in flowers or decorative plants until I realised I was thinking about it all wrong. Buying ready made plants in plastic pots will do nothing for me because the purpose of the flower is not simply for my enjoyment, it has a part to play in a much wider biodiverse picture, as food and shelter for pollinating insects and as a layer in a complex canopy. Once I started thinking of plants as part of a living landscape, it encouraged me to think about the relationship between plants and to move away from monocrop straight lines. Now I endeavour to mix vegetables, fruit, herbs and flowers while sparing a thought for companion planting without over thinking it.

Friendships

The mark of success I am aiming for is to be able to go to my garden on the birthdays of my friends and family and harvest a bouquet without feeling anxious about depleting my stocks. It feels great to offer someone a bunch of edibles, a cutting or some surplus seedlings, just as I love to receive them. I want a bounty I can share. Rather than bringing a token shop-bought cake when visiting someone's home, I'd like to be able to bring a punnet of home grown strawberries. There are many situations where buying a gift might be overkill but a homemade token is understated and almost always appreciated.



So get inspired, get going and get growing!

Things I Learned Travelling Alone

I've always loved travelling alone, be it a short bus journey or a ferry to another country. It's a way to wipe the slate clean, assume any identity you wish (not in a weird The Talented Mr Ripley way) and learn more about yourself by observing others. Now that I am working part time, I have more freedom, but am almost always with my almost three year old. I've seen so much of what Co Cork has to offer in the last three years, but always with my side kick in tow, so I was very excited to get the chance to go to Brussels for a weekend in May to visit a friend. I flew from Cork to Amsterdam and took the train to Brussels, a wonderful trip along canals and walkways with beautiful summer houses and allotments dotted along the route. The weather was beautiful, leisurely cyclists were everywhere just making me feel good by watching them, I was travelling light with a small back and feeling free.

For entertainment and enlightenment on the train, I had downloaded lots of TED Talks on random subjects. I watched presentations on creative design, outer space and the human psyche and thought about life, well my life mostly. And here is what I learned on my trip:

• The power of time off

There is an amazing scheme available to me at work that allows me to apply to take a block of unpaid leave. For the last two years I have taken a six week break. Apart from a weekend away, I've spent the time living the slow life - cooking good meals, gardening, visiting family and just not rushing anywhere. Not that I live a particularly fast paced life normally, but I work to live so the less time I can spend commuting and in an office, the better for my health and my head. My earnings are dismal in comparison to a few years ago but my money seems to go further.

• The power of self-reflection and anonymity

Once of the biggest challenges, I found, becoming a parent was the loss of [my perceived] identity and becoming suddenly more visible in public. Simple things like having to navigate a buggy on a busy street makes me feel unmoveable, awkward and at the mercy of others. My smiley toddler who says hello to everyone attracts attention that sometimes I don't want. Travelling alone I can move quickly and silently, wear different clothes because I am more lightweight and make decisions based on my own desires alone. It also helps me appreciate the joy of my normal life - the fact that I am never lonely because I have an exuberant child who will accompany me to the ends of the earth, even if it is hard work at times.

• 100 reasons not to be negative

Terrible things happen to us all, more to some, and it's healthy to react emotionally during difficult times but positivity is such a warm and contagious trait to have. I'm not sure if it can be learned or if it is innate to a person, but the more time I spend around negative people the more I see how your attitude to life determines whether or not you will be happy. How awful it must be to be miserable most of the time. Sometimes it's better to look out, rather than inwards, and not put yourself at the centre of the universe.

• Sometimes being in a crowd can be beautiful

I'm usually trying to find the quiet place but being in a busy city on a fine day with music playing and festivities surrounding me just made me love people, all so different and interesting.

• Olives are a great portable snack!

I never leave the house without food and always looking for filling foods that don't need refrigeration. Hurray for olives. And I discovered cream cheese stuffed peppadew peppers. Oh my god.

• Sometimes, do nothing

It's harder than it seems and it's why I still haven't bought a smart phone. It's nice to be truly idle sometimes, just looking around and taking it all in.

• Everyone looks fabulous in the sunshine

Clothes get more colourful and experimental and everyone seems so much happier.

• People care about me

I expected to slip away for the weekend and return as if nothing happened but I was pleasantly surprised when people made contact to see how I was getting on.




So if you are feeling at a bit of a hiatus in life, and have the freedom to get away for even a day, go on a little adventure by yourself and hopefully you'll come home feeling better for it.