Garden Diary 22nd March 2021

I 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 relation to each other. I don't want to accidentally cause shade where it is unwanted.

In the above photo we have rhubarb to the fore, with the Jerusalem artichokes on the right. Stella cherry tree behind, with strawberries in the long bed on the right. Containers have Miranda potatoes and the straw in the background beds also contain these. In between is garlic in various places, broad beans and leftovers from last year including beetroot and broccoli which I have left standing for the birds. The broccoli should actually be sprouting now but they suffered too much insect and bird damage. There are raspberries, lemon balm and chives in there too. To the left of the beds, behind the bright green container, you can see one of two small Regina cherry trees I have. All my cherry trees are coming into leaf and I hope to have plenty flowers this year, at least, as I have two different varieties now. Last year I only had the Regina. A few cherries will be the cherry on....forget it.

Garlic and broad beans

Spring flowers are doing their job providing colour for me and food for insects.

Anemone

Primrose

Signs of life are appearing on my trees. Hazel and Rowan photographed below. 

Hazel

Rowan

I am getting really excited for the coming growing season. I've done significant work planting perennials such as fruit, nut and berry trees as well as soft fruit and native climbers like honeysuckle and dog rose. I feel like a bit of form is coming to the once green grass canvas. Really buzzing about the native flowers that should come up in the grass too. 

Till next time..

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..

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.

Garden 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 specimens living in there that are historical and huge. Anything massive I find in the house is released into the garage (thankfully not adjoined) and I'm not too eager to meet them again. At the moment I am pulling out empty pots from a big cardboard box and am physically shivering in fear what is living among them.

I am mindful that April to May is really the ideal time to plant seeds in Ireland and if you wait until then, the outdoors will take care of them for you, but for hobby sake I have planted some spinach, peas, leeks, pak choi and cabbage indoors. These are all quite cool weather plants and are some of the best choices for early planting. I've also planted sunflowers, borage and corncockle.

I've used egg boxes for cabbage and toilet roll inserts for leeks.

The little plants you see are Echinacea pow wow (coneflower) that I grew from seed last year but never made it in to the ground and never flowered. These are perennial plants, which any gardener knows are worth a lot, so I can't wait to get them into the garden and hopefully enjoy some flowers this year. They should attract a lot of butterflies. Last year my wallflowers and sunflowers were my strongest butterfly charmers.


I have broad beans coming along outside, following planting in December, and garlic is poking it's head through the soil. Perennials are the raspberry bushes. Once early April comes I will plant potatoes, early carrots and beetroot outside, plus additional sowings of spinach, peas and pak choi. May will welcome sowings of parsnips, courgette and purple sprouting broccoli plus more salad leaves, peas and beetroot. There is probably more but that is really a good choice of plants for us, based on what we eat. I'm forgetting herbs... coriander and thyme must go in. I think I have outdoor basil seeds that did well for me before. Oh I have a big rosemary bush out the front that I use all the time, including for the chicken and roast veg that I just took out of the oven.

That's all I have to say right now. Good gardening.

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!

My Garden: 11th June 2016

June is a wonderful time in the garden. By this time we've gotten ample sunshine and rainfall to really get things started. Some long awaited crops, like broad beans, are ready for eating, everything else is making good progress and there is still time to sow seeds.

My over-riding plan for this year was to promote polyculture in the garden by growing vegetables, flowers and herbs alongside each other. I found it surprisingly difficult to get it started, trying to think outside the box when I was planting, but as the beds have filled up, I am getting more adventurous and creative with plant placement. And I have noticed the results massively. My broad bean crop is healthy and bountiful, and I like to think that the bright colourful pansies surrounding them have helped attract pollinating insects to the beans. I've been growing broad beans for a few years and this is my best year yet.

In my main veg bed (first photo) I have garlic, beetroot, parsnips, lupines, thyme, broad and borlotti beans, pansies, coriander, dill, radish, nasturtiums, Gypsophilia elegans (Baby's Breath) and spinach. I've noticed a massive lack of pest activity (namely slugs) and I believe this is because of the mix of plants camouflaging each other. Certainly my lupines in other areas of the garden are being well damaged by slugs, whereas the flower stalks in the vegetable bed are pristine.


The variegated leaves of the nasturtium reveal the first flower of the season. I've been nibbling on the leaves and they have a massive peppery kick. They are nestled among garlic and spinach which has gone to seed in the heat. The low lying, creeping leaves of the nasturtium is a nice balance to the tall spikes of the garlic:

Radishes grow in a line and you can see thyme to the left:

Peas are just starting the flower. You can really see the importance of a trellis - the bottom of the plants are quite chewed by slugs but the tops are out of their reach:

On the patio at the back of the house (south facing) I have my courgettes and tomatoes in pots. The biggest courgette in the foreground is in a 20 litre pot and the effect is incredible. I am planning to move some tomatoes into similar sized pots and the others into a bed. I've never grown tomatoes in a bed before and I'm looking forward to seeing what difference it will make:

That's all the highlights at the moment. I could show you photos of my giant comfrey plant covered in bees or the potatoes beginning to flower but I think I've taken enough photographs for one post. Till next time...