Making Space

Making Space
Not long after moving into our new/old house, we chopped back a lot of overgrown shrubs at the top of the garden. Although quite neglected and leggy, the rhododendrons and ... looked fine but we wanted to get a better feel of what sort of area we had and how much space we would eventually have for vegetables.
My intention after hacking down the shrubs was to hire a skip and have the lot taken away to be recycled at the council depot. We have close neighbours now and I don’t think a bonfire would go down too well as one of them usually has washing hanging up outside on the line.
All of the shrubs larger trunks have been cut with a chainsaw and put into an out of the way corner of the garden to season and dry out for next year when I can chop them up for burning in the fire.

Chimney Fires
Apparently there has been a big rise in chimney fires over the last 2 years and burning damp wood is one of the reasons mentioned as it forms an inflammable layer of oil in the chimney, another reason is the increase of wood burning stoves being used for more than just burning wood, anything and everything is being burned to save money. Another financial reason seems to be that people are not getting their chimneys cleaned as often because money is tight in the recession. I was told to add the potato peelings to the fire to clean the chimney. I’m not sure if it works but it does eradicate the small plants that sometimes grow in the compost heap from the potato peelings.

Saving Money
The remaining shrubbery has been piled high in the middle of the clearing and we decided that €120 for the skip hire was too much to pay. If we had a larger garden I could just leave the pile to rot down, but we need to get it moved. Our solution to the issue is to get lopping.
I have been working my way through the pile with the loppers, patiently chopping up the twigs into pencil sized lengths and filling up coal bags. It actually doesn’t take long to fill a bag and the resulting twigs added to the front room fire has actually been saving us money as we are using half the amount of coal as usual. So it’s a win, win situation. We have saved €120 on the removal of the waste and I would say we will save €100 on coal and the smaller waste that is too fiddly for the fire will go back into the garden as a mulch after I have passed it though the shredding machine. It’s also great exercise for me and the dogs as they enjoy chasing after the sticks and pulling them out of the bags after I put them in. Apart from the temporary mess there are no down sides to this form of recycling in the garden. I love it.

New Growth
As I am out lopping I’ve been spotting some new growth in the garden. It looks like we have a clump of crocosmia coming up and if the dogs stay off of the rockery area we should have some interesting geraniums popping up. I am not really ready to add more plants to the garden yet until we know what we have already, but if doesn’t stop me from looking at what’s new for 2012.

New Flowers for 2012
As usual there are a lot of new flower varieties out this year with something to please even the gardener who usually just grows vegetables, like me.

Argyranthemum 'Upsy Daisy Blush' Half-hardy Annual. These daisy flowers grow 1.5m (5’) tall in just a couple of months from a spring planting. These half-hardy climbing argyranthemums produce masses of 7cm (3”) wide blooms, that slowly fade from pink through to white,
Hibiscus 'Hardy Giants Collection' Rose Mallow, Mallow. Hardy Shrub. Superb Rose Mallows bearing huge flowers of up to 30cm (12") across! Bred in Nebraska by the Fleming brothers, the 'Van Gogh's', the shrub has short lived flowers that appear throughout the season.
Oleander Collection. Nerium. Hardy Shrub. Hardy summer patio exotic . The sweetly fragrant, funnel shaped blooms flower through the summer and well into autumn, followed by fascinating bean-like seed pods. They make a good hedge too.
Dahlia 'XXXL White'. Half-hardy Annual. A ‘dinner plate’ dahlia that doesn't need staking! Twelve years of breeding have produced this extra strong, extra sturdy Dahlia, with extra large blooms up to 30cm (12") across.
Buddleja 'Flower Power'Buddleja x weyeriana 'Bicolor', Buddleia, Butterfly Bush. Hardy Shrub. Blooms transform from deepest violet to rich butterscotch yellow for an enchanting kaleidoscope of colour. This colourful, low maintenance butterfly bush has a neat compact habit – just perfect for small gardens. Height and spread: 200cm (79").

These are just a few of the plants on offer and no doubt the local garden centres will be stocking even more as the season moved forward. It’s always a bit of a trial and error finding new varieties that will do well and thrive in our climate, but that’s the fun of gardening!

Book Review - “Vegetables for the Polytunnel and Greenhouse”

 

 Totally captivating. Klaus Laitenberger’s new book has loads of tips for the vegetable grower.

Costing the Earth

It looks like us gardeners are coming under a bit of criticism this week. New research from the University of Reading, the University of Sheffield, and the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) suggests that, far from doing our bit to save the planet, we might be doing more damage.

According to the research, mowing, watering the lawn to the use of peat and pesticides all have a harmful effect on the environment say the new paper called “The Domestic Garden: Its Contribution to Urban Green Infrastructure”

I know I have mentioned before about garden centres and DIY stores seem to have more products on the shelves that kill things compared to products that help plants grow, so it’s no surprise to hear that gardeners are being advised to change their ways. Some gardeners are already changing and some of us with small lawns are abandoning petrol lawnmowers and opting for push types to save up to 36kg of CO2 every year. Another suggestion is to stop using lawn sprinklers that can use up to 1,000 litres of water an hour, that doesn’t really affect us in Inishowen though.

The paper also claims that planting a tree can take a decade to become "carbon neutral" and patios have a carbon price. A paved area of 25sqm has a one tonne carbon footprint. There has been a rising problem with flooding in some areas and covering areas in concrete is one of the factors blamed for this. I’ll take my chances and plan for the future though and plant even more trees.

The study also blames the gardening industry for being "directly responsible for the introduction of invasive species" by importing plants that escape from gardens "with huge consequences for native biodiversity and the economics associated with eradication measures".

The widespread use of peat by gardeners is also identified as a problem. Peat dug to be used as compost in the UK and Ireland releases half a million tons of CO2 a year – the emissions of 100,000 cars.
Senior advisors from the RHS are here to help though and will soon be advising us on how to create less environmental damage. Here are two tips for a starter from me. Grow organically using natural self sustaining methods without the use of chemicals and don’t concrete anything. Problem solved.

Polythene Tunnel

Klaus Laitenberger from Milkwood Farm in Leitrim has a new book out “Vegetables for the Polytunnel and Greenhouse”, and one of the points he mentions is that even with using the plastic covering on a polythene tunnel when we grow our own vegetables, we will still produce far less pollution and carbon emissions than if we go out to buy shop bought veg that some would have travelled half way across the world to get to us. He’s got a point

Book Review

Klaus Latenbrgers book “Vegetables for the Polytunnel and Greenhouse”
Klaus Laitenberger’s new book, “Vegetables for the Polytunnel and Greenhouse” compliments his earlier book “Vegetables for the Irish Garden” This fresh release is specifically aimed at growing vegetables under cover. As expected the range of crops we can grow under a bit of protection is far greater than out of doors and exposed to the extremes of our climate.
The book contains lots of useful information about choosing a site for either a polythene tunnel or a greenhouse and takes into account your individual budget. Klaus gives us step by step directions on propagation of the young vegetable plants, improving the soil pest and disease control and what confuses me even after 30 years, crop rotation.
There’s a month by month guide on caring for the plants in the tunnel and if things are planned well there’s no reason at all for the tunnel not to be providing some types of vegetables all year round.
There are some plants that just wouldn’t perform well out of doors in the tried and tested list Klaus has put together. The alphabetical list starts with Aubergine and ends with the Yacon. The Yacon is one of Klaus’s favourite vegetables, not only for taste but the fact that it stores starch as insulin, not as sugar. This makes it ideal for diabetics to eat. Interestingly enough the Yacon leaves were use by the Incas as toilet paper. Now there’s another money saving tip.
The book has some great photographs of earlier successes taken by Anna-Maya and Mary from Greenhill Farm in Malin and also includes some extremely attractive pencil drawings from the Thomas Etty Heritage Seed Company and Dympna O’Driscoll.
This captivating reference book, written by a gardener who loves to grow food is available from the Milkwoodfarm.com website as well as John and Mary Reilly’s farm in Malin.
Every polythene tunnel needs a raised bed, so if you need any tips and advice about how to include them into the garden I would like to remind you that my e-book “Raised Vegetable Beds for the Organic Garden” is now available at raisedvegbeds.com or through Amazon and will fit very neatly onto your virtual bookshelf!

Grumpy

It was my birthday recently and I’ve never really been very good at giving myself treats. My idea of the perfect present to myself was not cleaning the loo for a day. Bliss. I managed to hold out until about 3 in the afternoon then succumbed to doing a bit of plunging. I did do a bit of internet shopping in the evening though and bought what I think is a lovely A1 pen and ink drawing of some dead leaves all in a monotone sepia colour. I’m probably not making it sound very interesting but it should look good when it’s framed and on the wall. I couldn’t resist the picture, it only cost me 5 euro off E-Bay. Who can resist a bargain?

Snowdrop Mania
It’s a bit early for me to be buying any real plants for the garden and as it’s the first spring we have yet to see what’s appearing. There are the strange oniony bulbs coming up as predicted and we noticed a few crocus and daffodils are appearing.

The few snowdrops we had were soon trampled by the dogs but attractive in their short life. I’m glad it wasn’t the snowdrops that were on sale through E-bay last week that got trampled; there was a single Scottish Elizabeth Harrison snowdrop bulb (Galanthus woronowii) that was sold for a record €865 which made my poster picture of dead leaves look even better value. The price paid for the lowly snowdrop more than doubled the price of the previous most expensive bulb, a ‘grumpy ‘Green Tear, which went for €430 last month. 30 collectors frantically bid for the new pale stemmed specimen.

Security
Becoming popular in the 19th century and with more than 2,000 cultivated varieties there is plenty of scope to spend loads of money getting a collection together.
Joe Sharman, 51, discovered the fed-up Grumpy flower - Galanthus elwesii - in the garden of British explorer Sir Vivian Fuchs in Cambridge 20 years ago and Joe won’t reveal where he grows them because he fears the valuable plants will be stolen. With snowdrops suddenly becoming so valuable, many collectors are hiring security guards or using tags to protect their rare species when they put them on display. Job creation in the horticultural industry!
It's still got to go some to match the tulip mania. At the peak of the hysteria, in February 1637, some single tulip bulbs sold for more than 10 times the annual income of a skilled craftsperson. It is generally considered the first recorded speculative bubble. I’d estimate that at about €250,000 euro. I’m off into the garden to see what gems I can find...you never know what’s lurking in the undergrowth.

March flowers
As I am in the garden it seems a good time to see what needs doing at this time of year.
Divide snowdrops. Lift and divide any congested snowdrops after flowering but while still in leaf. Carefully tease the clumps apart and replant the bulbs at the same depth they were before. Check if they have smiley faces or any other cute characteristics, you might be able to sell them for a fortune on Ebay.

Hostas. Lift and divide large clumps of hostas before the leaves get big. Slice through the root ball with a spade leaving a few shoots on each piece. Replant the sections back at their original level.
Hardy annuals. Sow hardy annuals such as calendula, nasturtium, lavateras and cornflowers in shallow drills or patches. They are very reliable and germinate quickly, and a good choice to keep children interested in helping you grow your flowers.

Pruning clematis. Summer-flowering clematis varieties that blossom on the current season's growth, such as Clematis 'Etoile Violette', need to have last year's growth pruned out now. Cut any tangled old stems down to a pair of new shoots near ground level as soon as possible.

Prune honeysuckle. Honeysuckle can be pruned back now if yours has got out of hand. Prune all the shoots to about 1metre from the ground and cut out old or dead shoots. If you can see any green buds below the 1m mark then prune back to just above those. By summer the shoots will have doubled on size.

Jasmine. I chopped back a jasmine climber a few weeks ago. Since then all the leaves have dropped off. I’m thinking I should probably have left that for while. Don’t be it too much of a rush to get everything cleared up just yet. There are still a lot of things hibernating in the garden and making the most of what looks like an untidy mess to us.

Spring is in the Air

Seasonal Change
Spring is definitely in the air and I am itching to get back into the garden. Over the three months we have lived in the new/old house we have seen the garden change from a luscious jungle of overgrown shrubs and perennials intertwined with old pieces of furniture, rusty wire frames, old planters and footballs into a muddy wilderness.
The garden looked lovely on the surface when we first moved in. I took some lovely photos of it as it was and they were worthy of a centre spread in a gardening magazine, but the more I looked at the garden, the more I knew we had to do something.


Apologies
It’s a bit like going to a friend’s house where they apologises for the mess in the garden, you can’t see it at first, just like you wouldn’t notice on a photograph and you don’t know what the fuss is about. When you look closer though the neglect starts to appear and you see the overgrown shrubs, weeds and old broken children’s toys scattered around. Thankfully though it’s your friend’s garden so you can just sit and relax on the patio chairs drinking Pims or a can of lager.
It was the same for me at first because the garden still felt like it was tended by the person who lived here before us. I enjoyed the fact that there were self set sycamore trees towering over the washing line and an old rotten fence that had 20 layers of different coloured paint holding it together.

Clearing
The urge to set up raised vegetable beds to grow our own crops this year has given me the incentive to do a bit of clearing though and over the last few weeks I have taken out all of the trees with my trusty chainsaw. That sounds a bit dramatic, there were only two of them, it felt like more though because over the years the trees (both sycamore) had been chopped back, allowed to grow and then chopped back again. The results of this were multi stemmed sycamores that were mini forests in themselves. They had to go. The large rhododendron shrub has been reduced to a stump and so have the cotoneaster, again self set by the birds. I’m going to have to remove their roots soon as they could do some damage. You usually find self set plants grow in the most awkward of places, in small cracks and crevices near walls. Their roots can be problematic though if left unchecked.


New Secret Weapon
There are a lot of roots growing where the raised beds will go and I have a great idea to get them out without any effort on my part. If you remember I secured the garden a few weeks ago to keep the dogs in. This has worked well for now and the dogs have more or less destroyed the lawn, leaving it a muddy mess. I want to take things to a new level though and instead of just the top of the soil being cleared, why not the roots too? The dogs wouldn’t do it, but a pig would. I was on Donedeal last night and saw pot bellied pigs for sale for 17 euro. Now that’s cheap labour, they could have the ground cleared in a week, roots and all.
There are a few objections though which will need addressing first though that the family have raised. What happens to the pig once the ground is cleared? What if there are pretty bulbs that we don’t know about that will get eaten, (pigs are not known for being fussy eaters) and thirdly, my question was, can you eat pot bellied pigs? I couldn’t raise an animal to kill them though although I do threaten to boil up the guinea pig sometimes when it’s not being fed regularly. I wouldn’t of course, there’s not enough meat on it to make it worthwhile.


For Hire
There was the suggestion of just hiring a pig (another one of mine I might add) I couldn’t find anywhere or anyone that offers this service on Donedeal or any other classified site though. I think it would be a great idea. It doesn’t have to be a pot bellied one either, it could be one of those massive pigs used for hunting truffles, I’m not fussy. I’m open to any offers, if anyone has a pig they wouldn’t mind hiring out for a few weeks, you know where to bring it. Just let me know first, I still have to convince the family it’s a good idea.