Traditional weather signs

When I was younger, I was told that pine cones could forecast the weather as they change shape according to whether it is wet or dry. In dry weather, pine cones open out as the scales shrivel up and stand out stiffly. When it is damp, they absorb moisture and as the scales become flexible again, the cone returns to its normal shape. I used to keep a fir cone near my back door and they were pretty reliable. Nature is good like that and can give us far more indications of the weather, not only for that day, but for the whole year. Problem is that most of us have lost the art of seeing the signs.

One person keeping the old tradition of weather forecasting going is Michael Gallagher from Glenfin. Michael’s forty years as a postman has given him an opportunity to meet some of the older people (particularly from the Croaghs) who still know a thing or two about predicting the weather.

In the past, people in rural Ireland, who depended so much on the weather for sowing, reaping and harvesting of crops had a fairly reliable system of their own to predict the weather. They understood that all life on earth depended on the sun so they looked to the sun and planets, wind and water, bird and beast which all depended on the sun, for guidelines. The heavenly bodies were studied very carefully by our forefathers for any changes in the weather.

Michael explains that the outline of mountains against the horizon and their ever-changing hues from day to day portrayed to the people of the Croaghs the type of weather that could be expected. “A blue haze on them meant heat, while mist meant rain. The outline of Cruach na mBoc or Gaigin appearing further away in the distance meant fair weather.”

It wasn’t just the mountains that were a signal of weather conditions. Frogs, insects, bats, bees, butterflies, birds and animals by their outward appearances, moods or movements, indicated the weather that could be expected in the days or weeks ahead. The cat was regarded in ancient Egypt as sacred, but in the Cruacha it was regarded as prophetic as regards weather.

The moon played an important part in predicting weather. The moon in all its phases was a great weather guide for the past generations. A far ring on the moon meant a storm near hand while a ring near the moon meant a far away storm. If the weather does not change at the beginning of any phase of the moon it means it will not change for the duration of that quarter. Also the first quarter of the New Moon follows the same pattern of weather as the last quarter of the old moon. In winter and early spring if the New Moon makes her appearance on the second or third day and appears like a small silvery crescent with upturned ends, it foretells frost and snow for the duration of the moon. If the moon appears to be racing behind the clouds that means wind and storms aren’t far away.

Birds

Michael also found that people looked to birds and insects for indications of weather patterns to come. “Our feathered friends are most sensitive to changes, and people who study them minutely can foretell changes in weather conditions.

The wren, robin, sparrow or finch seen washing and preening their feathers in a pool of water is a sign of fine weather. If Willy wagtails can be seen fluttering about street or farmyard, heavy rain may be expected.

Robin Redbreast

The robin flies near the house and into the barn when snow is forthcoming, but she flies in on the open door, a heavy fall of snow is fast approaching. If the robin sings in the evenings in spring or summer, rain is sure to come on the morrow.

Ducks

Ducks waddling is a sign of wind. When ducks stay out in the rain, it’s a sign that it won't fair all day!

Hens

Hens picking themselves are a sign of rain.

Magpies

As for magpies, when they gather together and chatter loudly, this means storm and rain.

Insects

Insects, slugs, butterflies, bees and frogs are sensitive to changes of weather. Worms, crawling on the road or on the surface of the ground, is a fore-bringer of rain, but, if seen crawling on the doorstep, look out for floods. During cold and inclement weather in autumn, if black horse-worms can be seen crawling on roads or walls, a good warm spell of weather can be expected. Slugs and caterpillars crawling on wallsteads, forecast rain in the near future. Ants, known as flying ants, or 'Siongain eiteogach' in Irish, when seen flying in multitudes and settling on window-sills, railings, ledges, or even on roofs and bonnets of cars, are a sure sign of approaching rain. A sting from a flying ant can be very painful, and, the more painful it is, the nearer the rain. Spiders, patiently threading their webs outside doors and windows presage bad weather, but, when they weave their webs on tops of rushes or whin bushes in early Spring, good weather is on the way.”

Buy the book

Michael has amassed a lifetimes worth of knowledge for local weather predictions and has wisely catalogued all of the stories, tips and advice in his new book ‘Tuar na hAimsire - Traditional Weather Signs’. You can order a copy from his website www.michaelgallagher.ie. It is great that old wisdom is not dying out but thanks to Michael it is accessible to a new generation. Perhaps if I had bought the book earlier, I would have got some snow chains in time for the big freeze.

NEW INISHOWEN GIY GROUP

 

l-r. Donal Doherty, Michael Kelly, John Hamilton, The Doherty/Donnelly family and Bev Doherty.

I’m walking into Harry’s Bar in Bridgend. It’s not often I venture out into bars, but tonight is something a bit special. It’s the first meeting of the new Inishowen GIY (Grow It Yourself) group. The GIY movement was started in 2008 by Irish Times Journalist and author Michael Kelly as a non profit making venture in Waterford. The idea is help people find out more about growing their own produce and has quickly spread nationwide with over 80 groups forming around the country.
The bar is packed, I know a few familiar faces such as radio gardening expert Gareth Austin, gardening gurus; Willie Grant , Bev Doherty and Colm Grant, as well as others I haven’t met before, all with the common interest of growing their own produce and in some cases rearing their own livestock in Inishowen.
Michael taps his glass and introduces himself to the 50 or so people in the room. “I’m no gardening expert,” he begins humbly. “In fact my first attempt at looking after plants ended in disaster when I managed to kill off some very old bonsai trees. “ (That’s not that difficult I can assure you, keeping a plant in a tiny container and cutting off its tap root is best left to obsessive fanatics.)

How GIY began

Michael continues to tell us how the idea for GIY began. “About eight years ago I bought a garlic bulb from a supermarket. I had got used to the fact that these bulbs had been grown in Spain or Portugal, but this one I picked up was grown in China. I couldn’t believe that this item, which cost less than 50 cent, had been shipped 5000 miles across the world. I got on my high horse and decided to grow some for myself. I took the bulb home, divided up the clove and planted them in the garden.
The cloves were then ignored and neglected, but that didn’t stop them sending up green shoots, which eventually fell over and withered away. I thought the plants had died so I started to dig the brown shoots out. To my surprise the single cloves had grown into fabulous bulbs. “
This realisation that plants instinctively want to grow inspired Michael to want to learn more about the art of growing his own. “I was impatient and tried to find local groups to join but as there was nothing in my area, I decided to set up a small group locally.”
The first meeting was in Michael’s local library. He set out ten chairs for a small gathering. 100 people turned up and the enthusiasm was contagious.
In just two years the idea has spread throughout the country. To date 6000 people have joined the local groups, with Inishowen being the latest group to sign up, lead by Donal Doherty, the proprietor of Harry’s Bar.
“People came to that initial meeting for different reasons.” Michael explains, “It could be that the recession was forcing people to rethink their spending and grow for financial savings. There were people who had money but also had time on their hands, people who worry about getting good healthy, nutritious food and also people who liked the exercise that gardening gives you.”

Well travelled

Michael bought a few vegetables on his way up the country earlier in the day and showed us a pack of tomatoes (from Morocco) some mixed red peppers (from Holland) and some grapes (from Brazil). “The combined food miles for these basic vegetables, is about 13000 miles.” Micheal tells us. “I was on the Sean Doherty show this morning and he asked me if this was just the ‘Global Village’ we now have and expect with food. I had to disagree. The statistics don’t add up. We import 5 billion euro worth of food a year into Ireland and export 7 billion euro. The most ridiculous fact is that Ireland imports exactly the same amount of onions as it exports. Now where’s the logic in that? Ships are passing each other in the oceans with the same products on them?”
There were more statistics for us. “In the 1980’s 35% of our disposable income was spent on food. Now that amount has reduced to 17-18%. (You might find it interesting to know that here in Ireland we spend the same amount of our income on mobile phone charges as we do on food.”
Of course Michael is here to welcome Inishowen to the GIY fold and doesn’t dwell on the negatives. This is a positive movement to nurture locally grown produce, reducing our dependency on imports and benefit from a community spirit.

Michael’s Top Ten

Michael is keen to tell us his top ten favourite vegetables for growing.
“Tomatoes, potatoes (early ones like Orla or Sarpo) peas, garlic, leeks, herbs, salad crops, (which can be grown all year round), courgettes( one of the most prolific and easy crops to grow) cucumber (you can get 40 from just one plant), leaf beet, fruit bushes and an apple tree.” Observant counters amongst you will notice there are 12 in the list, but whose counting anyway. “Just grow what you really like” is the advice that Michael gives us.
“The space needed for a family of four to be self sufficient in vegetables is just 30 feet by 50 feet and a polythene tunnel 40 feet by 14 feet and should only take about 8 hours a week to upkeep .“ Michael can even tell us exactly how much it costs him to feed and rear a chicken to 12 week maturity (€7.50). He’s done the maths.
Michael concludes his fascinating talk by saying, “GIY wants to inspire people to gain and share skills in the edible garden. Please give it a try. The worst thing that can happen is that something doesn’t grow.”

Time for me to mingle....

Monthly meetings

GIY Inishowen will have monthly meetings at Harry’s Bar. See the GIYireland.com website for more details. The meetings are non profit making, fun and open to all levels of gardeners from the professional to total novice. Refreshments will be served and there is absolutely no charge.

Bird Care

A pain in the neck

I am sitting at the computer finding inspiration for this week’s article when there is a thud at the window. The kids are off school with the snow so we all go over and open the window. A wee bird is lying looking a bit dazed in the snow. One of the lads goes out and comes back in, hands cupped and a wee pair of eyes looks up. The bird is popped into a furry slipper and left there to recover. This isn’t the first time this has happened. A few wee chirps emanate from the wee thing. We leave him in peace and start chatting amongst ourselves, reminiscing about other bird rescues and wondering whether his wing has been damaged. After ten minutes or so a beak opens. Water is put in a dropper and the bird gulps the drops down and is left in peace again. Shortly there is a flutter of wings and the bird flies to the window where one of the boys catch him while the other opens the window. We watch as our temporary visitor flies to the top of the tree wondering what tales he will tell to his friends about the strange warm world he was in and then he swoops down, landing on the feeder to tuck into some nuts.

We always enjoy putting out food for the birds. It is one of the easiest and most rewarding ways to see wildlife really close up. In winter, birds may have difficulty finding natural foods such as berries, insects, seeds, worms and fruit. Earlier in the season we noticed the holly absolutely laden with berries – a sure sign of a long cold winter or so the old wives’ used to tell me when I was a kid. Nature has signposts for us, if only we could read them. Mind you not all of us have forgotton (I heard  the Donegal Postie on Highland radio who seems to know how to read the signs).

Feeding the birds regularly over winter will help the birds survive until the spring and God knows they have no supermarkets and oil centrally heated nests.


What would they eat?

Most kitchen leftovers can be used to feed birds. Bread can be crumbled up and scattered - moisten very dry bread first as it could cause dehydration.

Biscuits provide a rich source of fat, and cooked rice, pasta and pastry are packed with starch. Potatoes can be boiled, baked, roasted or mashed, and cheese - crumbled or grated - will be very popular with robins and wrens.

Fat is a wonderful source of energy - cut bacon rinds, fat from chops or blocks of suet into cubes. Mealworms can also be very useful, you can get large tubs of them from the petshop, Lidl were selling them too last week.

Fruit, such as windfalls or bruised apples and pears, goes down a treat with blackbirds and thrushes. It may also attract winter visitors from Scandinavia such as fieldfares and redwings.

Beware: Grapes, sultanas, raisins and some artificial sweeteners can be very toxic to dogs and some other wild/domestic animals. These foods should be put on a raised bird table and never scattered on the ground.

Go nuts

Fresh coconut in the shell is a great favourite with tits. Drill two holes in one end and drain off the milk. Saw the coconut in half and hang outside. Never put out desiccated coconut as it swells up inside a bird's stomach.

Peanuts are rich in fat and attract nuthatches, siskins, great spotted woodpeckers, tits, greenfinches and house sparrows. Peanuts may be naturally contaminated with an invisible toxin so make sure you buy peanuts of guaranteed quality. Use a darning needle to thread nuts in their shells onto string or put shelled peanuts in wire mesh containers or spiral feeders. Robins and dunnocks will eat crushed or chopped nuts. Never use salted nuts.

Bird seed mixes with sunflower seeds attract greenfinches and chaffinches. Dunnocks and finches prefer smaller seeds such as millet or canary seed.


Reduce risks

Scatter food on the ground for thrushes, dunnocks and wrens. Cats pounce from bushes and trees so don't put food nearby. Don't put food out late in the day; it might attract rats and mice overnight.

To reduce the risk of spreading disease, clean bird tables and feeders weekly and water bowls daily.

Bird pudding

* Make a mould, a half coconut shell is ideal, and thread some string or wire through a small hole in the base.
* Mix some seeds, chopped nuts, sultanas, biscuit crumbs and rolled oats in a bowl.
* Melt the same volume of lard or suet in a pan.
* Add the fat to the dry mix and stir well.
* Pour the mixture into the mould and leave to cool.
* When the pudding is set, hang the mould upside down in the garden.

Thanks to the DSPCA for their advice

Winter Tips

Trouble free shrubs

We have lots of evergreen shrubs in the garden. They do need pruning back occasionally to stop them merging together and taking over but generally they are trouble free. One thing I like about them is their resilience to adverse weather conditions. When we move out of the recent ice age the shrubs can bounce back and the garden resumes its green state. There are some people that suggest that we should brush or knock the snow off the branches or they will snap, but we generally never get snowfall that badly. Anyway it wasn’t snow in our garden; it was compacted hail which stuck to the shrubs like superglue, so there would be no flicking the stems clean. Best to just leave them as they are I say.

Mountain madness

Just like Christmas last year, we find ourselves snowed in. We are not exactly in the middle of nowhere but we are on the top of a hill with an uphill driveway. Getting the car out was impossible so it was a case of getting the backpacks out and walking through the fields to get to the shops. What usually takes just minutes turns out to be a morning’s jaunt. Not only do we experience the beauty of the Inishowen coastline walking into town but we also get to meet all the other folk in the shops that are also succumbing to mountain madness. We can exchange stories of how we can see the oil and coal levels falling fast as we attempt to heat our houses. All except one friend of mine I bumped into in the vegetable section of Aldi’s. He was insightful enough to build a nearly passive eco house, so even the winter sun is enough to warm enough to heat the rooms and water. Envious isn’t the word.

The snow and frost has been a bit of a shock to the plants and trees. Walking through Swan Park we notice that there are still leaves falling onto the snow. Autumn hadn’t finished. We still have lettuce popping its leaves out from under the ice as well. We probably won’t be eating it now but it will come in useful for feeding the guinea pigs. I’m still wanting to fatten them up for Christmas (I’m outnumbered though with my cost saving idea for a Christmas dinner ) Our broccoli and kale are still looking fabulous in the garden, they can withstand anything that’s thrown at them. I like to eat the small florets when they appear in late winter. Looking around the garden there’s very little else that we can eat in the next couple of months (hence the reason for being at the veg section of Aldi)

I cleared most of the vegetable beds before the weather closed in and I will be building them up in spring with some of the 25 tonnes of topsoil that I got last month. This way I can start the growing year off with weed free surfaces. A first for me.

Winter tips

It’s probably a bit late for me to be suggesting that you put any delicate plants into a sheltered spot or even in the garage. It might be a bit late also to move any delicate pots inside too, hopefully there should still be some intact so you could have a walk around and give the containers a bit of a tap, you can tell by the tone if they are cracked.

Talking of taps, if you have any outdoor ones cover them up with an old sack or some bubble plastic or insulation foam.

You could also use some of the bubble wrap insulation to put under the birdbath if you have one. The water might need replacing often too. If you have bird feeders keep an eye on those and keep them topped up too.
Empty the petrol out of your mower if it’s parked up for the winter.

Keep an eye out for Christmas plants to brighten up your rooms over the festive period. Choose from an ever growing range of plants which include.
• Winter cherry (solanum)
• Poinsettia
• Christmas cactus
• Norfolk pine
• Orchids
• Kalenchoe
• Amaryllis bulbs
• Begonia
• Cyclamen
• Hyacinth
• Topiary balls
• And even indoor Christmas roses

Overheard in the aisles of the local supermarket

“Aren't we forgetting the true meaning of Christmas? You know… the birth of Santa. “
“The one thing women don't want to find in their stockings on Christmas morning is their husband.”

GIY Inishowen

Event Date/Time 14.12.2010 from 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM
Host Donal Doherty
Location Harrys Restaurant Bridgend

Interested in growing your own food, but don't know how to get started or need a little bit extra help? A great solution is coming to Inishowen with GIY (Grow it Yourself) Ireland, a new not-for-profit initiative that is literally sweeping the nation.

Michael Kelly is the man behind the network that now has 80 groups around Ireland and helps almost 6,000 people grow their own food. The aim is to provide people locally with the practical skills they need to grow successfully.

GIY Inishowen will launch at Harry's Restaurant, Bridgend starting this Tuesday 14th December at 7pm. Regular meetings will take place to talk, learn from each other and exchange tips, produce and war stories. Regular expertise will be in the form of some of Harry's local experienced growers, Whiteoaks Organic Community Centre & An Grianan Organics.

"This is a perfect opportunity for people to get involved on a community basis & learn more about making the most of the space around the house & growing your own vegetables. It's great to see so many more polytunnels & enthusiasts around Inishowen, but there are so many more that would like to get started or share experiences & learn more. It is totally free to attend and it will be as practical and light hearted as possible. There will always be free tea/coffee & nibbles served at each meeting.

The timing is perfect as Harry's are just developing our own greenhouse & growing plans for 2011, so people are welcome to join while we learn too! It's great that Michael is travelling up for the launch, his expertise is second to none" says Donal Doherty, Manager, Harry's.

"I'm delighted to be coming to Inishowen and see the network of GIY expand into Donegal for the first time" says Michael Kelly, Founder GIY. "This is a great opportunity for people to become involved with talks, access seeds & seedlings, attend garden visits & meet more experienced growers in a relaxed environment. That produce from local growers are already used by Harry's makes a perfect fit and Harry's is very accessible from all over Donegal & Derry for anyone interested in coming along. I look forward to meeting everyone on Tuesday and sharing plenty of growing tips."

The story of Irish Gardening

Swan Park house

Farming has been the predominant form of working with the land in Irish culture. With the present economic climate, growing our own food will probably be again a bigger part of our lives. Gardening as we know it, with our neat beds, borders and lawns is a relatively new venture into land use. Over the next couple of weeks I’m going to take you back to the beginning of the phenomenon that is gardening to see how it all started and how certain periods in history changed the way we see and use the land.

In the beginning

Gardening was thought to have originated in Jericho, Palestine in 8000 BC and was introduced to Cyprus, Egypt and China in 5000BC. By 2500BC the Indus valley and South America had picked up on the idea and introduced basic gardening as they were more settled that in their nomadic pasts. The ancient Greeks designed open urban spaces, planned paths, parapets, steps, walls and ornamental buildings for simply looking at and enjoying. None have survived but our imaginations can wander when we look at Olympia and Hadrians Villa in Tripoli. Herb uses and references date back to 3000BC in Chinese documents and ancient Egyptian papyrus from the middle of the second millennium BC. Both cultures stated that herbs were used for flavouring and medicine. Herbs were probably the first cultivated edible and medicinal plants grown by the masses. The Anglo Saxons were responsible for naming many of our native herbal plants and in 812 AD Charlemagne (742-814), a holy Roman Emperor, recognised the herbs importance during his military campaigns and ordered 74 different types of herbs to be grown in the Imperial gardens.

Leaving their mark

Around Ireland and the UK there is no direct evidence of deliberate ornamental planting to pre Roman times. The Iron Age was predominantly engaged in farming. From 43 AD the Romans did bring over many horticultural ideas and plants. Vineyards were established in the warmer southern counties and plenty of plants that we now class as weeds appeared such as Lily (Madonna). Cabbages and leeks were introduced by the Romans in much the same way that the Persians introduced roses when they invaded other countries. They were a sign of their presence and influence on the conquered country. By 1066 Western Europe crusaders brought new ideas, monasteries were established with large walled gardens, orchards and herb gardens, all cutting edge stuff at the time. The large walls helped to shelter the plants, but in later years when walled gardens were built for private individuals they were mainly built to keep out the peasants who might take an opportunity to steal a bunch of purple carrots.

First cook book

The late middle ages brought us our first plant and cookbook. In 1393 a French book called ‘Le Menagier de Paris’ had recipes and instructions on how to grow hyssop, fennel, savoury, marjoram and other kitchen herbs. Medieval tapestries show gardens and orchards outside town walls and with the decline of castles, the country house stately gardens emerged as settings for building the relationship of inside and outside of the house, which is a very popular garden design idea, especially in town houses where the garden merges with the living space.

Formal and intricate

In the 16th century the Renaissance design for gardens was formal and intricate. The style had classical detail and features such as temples and statues. Native flowers, especially herbs were cultivated as well as evergreen hedging which provided a formal setting around the beds. Topiary, the shaping of shrubs, was popular too as were grass topped seats for the passerby to stop and sit for a while taking in the scents of the herbs. The ‘Knot’ garden was made popular in Elizabethan times which probably originated from Italy via Holland. These designs again generally contained herbs. There intricate patterned squares that made up the ‘Knot’ usually had box or rosemary to make the pattern and then had coloured gravel or flowering plants inlaid. These designs were superseded by ‘Parterres’ around 1644 which also incorporated swirling patterns and didn’t need any flowers as they were dramatic enough without. During the late 17th century plants were introduced, the first bedding plants if you like, to represent embroidery patterns in the garden. Some designs also used turf.

The grand manner of post Renaissance garden design was developed by Andre le Notre (1613-1700) at Versailles which again extended the concept of a palace leading into the countryside, bringing the two features together as one unit. In 1644 (a few years after the horse chestnut tree was introduced into Ireland from the Balkans) George London and Henry Wise spread the French styles of Le Notre around the UK then a succession of popular designers such as John Vanbrugh, Switzer spread the delights of urban gardens to a wider audience of mainly landed families. William Kent (1685-1748) was working on Holkam Hall in Norfolk and under him was Lancelot Brown (1716-1783) Lancelot acquired the hick name of ‘Capability’ for his habit of tactfully telling people that their gardens were ‘capable of great improvement’ . He developed a style of grass, water and trees at many of the great homes, one of the first in Ireland was that of Delaney at Deville and this in turn influenced followers such as Henry King to design Florence court in Enniskillen.
Next week: New plants and herbaceous borders taking us onto the next stage of gardening for the masses.
Photo: The walled gardens at Buncrana house were probably used more for cattle than flowers

New plants

New plant genera was being introduced from all over the world by botanists and by 1790 the Royal Dublin Society acquired the site for the National Botanic Gardens in Dublin Humphrey Repton (1752-1818) was able to use a greater range of plants that previous designers and introduced features like fountains, terraces and balustrades. The gardens were still for the elite though and this didn’t change until John Claudius Loudon (1783-1843) a great writer of his day brought gardening to the rising middle classes and it marked the start of specialised designs such as rock and bog gardens. He was lucky enough to be alive when the first of many public parks opened in Derby in the UK.

Hot house

In the early 18th and 19th century most Irish country houses were set in newly planted areas with beech trees arranged around perimeter belts and fields were sprinkled with elms, oaks and chestnut trees. There were hundreds of these square formal houses spring up all around the country. As history panned out, most of these now lie in ruins and the Anglo Irish that built them are long gone. These areas were originally called ‘Elysiums’ or ‘Places of complete happiness’ Not gardens as we are familiar with, even then it was still the walled gardens that housed the flower beds and borders.

By the mid 19th century, great formal gardens in the French Baroque tradition had revived borders, carpet beds, paths and clipped hedges that surrounded the houses. William Robinson (1839-1935) was an undergraduate in the estate of a clerical baronet in County Leix (Laois) who, after a row with the owner opener up all of the hot houses on a cold December morning before fleeing to Dublin to work . Helped by Dr Moore of the Glasnevin Botanical Gardens Robinson went to the Botanic Gardens in Regents Park. He rose to be a very influential gardener, especially with wild flowers and in the late 19th century wrote ‘The Wild Garden’ (1870) and the ‘English Flower Garden (1883). These books contributed to the end of formal gardening as we knew it. His naturalism was and still is ideally suited to the Irish climate. The herbaceous borders were created.

Herbaceous borders

Then along came Dr Gertrude Jekyll (1843-1932) who further developed the herbaceous borders, shrub borders, wild gardens and woodland gardens. She condemned bedding plants, topiary and conservatories. In 1891 she joined with Edwin Lytyens and went on to design over 300 gardens which included the War Memorial Gardens at Islandbridge in Dublin and the gardens at Heywood, County Laois. William Robinson and Gertrude Jekyll laid the foundations for modern garden design in the Victorian era with their natural vernacular styles affording ideas to the wealthy and also to the masses. The garden as we know it had evolved.

Bauhaus

In 1919, Walter Gropius, a member of the modern German Bauhaus Movement incorporated the total design of inside and outside of the house and understood the connections between the two. The movement was closed down by the growing power of the Hitler movement but the influence moved to a more free thinking America and flourished. A new style emerged again rejecting the old formal designs. Thomas Church, Garrett Eckbo and Laurence Halpin broke new ground. Gardens reflected the house, landscape and personality of the owner. This movement was slow to venture over the Atlantic but it was helped along by the book ‘Gardens in the Modern Landscape’ written by a Canadian called William Tunnard and illustrated by artist Gordon Cullen.

Present day

After 1945, modern garden designers assimilated ideas from all over the world as suburban towns were developed after the war. Sylvia Crowe, Jeffrey Jellicoe, Brenda Colvern, Peto, James Russell and Brookes moved forward the art of gardening. They specialised in small gardens that had to be functional, provide some outdoor living space, an area for clothes to dry, children to play and even a place for the dustbin to go. The idea was that the familiarity of the garden should increase to give a feeling of unity and contentment for the family. This idea is still very prevalent today with the addition of the vegetable garden.

The four main designs that are widely used today are:

The cottage garden.
These make the maximum use of a small space and rely on flowering plants, small lawns and some vegetables.
The Italian garden.
Probably of classical origin, relies on architectural features, pools, sculptures, hedges, gazebos and secluded areas for contemplation.
The post Renaissance garden:
This is where the property is in harmony with the countryside.
The Irish/English romantic garden.
These are informal, picturesque, and intimate and give the opportunity for exploiting the beauty of many plant species in clumps or single specimens.

Of course most gardens of note can incorporate all of these features and often do. The use of gardens by new garden designers is now seeing these outdoor spaces becoming far more practical and productive. Vegetables can be incorporated in beds and borders just as effectively as a veggie patch and gardens can also be a place not only to relax but to house energy saving geothermal heat pumps, underground water storage, wind turbines and solar panels. Gardening designs and ideas have and always, and will always hopefully move with the times and need to be embraced and recognised as a great benefit to the quality of everyday life.

Multitasking

Need to switch off? Try gardening.

I have realised exactly why I love gardening so much. It’s the one thing in my day that I do without thinking about the next job in hand. It’s the one important time of the day when I am not multitasking—trying to pay attention to numerous things simultaneously. I do anticipate my next jobs of course, but whilst I am mowing the lawn, that’s all I can do without being distracted and putting myself in danger. When that’s finished I can go on to do other things like sweeping the driveway systematically and safely going onto the next thing.
I could blame the computer for my lack of attention to one task. I can’t stay on a webpage for more than 5 seconds before getting impatient and if the page takes a while to load I will try to fit in reading e-mails and jumping onto the pages of DoneDeal to see what classic cars are for sale before clicking to see if the original page has loaded. Glancing at pages isn’t a problem until it is an instruction to do something. I waste hours trying to do things before eventually going back and reading the information properly. As my lad say when he sees my trying to set something up and getting impatient, “RTFM” (Read the f-ing manual) it makes sense I suppose –but it takes so long.

Feel good

Multitasking jobs like phoning whilst cooking or checking e-mails/facebook as the spuds go onto the boil, we claim to do so in the name of efficiency. Scientists now think the real attraction to multitasking has a lot to do with dopamine, a feel-good neurochemical released when we're stimulated by new things, even as simple as anticipating what is in the e-mail message. One scientist tells us that “We're all novelty junkies and multitasking, especially the electric kind, is a great way to get a fix.”

NCT

I tried to multitask last week putting my car though the NCT. I thought I could use the time spent sitting in the waiting room constructively by ‘thinking’ of solutions to my daily issues. A total waste of time as it turned out. I couldn’t concentrate on anything, partly because it was so cold, but mainly because the NCT man had to jump start the car in the checking bay. Not a good start to the test. It made me far too anxious to think about anything ‘constructive’, so I just got more stressed because I couldn’t think about the things that were stressing me. I sometimes think these small windows of spare time (like the ten minute wait for the lads to be picked up from school) are useful. But realistically I’d be better off just having a nap and in much the same way that gardening does, gives my brain a rest.

Just remember

There are times when multitasking can be valuable, especially if you are flying something. But recent evidence suggests that multitasking with unrelated activities—such as trying to write an article in my head as I am watching Coronation Street, or tying to wash the sink down when I’m brushing my teeth can impair short-term memory and interfere with mental processing. I am often seen as forgetful. I now see that it’s not that I forget things; I never really remembered it in the first place.
The medical boffins with impressive attention spans say that this is partially because most of what we call multitasking doesn't actually involve doing multiple things simultaneously; it involves rapidly switching between activities, a process that saps time and energy by requiring us to constantly refocus our attention. One doctor tells us that “When a conscious decision has to be made, our brains can generally do only one thing at a time," I can relate to that. Quick and creative thinking can be impeded and when we learn something while multitasking, we use an area of the brain called the striatum, which is activated when we learn new habits or skills, as opposed to the hippocampus, which is associated with forming conscious memories and is active when we're focused. The problem with habit-based learning is that it tends to be inflexible. This generally means that if everything goes the way it’s expect it to, all well and good, but if the routine is broken by something as simple as a phone call, getting back into the swing of things can be a bit awkward.

Have you ever really eaten an orange?

Here’s a test to see if you are trying too hard to multitask. When you eat an orange, do you put the next segment in your mouth before eating the next one? Next time you eat one, just take a look. A wise sage once told me that until you eat the separate segments individually you have never really eaten an orange. You are too busy anticipating the next piece, which is similar to multitasking.
Gardening is my one great release from trying to juggle my days ‘things to do’ It makes me realise that in the day the challenge is not to find stimulation but to say no to it, to take control of my rather short attention span and cultivate a different kind of richness in my life—one that comes from leaning on a spade and looking at the scenery. It sounds daft, but by doing this I tend to get a lot more done in the day.

Cleaning Paths

Our new puppy is looking rather cute at the moment. I suppose they have to have some endearing qualities so they are kept as pets and not given away to the dog pound. If Kenny (that’s what we have temporarily decided to call him) wasn’t looking at me with those sad eyes I would have probably shipped him off by now and been left with a clean kitchen floor that isn’t constantly wet. There were times when I wanted to rub his nose in it, but thankfully the good old internet was there to give me some good advice.

Toilet training should only take about a week and the pup needs to be praised for doing their business outside, not reprimanded for doing it on the front room carpet. It is yet again a case of me being trained as well as Kenny (or Kenneth as I like to call him much to the annoyance of the rest of the family). His mother, Chips, has taken to running out of the house in the morning and hiding in the woods, coming back covered in bramble thorns and gorse, only to eat and sleep. She keeps a distance from her offspring now as he has a fine set of sharp teeth which must make feeding a bit of a painful procedure. Her chair is still too high for Kenneth to jump onto so Chips just stares at him dismissingly as he tries to get to her. Parenthood, isn’t it wonderful?
I read that a puppy needs to be taken out every hour and told to do its business. I might as well use this time productively so instead of standing there saying “do a wee wee” (the websites suggestion, not mine,) I am finding outdoor jobs to do. This should keep all three of us happy. I can release my frustrations by doing a bit of manual work, Chips can hide in the gorse and Kenneth can frolic around and eat fallen leaves.

Clearing Pathways

The autumn leaves are looking particularly beautiful at the moment, we have a few really bright varieties of acers that go scarlet in colour before falling, and we have a sorbus and a birch tree to add to the rainbow of colours. I’m outside to clear the path of leaves in the front garden today and notice that the path needs other work to make it safe for the winter. I have three jobs to do (four if you count keeping an eye on the puppy)

1. Clear the path of weeds
2. Clear the steps leading up to the path
3. Wash the path down to stop it from becoming slippery when wet.

Clear the path of weeds
 The path is crazy paving and over the year annual and perennial weeds have grown in the cracks. I’m not as organised as the bloke working on the Credit Union grounds in Buncrana. He has a stick with a nail on the end and he scrapes out all of the dirt and weeds from the path cracks. I’m not so exacting with the weeds on my path and jut hack the tops off with a spade. I’m careful to make sure that Kenneth is preoccupied chewing on a cotoneaster stump before commencing. I also clear the edges of the path where the grass is beginning to encroach into the crazy paving.

Clear the steps leading up to the path
Whoever washes the dishes at the kitchen sink looks up the path through the window and I couldn’t help but notice that groundcover plants are covering most of the four steps leading to the path. I used the excuse that I liked the plants cascading over the rockery stones for a year or two now, but they are full of creeping buttercup, clover, couch grass, London pride and ivy. Chances are that it was just supposed to be London pride growing over onto the path but everything else has been mixed up in it over the years. I wouldn’t be bothered to pick the weeds from the mess so I pull everything back off of the steps back to the rockery stones, the clumps came up easily, even with a young puppy behind me hanging from my jumper. It’s amazing how wide the path is now that the clumps have gone. I am now in a position to allow only the plants that I want to grow onto the steps without having to do any weeding.

Wash the path down
I’m just using soapy water and a stiff brush with a dog on the end for this. I don’t want, or need to use any harsh chemicals for this, especially with soft paws running about. The stones can get really slippery when algae grows on it so it really needs doing once or twice a year, -even more if the pathways are in a lot of shade. It only takes a few weeks for the paths to be dangerous.

I have a couple of wheelbarrow loads of weeds from the path and as I empty the contents onto the compost heap I look at Kenneth and find myself saying. “Time to go back inside. Do a wee wee”.
Did I really just say that?

Halloween 10

Any excuse

I’ve managed to find yet another excuse for having the garden in a state of disarray. This week I usually use the fact that it’s a school holiday to not sweep the leaves, but it’s also Halloween at the weekend so I have a few plans up my torn zombie sleeve. The ghouls and ghosts will be calling at the door demanding treats with the threat of a trick if I don’t comply. This year it’s retaliation time.

Turning the tables

The first thing to do is to keep the leaves and pile them up around the doorway (if the wind hasn’t already done it for you. Then prop some dead tree branches onto the walls. Fake cobwebs can be cast over these for added effect and a spooky face can be stuck to the door, dripping with blood. If I can be bothered I might get some fake tombstones and paper bags with LED lights in them to dimly light up the driveway.
The scariest thing that you could do to frighten the children witless when they come knocking at the door is to offer them something that isn’t filled with sugar when they hold out their expectant hands waiting for the ‘treat’. I have a simple recipe for severed eyeballs that should frighten the living daylights out of them, solely due to the fact that the main ingredients are fresh vegetables, namely cucumbers, carrots and black olives. There is a dollop of cream cheese to stick everything together in there too. They will look sweet and tempting under creepy low lighting and should get a reaction when they are put into the excited child’s mouth. If I am feeling generous I could always make up some bloody worms made from thinly sliced hotdog sausages, but where would the fun be in that for me, they would probably enjoy those? I could always try and fashion dog poo shapes by mixing weetabix and water together and leaving them on the driveway. Actually, as an afterthought, only make things you are happy to clean up off windows in the morning. Even fruit can be a bit messy.

Pumpkin fun

There are creepy things that could be made with pumpkins too. We grew some deep orange coloured ones this year for hollowing out, but unfortunately we ate all of the regular shaped ones. All we have left are a few very irregular looking ones that look as though they have been deflated and are too small to hollow out. I think the main problem this year was that we didn’t nip off the growing shoot of the plants. They produced lots of small specimen pumpkins instead of a few large ones that would have been suitable for the seasonal purpose of carving. The resulting plant growth of the pumpkin plants has made its way up the decking steps and towards the house, which I suppose is creepy enough in itself. All is not lost though, we’ve taken to dressing one of the small pumpkins up with an ‘Anonymous’ mask (It’s an image of Guy Fawkes from the film V for Vendetta. If you don’t know Anonymous ask your computer savvy teenagers who they are) and a trilby hat. It looks very dapper, but scary it isn’t.

Here’s a tip for you if you don’t fancy illuminating your pumpkin. Smear petroleum jelly around the hollowed out inside, this stops it from drying out. Instead of putting the candles inside, pop in a potted carex grass, leaving the long fine leaves to cascade from the top. It looks great in the daylight, just like real hair. There are other plants you could pot up; chrysanthemums are in full bloom at this time of year. For an instant display of colour try putting cuttings from berried twigs like pyracantha into jars. Holly is bursting with berries this year; sprigs of these would look great coming out of the pumpkin head. Scatter colourful leaves around the pumpkin base for added effect.

If my trip into Derry was anything to go by recently, this Halloween is promising to be one of the grandest yet. Every other shop seems to be selling Halloween costumes and accessories; it’s keeping their economy going. With just a bit of effort and a few chopped pieces of vegetables we can give the door knocking kids a night to remember without spending a fortune. And being realistic, I’m probably scary enough to most young children without having to put on a mask.

Out of Room

Digging in the dirt

We ran out of room in the veggie patch this year. I’m not sure why really as we more or less grew the same things as the previous years. Maybe it was the extra large pumpkins that took up the room, or the weeds. Whatever the reason for the lack of space, I have decided to expand.
Acting impulsively I sift through this week’s edition of the Dealer to see who is selling topsoil, a vital commodity in my expansion plans as we really don’t have a surplus in our own garden. The collapse of the building industry in this recession has caused a huge rise in the price of topsoil. At the height of the boom all you had to do was to flag down a passing tractor and trailer carrying a load and they would drop it off at the house for nothing. Good quality topsoil now appears to be trading on the world markets alongside gold. The price seems to be around 150-200 euro per 20 tonne so if you can get a good quality load free of stones and couch grass, it’s not too bad. I opt for the most local supplier just down the road from us and prepare a space for the delivery.

A load of sheeting

As I am attempting to do this on a budget I manage to scrounge some black plastic sheeting to put on the ground. The load arrives; the sheeting on the ground soon gets covered, and more of the ground besides. The resulting pile also manages to block out the sun. It’s big, very big.
I’m very pleased with the soil. It’s got a good mix of silt, sand, clay and small stones. The field that it came from had been well limed and regularly top dressed with sand and manured on an annual basis. I pay the money to the friendly farmer. I spend the next thirty minutes just standing and looking at the giant heap, wondering what I have let myself in for.

On a budget

Again, because I am trying to do this on a budget, I have managed to get some used coal bags to put the soil into for easy storage and to move it to the new raised beds when they are in place. After covering most of the pile with more plastic to keep the weeds from germinating, I set about shovelling the soil into the bags. I soon realise that, although the soil is very loose and top notch, it does have more stones in it that I first thought. It also has old roots and couch grass. It will be grand for the subsoil at the base of the raised beds but not really fine enough for the surface. I don’t like rummaging through stones in the veggie patch and carrots certainly don’t like them so a cunning plant is needed. It’s time to be inventive. When I worked for the council I was once given the job of sieving 70 tonnes of soil, it needed to be fine enough for a top dressing on the bowling greens. I remember the giant sieve I used, so I need to replicate one of those.

Making a soil sieve

I pop to the Co-op to see what they have in stock. I was thinking of getting wire mesh with holes about 1” square, but after looking at it I realise that size would be too big for the job and let too many stones in. They have some strong metal mesh that has holes to about half an inch but it is too heavy for the job, it’s made to clean sheep’s hooves as they walk over it. I have about given up when I come across some fine mesh used for strengthening concrete. It’s just what I need and only costs 5 euro for a sheet 2’6” wide by 8’ long. My budget can stretch to that.
The first thing I do is divide the mesh in two, so I am left with a sheet only 4’ in length and one spare piece of the same size. I then sandwich one of the sheets in between lengths of 2”x1” planks of wood and screw them tightly together, which holds the mesh in place. The finished product is sturdy and sits well leant up against the wheel barrow at a 45 degree angle. When I shovel the soil onto the mesh, the stones fall to the ground in front of me and the sieved soil goes through and makes a neat pile that resembles finely sifted flour.
A resounding success I think. Now as I am the ideas man, all I need is for someone to do all of the hard work for me. Any volunteers?

Autumn

The Autumn Garden

I was wandering around a local DIY shop this week having a look to see what new innovations have appeared recently. I’m always amazed at the ingenuity of people when it comes to making our lives that little bit easier in the garden. Of course a majority of things are pointless or you could make your own, and probably already do, for less. Recycled rubber on the other hand might be a bit fiddly to produce as you would need a shredder a little bit bigger than the ones used for chopping your twigs into compostable bits. Or would you? Maybe I can dig out some old car mats and have a go at creating some rubber mulch. I notice one company have formed their old tyre shreds into large circles with a hole in the centre and a slit through one half of the diameter. The shredded rubber has been glued together and then painted green and can be used as a permanent weed block mulching mat around your trees in the garden. They would be quite helpful for me as I tend to get a bit too close to the bark with my strimmer, so I just leave the couch grass to grow in an untidy manner around the stump. It’s amazing how easily a young tree can be killed with over zealous strimming.

Astro turf decking

Another new twist on an old product is decking planks inlaid with green astro turf. You can now have your decking to look like a lawn. I laid a few of them out in the shop to see the results and I was quite impressed (you are talking to someone right at the end of the grass cutting season though, ask me again in spring and I’ll tell you something totally different). What they would look like after a few years though after the sun has been on them I wouldn’t like to guess. Maybe they are not quite as long lived as the planks on their own.

No gadgets, just simple gardening

Novelties and new inventions aside, there are always loads of traditional gadget free things to be getting on with in the autumn garden.

• If you are like me and wear gloves most of the time it might be a good idea to get them washed and dried. They tend to get dirty at this time of year. If any of them have holes or tears, throw them into the compost bin. Many a cut finger comes from thinking the protection is there when it isn’t
• Have a look at your potted plants outside. You might find it’s time to redirect some of them to the compost heap. Any long lived perennials or shrubs could be repotted. The garden centres are stocking their winter pansies now if you need to replace anything.
• Trim back any ornamental trees that are getting too big. They have a habit of growing when we’re not looking – suddenly they’re much bigger than we thought. Assess each tree to decide whether it’s shading other plants too much, blocking light to the lawn or spreading where it shouldn’t. Options include removing lower branches to raise the canopy, pruning some branches to thin out the canopy and even removing the tree altogether. Fertilise the trees with some slow acting bonemeal. If the tree is too big already get in the professional tree surgeons.
• It’s always a good time of year to make a compost bin. Summer gives us grass clippings and autumn gives us fallen leaves. If you want a simple method of composting fill up old dustbin liner bags with the leaves adding a pint or two of water, tie securely and put them in a safe place out of the way behind the shed. Next year they will have rotted down and can be added to the garden as a mulch or soil improver.
• Autumn is a great time to do some rearranging in the garden. The days might be cooler but the soil is still warm. Most evergreen shrubs and perennials, as well as strappy clumping plants, will transplant happily, but leave deciduous plants until they are bare later in the year. Try to keep the top of the root ball level with the soil when you replant, and water well, even if it’s raining. Seaweed liquid fertiliser is an excellent tonic for transplants.

More jobs in brief

• Take hardwood cuttings of deciduous shrubs, including forsythia, philadelphus and weigela.
• Plant clematis and secure to supports.
• Cut back rose bushes by about one-third to help them withstand winter winds. Use the prunings as hardwood cuttings.
• Divide and replant overcrowded clumps of tough-rooted perennials such as hostas and hardy geraniums.
• Continue to plant bulbs, such as Iris, daffodils and tulips, for early spring flowering.
• Lift dahlias as soon as the foliage starts to yellow, or after the first frost, and store tubers.
• Sow sweet peas in a sunny, sheltered site for early flowering.
• Plant out wallflowers, Campanula medium, forget-me-nots and bellis daisy plants for spring.
As you are doing some of the autumn clean up jobs, take a look around to see what areas can be improved upon next year. If your mind wanders further and you come up with inventive new ideas for making the gardener’s life a bit easier, let me know, maybe we can have our innovations on the garden centre shelves next year.

Puppy Love

“Your dog is definitely pregnant.” We have just been to Dublin and our dog has been boarding with a friend. “Her nipples are really distended,” she continues.
‘Yikes. ’It is not a complete surprise. Julie and I have been discussing whether or not the dog is pregnant after she disappeared for a couple of hours during her season a month ago. It’s a classic case of denial – we don’t want her to be therefore she isn’t. But reality is now hitting us in the face and I am feeling a bit of a fool.
“Well, you know how it is. When you see something every day, you are not aware of changes.” I am mumbling a weak excuse for not noticing the dog’s condition.
Looking back I realise that I noticed that something was different when Chips (the dog) came back from her escapade. She took to carrying a little ball with her everywhere. She was jumping on the furniture (preferably our bed) anytime you took your eye off her and although she didn’t put on too much weight (she was always super-skinny), her nipples did look a little bigger.
The next morning I book Chips into the vet. I used to think that female dogs needed to have a season before they could be spayed. At one time vets would have recommended this as it was seen to be healthier for the dog as it got older. Now this thinking has been reversed and it is recommended to get your dog spayed before their first season.
Now they tell me.

Shaved

The vet takes Chips into her operating room whilst my lad and I wait anxiously for news. A head appears around the doorway. “Is it OK if we shave your dog?” the vet asks. “Sure,” I say and a vision of the dog coming out like a mole dances in front of my eyes. “We just need to shave a bit of her fur away for the scan,” she explains. The vision disintegrates.
‘Can we see the scan?’ The nurse calls us into the room and shows us the image on a screen. “There is just one pup that we can see.” She points to the screen and we can make out a skeleton and a pulsating kidney bean that we are told is the heart beat. It looks big. “Of course there could be more hiding behind this one.” The vet is giving us her diagnosis. “It will be about 2 or 3 weeks. You might need to bring her in when she is whelping to have a caesarean, as she is having a very large pup.”

The birth

One week later, Julie goes into the kitchen at 5am. Chips is acting strangely. She is very unsettled. ‘I think the pup is coming,’ I say as I get out of bed and pull on a jumper. Chips is being very relaxed about the whole affair. She is sitting on her favourite seat with Julie and I holding a paw each and telling her she is doing well. She makes a few straining motions, I run around getting towels and water for some reason, old sitcoms have a lot to answer for. We have done a bit of homework on doggie births on the internet over the week and one site suggested that if a dog is only having one pup this gives the baby loads of space to stretch out and will look bigger on the scan. We are hoping for a natural birth. I don’t want to get the vet out of bed to do an emergency operation unless it is absolutely necessary. Not only because it would cost a fortune but the baby would need feeding every two hours after the first week as the milk would dry up. Our fingers are crossed and we hope Mother Nature knows what she is doing.
The internet suggests giving a whelping dog vanilla ice cream. The article mentions calcium for the birth and sugar for an energy boost. It also suggests taking the dog for a walk in the yard to get the pup in the right position and help move things along. I cut a slice of ice cream into cubes and hand feed them to Chips who, although slightly distracted, eats them all up after only a moment’s hesitation. I put a new battery in the torch and out we go into the night air; Chips, as ever, charging ahead, eager for some action.

Cut short

At the top of the drive I shine the torch toward the dog. ‘Oh my God, the pup is coming out.’ With no effort the pup slides out smoothly, landing on the drive. ‘Thank God it didn’t fall down the cattle grid’, I am thinking as I pull off my jumper, carefully picking up the newest edition to the family. Julie runs to get the boys and they leap out of bed in a way they never do for school. The newborn pup is carried triumphantly back inside followed by a very pleased and eager mother, wagging her tail and all business.
Into the bed set up in a quiet corner, the mother and pup settle down while we all gaze down at the wee cutie as it squirms about trying to find a teat. The children are happy to see what our newest family member looks like and I am delighted that we didn’t have to call the vet.

Book Review

 

Vegetables for the Irish Garden

At long last, a vegetable growing guide book just for us in the North West of Ireland. “Vegetables for the Irish Garden” by Klaus Laitenberger has just been released and is getting rave reviews around the country. This glossy 288 page book has all the tips and advice for growing a successful bumper crop of fine organic vegetables.
Klaus moved to Leitrim back in 1999 and quickly established himself as a trainer, becoming the head gardener at Rossinver Organic Centre. He also co-ordinated the restoration of the Victorian gardens at Lissadell House Co. Sligo. Klaus also runs seasonal vegetable growing courses around the country. The last one in Inishowen was at Greenhill Farm in the summer, which had twice as many people attending as the previous year- a good indication of just how popular growing your own is getting.

Milkwood Farm

Milkwood farm is Klaus’s home and personal project in Leitrim. Over the years he has worked the land, developing an in depth knowledge of organic vegetable growing in the North West. “It took me a few years to adjust to the growing conditions,” he explains. “The main changes I made were to be patient, delay sowing and planting times and to grow on raised beds.” Over the years Klaus has developed his own sowing chart, which is geared to our own microclimate and this is included in the book.
“Vegetables for the Irish Garden” has lovely hand drawn images by artist Dympna Driscoll and some photos at the centre of the book showing life at Milkwood Farm, including some of the crops that do really well locally. “Ireland has extremely favourable growing conditions, long days, plenty of moisture and mild temperatures.” Klaus continues. “Growing your own food can also save you a substantial amount of money. From a 200 square metre plot you can save up to €1000 in vegetable purchases.” He states. “The other attraction is that home grown vegetables are full of nutrition and far tastier.”

Logical

The first half of the book reviews vegetables that Klaus has worked with on his land and that are known to be a success; from artichokes to turnips. Every vegetable type from this section has the history of the plant, sowing and planting times, plant spacing, rotation needs, plant problems and how to deal with them, varieties and harvesting times suited to our climate.

Oca

One vegetable I have not seen before that Klaus mentions is Oca. This is the second most widely grown root crop for millions of people in the Andes. It’s a good tasting, nutritious high yielding crop but unlike the potato it isn’t susceptible to blight. Well worth a try for next year I think.

 

Planning a Vegetable Garden

Klaus uses the same logical layout on the rest of the book as he has done on his successful vegetable plot. His section on “Planning the Vegetable Garden” covers everything we need to know about getting started and keeping the soil healthy. Soil is the life of the garden and needs to be nurtured. Klaus mentions worms, recognising them as a vital part of the ecology of the soil. There are also tips on composting, finding your soil type and ground preparation. Everything is explained in simple, easy to understand terms.
The book is a modern, up to date account of vegetable gardening today. Gone are the times when books have to be full of chemical solutions to gardening problems. Klaus realises that to make a garden great all that is needed is plant diversity from companion planting, good soil, manual weed control and picking the right plants for the right spot. “When plants become diseased or riddled with pests it is often not accidental. If the right plant grows in the right conditions in good earth it is unlikely that there will be any trouble”. Klaus explains. You can’t get any better advice than that, although if there are problems, there are suggestions on how to treat the plants.

Trial and error

Over the last ten years Klaus has used trial and error mixed with a strong working knowledge of plants to create a vegetable growing reference book that will suit both the professional grower and novice. The book has all the information you need for a successful yield and deserves to be in a handy place so you can read it again and again.

If you would like a copy of the book for yourself, “Vegetables for the Irish Garden” is on sale at Greenhill Farm in Fawn, Malin, The Book Centre in Ballybofey and Glenveigh National Park. You can also buy your copy online from milkwoodfarm.com. And at only €14.95 it would also make a great seasonal present for the gardener in your life.

Summer produce

Late summer can be a bit of a glut time for fruit and vegetables. In the days before food miles people would have had many ingenious ways of preserving their produce for use in the bleaker winter months. Pickling, drying and dousing everything in salt as the sailors would have done are a few widely used methods of storing food, especially in the days when there were no fridges. Another method of preserving is to add sugar.

The hedgerows are bulging at the seams with blackberries (Rubus fruticosus) at the moment. These are an ideal starter for you to practice the art of jam and jelly making. I personally prefer the jelly, this is just blackberry jam without the seeds, which suits me perfectly as I find after eating the seeds I’m picking them out of my teeth all day. The jelly is great with toast and butter or can be added to natural yogurt for a tasty treat. Here’s a quick recipe which will make about four jars.

Blackberry Jelly

Step 1
Pick about 4lb of blackberries. It won’t matter if some are not completely ripe, but you will find the riper ones come off the stems better.
Step 2
Wash and drain the fruit through a sieve.
Step 3
Get a large preserving pan, (or any large pan) will do and put in the blackberries
Step 4
Here’s where you can choose what to add, either the juice of 2 lemons and 1/2 pint of water or substitute the lemon for tart acidic apples (granny smiths are good, but see what’s growing locally). This provides the pectin for thickening the mix. Simmer for 20 minutes
Step 5
After the mix has cooled a bit, place it in a hessian or cotton bag, you could use cheesecloth or anything else that allows the liquid through but not the pulp. I used the frame from a kitchen chair and supported the bag using a broom handle. Leave this overnight to drip through but keep well away from where household pets can get at it.
Step 6
Towards the end of the juice straining, sterilise some jars by washing in hot soapy water, rinse, then put in an oven at 175F, and leave for 25 minutes.
Step 7
For every 1 pint of juice extracted from the pulp, measure out 1lb of sugar. Add the sugar to the blackberry juice, and heat the juice on low, stirring all the time until the sugar has dissolved.
Step 8
Simmer for half an hour, until the liquid has reached “setting point”. Setting point is when you can put a little bit of the juice on a plate, letting it cool for a minute and then push your finger through the juice. If it doesn’t automatically fall back into itself, and stays at the point you pushed it to, then it’s ready to bottle. IMPORTANT: Make sure you don’t over simmer the juice as you might end up with toffee.
Step 9
Pour your blackberry jelly juice into your hot sterilised jars. . Leave a small gap at the top of the jar for air, this will help the jars create a vacuum after cooling and will last for ages unopened.

Courgette Fritters

Courgettes (also known as zucchini) are flourishing too, especially after all of the rain last week. A lot of people are put off by these vegetables, especially when they are just boiled up. We tend to fry them up sliced with a bit of added garlic, salt and pepper until they are golden brown, but this week i was given a recipe for courgette fritters.
Step 1
Grate the courgettes including the skins, squeeze out the excess juice if you want drier fritters. I used a magimix. Add herbs from the garden, a finely chopped onion and perhaps some peppers. I put in some finely chopped red chilli, this really spices things up.
Step 2
Mix flour and egg together to make a batter and add to the prepared courgette and veg.
Step 4
Heat 1 tbsp oil in a non-stick frying pan, drop in heaped tbsps of batter. Cook, in batches, for 2-3 minutes each side or until golden and cooked through.
The fritters can also be frozen and served when the season has passed.
Storing the crops
Most fruit and vegetables can be stored in some way. Depending on the crop, most root vegetables store very well in the shed, peas and beans can either be frozen or dried, garlic and onions store well if harvested and left to dry on a wire mesh in the greenhouse before stringing up. Fruit such as apples can be stored, especially the later varieties and plums can be made into jam too. With a bit of forward planning there could be less waste and fuller freezers this winter.

New gardening book launched to critical acclaim.

Klaus Laitenberger has released his organic gardening book ‘Vegetables for the Irish Garden’ to much critical acclaim.

Klaus who had been head gardener in The Organic Centre for seven years, has been growing vegetables for more than 20 years many of which in Ireland. He knows the Irish soil and the unique Irish climate and so he gives you - beginner or more advanced gardener - hands on information on growing vegetables in an Irish garden.

From Artichoke to Turnip you get all information needed for every single vegetable:
varieties, soil and site, sowing and planting, spacing, rotation, plant care, harvesting and storing, pests and diseases.

A sowing table, a month-to-month guide and chapters about companion planting, composting, weeds, tools and green manures make this book a great guide throughout the seasons and a "Must-Have".

Klaus's book is written specifically for sowing and planting, harvesting and storing vegetables in Ireland.

Below are just a few of the growing number of positive reviews:

Scéal Eile Books

“Vegetables for the Irish Garden” by Klaus Laitenberger published by Milkwood Farm Publishing. Pices from €14.95

We are delighted to have in stock copies of Klaus Laitenberger’s book “Vegetables for the Irish Garden”. The author is well known to gardening enthusiasts from his work as Head Gardener at the Organic Centre in Co. Leitrim, and his restoration of the garden at Lissadell House, Co. Sligo.
He has distilled his knowledge of the craft of vegetable growing into this volume. “Vegetables for the Irish Garden” is a handsomely illustrated book and is full of advice and tips tailored specifically to gardeners working in our Irish climate.
Expert vegetable gardener Joy Larkcom has descibed the book as “…an invaluable source of information for vegetable growers here – novices and experienced alike…”

Spend more time on the maths and you won’t have to palm off extra courgettes on friends, writes FIONNUALA FLANAGAN Published in the Irish Times 5th August 2010.

NOBODY ever warns you when you start your own fruit and vegetable garden that it helps an awful lot if you’re good at maths. Of course, green(ish) fingers are also very useful, as is a strong back and the understanding that Nature and not you, is the head gardener, but “computational skills” are surprisingly handy too. That’s because, very quickly, the urban farmer finds himself or herself in the garden, measuring-tape in hand, furiously adding, subtracting and multiplying in order to calculate exactly what quantity of seed potatoes, onion sets, carrot seeds or courgette plants will be needed to fill the plot. Length, width, perimeter and area (square metres or feet, depending on whether you’re metric or imperial) determined, it’s back to graph-paper, scale-rulers and Google we go, to painstakingly work out the “how much?” and “how many?”.
Which is why it’s so strange that when it comes to estimating how many vegetables we’d actually like to eat (rather than grow), it’s another story entirely.

Any effort at calculating quantities suddenly goes out the window. “Eight courgette plants, one square metre per plant- that sounds about right . . .”, we mutter vaguely to ourselves, without really stopping to consider quite how many courgettes will be produced (somewhere between 100 and 160 if picked when they’re about 10cm long).
Then harvest time comes round. “Not another glut of courgettes,” we groan, before quickly calculating how many friends/neighbours they can be palmed off onto. It’s the same with lettuce – they’re sown, they’re grown and then, all at once, there are twenty plump, purple heads of “Lolla Rossa” sitting there reproachfully, just begging to be eaten.

Even in the OPW’s walled kitchen garden, gardeners Meeda Downey and Brian Quinn are now dealing with a glut of cauliflower, cabbage and calabrese, which comes hot on the heels of a glut of summer berries. The difference here is that much of the fruit and vegetables produced in the walled garden goes straight to the next-door Phoenix Café, where it’s quickly used up. Not so for the home-grower.

In defence of those who over-sow and overgrow (which is probably most gardeners), part of the problem is that there isn’t exactly a glut of available information when it comes to calculating how much to grow of any particular fruit or vegetable.

That’s one of the reasons professional gardener Klaus Laitenberger’s new book, Vegetables For The Irish Garden, is very useful (we hope he’ll bring out an equivalent on fruit).

Take potatoes, for example, a staple crop for most gardeners yet one that many have difficulties with when it comes to calculating yield. While he points out that it all depends on how much you like them, Laitenberger suggests that an area of 40 square metres should provide “more than enough potatoes for a family of four from July until April. One square metre may yield 5 to 7kg of potatoes”.

Annual spinach? If you love it, successionally sow one square metre every three weeks, he suggests. Onions? Working on an average of five a week, Laitenberger points out that you’ll need to have stored away 140 onions to see you through from September to the following March (28 weeks). Lettuce? Sow 15 seeds every fortnight, he suggests, enough to give you five heads a week while allowing for losses from slug damage etc.
He’s good, too, when it comes to the lesser-known vegetables, such as the tuberous oca (“just a few to see if you like them”), asparagus (“ten plants are sufficient for a generous weekly helping for the six-week harvesting period”), and Jerusalem artichokes (“5 plants are more than sufficient as each tuber will yield around 2kg of artichokes”).

All of which is very useful advice for next year, but what to do with this summer’s gluts? Serious GYOers know that part of the answer lies in having a chest freezer, which goes a long way towards turning a summer glut into tasty winter dinners. Here also, Laitenberger’s book gives plenty of advice as to technique (always blanch first in boiling water) and as to which vegetables are best suited to freezing (asparagus, broad beans, runner beans, peas, calabrese, sweetcorn and Florence fennel amongst others).

There’s also advice on other storage methods, such as “clamping” and storing in boxes of sand, both of which techniques are best suited to root vegetables. But what about courgettes, which traditionally form the “gluttiest” of all the vegetable gluts? Laitenberger advises that these are best eaten fresh.

I know, however, that another GYOer of long experience, the Irish Times columnist and original “Good Lifer”, Michael Viney, has an alternative solution to the courgette glut. He, or rather his wife, Ethna, uses them to make ratatouille, the traditional French Provençal dish that is a stew of courgettes, aubergines, onions, tomatoes, peppers, herbs and garlic, which she bags into handy portions and then freezes. All of which tells you that, along with being good at maths, being an excellent cook is also very helpful (even, perhaps, necessary) when it comes to the art of growing your own. Of course, having an excellent cook to live with can be very useful too.
The OPW’s Victorian walled kitchen garden is in the grounds of the Phoenix Park Visitor Centre, beside the Phoenix Park Café and Ashtown Castle. The gardens are open daily from 10am to 4.00pm.

Toiling in the Irish soil Printed in the Irish Times July 17th 2010

By JANE POWERS
A new book by German-born gardener Klaus Laitenberger is tailored to the Irish vegetable grower.

GARDENING BOOKS ARE like the proverbial buses. You’re waiting ages for the right one, and then, just like that, two of them come around the corner. For years we’ve been craving a book on growing vegetables in Ireland. Our conditions are not the same as those in the UK, from where most kitchen garden books emanate: our climate is wetter and milder, both in winter and in summer. So, advice tailored for gardeners across the water may not fit us properly.

I mentioned the first of these homegrown books, The Irish Gardener’s Handbook , by Michael Brenock (O’Brien, €9.99) when it appeared earlier this year. And the second, Vegetables for the Irish Garden by Klaus Laitenberger (Milkwood Farm Publishing, €14.95), has just been launched. Keen vegetable growers will already know the author – who has served as head gardener at both the Organic Centre in Leitrim and Lissadell in Sligo – through his lectures and classes in organic gardening.

Since the German-born Laitenberger came to Ireland in 1999, he has been adapting his methods of gardening to our more soggy and clement climate. His book is particularly relevant to gardeners in the northwest, as he is intimately acquainted with the soil in Sligo and Leitrim. He now lives on an 11-acre holding at the foot of Benwiskin in north Leitrim.

I visited some years ago, and was impressed at how he managed to coax exquisite vegetables out of the waterlogged and infertile peaty soil. His methods for gardening in a damp climate with saturated soil are several. Drainage, of course, is paramount, and it can be created by digging channels to carry excess water away from the vegetable-growing area.

Raised beds are another solution. Adding properly decomposed compost and loosening the subsoil also help. Winter digging – which allows the cycles of freezing and thawing to break up the soil – is not something that he recommends, despite its popularity with many traditional gardeners.
As he points out in the book, we get more rain than frost in most parts of Ireland (although last winter was an exception), and the rain washes out the nutrients and turns the soil into “mash”. In such conditions, the soil pores become filled with water, and valuable underground dwellers such as earthworms are driven out or drowned.
Laitenberger has plenty of advice for new gardeners. I like that he suggests starting on a smallish scale, so that the garden doesn’t get out of hand and become a thing to daunt rather than delight. He also cautions against sowing seed too early – a mistake we’ve all made, in the rush to end winter’s doldrums. In most parts of Ireland vegetables should not be sown outdoors before May; broad beans, garlic, onions, peas, potatoes and shallots are the exceptions. Planting too closely, and choosing the wrong variety are also common errors.

The book, however, is more about getting it right than avoiding the wrong. The first half includes comprehensive instructions on raising more than vegetables, from artichokes to turnips. Besides all the expected advice on cultivation, and – importantly – varieties that he knows work well in Irish conditions, the author offers snippets of history and the odd pithy quote, such as the inimitable Charles Dudley Warner’s “Lettuce is like conversation. It must be fresh and crisp, and so sparkling that you scarcely notice the bitterness in it.”

The second half considers practical matters such as planning, soil, ground preparation, composting, rotation, pests and so on. A month-by-month guide will keep new gardeners on track from one end of the year to the other. Laitenberger has chosen not to include tomatoes, peppers, aubergines or cucumbers (tender crops that do best in greenhouses or tunnels), which may disappoint some readers, especially those who have warm corners in their gardens. Notwithstanding this omission, it’s a book that Irish vegetable growers (myself included) will be very happy to dig into.

Vegetables for the Irish Garden is available from selected shops, and by mail order, €14.95. See milkwoodfarm.com

See here for a list of stockists for Klaus Laitenberger’s Vegetable for the Irish Garden.