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.

Lawn Mowers: Serious Business!

Pesky problem

The invaders

They have been at it again. The pesky earwigs are out in force with their cunning plan to take over the world. Not only the outside world in the garden but in the houses too.

Earwigs in the garden feed on aphids, mites, fleas, and insect eggs so they can be beneficial in some ways. Unfortunately they also munch on dahlias, marigolds, lettuce, potatoes, and hostas. They will also feed on mosses, lichens, and algae so if there were enough of them they could keep your driveway clean and be a natural remedy for mossy lawns.

Our army of earwigs have decided to come indoors for food and to shelter in the nooks and crannies that are dark and damp. They have also been mobilising themselves in the bedroom and taking chunks out of our visitors. The arrogant pests are nocturnally sneaking the kitchen, front room and bathroom for food looking for their next victim. I’m not sure what I dislike about them the most; their ability to jump out of dark corners and scare the living daylights out of you, their attraction to living in my bread bin or the fact that you have to check the bed before jumping in. I should admire them for sticking their pincers up in the air and taunting me for a fight, it’s a bit of a lost cause when I push my size nines in their face.

Just here for the shopping

Earwigs don’t reproduce indoors thankfully, they just come shopping. One way to keep then out is to block up all of the entrances, window seals, door frames and skirting boards. In most houses this is nearly impossible, gaps in doors and windows are inevitable. So how can I keep the invasion at bay? The best way is to keep a clean and dry area around the outside of the house, which again here in Ireland is almost impossible, and then for those brave enough to sneak into the house we can set traps. Get a sheet of newspaper and add a drop of water until it’s damp all over, scrunch it up into a ball and then leave it where you think the earwigs are, usually worktops in the kitchen or any dark corner. In the night when you are asleep they should use these as their home and be curled up asleep when you get up the next day. Do with them as you will, throw them into the compost, set them free or give them a sacrificial burning in the fire, whichever you think most appropriate.

Earwigs are not the only pests that stray from the garden into the house. Ants can be irritating too. I have a constant stream of them coming in from under the door in the hallway and making their way into the kitchen for a few grains of sugar. I’m sure they wave to me on the way out.

Ants

Red and black ants are nuisance pests rather than plant damaging ones. I used to think that the ants were beneficial to the garden because they farmed aphids for honeydew. This has little effect on the greenfly’s ability to suck sap though and the ants fight off the natural predators away from the greenfly. If I see an infestation of greenfly I tend to just cut off the affected stem and throw it away. If the ants are nesting in containers they can do damage disturbing the roots and they can be a big problem in the lawn where they are active from early April to late September. Damage to lawns is caused by ant mounds, where soil that has been excavated for nests appears on the surface. I don’t really come across this problem though as generally our lawns are far too wet for them and they tend to nest under paving slabs or stones in the rockery. If they do nest in the grass, mowing could get a bit noisy as the dust flies in the air and the presence of ant adults on lawns can be unpleasant. I remember sunbathing once and woke up itching. A whole colony of ants was swarming over me as I slept. I have never jumped into a shower so quickly. Ants can make nests in the flower beds too, it’s less distance to walk to the plant stems that have their greenfly farms on and the perennial plants and trees make the soil a dryer place for them to live.

Controlling the ants

Although total removal or elimination of ants from gardens is difficult to achieve and probably very environmentally unsound, it is possible to drive them out of areas you don’t want them in using nematodes that can be applied directly to ant colonies when the soil temperature is 10ºC/50ºF. One application of the small eggs will gain control of ants already present in the soil where the tiny microscopic worms act as an irritant to ants causing them to leave their colonies and nests. I used to spray the nests under paving slabs with paint when I was young. They were my army and I could identify them in the garden, although thinking about it they didn’t live very long after being painted.

For indoor invasions by ants, or for use in between paving slabs and under patios, we can use natures own insecticide – pyrethrum, which is a 100% natural insecticide made from ground up chrysanthemum leaves so is completely organic. A liberal dusting everywhere the ants are keeps them at bay.