Prevailing Wind

Up in the Air

Congratulations to Diarmuid Gavin this year for getting the gold at the Chelsea Flower Show with his Irish Sky Garden sponsored by Failte Ireland and Cork City Council . It couldn’t be more deserved.
The design is bold and totally impractical with no flowers, and I love it. I’ve always had a soft spot for ornamental grasses and formal trees and the two blend together seamlessly. The design was inspired by a lot of factors including the begonia carpet bedding outside the Grand Palace in Brussels, a pattern of water circles in Venice Beach in California, the rock formations on the Giants Causeway and the floating islands of Pandora in the Hollywood movie Avatar.
The most striking feature though is the floating pod that can lift people into the air by crane, which he calls the “Launch Pad” taking eager gardeners 25 metres up in the air to get away from it all and survey the area around them Diarmuid commented that from the pod at the Chelsea show he could “nearly see my house from here.”
Following on from London’s Chelsea Flower show, the Irish Sky Garden will be transported to Cork, and set within Cork’s Mid-Summer Festival from 11-26th June 2011. The pod along with certain elements of the garden will then be relocated and re-built alongside the River Lee as part of a 2m Euro development project to create a new park for the city, which the public will be able to visit free of charge from early July. Well worth a visit I think.

The prevailing wind

The lorry housing the crane mechanism for Diarmuid’s design was neatly tucked out of the way in and hidden by large trees; hopefully they drowned out the engine noise too. Trees for use as screening in the garden are a topical point this week too, especially as their ability to reduce wind damage. Anyone who doesn’t have some form of shelter belt around their gardens will be scouting around for their compost and wheelie bins and pots that were sitting near the doorway.
Wind can be one of the gardener's worst enemies. It can impede plant growth severely, stunting trees and shrubs, and it stops young seedlings in their tracks. Salt spray in the wind can exacerbate its effects, leaving plants looking burnt, with scorched leaves and blackened branches.
Shelter belts are the obvious solution, and planting wind-tolerant trees and shrubs is a sensible starting point. The major drawback, of course, is that you risk shutting out the view.
The direction from which the wind most often blows will influence your garden’s character, and what you can grow. As a general rule, northerlies and easterlies are cold, while westerlies are warmer but stronger.
Diarmuid’s garden design incorporated mounds of shrubs on a slope, this idea combined with some larger trees on the garden boundary would be an extremely effective method of slowing the wind down in the garden and reducing any damage. Swirling tall grasses also help and look fabulous as they sway around. When the wind isn’t blowing the dips in the mounds can be a place to relax and enjoy the views. I've seen smaller, curved mounds work just as well planted with fragrant, creeping thymes and chamomiles that thrive in the good drainage that such a bank provides.

Wind Problems

• Long term, winds can cause trees to grow sideways, especially in coastal areas like ours.
• Sudden gales snap branches and stems, especially if we have had gentle weather for a long time like this year.
• An unexpected cold wind may ‘scorch’ tender new growth, leaving it crispy brown
• Even gentle winds can scorch plants that naturally live in sheltered woodland, for example, Japanese maples.

Prevention

• Use canes to support plants
• Surround the garden with a ‘shelterbelt’ Open fences, screens and hedges are always preferable to solid barriers, with several lines of defence the best policy, provided you have room.
• In exposed locations, evergreen hedges such as escallonia, laurel and griselinia provide more shelter in winter, while deciduous species such as beech and hornbeam are good in that they hold onto their dead leaves until the spring.
• Instant rubber fabric strips stretched between poles are an excellent stop-gap until hedges grow sufficiently tall. These shelterbelts all work because they are porous; they slow wind down but allow it through. Solid walls and fences force the wind over them causing more damage to plants compared to porous windbreaks.
• Coniferous trees like sitka spruce and Scotch pine are effective but only in a large garden. They will suck all of the moisture from your small garden and be a menace to the neighbours otherwise. Native trees like Whitebeam, hawthorn and birch are deciduous alternatives. These trees have the added advantage of more open canopies that will not totally obscure the view.
• We have no shortage in the local garden centres of wind resistant shrubs; ones with dark leathery leaves such as mahonia and hypericum are effective. Shrubs and perennials with hairy leaves like santolina and lavender do well at resisting the sea breezes as they trap moisture in the hairs. For small ground cover plants, hardy geraniums and periwinkles are excellent.
• Living willow screens can also help to filter the wind, while creating an ornamental feature at the same time. A woven "tunnel" or bower, for instance, could have an opening from which to enjoy the view in shelter, while the area behind it would benefit from protection from the wind.

Go with the Flow

Sometimes, however, it pays to go with the prevailing conditions, rather than against them. Some plants, such as bamboos and ornamental grasses, not only put up with the wind but look at their most beautiful and exciting while bobbing about.
Creating an effective wind break in the garden takes time. I was talking to someone this week who has taken fifteen years getting a shelter belt together. It’s well worth it though, not just for the plants, but also the time it’ll save you looking in the fields for your compost bin.

More Reading

Diarmuid Gavin Autobiography

Outer Spaces

Weedkiller Use

 

A bank collapses after weedkiller was applied, killing off the roots that held the soil together.

We have seen amazing progress in the garden this month. The warm sunny weather mixed in with showers has produced a profusion of beautiful spring growth. Not everyone sees the free flowing swathes of greenery as beauty though as a lot of gardeners and farmers seem to wage war against nature as soon as things start to grow by popping down to the shops and buying chemical weedkillers.

I was reading a gardening forum the other day; someone asked how to get rid of dandelions, daisies, thistles and moss from their garden lawn. They were going to use Hytrol, which is a total herbicide (kills everything) so there will be no grass, weeds or moss left after applying it. The other products on the market don’t fare much better either. Selective weedkillers containing MCPA and 2 4-D, are used for their low cost, not safety. 2,4-D is toxic to the liver at small dosages and has been used in chemical warfare. My advice was to learn to love the weeds and cut the grass often.

Weedkillers are just a temporary solution to the weeds. Taking a bit of time (and effort) to change the environment where the weeds grow will be a far more long term way of dealing with the issue.
Mary, a keen organic farmer and gardener from Greenhill farm says: “If a weed doesn't like where it is, it won't grow! For example you will only see docks in a compacted field, or on paths. People feel they need to eradicate these more because of 'what the neighbours think' than anything else. If your soil is loose and fertile, the docks will find somewhere to grow more successfully. If you keep taking away their light supply (i.e. cut off the leaves) they will also die. It's the mindset that's important, not the method. If you have patience and wait for the weeds to decide they're not welcome, you have won!"

Moss on the Lawn

Another question asked at this time of year is about killing moss on the lawn. Should you spray? I don’t think that’s necessary.
Solutions that appear the easiest (such as chemical weedkillers) are not the answer. Five easy steps are:
• Improve the drainage
• Mow often
• Aerate-adding sand into the holes
• Apply Sulphate of iron, mixed with organic fertilizer.
• Let nature do the rest

I guess you can tell I don't like weedkillers or the way that they are advertised like sweeties for gardeners with their colourful and amusing packaging promising us a life of weed free living. Applying chemicals to the garden are not a quick fix. The garden will need treating every year (poisoning wildlife, us and the land), unless you take natural measures to alter the way the land is working. As one reader observed “When you’re in the garden centres it seems that there are more items to kill things than make them grow"

Question Time

I put the question about using weedkillers to my gardening chums and there are a few landscapers who would use chemicals as a last resort. They would always follow the instructions and NEVER spray on a windy day. Most would also clear the ground manually first before applying the chemicals. Most other gardeners I asked seem to go for a more natural approach. Some solutions were:
• Spending about 20mins EVERY day going over the garden with a knife and kneeler.
• Using a garden flame thrower.
• Using natural products such as vinegar.

Here are some more interesting comments from gardeners:

"Isn’t that the challenge and the thrill??" referring to finding alternatives to weedkillers.
"We just have to learn to accept that nature is never "tidy, square monoculture." The more effort we put in to achieving this, the quicker nature will react to create the opposite"

"Outwitting nature as much as one can, yes that is a real challenge and gives great satisfaction. It will never produce the "perfect" solution but does that really matter as long as it gives you food and supports our striving for sustainability......"

“The proliferation of chemicals has largely occurred over the past fifty or so years and prior to that much more reliance was put on good cultural practices. Look at old gardening books, not a mention of pesticides! We should embrace and work with nature rather than against it, feed the soil and not the plants, recycle all waste, encourage natural predators and avoid at all costs, the use of chemicals, whether as fertilisers or pesticides.
“I have tried to minimise the chemicals I use in every way...whether in the garden, or home. I am a post-war baby and my life span has seen an explosion of chemicals being used for the most trivial of reasons.”
" Take Roundup, the most used herbicide worldwide, making billions every year for Monsanto. It was for decades, heralded as having no negative effects. Now there are more and more coming out, thanks internet. Agencies all over the globe are looking seriously into this stuff and it is predicted that it will soon be banned in some countries. The conclusion: grow and eat only your own stuff, or buy real veggies, meat from an organic source, bake your bread with organic grain, enjoy cooking and baking and live happily ever after. You may not necessarily live longer, but you will certainly die healthier."

To conclude, here is one of my favourite quotes. "Man is a part of nature, and his war against nature is inevitably a war against himself." -Rachel Carson."

Peat Free Gardening

 

Peat extracting machine Pic TLCowill

There is a growing movement of gardeners moving away from traditional peat products and finding more sustainable alternatives for young plants and seedlings.
Peat extraction began on an industrial scale after the war for use in horticulture to put nutrients back into the soil and since then intensive methods of extraction have been used to produce the big bags of moss peat and compost we see in the shops. This is exactly the same principle of open cast mining that is used to extract coal. Today less than 8% of the original area of Irish peat bogs has been left undamaged. Andrew King from Cork, who studied Horticultural Science, said recently, “peat bogs, our bogs, are just as precious as the rainforests. They (the processing plants) should have shut down many years ago; I've even seen Irish peat on sale in Morocco. “

Most of the peat used by English gardeners comes from Irish bogs which are important to wildlife habitats. Industry sources estimate the gardening peat market to be worth some €25m a year. 42% of the controversial compost used in gardens continues to be peat, this percentage could be dropping though with cheaper processing costs for recycled garden waste and celebrity endorsements.

What do the bogs give us?

• Peat bogs store huge amounts of carbon and allowing its excavation would release huge amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
• Plants such as such as the bog myrtle, bog asphodel, bog rosemary, cranberry, cotton grass and purple moor grass flourish in the peat bogs.
• Wildlife such as birds, voles and lizards live in the protection the bogs provide.

Do Irish gardeners like the peat free compost?
One issue with peat free compost is the price. It has in the past been more expensive than traditional compost. This is changing now with the inclusion of peat free compost being sold most main retail outlets. The uptake is slow though by the Irish gardener, although more vegetable gardeners opt for the peat free soil compared to the flower growers. Some gardeners think natural compost products on the market have short shelf lives, so if you get last year’s bags the nutrients will have all but gone, this would be the same for both peat and peat free composts.

Mixed Reports

Some Irish gardeners claim that the moisture content is harder to control in peat free compost and needs to be treated differently or seedlings will die. This need not be a problem though. Gardening techniques change all of the time so we need to be open to new eco friendly products even if it means re-training ourselves. It will be a high price to pay for your vegetables if it means depleting the peat bogs to grow them.
Peat free compost in hanging baskets is also proving to be a talking point. Customers claim that they dry out faster. The inclusion of water retaining gel helps to combat that. For this reason as well as cost, growers are very reluctant to use peat free compost on a large industrial scale, although some are changing over due to customer demand.

More widely available

Peat free compost from Irish recycling plants is now being more widely produced, which is helping to lower the price and save on fuel costs. Coir was popular a few years ago but the rising fuel prices have all but stopped its use.
Peat free compost can have greater benefits to the soil than peat based products.
• Retains moisture
• Improves soil structure
• Increases yield therefore reducing costs
• Irish celebrities such as Diarmuid Gavin, Mary Reynolds (bronze medal winner at Chelsea) have spoken out about the overuse of peat and are endorsing peat free products so there will be more products available

Read the labels

It’s not a good idea to grow your seeds or plants in the wrong type of products to save money. Check that the product has been made for the use you need it for.
• Growing seedling s in growbags of any kind isn’t a good idea as it’s too coarse and the wrong type or mix.
• Growing plants in just peat is also impossible as peat holds no nutrients and is purely an anchor for the roots.
• If you look on the bags of compost it will normally state “Enough added fertilizer to feed plants for 4 weeks.” After this the gardener will need to add their own feed.

What is peat free compost made from?

Shop bought organic compost can be made from shredded tree cuttings and garden waste and have additives such as seaweed. The organic matter in natural mixed compost will hold far more nutrients that peat compost for a longer period of time. Just like humans, plants grow far better with a mixed balanced diet.
Coir compost was one of the first on the market but it is out of favour now because of the transport costs, being brought in from across the world. Gardeners are looking for products made closer to home.

Make your own compost

If you have the facilities of a compost bin then you could make your own compost. It will need to be heated and turned well to kill off the weed seeds. This saves on price and also any concerns about fuel costs for transporting. Gardening in a recession is a lot about saving money so making your own compost is a good idea. Add small layers of wet and dry materials for a good mix.

John Innes Compost

The use of peat in compost could be reduced by making your own variation of John Innes Compost. The compost is a mix suitable for growing a wide range of plants. It includes sterilised loam, which in this case is good quality topsoil which is crumbly and not wet and sticky and a touch of lime. This is then sterilised by steam then a small amount of peat is added as well as sharp sand and fertilizer. To keep up to date with new thinking the fertilizer can be organic and the peat can be substituted with peat free mixes.

Worm Composting

Having your own worm composter can produce perfect base soil for your seedlings.

James Comiskey from About Your Garden Landscaping and bronze medallist at Bloom thinks we will use more peat free products in the future. “There is a move towards peat free compost. I don't think it has gathered momentum yet but it's only a matter of time. We will probably look back in the future and shake our heads at the madness of digging up our bogs.”