Those Darn Dogs....

I got fed up of running up and down the road this week trying to track down my wayward dogs. Both of them found a way out of the garden even though I am constantly piling up chopped branches and anything else I can find to block up escape routes.

As soon as I took my vigilant eye off them for a second they were away, high tailing it to one of three places where food is left out. The first port of call for them is the neighbours who leave food out for the cats, and if you have ever had cats you will realise that most of them are grazers popping back and forth to their dinner bowls when the urge takes them. It only takes one sitting and a couple of seconds for the plate to be licked clean when one of my two get there. Another destination is a few hundred yards away where someone puts food out on the lawn for the birds. Bird feed isn’t very well digested by dogs and looks the same going out as it does going in. The third place is at the edge of the park where someone is a bit sloppy putting their leftovers in the bin. They feast on spaghetti one day then a pile of mashed spuds the other.

Making the most of every opportunity

The dogs make the most of every opportunity to get food. Julie’s dad came over the other day and delivered a beautiful homemade loaf. It was a bit early in the day and as we were in bed he decided to leave it in a “safe place” in the garage carefully wrapped up in a brown paper bg. The safe place was on top of the boiler so it didn’t take much for one of the dogs to get it down and devour it. It also didn’t take much to see who the culprit was. Chips, the daftest of our two dogs could hardly walk let alone run when I took them for a walk later, her stomach was like a balloon.

I had to do something about the dogs escaping so I went down to the wood yard and bought myself 75 metres of 2”x1” strips of wood to make a sturdy trellis. I did a bit on the other side of the garden so knew what I had to do. There is a really wavy concrete block wall that rises to about 3 feet high so I screwed vertical posts onto these for a start before gauging how far to space the horizontals out so the dogs couldn’t squeeze through them. It took me all day to build the trellis, and fine looking it is too.

It took the dogs less than three minutes to break the defences and high tail it down the road again.
I wasn’t going to be beaten so after getting the pests back I got my lad to let them out of the house whilst I hid in the neighbour’s garden undergrowth to see exactly where they were getting out. I couldn’t believe what I saw. Because the wall has a slight wave of subsidence to it, the dogs found the bit that had the biggest gap and twisted themselves sideways to get out. The gap was only inches tall; you would never guess they could sliver through such a tight gap; they looked like flapping flatfish that were trying to escape a net.

Let them witness the work

I chained both dogs up to their kennel and let them witness firsthand how I unscrewed each section then lowered them following the contours of the wavy wall. It looks a bit odd, but there is now a uniform gap all the way along the wall. I sauntered over to the kennel and let them off their leads. I went indoors and when they thought I wasn’t looking made a bid for freedom. Their attempts were foiled, try as they might they couldn’t find a gap.

I’ve won this round. It probably won’t be long until they find a way to climb up the trellis like a ladder. I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.

Choosing seeds from Catalogues

Choosing seeds from Catalogues

It’s time for us to be looking at seeds now for planting out in the garden for the coming spring. I was talking to garden guru Klaus Laitenberger from Milkwood Farm recently and he thinks the same. So much so that he has set up a mail order seed company in conjunction with Quickcrop selling small packets of carefully selected vegetable seeds that will be ideal for our climate.
I asked Klaus how he went about choosing the right seeds for his company called “The Vegetable Seed Co”

“We selected the best varietes for the Irish climate and for taste and flavour.” Klaus tells us. “They are also chosen for ease of growing.” Klaus also realises that some of the older varieties have a natural resistance to pests and/or diseases “For example Parsnip 'Javelin' is resistant to canker, pea 'Greenshaft is resistant to mildew and onion 'Golden Bear' is resistant to downy mildew and other moulds. “

Klaus has also researched the fact that most customers don’t need thousands of seeds so he is keeping the packets down to a manageable quantity and better still keeping the prices down so we can have more variety in the garden . “All seeds (with the exception of some toms and cucs) are only €2 per packet.” Klaus says proudly and continues. “We stock some interesting mixes , for example a cabbage mix for all season, kale mix, lettuce mix, oriental salad mix. This saves money. One packet of cabbage will give you cabbages from July until January and all from one sowing.”

Klaus is also offering you the chance of saving more money by buying 20 seeds and getting a free metal tin to keep the seeds dry for only. Check out the choices on www.quickcrop.ie

Here are Klaus’s top ten home grown vegetables seeds for this year; all of them have been especially chosen to give great results in our cold, northern gardens:
Klaus's Top Ten Choice:
Broad Bean – Witkeim Manita
Beetroot – Pablo F1
Cabbage – Mix of all seasons
Carrot – Rothild
Courgette – Ambassador
Lettuce – Surprise Mix
Parsnip Javelin F1
Pea – Greenshaft
Scallions – Ishikura
Swede – Gowrie


As we are on top ten lists, let’s have a look at top tips for finding what you want when searching seed Catalogues:

Most descriptions are self explanatory and help us decide what’s best for our own garden.

• Early Maturing -If you want the crop early before main crop harvesting.
• Large Fruited
• Ideal or Suitable for Pots, Raised Beds
• Good for Freezing
• Compact Variety
• Resistant to Bolting, Blight, Carrot Fly
• Recommended for Exhibition – Ideal if you want to take your crop to the Carndonagh show
• Can be grown indoors or outdoors only – this usually applies to cucumbers, tomatoes and tender vegetables where specific varieties have been developed to survive in certain temperatures.

There are other more confusing terms to look out for on the packets. Here are a few.
F1 varieties, or hybrids. These are created by crossing two parent varieties to create a new one with claimed superior traits to either of the parents. Because of the way these are created, the seed is more expensive as it has to be re-created from the parent plants each year and only the company that produces them knows what those parents are. There is no point saving seed from F1 varieties as it will not be the same as the original.
Genetically Modified (GM) seeds. These are created by manipulating the genes of the plants in laboratories and there is very justified concern that these traits could contaminate other crops making them sterile. Thankfully at the moment GM seeds aren’t licensed for sale to amateur gardeners in the EU.
Open Pollinated varieties. These are ones which can produce seed which you can reuse year after year. This is how new varieties developed through most of history as plants cross-pollinate and this results in a healthy bio-diversity of seed types: particularly important as the different traits can often have better resistance to various crop diseases. These are also sometimes called heirloom varieties although this term does get used more broadly.

Organic seed. These are grown by certified organic means without pesticides, fertilizers or herbicides and must also be packaged without being treated with fungicides.

Making choosing simple
Thankfully Klaus has done all of the hard work for us and has come up with the perfect choices for our vegetable gardens. Check them out on Quickcrop.ie

In your Right Mind

 

 The right -left tool for the job, and I can’t use any of them!

It’s a Right Handed World

There’s no doubt about it-it’s a right handed world. From the way doors open, how we take off the top of a can and do gardening work with tools, everything is geared to the 90% of right handed people. The remaining 10% of us lefties (yes I am one) have to deal with all sorts of potential obstacles daily.

10%

The10% percent of left handed folk would be a lot less if overzealous teachers from the very recent past had their way. My experience of a primary school teacher who forced me to write with my right hand culminated in my speech disappearing after a spell of stuttering and then three weeks off school to get my voice back. It was only then that the reason for my muteness became apparent. I was surprised that the teacher was on her early twenties. This was a long time ago in the 60’s but I have heard stories of the same things happening as recently as 1990 in Ireland. Julie’s left handed dad still only writes with his right hand because of school.
I have never had any problems with right handed tools and equipment. I suppose it’s because it’s what I grew up with. Left- handed equipment has been available for a long time though. I remember my first experience with a left -handed golf club. I didn’t have a clue what to do with it, the same as left handed footballs ( my excuse for being rubbish at football) ; I never got to grips with them either Like many lefties though I did excel at art in school- artists such as Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo , Raphael , Pablo Picasso , Rembrandt were all left handed so maybe that means the Ninja Turtles were too. It has been said that left handed people are more dextrous, we were also very useful in combat as the opponent would assume you would go for them with the right arm with a sword. Mensa has over 20% of people that are lefties too which is above average.

Handshake

Julius Caesar was left-handed and instructed all of his Roman subjects to adopt the right-handed handshake. Maybe this was because it left his weapon hand free when greeting people. Similarly it is thought that a reason for preferring the right-hand greeting is that this generally was the weapon hand and clasping them together allowed neither party an advantage on meeting for the first time. Interestingly Lord Baden Powell chose the left-hand for the Scouting handshake. Two theories exist. One that the left hand is nearer to the heart and the second is that using the non-weapon hand was a sign of trust. Either way I still get confused when I am shaking hands.

Sinister

The Latin word for describing left handed people is 'sinister' (right-handed is dexter - hence why we have the word dexterity referring to the ability to use hands) Being left handed does have a few disadvantages when it comes to writing, we do tend to smudge the page when we have a free flowing pen. Thankfully it’s not as big a problem as when fountain pens were used. There are left handed pens available but I tried one once and again couldn’t get to grips with it. There are also left handed rulers on the market with the digits running from right to left. As a left hander, I also find it very difficult to use the mouse on the computer with the left hand as I am so used to operating it with the right hand.

House and Garden

I recently did a lot of work to our house, putting in new doors, plug sockets, light switches and electrical appliances. It wasn’t until we moved in that my lads started to complain that everything was back to front. I had inadvertently made the house a left- handed paradise.
There is a long list of leftie gardening tools on the market. Secateurs, hoes, sieves, belt storage pouches, grilling tools for the barbeque, saws with left -handed grips, lawn edge cutters and scissors. I can’t use any of them although they could make some left handed gardeners lives a lot safer having the right left tool for the job.

Cesare Lombroso a 19th-century Italian criminologist famously spoke of “Left-handedness being a stigma of degeneracy”. Such statements have thankfully long since disappeared from the views of the world, and it is worth remembering that, if ever we are on the receiving end of any derogatory comments from a right handed person, the left side of your brain controls the right side of your body, and the right side of your brain controls the left side of your body; so only left handed people are in their right mind!

Leaving the garden alone

 

Pic: That should keep the dogs in for a while.

There have been a few changes in my life over the last few months, the largest probably being the house move. Gone is the acre garden with the myriad of raised beds and natural woodland overlooking the Swilly to a more modest, but beautiful semi detached bungalow in the town.

The Garden

The overgrown garden is half taken up with a crumbling double garage complete with internal ivy dangling down from the rafters and the trampoline that originally looked tiny in the garden it was originally bought for, but now looks extremely out of place. Its fun to see children bouncing on it though so it will stay for while until we decide what to do with the garden to put our stamp on it.
I’m intending to let nearly everything else stay in the overgrown garden for now. The last owner of this 80 year old house planted the garden with a lot of shrubs and bulbs, which are now appearing everywhere as the mild winter weather continues. There is a hard standing area at the top of the garden that looks like it used to be a greenhouse with only a small concrete wall surviving over the years; we unearthed this when we were hacking back the overgrown rhododendrons and holly. It looks like the birds have had a hand at planting over the years as self set cotoneaster has emerged at the edge of the paths. As yet these are the only shrubs I have dug out as the roots can be very damaging. There is one bulb I am trying to remove now that smells like onion but as yet I can’t identify it. All I know is that it is very invasive and hardy; spreading onto most areas in the garden and it’s even growing along the edge of the house wall. I can dig out the tiny bulbs that are in the soft earth but the ones that pop up along the gap in the concrete are more difficult and appear to be immune to any natural weed killers that have been poured on them.

Resistance is futile

It’s a bit difficult for me to show so much restraint with the new - old garden. I’m usually straight in there with my mattock and any petrol powered machines that I can get my hand on removing anything and everything. The fact that I can’t get any machinery into the garden through the narrow gate is probably a good thing as this will give us time to decide exactly what to do with the area with the design and layout that best suits our needs.

The things we know we need are:
• Washing line
• Vegetable raised beds
• Area for the dogs to play
• Patio
• Bit of lawn
• Path

That’s about it up to yet, pretty basic really. It doesn’t sound too taxing but even deciding where to place the patio is proving to be difficult. The summer sun manages to shine onto most areas of the (nearly) south facing garden throughout the day and so in the height of the growing season you would think the patio could be placed anywhere. Wrong. In the winter months the sun is so low that certain large areas of the garden are blocked off from sunlight by either ours or the neighbour’s rooftops. Not that we get much chance to sit out in the winter but it’s something to take into consideration, just like what the area will be made of. I initially suggested decking outside the patio doors but the lack of sunlight will turn the planks to an algae farm, breeding masses of the slippery stuff. I could go out and clean it off and treat it like an extension of the house, but I know it’ll never happen.

Everybody needs neighbours

The other bit of work that I needed to do a little while after moving in was to secure the perimeter. We have something here that we haven’t had for years. Neighbours. We are used to having the freedom to let our dogs roam about in the countryside on their own and not get into mischief. Being on an estate has made me realise that our two dogs have no sense of boundaries and jump over any that get in there way. They happily introduce themselves to anyone whose dinner smells the nicest, optimistically sitting outside the neighbours back doors with their noses twitching. It doesn’t go down too well so I have built a very effective barrier from 2x1 lengths of wood and secured these to the three foot boundary wall, raising it to over 5 feet. I know it’s only a question of time until they find a way through the barricade but it’s doing the trick for now.
I’m enjoying every day in the garden as I am finding something new in every corner from the bulbs to perennial plants that are now emerging.

It’s a waiting game though because unlike the dogs I am thinking of a way into the garden not out of it - with a mini digger. I will document the plants that emerge of course and put them aside for replanting. Then the fun can commence and I can dig everything else up. I can’t wait!