A
happy day spent looking at flora in the Gran Canaries desert.
I had so much fun with my new Panama hat last week that I decided
to take it on holiday.
I have just returned from a very enjoyable week away on the
island of Grand Canaria staying in the city of Las Palmas on the north of the
island. I took the family with the hat too, just for the laughs. It’s funny how I thought I would be part of a
large group of people sporting these head protectors but over the week I didn’t
see anyone else wearing anything similar, it looks as though peak caps are the order
of the day.
Preparation
Back home, I couldn’t just leave the garden in the recent
heat wave, so before I left I did a week’s worth of preparation. In that time
the hosepipe got lots of use. The tunnel
was soaked everyday and I added a lot of water retaining gel to the hanging
baskets along with upturned bottomless plastic bottles pushed into the soil
full of water. I have a lot of young
seedlings and cuttings coming on in module trays which I immersed in a tray in
an inch of water. All of the legumes,
peas, beans mange tout got a daily watering and the grass was cut really short. I could have asked friends or family around
when I was away to look after things but I set myself a challenge of having the
garden totally self reliant for a whole week whilst I was away.
First Impressions
When the plane approached the runway at Las Palmas airport I
couldn’t help commenting that the landscape looks very similar to Inishowen, or
at least Inishowen if it never rained! The outline of the hills was similar -
if you squinted, but everywhere was grey with volcanic soil and rock. We’d have
to go a few years without a drop of water to get a landscape like the one I was
landing in.
On the drive into the city I noticed there were a lot of tan
coloured net structures covering vast areas of ground. These structures were
initially built for growing tomatoes in. Some of these shaded growing houses
covered as much as 10 acres each. It was big business for years, a bit like the
mushroom growing here, but eventually they were priced out of the market by
competition overseas. One disadvantage I could see was that to grow the fruit ,
soil had to be shipped in then put into grow bags to enable the crops to grow
well, as the existing soil lacked any real structure or nutrients, which isn’t
very sustainable.
Things were looking a bit bleak on the flora side of things
in Las Palmas.
More exploring
My impression soon changed as I explored more. I spent a day
in the dry desert looking at the cacti and other successful succulents. There
are over 100 species of plants on the island not found anywhere else in the
world, but I wasn’t really sure if I found any although I enjoyed looking.
The city area was full of municipal planting and raised beds
from the canopies of large palm trees down to the ground cover shrubs, some of
which like cineraria and we use here as annuals in bedding displays. Holding all the plants together are large
pumice stone rocks of a deep red colour which brings out the beauty of the plants
and shrubs. Weeding isn’t an issue on the beds as the plants are watered by a
drip feeder pipe giving water only to the roots of each plant to conserve
water. The rest of the ground is hard baked and nothing could grow. Some of the succulent leaves dripped wet in
the evenings as they had the ability to collect moisture from the air. Las Palmas city is under a bank of trade wind
cloud in the summer (thankfully for me being used to the Irish weather) It’s
something the locals call the “Donkey’s Belly” which comes from when the
farmers took a siesta in the afternoons and would lay under a donkey. I might
try that myself.
Swimming Hat
Similar sorts of planting was done at a water park on the
south of the island, idyllically set in a desert surrounding. I did go swimming
in a pool for a few minutes - complete with my Panama hat of course (which a
lot of people seemed to find entertaining for some reason but it was clear
skies away from the Donkey’s Belly” and I didn’t want to get sunburnt) I preferred to spend the hours looking at the
plants in closer detail making sure I had the factor 30 suncream on.
Paid Off
Coming back to a lush green Ireland I was really pleased to
see that although Inishowen had more sun than we did whilst away, my excessive
watering the previous week had worked!
All of the plants and vegetables are now flourishing both outside and
inside the tunnel, the hanging baskets are in full bloom and all I have to do
is give the lawn a light hover vacuum in the morning. I’ll have to go away more
often, as long as the preparation work is done beforehand.
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