Highlights 2014

I’ve been having a think about what have been my gardening highlights last year. I suppose the most entertaining thing was getting the new shed put up, dismantling it on my own and then bringing it back from Co Dublin in a van. It’s one of those things that I look back on fondly but didn’t really enjoy at the time. I’ve forgotten about three nights sleeping in a transit van on top of a roll of cardboard. It’s good to get out of your comfort zone occasionally I think. 

Highlights

The growing highlights were Klaus’s vegetable seeds. They all seemed so disease and pest resistant and put up with the weather conditions and all managed to give bumper, quality crops. I’ve been saving seed from the beans to replant this year and I am also shelling sweet pea pods to replant this week in the tunnel. I have planted garlic in there a while ago and it’s coming on strong. The only other thing I’m doing in there at the moment is playing with paper pulp. You have to do something with all of the present wrapping paper so I have pulped it all up, along with cardboard, and am attempting to make recycled paper sheets. 

Pulp

The polytunnel is a great place to do this as it’s extremely messy. In the tunnel I don’t need to tidy up after myself.  I have also made some sheets incorporating shredded leaves which look really interesting but I don’t think you could write on them. I have a ‘Mould and Deckle’ which is a paper making sieve made from what looks like a picture frame. It’s the proper job for making paper. I learnt to use it, like with most things, by watching Youtube videos.

My initial plan was to make lampshades for my ever growing collection of table lamps. These are proving to be a bit tricky as the pulped paper doesn’t seem to want to stick to my oiled balloon, which I am using as a template.  So my next plan of action with this gloopy bucket load is to make small plant pots for my seeds. They only need to be the size of an egg cup so I can form those in my hands and let them dry. “Why don’t you just use egg carton boxes Ian?” I hear you cry. Good question, I would, but I pulped them all along with the Christmas wrapping paper. 

Hang on

Because my sweetcorn didn’t germinate last year I am holding back planting seeds out until late spring. I’m not even going to order the seeds early. I’ll put them out late which will hopefully give them a sense of urgency when they are planted and bypass all of the pests and disease they could succumb to in colder weather. 

The lawn will need some serious TLC this spring too as the drainage seems to be getting worse.  It’s a double edged sword I suppose. On the one hand the ground is totally submerged and this will give rise to a lot of fungal growth and dead grass. On the other hand I can now pick up the dog mess with a fishing net as it floats past me in the mornings. You have to look at the positives. It might even catch on. ‘Poo Fishing.’ It has a ring to it I reckon.

Timber

There was a lot of chainsaw noise coming from a neighbours garden a few weeks ago. I managed to sleep for most of it until I heard a huge crash. They neighbours got the heavy mob in to remove a massive sycamore tree from their garden. It was so big that it managed to block out at least the last three hours of sunlight from our garden. It’ll make a huge difference to the light in the evening for us and I won’t be digging up self-set sycamore seedlings every year. I’m never really keen to see any tree chopped down, in fact I’d probably live up one to save them from developers. In this case though I think they have done me a great service. I just hope that the tree surgeons have removed the stump and roots too as we could see the tree rise from the ashes in the form of a multi stemmed bush.