The Only Way Is Up - Vertical Gardening

There’s no reason we have to limit ourselves to growing in the ground. A lot of us already have plants growing in containers, hanging baskets and even old brightly painted tin cans, so there’s nothing new there. How about covering the whole wall space with plants though? It sounds a bit excessive, but the idea is growing in popularity with both businesses and individual homeowners embracing a greener future in urban areas.

Vertical gardening

I was in the town of Reading in Berkshire last week and came across a massive planting installation that covered a whole shopping centre wall. I’d say the dimensions of the vertical planted area covered the size of a tennis court and as it was a shady area was planted with ferns, bergenia, the drought tolerant barbed wire plant (Tylecodon reticulatus) and the hardy Heuchera Palace Purple. 

The plants are kept in place by means of small pockets; in this case they were made from modular plastic pot shaped moulds that click together.  At this size the structures need to be fastened securely and most of them sit on a specially constructed galvanized metal frame that sits away from the wall to allow for ventilation.

It’s in cases like this that gardening meets high end design and incorporates the skills of not only the plants person but architects, builders and engineers. Which is great because it confirms that gardeners are in the same league as other professions and are being recognised as so. Gone are the stuffy days of the public thinking professional gardeners sit in their potting sheds smoking a pipe and will work all day for the price of a bag of chips. Hopefully these types of innovations will attract a new generation of modern gardeners who will ‘green up’ our built up urban towns and cities. 

The structures are designed to actually protect walls. Modern materials such as plastics can have a shorter lifespan when the suns UV light hits them and constant heating and cooling could cause cracking. Because of the gap between surfaces there’s no problem with damp or structural damage you would get with something that clings to the wall such as ivy or is fastened by wires. 

These types of wall covers don’t come cheap though, the average price of a commercial wall such as this could cost you up to €500 per square metre. The companies claim the plant covers could triple the lifespan of the walls so this offsets at least a part of the cost.  Plants will need replacing from time to time but if they are chosen correctly and given just the right amount of water and feed,  there’s no huge cash outlay after they have been installed – apart from paying an abseiling gardener. Rooftop rainwater collection could feed the plants by inertia drip feed cutting down the need for electrical pumps. 

The designs are used to good effect indoors too and have the same principle of allowing air to pass behind them sparing the wall any damp. There are some massive corporate ones but we can make our own out of something as simple as a picture frame and a bit of old cloth made into pockets, which would be an ideal home for succulents.

There’s no need for us to be plashing the cash on huge planting schemes. There are products on the market that can be hung on the wall and planted up. If you imagine one of those sheets full of pockets that hang on a bedroom door to put rubbish in and triple the price you will get the idea. The increase in price is because the material has to be thicker. There are solid plastic type holders you can get as well. These click together to make the wall covering as large as your pocket will allow (these cost about €20 for three pots) so I’d say it’d cost you a mortgage to cover the front of the house. The main issue I can see with these small home DIY kits is the lack of air circulation behind them. It could be a mould problem waiting to happen so the solution could be to attach them to wooden batons. 

Let’s assume we have covered the front of the house and the interior walls with decorative plants, but how about the idea of a ‘vertical allotment’ where we can grow our edibles in confined spaces, ideal for the city dweller that only has a balcony? I think it could easily be possible to get a healthy crop of salads plants. I’m not sure about main crops such as carrots, peas and spuds but I should think you would have fun experimenting.

Spent Coffee Grounds - A Guide to their Uses

Expectation vs. reality making coffee lampshades

Over 1.5 million tonnes of coffee grounds are sent to landfill around the world every year. In the UK and Ireland alone it’s over 600,000 tonnes or up to 93% of all the coffee waste produced. 

A huge amount and an indication of just how popular this new drug of choice has become. 

Coffee shops are replacing the pub for people to hang out in and it’s socially acceptable to have all night coffee houses and even drive by coffee collection points.  

These facts passed me by and as I don’t drink coffee.

This changed last week when I was looking online for new lampshades to make ( I tend to make these when winter comes to keep my sanity until I can get out in the garden again). 

I’ve made shades out of various materials, concrete, paper, old car parts, plumbing material, plastic, old spanners and even dog hair, so when I saw a shade made from spent coffee grounds I thought “ I could do that”

 I’m being proved wrong. 

The images of these super smooth, tough and durable shades were  the result of 5 years’ worth of tinkering with materials and a special ‘patented secret formula’ so the designer said on their website. How hard can it be? Just a few dollops of PVA soaked grounds put into a cone shape and were away. Wait a week and then hang up the resulting shade. 

It’s a case of expectation versus reality here. I have not a collection of cup and plate shaped shades (I use the term lightly) that bear no resemblance to the original images. I was also told in the blurb on the website that the shades “emit a delightful smell of freshly ground coffee when the bulb heats the shade” erm, no they don’t. I’ve been sneezing every time I walk past them and the rest of the family thing that there’s a pile of old grounds in the kitchen compost bin rotting away and keep asking what the horrible pong is.  The compost bin is probably where they belong… but is it?

There are a lot of potential uses for spent grounds and the more ways to recycle the waste, the less the large coffee chains have to pay for getting rid of their by product. 

Some uses found so far are:

•  Add to the compost 
• Used to dye paper and cloth.
• Mix with glue and touch up furniture.
• Flea repellent.
• Odour eliminator.
• Soak up grease.
• Covert to laundry detergent.
• Make into bioplastic.
• Use as a biofuel. Oil is extracted from the waste, grounds are dried to filter impurities in biofuel production, and any remnants are burnt as a source of energy from electricity.
• Firelogs.

It’s the composting of the grounds that I am concentrating on now as I haven’t the patience to “tinker” for 5 years to get the mix right for lampshades.

I have decided to do a test bed with the coffee I collected from the shops last week. I got over 5kg from about 10 shops who all happily dropped their used grounds into my open bin bag. There are some large companies who have bags of grounds on the counter for us gardeners to collect but I didn’t come across any. One shop chain spokesperson said they have now stopped giving away the grounds all together to the public after an email was sent to all of the outlets, I’m not sure why, probably people were trying to boil up an extra brew in their kitchens.

I’m not very hopeful the grounds will improve my garden.  Tests have been done before and the results have not been particularly successful, only in one case of growing oyster mushrooms did the grower actually say there was an improvement in their crop. It could be a case of old wives tales and hearing of the benefits often enough in press releases from the coffee shops could actually make us believe the hype. In most cases large amounts of grounds added to the garden slows plant growth and actually kills plants. 

Coffee grounds are a rich source of caffeine, richer than coffee itself, depending on the brewing technique. One of the key functions of caffeine in the plants that produce it is ‘allelopathy’ ,the ability to reduce competition from surrounding species by suppressing their growth. Caffeine is packed into coffee seeds for the very function of suppressing the germination of other seeds.

Studies suggest it also stalls root growth in young plants, preventing their uptake of water and nutrients. Yet others have shown it has antibacterial effects (so much for boosting soil bacteria). It’s not really acidic either so throwing it around your rhododendrons won’t really do much.

I’ll probably start by just adding the coffee to the compost bin and let the worms work on it,. Even this gets mixed reviews. Some vermicomposters (worm growers) say the spent ground don’t hold water so are not very palatable. I’ll mix mine in with other wetter food scraps as big clumps of coffee might heat up too much.  

Just in case you were wondering if dry coffee grounds deter slugs and snails – They don’t!  I’ve had the bag outside and it’s full of them. 

The ‘Old Wives’ have been at it again.

Rogue Tomato and Autumn Bulb Planting...

I had one job to do in the tunnel this year. It was simple, all I needed to do was pull up all the tomato plant seedlings and compost them - Simple. There were a lot of the self-set plants and I very nearly got them all. 

Apart from one. 

Just one solitary tomato plant has been left to run free, I took my eye off it for a few weeks and it’s taken over. I estimate the untrimmed, uncared for plant now takes up at least 10 square yards of valuable space in the tunnel. This is how tomatoes grow in their hot, natural habitats, unpinched and not a bamboo cane in sight for them to be tied and trained on. 

The crop has been fantastic though although for some reason the fruit is still foamy, just as it was a few years ago when I planted the original seeds. They are tasty enough though so I’ll wait until the frost hits it before I pull it up and compost it. Next year though there will be no tomato plants in the garden, unless I miss one.

Dilemma

I really need to totally clear the tunnel and start again by sterilizing everything as there is a lot of mould growing on leaves, the pots are filthy, greenfly has infested all the broccoli and kale and there are hundreds of slugs and snails feasting on everything but the tomato plant.

“What is the reason for not clearing the tunnel?”  I hear you ask. 

Well, it’s two frogs. Both of them have been with me all summer sploshing around in the sunken bucket I have in the corner. They give me such hopeful looks when I walk in so how can I destroy their environment just so that I can plant cash crops in an intensive, non-sustainable manner? I’m sure large organizations have this dilemma all of the time and think nothing of clearing rainforests and displacing the residents in the process but I just can’t bring myself to do it. I’m sure I’ll find a compromise somehow, maybe just limit their space to half of the tunnel or restrict them somehow. I’m also quite sure that method won’t work either as historically nothing good ever comes from closing boundaries and free movement. So for now the frogs are free to roam to their hearts content and I’ll find a more amicable solution for both of us, after all they are working in the tunnel, there would be far more slugs and snails if they moved away.

Fleece

I bought some fleece webbing to cover up some pots and protect them from the oncoming cold winter weather. I did a bit of price comparing and there’s a huge difference in the amount being charged and very little (if any) difference in quality. The prices range from €9 down to 90 cent for the same product in the shops. Online was a bit more expensive as postage is included. I got four packs of the 90c sheets of 1.5x5 metres from a shop in Derry. I have also ordered some multi cell trays online to plant up some cuttings which I will be overwintering. It’s a good time to be looking for bags of compost at reduced prices now as the season is ending and shops don’t want old stock lying around all winter.

Autumn bulb planting

I’m going to try and find the pots of spring bulbs this week. Like most years I have them in pots and when they are done flowering I can just put them to one side instead of looking at the leaves dying off for weeks (think daffodils) they also don’t hinder the enthusiastic grass mowing I tend to do after hibernating for a few months.  Spring flowering and hardy summer bulbs can be planted now.

• Plant spring-flowering bulbs, such as daffodils, crocus and hyacinths as soon as possible to give them a good start.
• Plant tulips in November.
• Plant hardy summer-flowering bulbs, such as lilies, alliums and crocosmia, this month too.

I’ve found that growing them in pots speeds up the flowering and maturing time. They do need watering in dry weather and the soil might need to be changed every so often. Bulbs get a lot of their energy from photosynthesis and tend to absorb energy back into their bulbs as the leaves die down so I haven’t really have an issue with them lacking in nutrients even if I forget to repot them for a year or two.  

I do have some spring bulbs in the front garden planted into the soil. I’ll hack back the nasturtiums to see if they are still there.

What Makes a Good Lawn?

Just what is a good lawn? 

Is it all about the uniformed growth and greenest weed free swards? Is a good lawn one you can play football or golf on? Does it just need to look nice from the kitchen window when you are washing the pots? Has it got to be full of wild flowers and only need to cut it twice a year? 

There are so many different variables to lawns and the answers are as diverse as the gardeners who look after them. 

Over the past few years these green patches of ground have come under increasing criticism both for their high maintenance and need for chemical use to keep in tip top condition. But it doesn’t need to be that way.

 I for one have tried alternatives on a small scale. I set aside a small area to go wild (much to the annoyance of one of my neighbours) and turned one area into a chamomile lawn. I can tell you now both of these take up far more of my time looking after than a conventional lawn.

Over the fence

I don't think I know one person in Inishowen who is totally happy with their lawn.

 As a viewer over the fence, most gardens look lovely. I have some old images of my plot when we first moved into the house and the whole garden was overgrown and neglected, I couldn't wait to get stuck in and ‘improve’ the place.

 Looking at the pictures now seven years later, the garden actually looked far more lush and colourful than it does now after all my work. The garden in the pictures hasn't changed but the way I look at it has.

Overall the garden looks lovely in the pictures but it's only when I hone in on the details and imperfections as I did when I moved in that I started to worry and think about making changes, it's a similar principle to most issues we have in everyday life.

I think I tend to look at my own lawn and project my irritations and frustrations on the rough patches before realising the imperfections are in me and not the grass. 

Let’s  see what gardener's actually say about their lawns.

The most common observations and complaints about lawns here in Inishowen are:

• Too wet and waterlogged.
• Costs too much to keep as we need to get someone in to cut it twice a month.
• Need too many chemicals to keep it looking nice.
• Moss growing everywhere and taking over.
• Not growing well in shaded areas.
• Takes up too much time cutting it in summer.
• Not hard-wearing enough to play on.

All of these issues can be overcome to some degree apart from finding someone to cut the grass for free if a family member isn’t available. The reality is that there will always be something that needs doing. I've just come back from a family wedding in Alicante and I only saw one or two patches of grass growing. There were plenty of herbs and picking the pomegranates is fun , the local council seem to favour artificial grass now as it saves on water  in the city centre. So just growing a lawn here in Ireland seems easy in comparison.

Regardless of how you look at your lawn, plants will be plants and the grass will need a bit of annual care, especially in the case of moss. The only place you'll see grass without moss is on the sandy golf links around the peninsula, you will even see moss on artificial grass eventually! So living with it seems to be the easiest option. Apart from digging up the whole garden, raising it about a metre and putting in new soil/sand and drainage it will more than likely come back every year and need to be treated with a chemical.

Drainage is the answer to lawns being too wet and compacted, but can be a costly job on large areas.

If you have bald patches the autumn is a great time to overseed the area. If you don't have the same grass mix to add and want a more uniformed colour them scatter the seeds outwards from the patch putting fewer and fewer seed on the ground as you work out. It's a bit like blending colours in paintings. Mix the seed with a bit of sharp sand so it goes on more evenly.

If an area is in shade there are certain types of seed you can get to put in these areas. They might look a bit different but at least the area will be green.

Scarifying the grass with a spring rake can get a lot of the moss out. After this you can aerate the ground with a fork and sweep sand into the holes. This will help with drainage and compaction.

If the lawn has a lot of crane fly larvae in it you could put black sheeting over the ground then check it every morning putting the leatherjackets out for the birds. These will probably only be temporary measures in the same way that chemical usage will be.

Conclusion

Instead of us looking for the 'perfect’ lawn for our garden and being annually disappointing, we can ask ourselves...

Does the area look generally pleasing to the eye and give us and the family pleasure?

Is the lawn suitable for purpose? Game playing, dog use, defining borders siting the barbeque, table and chairs?

After sitting four stories up in a city centre apartment block for a week at the family wedding in Alicante I'm just pleased to see any greenery and I must say from the plane up here at 20,000 feet, all of your lawns look absolutely wonderful!