New Year Ideas for the Garden

It’s time to go crazy with ideas for the garden. 

After all of the hullabaloo of Christmas and New Year it’s great to free our minds and let imaginations run riot with horticultural ideas without distraction.  Do we need more flower beds? Will the veggie patch be big enough for all of the crops this year or do we expand?  Where can I get a lorry load of manure? There’s a lot to be thinking about.

New Year Seed Choices

One of the first questions we need answers to is where to buy seeds and what are we going to buy this year?  I usually buy from either Klaus from Green Vegetable seeds in Letrim, (he has 110 types of veggie seeds on offer this year) or the Organic Centre in Rossinver but last year I tried buying seeds from online suppliers I found on Ebay. I actually found them to be really good with a very high germination rate and were also certified organic, whatever that really means. I think I’ll pick and mix this year and get different seeds from all of the above so as to keep both local and national suppliers happy. 

Going Potty

One of my New Year projects is to start making my own pots.  I have tried over the years to make plant pots from different materials such as concrete, hypertufa and hemp and although they looked attractive they didn’t really prove to be too practical. The concrete ones took the skin off my hands when I made them and they all seemed to make the soil more alkaline with the lime content they all had. The hemp ones dropped to bits too which wasn’t really the desired effect I was looking for.

This year I am going to go back to basics and recreate some traditional terracotta pots.  I was lucky enough to acquire a potter’s wheel and a huge kiln for firing and have set up the shed as a potters studio where I am learning the art of centring clay on the wheel and making basic cylinder shapes. I have done a couple of pottery classes in the past but always had to battle for a go on the wheel, now I have one to myself and with the help of YouTube videos am well on the way to becoming a pottery master (well, give me 50 years) For now though I’m happy just making the popular pot 10-12 cm shape that are similar to the aricula and long tom pots I got a couple of years ago from Carleys Bridge Potteries in County Wexford. The one big difference with the original pots and the ones I am making is how the CB ones have aged over 100 years. Once I have got the shape and fired the pots all I need to do is try and replicate the aging process. I could let nature do it by leaving them outside for a while or try and create a wash with yogurt to get some moss growing on the sides and let a few spiders leave behind a few cobwebs. We’ll see, I might even like them new looking for a while.  The fun is in the experimenting.

Feed the Birds

We’re putting out lots of food for the birds and they love it. Last year we had the feeders on fences and walls filled with peanuts. They were still in place in summer as no birds seemed interested. This year I have hung the feeders on poles so they are free to blow around in the wind away from buildings and filled them with fat balls and small seeds. It seems to have made all the difference as I am filling them up every day at the moment. The fat balls attract the larger birds like starlings, crows and magpies and the smaller seed feeder brings in the robins, sparrows, tits and wrens. Pigeons get in on the act too hopping around on the floor looking for fallen seeds. If you haven’t manages to take the festive tree to be recycled you could always put that upright in the garden and hang a feeder on it for a while.

This time of year is just perfect for taking a bit of time out of the garden to give you time to reflect on what happened you would like to improve on last year and enjoy the process of learning for the coming season.

Here’s to a fun filled, enjoyable and productive new year.