Living Under the Donkey's Belly

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.

Ring Weeder Gets Over $10,000 Backing

I came across this today. It's a simple device to help weeding. It's already exceeded the inventor Vincent Suozzi's expectations of raising $8500 - it's up to over $10,000 raised for production. It'll cost $8 for one and shipping is $15 for us in Ireland.


Have a look and let me know your thoughts, and maybe even pledge the $8 yourself.


Go to the KICKSTART PAGE and see how the pledges are flooding in!!

UPDATE:  Today (31stJuly 13) the amount has rocketed to OVER $13,000 

500 Backers and counting!!

My Hat and I?

Does anyone really understand me and my hat?

Living in a Sunny Dream

“You might think you look like someone who is walking the African savannah, but....” The family verdict was coming about my new purchase of a fabulous Panama Hat. “to us it just looks like, well, it just sort of sits on your head” .

“That’s what they are supposed to do”, I reply, quietly relieved that’s all they could throw at me.

They are right of course, the hat might not physically transform me to the deck of the African Queen with Humphrey Bogart (who I have just been informed wore a sailors hat in the film) but at least I can use my imagination and not get sunburnt ears while I dream of sitting under a rotating roof fan sipping a gin and tonic  in the tropical heat (the tonic is to supply me with quinine to stop me getting malaria in the film that’s going on in my head of course.) 

Tackling Weeds

I’m tackling a few weeds in between the rows of peas and beans today. It’s funny how my approach to the weeds changes throughout the year. In winter I don’t really think of them at all, early in spring I try to get them as they germinate, in late spring I pick and hoe down the annuals and pull out the perennials before they get to about three inches. 

As the summer approaches I try to keep them off the veggies to give the plants a better chance at catching the light. In mid to late summer all I want to do is to pull or hack them back so they don’t flower, go to seed and spread. By autumn I realise just how futile my attempts have been, especially when the neighbours don’t have the same attention to dandelion seed heads and encroaching brambles as me. Airborne seeds know no boundary. It’s good for me to have a few rogue weeds around though, it adds to the diversity of the garden and I get more visitors of the insect variety coming to visit, most of them friendly.

Second Flush

I’ve been cutting back the herbaceous geraniums. They are not the same as pelargoniums you see in hanging baskets as they spread like crazy given the space.  I have done this because they will give me a second flush of flowers come late summer.  Nepita, astrantia and lamuim are all good to chop back for a second flush as most of the flowers come together.  For other plants such as my climbing rose, the flowers are best chopped off as they go over, or drop their petals, which in this plants case, every day. If I could dig it out I would,  but it has resisted all efforts up to yet. Maybe in winter I will tackle it.

First Flush

The first flush of fast growing plants is over in the tunnel and I am being extremely organised and replanting any that I pull up. The radish, mustard, coriander have been reseeded and I have also done a late sowing of spinach, basil and lettuce. 

I’ve also planted a late batch of broccoli for my father in law, but the intense heat has killed off three attempts I have made so far, they are not used to being germinated at this time of year really.  The fourth attempt has been put away in a cool shay place until they plants are sturdy enough to look after themselves.  Some of the cuttings from the box hedge I dug up last week have suffered the same fate, ones that were in direct sunlight turned brown in a day. Thankfully I still have 40 good ones going into the shade with the broccoli so all is not lost.

Bushy Tomatoes

The tomatoes are coming on well, both inside and outside of the tunnel. I have three different types to cover me in case any are like the balls of foam I had last year.  There are some busy types that I am leaving alone to fall on the tunnel floor and spread like they would in the Mediterranean, but some of the others I am pinching the side shoots out and supporting on poles to speed up the fruiting and ripening process. We generally have to do this to cope with the short growing season here, but after the last few weeks I think it’s the turn of the bushy ones to keep on cropping.

In fact standing next to the tomato and geraniums I do feel as though I could be sunning myself on a veranda in the Med, the hat helps of course, but no-one really understand me and my hat..

Growing Fast

My only complaint is that the vegetables are growing too fast!

I have a friend over having a look at the contents of the polytunnel. “You can eat those,” he says pointing to the tops to the white turnips. “They are not to everyone’s taste but if you add a bit of lemon it takes away the bitterness.” 

Later that day I thought I would give it a go.  These turnips are just one of the vegetables growing at break neck speed in the tunnel.  If this is my only complaint about the recent heatwave and sunny days then I am a lucky man.  My lad says that staring at plants stops them from growing, much in the same way a watched kettle never boils. One day when I have the time I will try and prove him wrong.

Turnip Tops

Back to the turnip tops.  I prepared them in the same manner I do the spinach, which is to rip the leaves up and throw them into a pan after rinsing. I don’t add any more water as this makes the leaves too mushy. Then I cooked them for a while until they seemed to boil down to nothing.  Fresh turnip tops are hairy - and still are when they have been boiled up, combine this with the most bitter “green” taste and the slimy consistency of a slug trail and ‘voila’ you have cooked turnip- tops. I can eat most things that come out of the garden but the green mush ended up in the dogs bowl.

As things are growing so quickly in the glorious sunshine, it’s the compost bin that seems to be devouring most of my produce as the dogs can only eat a small proportion of boiled up leaves.  The quality of the crops isn’t good enough in my eyes to give away to people either. The spinach both inside and outside of the tunnel seemed to go from small fresh salad leaves straight to flowering and bolting without the abundance of growth I expected. I have sown a second batch this week so hopefully these might produce a better crop later in the season. I have had to dig up most of the radish and mustard too as these have got too leathery. 

Manure and the law

I don’t class the produce I compost as wasted though, it’s a green manure which will be ready for next year. I might need more of it some next year as I have heard some disturbing news about a local supplier of my well rotted horse muck.  This very generous man used to leave the muck under some trees down a laneway near his farm so it was accessible to us to collect with bags and throw into the boot of the car.  The council have had a complaint from a passing pedestrian and have made a decision to prosecute him for illegal dumping. In America residents are being imprisoned for growing veggies in their front gardens, let’s hope our local justice system sees sense and the court sees his only action is to help gardeners feed the land.

Boxed in

I like box (buxus sempervirens) especially when grown as a hedge as they are slow to get out of shape.  These tough shrubs, unlike my vegetables don’t seem to grow even when you don’t look at them and are a real testament to patience.  I had two very large specimens on either side of the front door that had probably taken about 30 years to form into two identical looking circular space ships.  As art forms they were fine, but come a wet day and you couldn;t help brushing past them coming through the door, getting everything soaked.  I tried trimming them back last year but they are like a balloon, take away the surface and there’s nothing left on the inside. I don’t want to have to wait years for them to grow back if I cut them right back so out they came. They didn’t put up too much resistance either as the roots were shallow enough. I am keeping the legacy of the box shrubs alive though as I took 40 cuttings before I hacked them back.  I might use them to set a hedge somewhere in the future. The ground where the shrubs are taken out probably hasn’t seen any compost or bulking agents since they were planted so will need a bit of TLC before anything goes in.

It’s a bit strange going out of the door now as it feels very open, but we are getting more light into the house through the door glass and I am sure the bare patches will soon be planted up, maybe with vegetables, as thankfully it’s not illegal here.