Veggie Plants to Sow and Pick in August

 Pick your crop when it's young and tender. not like these peas!

Did you know that Dutch scientists have grown radishes, peas, rye and tomatoes in soil similar that found on Mars? The scientists concluded the edibles were safe to eat and didn’t contain any dangerous levels of heavy metals.

 

I didn’t know that and I am not really sure why I find the fact so interesting. It must be something to do with the realization that we can grow edibles in even the harshest and uninhabitable of places in soil that you would think was dust. It reminds me of the islands were farmers grew their spuds in rock cracks filled with seaweed. 

It also highlights that healthy nutritious soil is the most important factor when starting a garden. It could be said that the best fertiliser for the soil is the gardener's shadow; I’s also add that plenty of mulching helps too. 

It might seem like the edible gardening year is about over. I do hope not as my luffa’s haven’t even formed yet. There are loads of crops to either sow or plant at this time of year though so we can be kept busy and distracted from grass cutting.

Plants to Sow

Herbs such as basil, coriander and rosemary can be started off in a greenhouse or on the windowsill.

Lettuce. Our lettuce is actually growing better in the cool damp (wet) weather than it was in the harsh sunlight. Winter varieties can be started under cover.

Pak choi. This is another plant that likes the cooler weather and loves the early autumn conditions.

Radishes. No one in our house eats radishes apart from the dog but they can be a fun crop and you can have them mature in less than eight weeks.

Spring cabbage. Sow now and these will give you early crops next year.

Spring onions. You can  pinch the leaves from these from now until spring.

Peas. If you just want the fresh pea tops then you can plant some under cover and pinch away.

Garlic and onions can be planted now too.

Picking Early

There are some instances where I leave the vegetables far too long before harvesting. The first plant that springs to mind is the sweet corn. Year after year I wait just that bit too long and the corn has gone woody. I sometimes leave my spinach and lettuce too long and these go to seed turning the leaves bitter.

Picking the veggies early is a luxury us growers have as we don’t need them to wait until “optimum selling size” like the shops do.  Because of this I would say that you could harvest tiny Brussels sprouts now for a few delicious stir fries. There are others that will bebefit from not leaving too long in the ground too.

Beetroot. You can thin out the rows to allow others to mature.

Broccoli. I usually leave the whole plant until spring and eat the florets but this year I am enjoying some of the young leaves. The same goes for kale.

Cabbage. Get them now before the slugs do.

Carrots. These can be thinned out too and put in the stir fry.

Caluiflower. These discolour quickly after maturing.

Celery. Pick before the stems turn yellow so pick them when they are tight and white.

Courgette. Pick when young as they seem to grow 3” a day and before you know it you have a marrow worthy of a prize in a giant vegetable competition.

Runner and French beans. These can get a bit stringy when too old.

Onions. Get them when the stems start to wild for a crisper bulb.

Peas. Get them young too. When the peas have filled the pods I think they get a bit dry and flavourless as the sugars turn to starch.

Radishes. My dog doesn’t mind the old ones but I wouldn’t entertain them.

Tomatoes. These get a bit mushy when left too long so pick as they turn red for the optimum sweetness.

Turnips. These get really woody if left in the ground too long, especially the small golf ball types. Get these too before the grubs do.

Rosebay Willow Herb

 Rosebay Willow Herb

At the beginning of the growing season I planted up containers for myself and my sister in law. This has turned out to be a bit of an experiment in plant car over the last two months.  As hers flourished and gave colour to her patio, ours have more or less withered and died back. I’d like to say that this is because I gave her all of my best annual bedding plants but there’s probably more to it than that. Her pots are watered regularly. She deadheads them often and gives them a bit of a feed now and again. I do none of the aforementioned as mine are more than three feet from the back door.

I have noticed a bit of an imbalance with how my vegetables are growing this year and it’s all down to feeding the soil and mulching. In areas close to the compost bins where the broccoli and beans are planted, things are doing really well. Further away from the compost bins it’s not the same story though as the luffas and kale struggle for nutrition. I think I have the reason. It is because when I emptied the compost bins in spring I just tipped them over and spread out the contents over the areas very close to the bins. 

It was very lazy on my part I admit, but my excuse is that the air came out of my wheelbarrow tyre so I couldn’t move the compost around the garden as easily. I could give a list of other excuses too but they are all as implausible, I was just lazy and like in most things in life, you get back what you put in. I’ll be mulching everywhere next year with manure, seaweed and compost to get things back on track.

Rosebay Willow Herb

 

When I was a lad I spent a lot of time in the back of cars with a bottle of pop and bag of crisps in car parks. I know teenagers do this voluntarily but I did it because my parents were in the pub. Because of this there are three plants that I look back on with a bit of nostalgia, honeysuckle, and bindweed are two of them as I used to pick them for something to do before it got dark in the car park. The third plant was the rosebay willowherb. One of the car parks was next to waste ground where the plants love to grow.

Rosebay willowherb, Chamerion angustifolium (also known as Epilobium angustifolium) is a widespread perennial plant and loves embankments, rocky places, mountain scree and open woodland.

The tall plant with small pink flowers is also known as Fireweed, particularly in North America, this name reflects the plant’s appearance following forest fires and other events which leave the earth scorched.It’s also called Bombweed because the plant quickly populated derelict bomb sites in the World Wars.

Rosebay willowherb flowers from June to September. Long seed pods form containing masses of hairy/fluffy seeds which are carried on the wind. There can be around 80,000 seeds per plant and some of these have been known to travel 100km.

The plant likes cleared woodland and early stages of coppicing but growth and flowering become restricted as the tree canopy develops again. In reclaimed bogs in Ireland it is an important early colonizer but disappears as the vegetation matures.

Rosebay willowherb tolerates shade and a broad range of climatic conditions and seems to thrive in both acid and alkaline soils.

Rosebay Willowherb Uses

The plant has been used for a lot of things over the year, from entertaining me as a child to natural cordage to fire-lighting to clothing to edible roots, shoots, leaves and flowers as well as numerous medicinal applications, some of which are still being investigated.

One use which was familiar to North American First Nations as well as to Kamchatkan reindeer herders, was consuming the pith from inside the stems – raw, cooked or fermented.

The most popular part of the plant is the inner section of the mature stem, called the pith. The pith falls somewhere between cucumber and unripe cantaloupe both in terms of texture and taste. 

It has some sweetness to it but sometimes also a slightly hot, peppery aftertaste. When collected up, the pith becomes more gelatinous and slimy and browns quite quickly, so it’s best eaten fresh.

The collected pith can be added to soups and broths both to thicken them and add extra carbohydrate content. It can also add a little flavour to otherwise bland concoctions.

Taking the pith from Fireweed is something which is easy to do, just peel back the stem. 

Other parts can be used too. The young shoots in spring are absolutely delicious blanched the growing tips dried as green tea. 

The raw baby plants can be used raw in sandwiches too.

Rosebay willowherb is one of the more useful wilderness plants but as always test a small bit first before cooking it up for the family.

WhiteOaks Organic Farm

The Whiteoaks Acorn Organic farm

Most summer bedding plants are looking fantastic at the moment.  

 I actually thought mine were doing really well until this afternoon when I visited my sister in law. Her back porch area if full of wonderful bedding plants, lobelia, petunias, geraniums and a host of others, all in containers.  

I was admiring them all with just a touch of jealousy until I realised that I actually supplied the flowers and planted the containers up for her. I made them up at the same time I put my own displays together. The soil was the same, the containers were the same, but there was one difference – deadheading. My sister in law would pop outside most days and just nip off the spent flowers. I, on the other hand will occasionally pull a dead flower head off as I am walking past the patio. You wouldn’t think such a simple and quick procedure would make so much difference to a display. Plants such as pansies will use a lot of energy producing seed heads and forget to flower. Petunias, well they just give up really quickly without a bit of clipping. 

I came straight home and started on mine with a vengeance, taking off any heads I could see, even the beautiful ballerina fuchsia flowers were pulled off if they had gone over their prime. It’ll be a week or two until I see the fruits (or flowers) of my efforts but I am sure it’ll be worth it. 

Ragwort

I’m not sure what to believe anymore and I mean that in the broadest sense. Every day I have a myth dispelled, from nitrogen deficiency in mulch, the actual benefits of eggshells in the garden, to whether organic honey can actually exist. The daily list is long and although it’s very tiring I do like the idea that we should “Question Everything” This comment is spray painted on walls and is usually accompanied by the word “Why” underneath. In this case though I am questing ragwort. It’s supposed to be really invasive, poisonous and generally not a nice thing to have in any garden or farm. All that I can say is we have had some on our local park for years now and it hasn’t taken over or (to my knowledge) killed anything. 

MYTH: Ragwort is "extremely toxic" to horses.

FALSE . This claim was made by the British Horse Society in a survey in 2014. It over estimates the toxicity of ragwort by around ten thousand times!

MYTH: Ragwort is an "invasive weed." A term scientist’s use for a problematic plant that has taken over land.

FALSE . Ragwort (Jacobaea vulgaris formerly called Senecio jacobaea) is a common native Plant. You It can be confused with Oxford Ragwort.

MYTH: Ragwort has increased in the country and is spreading across the country like a plague.

FALSE. Ragwort like all other wildflowers subject to regular surveys by botanists. The recent surveys show its distribution has not changed significantly since the 1960s. The 2007 UK Countryside Survey shows significant declines of ragwort

MYTH: Ragwort is a risk to the health of dogs.

FALSE. Dogs are not threatened by ragwort as it is not toxic enough and they do not eat it.

But please don’t take my word for it (or the ragwortfacts.com website the information came from) Like I said before, who really knows what the truth is and is that really the truth. My head hurts!

Acorn Project Organic Vegetables Home Delivery

I got a leaflet through the door today from the White Oaks Organic Farm based in Muff.  They have started up a box delivery of chemical free and organic herbs, fruit and vegetables around Muff, Buncrana, Culmore road and Burt areas to mention a few. They even sell directly from the farm.

 

About

The White Oaks Acorn Project is an organic produce scheme, which operates on the same complex as the IOSAS Centre and White Oaks Rehabilitation Centre. It runs alongside the latter in providing facilitating therapeutic work for residents as well as supplying us, local restaurants and shops with these fresh, chemical-free vegetables and herbs.

It will depend on the time of year for the contents of the boxes but you’ll get the all summer basics such as basics, lettuce,tomatoes,strawberries,scallions, potatos,cabbage and onions and then other vegetables will be added in season such as turnips, currants and kale

If you can’t collect then a large box of vegetables or a juice box (normally 7 items) can be delivered to your door for only €9. You can even phone in just before getting there and a box of fresh produce can be picked for when you arrive. You can even watch them pick things for you, you can’t get any fresher than that! 

You can ring them on 0749384866 (NI) 00353749384866 or visit their Facebook page ‘Whiteoaks acorn organic farm’

Here are some more images from the Whiteoaks farm:

 

Far Less Bover Without A Hover

My hover mower finally gave up working this week. There were no warning signs, no coughing and spluttering, sparks, dramatic noises or things flying off into the neighbour’s gardens. The motor just stopped. 

As it happened quite soon after starting to cut the grass, I thought I’d do a bit of diagnostic work to see what the issue was. Last year I had to shorten the cable by a foot as the wires were showing just above the handle. It’s a pretty common problem on wired appliances; take a look at your iron and you’ll see how the constant movement frays the plastic. So that’s where I started the diagnostics.

Wiggling

I spent a few minutes wiggling the wire, which I am assured is a proper electricians method of testing things in much the same way you kick tyres to make sure the car is in good condition. I then commenced the now annual job of dismantling the mower. There’s very little to go wrong with the machine really so after only a minute or two I come to the conclusion that it’s ready for the recycling centre. 

After assembling it I did give it another try as my magic fingers could have fixed it without knowing.  They didn’t.  

Cold wash

My reputation for fixing electrical things is at an all-time low at the moment. I called in an electrician the other week to have a look at our washing machine. For over four years we have had to put up with cold washes (eco mode)as the heater didn’t seem to work and I thought it was about time we moved up to the 60 degree wash once in  a while. The washing machine repair man came around and after fiddling and testing a few things couldn’t find anything wrong, so very kindly and respectfully showed me how the control knobs worked. Apparently I have been using the machine wrong all of this time and failed to switch the heater control button to ‘On’. The bloke didn’t even have the heart to charge me.

Research

In the evening I started doing a bit of research on lawnmowers. I spent a few minutes on the buy and sell websites and decided not to go down the second hand route as it could spell trouble. I thought I’ll buy new, especially after my one time experience of buying a used phone. My advice is don’t, you’ll be buying someone else’s trouble. The replacement for my hover mower is about 80 euro but after looking at the picture I realised I wasn’t really happy with it anyway. It always felt too fragile for the job and you’d have to go over the same place ten times until the grass was cut. So I started looking a bit more upmarket and was even looking at the automatic ones, which would be a total waste of money and I don’t think they have designed one yet that can weave around lumps of dog poo.  I’m sure running over that would  put a stripe on the grass.

Strimmer

I decided the best thing to do would be blowing the dust off my petrol strimmer. It’s been lying in the shed for nearly five years so a bit of a service was needed.  The shaft was greased, spark plug cleaned and new petrol/oil mix was added. She started first time (do you hear that Mr washing machine repair man!) and seemed none the worse for being unused for so long.

It’s a very powerful strimmer and cut the grass really quickly with wide sweeping twists and got right underneath all of the thatch and grass clumps that had formed over the years using the flymo, which only shortens the grass to about two inches. It’s left the grass looking pretty rough and patchy but it’s greening up quickly in the summer heat.  

Clean Up

My only reservation is the big clean up afterwards. There’s very little control where all of the cut grass flies to and can leave green marks on the walls. The paths also need sweeping afterward but I can live with that as it’s a small price to pay for getting the grass so short. 

I probably won’t need to be cutting it twice a week like I have been doing which will give me more time to hang up the super clean and fresh clothing that’s coming out of our washing machine.