An Organic Lifestyle (Organic Growing Pains)

I collected Aoife from school and we went to the allotment, while Aoife did her homework in the tea room I did some quiet digging as it was a beautiful sunny afternoon. We are having a lovely Autumn at least but it gets chilly about 4.30 pm. I had turned over the ground here last week intending to cover it with  weed suppressant and move the rooted Globe artichokes over here.Now I am thinking I may turn it into a type of herbaceous bed with the G.A and lots of flowers for colour. This bed runs along the pathway between our plot and Angela & Peter's. We don't need a fence between us but a nice useful flower bed would be good. Some flowers still blooming on the allotment.These are Dianthus ( Sweet Williams) they are tiny but I don't remember any label on them saying miniature?!They have flowered all summer and continue to brighten the bed. Another aubergine on one of our 3 grafted plants, we have never had any success with these before but they have produced nic...

I could not think of an attention grabbing title for this post so calling a spade a spade this is simply about Brussels Sprouts, love 'em or hate 'em. We grow them every year usually quite successfully but this year growth has been slow and we have 6 plants at varying degrees of growth even though they all went in the same day! Three plants went to seed so were brought home for the hens to enjoy.    The netting which they were under was too short as they were growing up against it, apart from making the taller ones bend over the white butterflies could still lay their eggs on the leaves. I don't know how late in the season they stop but they are still very visible around our plots.     The fruit cage is no longer needed so the canes and netting were recycled for the sprouts. I had to put some support canes in place for a few which were bending, topped with empty yogurt bottles to avoid getting our eyes poked if we are in the cage.The...

We grew beetroot which did not do too badly, it is a crop we usually make a token sowing of as I don't eat it and the others are not too keen either! I had pickled it in previous years and did like it but the whole pickling and waiting until it was ready to eat was tiresome. Rosie, one of our allotmeteers with her husband Con grows quite a lot. While talking about it one day she said she cooks it and puts it into vinegar and it can be eaten as wanted.I tried it this year, roasted the beetroot in the oven then peeled,sliced and put it into jars, covering it with red wine vinegar.It can be eaten immediately but I am not sure just how long it would last in the jars, not really a problem as it did not last long enough to worry about it! My D.Michelle and I set off on a 2 1/2 hour road trip a few weeks ago to visit Ikea near Dublin.We had not been there before and it is the only Ikea store in Ireland.It is a big Swedish company specialising in storage ideas and the prices ar...

If Before I start on stress, a rainbow appeared over the allotment today as we were leaving so I will take a deep breath and think beautiful thoughts!I had noticed when I tried to leave comments on some blogs over the past week or so word verification kept telling me I was putting in the wrong letters! Yesterday I spent hours visiting all of the blogs on my sidebar which had been  updated in the past month and tried to leave a comment.Any of them with word verification would not allow me, I tried each 3 times, a slow process after writing a comment.If anyone reading this and whose blog is on my sidebar has not had a comment from me then your blog will not allow me to do so.I have now removed word verification from my own blog to make things easier, I will see how much spam I get! ! This hatbox was delivered to me on Friday, I was mystified when I saw it arriving wondering had I been on Ebay in my sleep ordering frivolities! It was my beautifully w...

A very random selection of summer photos as it was a very random kind of summer! Weather was unpredictable and harvesting even more so.I lost my blogging MOO somewhere along the line due to Blogger and problems with that, I think I will be looking at other means of publishing the blog.The latest which I have encountered over the past few days is I cannot leave comments on other blogs as the comment moderation does not work.I type in the word verification over and over again but blogger keeps saying it is wrong!   Anyway we had gooseberries which Kathryn made into jam and I tried compote! Our little plant pot holder was happy amid the summer flowers Grand daughter Gemma shone on her debs night, she went for the vintage look which was so elegant! My lovely Aunt Maisie celebrated her 83rd birthday, she is the last remaining one of my Mother's family of 8 We had sweetcorn, not as plentiful as previous years but 2 cobs on each of 8 plants was not too bad...