An Organic Lifestyle (Organic Growing Pains)

Hi,sorry for the long absense from the blog and thank you all for leaving comments. I have been busy and my computer was not turned on for days at a time.The allotment has kept me busy most days and the evenings were spent blanching, freezing,baking and jam making! We have 2 nice pumpkins on the White Ghost plant. I discovered blackberries hiding under branches when I tidied up the fruit bed, just enough to add to the morning cereal. I was loud in my praise of cabbage collars recently and the proof is here to see!Two of the 7 plants which are coming on nicely had dead snails on the collars. They are impregnated with a slug deterrent which seems to be working. The autumn fruiting raspberries, hard to see properly through the netting but there are a good many of them ripening . Blueberries are ripe and juicy, these photos were taken before I cleaned up the bed and cut back the summer raspberry canes. The lower branches of the blackcurrant bush were touching the grou...

We have had a lovely week weather wise, sunny days but cold & frosty nights.These photos have been taken over a few days both on the plot and at home and are not in any particular order. Today on the allotment the onions went in, these are Sturion and there are 2 rows of shallots which we have not grown before. I paid 2.45e a lb for the onion sets in a garden centre and there are 2 lbs of them in this bed. One of my fellow plotters told me Lidl are doing a lot of garden items next week and one of them is onion sets for 1e.He got them last year and said he had great onions from them.We are doing a second onion bed so Lidl will go in there and we will be able to compare the two. The cover is the enviromesh that covered the carrots last year, I thought it may as well earn its keep protecting the onion sets from the birds and frost.There was not enough to cover the whole bed so it will be interesting to see what if any difference it makes to cover the onions. Some people are very organ...

Fame! remember the leg warmers? Well they are alive and still in vogue, this is one of the horses near the allotment.I had to take a photo of them, I asked the girl who was grooming him why he was wearing them and she said they kick their shins so these were to protect them. Most of them wear dull grey ones but these are really cute! My cavalier king charles spaniel Sam, looking very cold and bored wondering why I was out in the front garden taking photos on a cold windy day!He hates anyone pointing a camera at him and keeps looking away. This is what I was taking photos of, tiny catkins on the contorted hazel tree. Daffodils and crocus peeping above ground in the flower bed at the back daffodils appearing in the flower bed at the front of the house. It is really a sign that Spring is on the way and this cold dismal winter will be over. It has not been too bad so far, we have not had any rain for weeks1

This is where I spent some time last week, a small cove on the coast about 35 minutes drive from where I live.There is usually a fishing boat or two but that day there was a speed boat and a catamaran!Notice the sun shining. All life comes to the cove at some time. There is a riding stables nearby and the horses come down for a paddle in the evenings.The tide is in so there is none of the beach visible. At the end of the month this is where I will get the seaweed to mulch the asparagus, it comes in on every tide but it is cleaned most days during the summer. See more photos in photo gallery on side links.

We are in the middle of the wettest summer in living memory here in Ireland. Some areas have had a months rain in a few hours and fields of ripening wheat have been destroyed . The Met office is not giving much if any encouragement that it will improve anytime soon. We had not been to the allotment for a few days but I went out this morning to check on things in the greenhouse, to water and feed them. I had 4 red tomatoes and the peppers and cucumbers are growing too. Our pumpkin is doing great being ignored and left to its own devices!The pumpkins on the bank are taking over, I have never seen anything grow so much in a few days! Of course I did not take the camera as the weather was so bad. I have some I had taken earlier but did not have time to put up and the sun was shining as well! Whatcha ' doin? Honey comes over every now and again to see what we are up to. OR maybe she is checking out our carrots growing in the blue barrels to see if they are ready yet?! Why did I put them...

Our near neighbours on the allotment, they are usually in the field next to us, but they were probably safer in the stables on the Open day.