An Organic Lifestyle (Organic Growing Pains)

Time flies, I feel guilty for not posting more often but it just seems like a few days since I last posted, am I turning into Rip Van Winkle??!! Blogger has changed since my last posting so I had to find my way around my own blog! The weather is very changable here, sunny days, freezing nights ,wind, rain in fact typically Irish. We put in a green manure over the winter months it was our first time using it and results were inconclusive to say the least.This one was in early and grew fine, here it is just coming into flower which if my memory serves me right shoud be cut down now. Green manures are supposed to help stop leaching of nutrients over the winter months through wind and rain, using a legume sets nitrogen in the soil for later crops.It is now recommended to put in a green manure between crops, not leaving the ground bare at any season for any length of time as it also keeps down the weeds and saves some work in the weeding dept. The same patch after I cut the tops down ...

I have not been to the allotment for over a week because of torrential rain every day and I have not been able to get on to the blog because Blogger is so slow!I am not sure if it is Blogger or my Internet provider is at fault, I tried up loading photos but they took so long I just gave up.The new header pic was done last week and took nearly 20 mins to upload, which is why I am on here on Sun morning hoping nobody else is online yet! Our leeks have settled in at last and are looking a little more healthy and whatever was nibbling on them has stopped. I cleared the bean bed leaving the roots in the ground to rot down to provide nitrogen.The Lollo Rosso is not alone a splash of autumn colour but a tasty addition to our salads. The strawberry bed was cleared of all old leaves and debris, the near row was 3 year old plants and were pulled up.Some of them had a second flush of strawberries so I left them but with the wet weather the slugs got to them first so now this side is completely cl...

Again it has been over a week since I posted! I honestly do not know where the time goes to.We have had a deluge of rain over the past few days, some areas of the county are flooded and at the height of the rainfall a lot of roads were flooded to the extent of being impassible.Today we have cold wintry sunshine but a gale force North Easterly wind to keep temperatures down.I spent absolutely no time out on the allotment so some of the winter digging is getting behind schedule.We have a huge pile of horse manure on the plots but I have bought some Green manure seed to try an alternative. We already put in Phacalia earlier which has now been cut back to cover the soil, this is one I saw on the Seedaholic website and decided to try it as it is a Winter growing one and can be sown from August through to November.I liked this one as it has 3 types of seed in the mix and some winter colour will be welcome.The red flower is Crimson Clover ,it is a good nitrogen fixer,quick and easy to grow,...

Well back to basics. The weather today is wet and grey at the moment, so no gardening. Susan Taylor, (see motivation and education post) also discussed green manure and how beneficial it is to keep down weeds and feed nutrients back into the ground. It can be over wintered on a plot or put on a space that you do not intend putting something in for a while. There are various types grown over winter and dug back into the ground around February. I liked this one in the photo called Phacelia which can be allowed to flower and left on any patch of ground until you need that space, with the added benefit of flowers. I copied this photo from Irish Seed Savers Assoc, as it was the only one I could find. The seeds can be bought online from them as well. Irish Seed Savers have an excellent article on Potatoes, the names, a description and history.It is well worth looking at before buying seed potatoes for next year, as they also give details of blight resistant varieties and seed potatoes can b...