An Organic Lifestyle (Organic Growing Pains)

Another photo to compare to the header pic, taken from roughly the same angle!there are now 4 raised beds completed and in use plus the potato section and the polytunnel.  Son Billy made the bed for the sweetcorn on Sat morning and filled with compost. I have discovered an organic local compost supplier, our local City Council !`I took my own bags and you fill yourself and pay €2 per bag. It is composted completely from green waste brought to the recycling centre, still affectionately known as 'The Dump' on the outskirts of the city.  I topped it up today with 2 bags of Farmyard manure  ( bought prepacked). The Sweetcorn was sown in seed trays then potted  on into 3" pots then into 6" pots, if the bed had not been ready in the next few days then they would have been repotted into even larger pots.My rule of thumb for repotting is, if any of the roots are visible through the end of the pot then it is time to move on as it holds back the plant. S...

The allotment is beginning to take shape albeit very slowly, due to time constraints and the weather, but today the sun shone and I had time to spend there even though it was a bit wild and windy.The top third of the plot is now productive! The carrot bed in the centre was remade as the boards of the previous one was nearly rotten so leaving the bed more or less intact, new boards were put in place around the sides.There seemed to be an awful lot of earth so most of that was shovelled over on top of the potato drills this morning. I got 2 bags of sharp sand and a bag of compost from the home compost bin and dug it into the bed and removed what seemed like hundreds of stones from the bed.Carrots like light sandy soil which is loose and as stone free as possible, they are the divas of the vegetable world! I planted 2 rows of 'Carrot Purple Haze' which has a purple hue to the skin, and 2 rows of Early Nantes from Quickcrop. I had space to plant 1 row of beetro...

 Today's harvest from the allotment, it was not very colourful until I added the carrots and beetroot from the raised bed.I cut down the Broad beans and stripped the pods which are filling the bag on the left.I just cut the stems leaving the roots to rot down in the ground as legume roots are rich in nitrogen. There are 7 courgettes! Time to start making soup I think. The carrots from the covered raised bed are really tasty, these are the Sutton's baby veg which we are using while young and tender, leaving others to mature. We are coming to the end of our new potatoes, these are old reliable Home Guard, there are more beetroot and 2 nice  size heads of Broccoli. A few weeks ago we didn't think we would have anything much to take home as we started so late but the heatwave helped and dare I say it , those nice soft summer showers!  The tomatoes in the lean to tunnel are just about OK, not a lot to harvest at all.I have almost stripped all the leaves and branc...

 I have been up to the allotment for some time each day, watering & weeding.I had noticed some of the peas being chomped not from the bottom as in slug attack but the tops and edges of the leaves. One of the other plotters informed me its being done by a cock pheasant who lives in the next field! I have seen him in the allotment field but not near the plots, he obviously bides his time! I covered the entire pea and broad bean beds with netting, hopefully he will be stopped before he does too much damage and they will have time to recover. The other plot has the peas in a row and he has decimated the whole row of them maybe past recovering. The raised bed with 4 courgette plants, 3x green and 1x yellow, this got a dressing of horse manure from the Hydro Allotments to create a hot bed  for them and they are putting on a growth spurt with the brilliant sunshine warming them up. I sprayed the potatoes against blight yesterday, maybe I'm paranoid but this spell of re...

 Sat morning looked promising so we set off to do a bit of plotting. GS Callum came to lend his expertise and I think thoroughly enjoyed working in 'his' garden! This is our second raised bed which is earmarked for the cucumbers which are languishing on my bedroom windowsill while waiting for the right conditions. It will be filled with horse manure from our previous allotments on  the Hydro Farm  which Zwena has very generously said we can use.It will create a 'hot bed'  for the cucumbers, then the problem will be getting Callum to dig elsewhere! Having a look around to see where else he can lend a hand?! Tea break is a very important part of gardening! The sand table was on our previous plot and it has been relocated also as we have a few mini gardeners to be amused. We could have the best watered plot on the site!The site is fairly sheltered on most sides but the incessant wind we have been having dries out the ground faster than we ...

 Posts in position for the wire fencing because we have been told that rabbits are also a big problem up here!Billy dug a trench along the fence line to bury the end of the wire to stop said rabbits from tunneling underneath. Windbreaker was then added for extra protection for plants as it is a wide open field! It is hard to see in this pic but the first permanent bed is in place across the back fence. I slipped 4 raspberry canes, 3 stools of rhubarb and 1 Globe Artichoke from the plot in The Hydro Farm. The shed has to be put into place this weekend before digging out the other beds ASAP! Potatoes are still chitting in the shed. Onions are waiting to go in. Seedlings are backing up at home waiting to be hardened off  Seeds planted today were Sugar Snap.These handy little seed trays had grapes in them, nice and high with air and drainage holes already in place and a  lid to act as an incubator Two of them just fit nicely into another reusable...

Cauliflower & cabbage plants, these were bought and potted on into larger pots and will be repotted probably twice more before going out into their permanent plot.They have been netted against the birds which would love a taste of some nice green veg to vary their winter diet.  Our seed potatoes chitting in the shed, not a whole lot but we don't have a lot of space and it will be late by the time we get them in  The rhubarb which I broke off  the big plants we had on the Hydro, I have one in the garden here which is growing fine these got 'a touch of frost' the other night and are looking a bit sorry for themselves I set to on the seed box last night and discarded out of date seeds and opened packets.I had been tidying out one of the spare rooms and came across a gardening journal which I had started last year. I start one every year but then forget about it! I was amazed at the amount of seeds I had already sowed by this time of the year so we will have ...

 Kevin and myself went out to the allotment on Fri afternoon, it was not just sunny but absolutely roasting! I watered all the plants in the greenhouse and it felt like a sauna. The tomatoes are ripening slowly.Harvest included: 2 courgettes lettuce Small Red Duke of York potatoes 2 cucumbers some french beans & small tomatoes blackcurrants,strawberries,red gooseberries & blueberries.The strawberries and cherry tomatoes went to Jack who eats them like sweets!.Not enough fruit to make a summer pudding so the gooseberries & blackcurrants were added to apples to make a summer fruit tart.The blueberries go on my cereal in the morning. The long green plant at the top of the photo is a Brussels sprout plant gone to seed, the 4th of 10 to go.It was brought home to the hens and I tied it to the fence.Within a very short time it was a skeletal shape hanging from the fence! Waste not want not. Kevin noticed some of the globe artichokes and asked to take some home...

We seem to be getting every second day dry with some sunshine then a day of continuous rain.I spent most of Tues on the plot tidying up and doing some serious weeding! Photo is of an Iris, I bought a pack of summer flowering bulbs in Lidl some time back but so far they have been all Irises. Kathryn had dug over some of the potato bed which had been vacated and I put in the winter leeks. These were in a tray at home and I have to say they are the smallest leeks I have ever planted out, hopefully they will come on now they are in their permanent bed. The Lazy Housewife bean has recovered from its hen ordeal and there are 2 pods on it so far, I am not going to use them but save them for next year's seed. They were given to me by Matron when she visited Cork last year, I did see on her blog that they should be left to dry on the plant to prevent mould. Peas, sadly neglected by us!I should have put more raffia up the poles as they grew as they had twined around each other for support.T...