An Organic Lifestyle (Organic Growing Pains)

It rained steadily all through Friday and Saturday, this morning dawned bright and sunny but the clouds have been gathering and even though it has not rained yet it is on the way.I did not pick the raspberries when we were out on the plot on Wed morning thinking to leave them another couple of days to fully ripen.Yesterday in the midst of the downpour I was thinking about the raspberries rotting in the rain and the slugs so took myself out,donned the rain gear and set to work gathering the fruit and putting down slug bait.The rain was like a curtain it was so heavy, this photo is of the manure heap at the top of the plots, you can get an idea of the rain from the splashes in the puddle which spread and spread in to a mini lake. No..the men in white coats have not come for me...yet! View to the left from the shed where I had to shelter from the worst of it, I am sorry the rain is not actually visible but the leaden grey of the sky gives some clue! View to the right from the shed showing...

I took these photos on Monday last when we were still enjoying sunshine.This week has ended with torrential rain which is forecast to continue through next week as we are in the middle of a deep depression causing higher than normal rainfall for the first 2 weeks of July, Oh well another 'normal' Irish summer!The slugs have ideal weather conditions, humidity and rain. These are some of the tomatoes in the greenhouse which have set fruit, rain or no rain today I have to go out to water them, it is very easy to forget about plants growing indoors when you are looking out at falling rain. The harvest that day,spring onions, lettuce,the last of the mange tout which have now been cut down and added to our compost heap their roots were left in the ground to add nitrogen.A few dwarf broad beans which will be going the same way as the mange tout soon.Raspberries and some strawberries which were turned into muffins, I have an Italian student at the moment who will have chocolate cupcake...

I began uploading this post on Tues evening but Smart telecom our phone and Internet provider experienced what they called a major 'outage' in the Cork area so we are only back online since this afternoon! Mallow garden festival was thronged for the 3 days it was open,it takes place on the Mallow racecourse each year.Zwena had been invited to 'do' an allotment for it so we were totally inexperienced greenhorns to the exhibition stage! Our scarecrow was designer clad from the charity shop!We constructed a compost heap and a raised bed, the idea was not to have a picture perfect site but to replicate the allotment as much as possible. I thought we would have a nice flat area where we would put in some raised beds with veg and that would be it.We got one of the 24 permanent gardens with 3 curved raised stone beds and had to work with that.The first day we went out we cleared and dug over the beds, the soil was not great, in fact terrible but we planted potatoes and some v...

We had a great day for and at the wedding on Friday. Billy,Janice,Alex and Callum A very rare photo, I am sure the only one in existence. 7 out of 8 children in one place at one time, dressed and cleaned up beautifully!The Groom does spoil it a little by pulling a face though. Alex and Lauryn were Groomsman and Bridesmaid All the girls Callum having forty winks to make sure he was up to speed for the day! The wedding invitations were done by caricature artist Niall O loughlin , one was mounted and Alex was in charge of making sure all of the guests signed it.We all had caricatures done during the course of the night, some hilarious. Billy & Janice enjoying the sunshine and strolling as man & wife. We had a fabulous day and danced the night away until the wee hours to a DJ. Photos of the Mallow garden festival tomorrow, it was on Friday,Saturday and today when I spent some time there, I must say the allotment garden was a big hit and was 'manned' by Zwena and a team on e...

With all the tooing and froing of the last couple of weeks I have forgotten to take photos of our take home harvest which has become a daily bounty now with the warm weather. Our first earlies, Charlotte are being dug and are blight free and unmarked, anyone who has had them has been full of praise for their taste and of course the dry weather has kept them clean skinned.They are being sprayed for blight every week and so far so good. We have had a bumper crop of strawberries and the raspberries are just beginning to redden, hence the fruit net being put up in a hurry. Rhubarb is growing apace, the new plants seem to be catching up with the older ones. We are getting very excited about the Sweet corn for once it has the correct temps and is almost growing while we are looking at it! The salad bed is producing spring onions and lettuce, we have quite a bit of lettuce staggered around the plot even on the Asparagus bed which I had to put net around as we are being over run with rabbits! ...

We had a fabulous day for our open day and evening BBQ.Lots of family and friends turned up to see why we spend so much time out here!Zwena explaining the art of toasting marshmallows to the children,great credit is due to her for the excellent turn out and catering for the day. Zwena also presented prizes for last years sunflower and pumpkin competitions and somehow managed to give prizes to nearly all of the children! The courtyard painted and spruced up before the guests arrived.Aisling had painted all of the old farm machinery last week and Gemma had painted nice rustic looking signs,all of the painting of gates etc was done during the week by different people.Zwena likes bright colours! The boys minding the small boys on our mini patio in front of the shed. Some of the visitors chatting, it is also a chance for the plotters to visit each others plots and chat as we are all there at different times and may not have actually met each other for quite some time. The hastily erected fr...