An Organic Lifestyle (Organic Growing Pains)

 This is son Billy's first year plotting with me, he had said they use quite a lot of courgettes and was looking forward to seeing them grow and picking fresh ones.I thought you will have some job coping with a glut so just put in 3 green and 1 yellow courgette plants.They have been very slow with the cold nights we had been experiencing but this week they have been reaching glut proportions! The smaller ones were almost overnights and the larger one was deemed a bit small the previous day! I wanted to make some Comfrey 'tea' to feed our new plot. We always had it on the Hydro Farm  so while I was in Blarney recently I paid a visit to catch up with plotting friends. I met Zwena, Rosie & Tom and came home with an armfull of Comfrey which grows wild  there and some rhubarb ! Comfrey should really be used before setting flowers when it is at its most potent but as with everything else this year I am like the white rabbit in Alice in Wonderland, I am ...

 My beautiful lily which grows in a pot just outside the patio door was sending out the wrong signals, I kept staring , not quite sure what I was seeing. The leaves were either half gone or semi transparent and there were black lumps as I thought on the undersides of quite a few of them, then I spied this lone red beetle on a leaf.  I have never seen a Lily beetle before but immediately knew that is what it was. Because I had become aware of the damage almost immediately on looking at the Lily I can only suppose it was not there this morning and had either landed or hatched out and immediately set to work!  I took a photo of the Lily just in case it does not survive another day! I searched the shed and came across this bottle and on reading the different bugs it dispatches there is the lily beetle, not a red one but a beetle just the same. I drenched each leaf on top and the underside and then got tissue, cleaned each leaf and then sprayed again to be sure...

 I headed up to the plot early this morning as it was promising to be a really warm day, I put my 2 surviving hens into a box and took them with me. Two have died during the past few months from what I can only presume is old age, they have stopped laying now and are like 2 elderly dowagers. I had a rather romantic notion that they would like  to spread their wings, feel the breeze in their feathers and romp in slow motion through the long grass of one of the unused plots?!  I left them out, they investigated the long grass for all of 20 minutes grumbling loudly and proceeded to stand by the gate with their heads buried in the long grass with their tales sticking up for the remainder of the morning ! I had worried in case I would not be able to catch them again but they almost hopped into the box for me! Back in their run they marched up and down squawking loudly, my hens do not do foraging they like their food and water provided! I painted the gate a ...

The garden at home is really beginning to burst into flower, above the 'Manhatten Lights' lupin bought at Mallow Homes & garden festival 2 years ago. The Mallow show is on at the moment and I hope to visit tomorrow ,weather permitting. We have been to Chelsea and Bloom so cannot but attend our very own garden show held at the Cork racecourse in Mallow! This photo was taken last week before the lupins flowered.In the front the primrose 'Vialli' bought at Bloom by sis Kathleen, between the lupin and primrose is Geum, seen at Bloom and bought here at home recently. This is a candelabra primrose bought at Mallow garden festival last year, I had forgotten about it until it bloomed quite spectacularly! Close up of the 'Vialli' primrose. The Acquelegia or Granny's Bonnet, this one is a lovely shade, it has reseeded all over the garden even in the gravel. This you have seen before, March pansies still blooming in their bowl ! The aliums were ...

The Broad beans have begun producing, this photo was taken a few days ago so they have gotten a little bigger since then, the quandary  now being when and how to pick and cook them?! Today, 3 onion beds weeded,fed and watered with the paths in between clipped with a hand clippers. We were going to dig out the paths and cover with 'something' but regular clipping will keep them tidy.There are 2 white onion beds and one red, they seem to be in varying stages of growth even in the same bed as can be seen in the top bed in the photo! The courgettes are really taking off, even though none have reached an edible stage yet there are lots of blossom. The sweetcorn is about a foot high and developing nicely, it is hard to see them properly here seen through the netting to deter the very determined Cock Pheasant from getting in. The small green plants around the edge are dwarf French beans, they are planted around 2 sides of the bed. The lean to tunnel is fulfilling its ...

 Was it the late Spring, but I don't think I have ever seen such an array of wild flowers adorning our ditches.Ditches to the uninitiated are banks of earth of varying heights which divide our fields. They are usually topped with bushes and trees and grass and weeds grow up the sides which are cut by the council or at least supposed to be cut by them. They cannot cut them at certain times of the year because of birds nesting, maybe because of the recession and staff cutbacks they just have not cut back the undergrowth as they should and all of these wonderful wild flowers are springing up to brighten our journeys.  Someone said that a weed is a flower in the wrong place and that is certainly true this year. The Bluebells were spectacular this year and the one flower I did not get a pic of were the banks of wild garlic, it would have meant stopping at the side of the road and may not have been the wisest thing to do.  Bluebells and creeping buttercup, nature has co...

 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...