All from nothing... (Part 14)

Our efforts to transform an unused piece of land into a productive vegetable garden.


It appears that we've finally been blessed with some seasonal weather, and knowing Irish weather can turn rainy at the drop of a hat, we've done our best to get out to the allotment on the afternoons and get as much work completed as possible. 


The allotment is changing with the summer, and the beech hedge that runs along one side of it is now a riot of beautiful wine and ruby leaves.


To begin, we built a frame (using the decking wood I mentioned in my last post) for the potatoes to sit in. We had chosen to place the frame parallel with the fence of the allotment, just to the right of the gate. I dug the earth underneath the frame thoroughly - this was a job I had been dreading as it's right beside a huge shrub (that I blogged about some time ago, when I cut it back) and I was concerned that the ground might be full of roots. 

The dreaded roots...

Turns out I was right! As luck would have it, there was only one large one from the shrub, which I had to saw through. The rest of them - and there were many - were mostly nettle roots. 
After I had finished, Clare sowed the potatoes out.
(Left, our makeshift frame)


The next job on the list to get my teeth into was finally completing the forking of the soil on the left of the allotment. This took a couple of hours to do properly, as I was removing the three "R's" (roots, rocks and rubble) while also mixing compost through the soil. After finishing this, Clare layed out some new beds, and picked out whatever stones and roots I had missed. 


The utterly incredible weather continued today, so we packed up lunch for the kids and all headed down to the allotment. I finished up laying out the new beds, and Clare sowed beans (dwarf yellow and purple tepee) and peas into them (the peas were planted out). I then hammered hazel staves into each end of the beds, and ran garden twine between them. To avoid confusion, this gave us three separate structures that the peas and beans will climb up. 

 Our climbing frames.

To make sure growing conditions are are optimum, Clare tested the PH of the soil, and it appears to be PH neutral, which hopefully will be to our benefit.






This evening, I sowed out the asparagus, all of which thankfully are still alive! Fifteen plants in all, that will hopefully keep producing for the next twenty years. 

The veg in the allotment seem to be making the most of the clement weather we're currently enjoying. The radishes are flying up - I appreciate they're a quick growing plant, but this growth is great to see - visibly getting larger by the day! 


On a more serious note, when watering the vegetables this evening, I noticed one of the enemies of the allotment gardener on our celery plants - slugs! I was quite affronted by the sight of them, as I hadn't expected to see them until the allotment was more fully established. In any case, I examined each celery plant and got rid of all of them before going home. 

Our celery - which the slugs want to feast on. Constant vigilance needed!

So that's where we're at. Next week is all about forking (as usual). But this time, I'll be working the right side of the central path. Getting so close to being finished I can almost smell it. So much more vegetables to be grown, eaten and hopefully enjoyed!

The allotment as it looked this afternoon.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch... (part 5)

It's been a while since I wrote about how our veg is growing at home. There's some new stuff growing, so I guess now is an appropriate time to write a blog about it. 

I'll start with the tomatoes. 
These have been planted outside for a week or two now, albeit underneath a sheet of transparent perspex (which has fulfilled the duel role of slightly warming the air underneath it and also protecting the tomato plants from overnight frost).


They're growing well, our next job is to put wire up in the troughs to allow the plants cling to when they send out creepers. 
All the troughs (or pots) that the tomatoes are growing in are filled with compost that's been rotting down in our compost bin for the last two years. 

Leeks

The leeks we planted are growing taller by the day. Clare rotates the box the leeks are planted in every day to ensure they all receive an equal amount of sunlight. They'll be left in the box for another month (till June) before we plant them out in the plot. 

Cucumbers (the pots to the left)

We're also growing cucumber - the seeds were quick to germinate, and the plants are even quicker to grow. In the above photo, the cucumber plants are the large plants in the pots to the extreme left (the next two rows to the right are peas, but more of that below). 
We had good success with the cucumber plants we grew the year before last - growing decent sized (and delicious) cucumbers. 
The cucumbers will be planted out in our back garden, as I think they'll require more care and attention than the other veg that we'll plant out in the plot.


The reason that we're growing additional peas is that by "staggering" the growth of the plants should give us a constant harvest of peas throughout the summer. 

Clare's also growing some veg we've never tried before - Cos Lettuce (pictured left) and "Purple Teepee", a type of bean that grows long, purple (surprise!) pods. I'm looking forward to see how these come along (pictured right). We're experimenting by germinating the seeds in "Jiffy 7's", which are basically recycled coconut fibres packed into a small disk. After watering them, they expand and you then sow your seeds into them. So far they seem to be working out pretty well. 

We split our chilli plants into two different good sized pots, suitable for sitting on the windowsill where they'll reside all summer. They're growing well, and already we're starting to see the first flowers coming out . These will of course eventually transform into hot chilies. 

 Now, time to go back outdoors. Last year we bought a shoot off a blackcurrant bush (pictured below). To be honest, as it looked like nothing more than a twig, I didn't really hold out any hope for anything growing from it. How wrong I was. Over the course of last summer, the twig grew into a bone fide blackcurrant bush. It eventually reached a height of about two and a half feet before the autumn kicked in and slowed its growth. 
A couple of weeks ago, buds started to appear on it, and at this point, it's continuing its skyscraper-like growth. We're collected a bucket of composted manure from the plot, and scattered it over the base of the bush. 

The blackcurrant is a really decent addition to the garden. It's a decent looking plant, and gives off a fantastic aroma. 


(Pictured right, you can see the original "graft" that the blackcurrant grew from - its the straight "twig" in the dead centre of the bush). 

The extent to which the blackcurrant has grown this year is obvious from the photo to the left - last years growth is the "woody" grey part of the stem towards the bottom. All the green stem is this years growth (so far!). It's about fifteen centimetres growth so far. 


I'm training some of the branches against the trellis to ensure they don't get crowded. Hopefully this will also make it easier to pick the fruit in years to come.
The leaves will come in useful to make a fruit tea. 

And, leaving the best news for last, our blackcurrant bush has started to produce fruit (pictured right). There are several bunches of these berries growing on the bush. I'm really excited about when I can finally harvest them, though I'm in several minds as to what to do with the berries - jam? - cordial? 
Any ideas greatly appreciated, please just leave a comment on the bottom of the blog.

There's also some good news on the gooseberry front. The gooseberry sapling I planted this year hadn't shown any signs of life, and after the frosts of early April, I had given it up for dead. 
However, after checking on it today, I discovered a few buds shooting up. 
It's not much, but the blackcurrant had small beginnings too, so I'll be patient. The idea of having both gooseberries and blackcurrants growing in our back garden next year is a very satisfying one!  

Strawberries

Last year we planted out a few strawberry plants, which grew some decent strawberries (every single one of which was enjoyed by Thomas!). In the autumn, these plants sent out "runners", which I replanted around the garden. These runners are now starting to blossom, as can be seen from the picture above. Not sure quite yet how many strawberry plants survived, but every one is a bonus. More details will follow on my blogs in the future.

On a final note - the forager in me wouldn't be happy unless I mentioned that some "hairy bittercress" (Cardamine hirsuta, pictured left) is growing fairly prolifically at the bottom of my garden. 

Most people would think of this as a weed - myself included. However I also know that this is a perfectly edible little gem of a weed - and it's not bitter at all.

As its name suggests, it tastes almost exactly like the "normal" cress most people will be used to - i.e nice and peppery, a lovely addition to a summer salad.