Winter madness

The snow has come with avengence in Dublin. We woke up to a 4 inch coating of white powder in the early hours of Sunday morning. An examination at dawn revealed some challenging circumstances for the winter crops.



Swiss Chard under Swiss conditions.



Frozen leek.



Winter variety broad beans (Aqua dulce) being tested



Perpetual spinach... I hope.



The most productive corner in Summer is the most bleak in Winter.

Sunflowers, spuds and summer

The weather has been exceptionally good (like, hot even) over the last two months and le garden has responded well.

Corn and zucchini going well in the sunny weather

First sunflower opened its glorious display last week - its over two meters high with a stem 4 cm thick! We are onto the last of the early spuds which have been divine! Saving the last for when a friend visits next week.

Unfortunately, most of the leafy greens bolted and so Michael has resown coriander, lettuce, rocket, spinach and bok choi in the hope that we can get another crop before the cold weather hits. I've not been particularly good with my succession planting, but then this year was mainly an experiment in determining what plants do best where.

Michael has decommissioned on of the Lisbon Treaty Composting Facilities in favour or a pile in a quite corner. The Treaty bin design lacked appropriate airflow - this has been rectified on one of the bins, but as the arrange was sorta ugly anyway, the second heap will now be much easier to turn. Of course, there was plenty of compost in the bottom -it did work - just not fast enough to keep up with our organic inputs. I'll make up some more nettle tea soon to give the heaps a boost. We are placing organic overflow into a wheely bin - which needs turning weekly given the restricted air flow and danger of stagnating water in the base (eek).

New ti-tech heap

New garden bed left by the removal of the Lisbon Treaty compost bin

Otherwise, Michael's flowers are going brilliantly: marigolds, sweet peas and lots of others I haven't gotten around to learning. He's also transformed the lawn - from dyring moss and weed to a proper velvet l blanket. The moss removal was exhausting confirming my view that lawn is a waste of space. But its the landlord's preference, so we need to live with it.

Back in town and too busy to write blogs! So many chores in the garden. However, I have had a moment to take some "before and after" shots covering the month I was in absentia.

My guerilla gardening is on track (about 10 spud plants growing happily in the neighbour's frontyard). Waging a war with the most divine coloured slugs I've ever seen! (pale with bright, fluoro orange stenciling). Getting anxious about the onset of blight (i.e. the potato disease that reduced Ireland population from 8 million to about 4 million). Umming and aahing whether or not to take pre-emptive (and thus, decidely unorganic) action and apply Bordeaux mixture. However, am having more success with elminating one pesky Brit from the neighbourhood - Helix hedra - or English Ivy - three progressive elmination photos below.

We've adopted yet another feline companion - this one with a desire to help warm the seedling beds in the greenhouse.

But best of all, have harvested and created my first meal from the garden (with a few cheaty bits - see below): Pork medallion in breadcrumbs with fresh sage, spring garden salad, garlic bread and homemade beer.

Snapshop before my antipodean hiatus

Its been another frenzied weekend of activity in the garden. Actually, it was such a lovely day on Friday (Irish weather: Think hen's teeth) so I took the day off and set my last lot of seeds: corn, mangetout, jalapeno, hungarian peppers, gourds, butternut pumpkin (from a grocery-bought fruit), green pumpkin and some helianthus seeds (found on the tram tracks - the ones the birds didn't want). With the new home-made greenhouse, there's plenty of space for these additions, though I am keep a munch indoors on the window sill for "insurance" purposes.

I embarked on some guerilla gardening in next-doors front yard to use up the remaining seed potatoes and found a bag of onion sets I'd overlooked and so whacked those in around the edges of garden beds.

I found a bunch of seeds from the early nineties in Michael's mum's old shed when visiting Clonmel a fortnight ago, so he has set about testing their viability. So far its been at least partly successful - not bad for seeds almost 20 years old (see the handing basket below). Also, he started chopping into the bamboo in the back corner of the property and has provided me with a fantastic supply of stakes and framing material!

So the rest of this blog catalogues each garden bed under tillage as of 25 April: as I will retake each photo when I return from the antipodes to see what a month's spring sun can achieve. I've also included a shot of the foul English ivy strangling the lovely ash out front (and steal precious light from our frontal sections) to see how much further it has declined since I snipped off all its life-support trunks (with glee). Also, the clematis vine running up the balustrade of the front steps is in bloom and looks great.

So its bon voyage for a month!

So I’ve been a bit slack since may last blog – but only in maintaining the updates – not in gather subject matter for the blog.

Alas, here’s why you cannot garden in winter in Dublin (some before and after shots):
























Worst of all, as the seedlings and rapidly chitting spuds sat eagerly on the window sill trembling with anticipation to break free into the garden – this hit us unexpectedly on 30 March (ie equivalent to getting snow on September 30 in Oz - madness):















However, spring finally rolled in and last weekend was a cracker – here are the jobs completed in the last fortnight of so:
- spuds all chitted and planted (three varieties – two maincrop and one early)
- onions and shallots in
- beetroot sown directly
- garlic bulbs plugged all over the front and back garden, including pots and a few in the herb trough on the front window sill
- the “cut and come again” leafy stuff planted as close to the kitchen as possible (roquette, spinach, lamb’s lettuce, butter lettuce, pak choi and coriander)
- mangetout (or “snow peas” in our parlance) planted in innumerable locations such as against hedges, in pots near trees, along wrought iron railings, in hanging baskets – all in the hope of avoiding any need to put in stakes
- cherry tomatoes in a trough elevated high on the front wall in the hope of getting maximum sun and sending down a cascade of fruit laden vines
- sun flowers (for fun as much an anything)
- leek, zucchini, roma tomato and rocket sown in trays to be planted out when we are sure the frosts have passed
- strawberry plants in temporary pots in anticipation of stable hot weather
- radishes getting matted in a single pot (gotta plant out soon)

And this is inaddition to turning in about 10 large bags of peat moss to improve structure (my landlady is SO jealous – its waste peat from compost testing, so sorta ethical). Michael has dug up ALL the stone in the backyard, washed it BY HAND, sieved and relaid it with the flagstones – it looks wonderful. The existing garden beds have been almost doubled in size by sacrificing a few large corners of the front lawn and extending the edging in the back yard. Best of all, as the sun races higher each day, we are seeing that the normally dark backyard actually gets some great stretches of sun in the latter part of the day and could be more productive than the front (which is south-facing, which actually means “north facing” for all intents and purposes here).



Last weekend, as I was severing the cut-throat vines of the English ivy to liberate the poor ash in the front yard (and also giving us much more light) a fella named George was passing buy. We struck up a gardening conversation and later on came by with some lovely potted hellebores!


My dream will be to successfully grow pumpkin. The only variety they sell widely here is butternut (and they call it a “squash” rather than a pumpkin), so I am hoping to get some variety. There are a couple of places in the front and back that could be fabulous for a vine to scramble up, so watch this space. I will raise some seeds in our new fabulous greenhouse (from Aldi – amazingly efficient) and sow some directly. You get a better generation rate in the greenhouse, but, pumpkins are very precious about root disturbance so it’s a catch 22 of sorts (I’ll use dunny rolls again to minimise disturbance).

And if that was enough, I’ve also helped some mates up the road kit out their garden with about half the list described above – so fingers crossed for a bumber crop!

Finally, here's the lovely breaky I ated in the sun last weekend - using window-sill grown basil and lettuce!