November newsletter with Klaus and Joanna

Posted November 24, 2024 by Josette Farrell in News.

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November Gardening Newsletter

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Dear Fellow Gardeners,

Our new project at Tilled Earth is moving on nicely. We laid out the Walled Garden and Warren has done Trojan work getting the garden ready for the next year. I always claim never to trust a man with a digger, but I would trust Warren to butter my slice of bread with his digger. It’s quite amazing how skilled and gentle he is with such a powerful machine!

We also removed the old concrete plaster on the front of the building. Actually – that’s a lie – Joanna spent hours every day with the kango to remove the plaster. Together we did the much gentler job of pointing the stones with lime plaster. It’s such a wonderful transformation. We’ll send some photos in our next newsletter. Our plan is to start growing food in the Walled Garden and Greenhouse in early spring and plan to open for courses in summer 2025 when the classroom and kitchen will be ready.

Last Sunday I visited Ian Graham – the project manager at Fota Island Walled Garden and a previous student of mine. He kindly gave us some Chilean myrtle trees for planting a hedge between the garden and the greenhouse. These have edible and fairly nice tasting berries. He also gave me lots of seeds and plants of exciting unusual plants including cuttings of the perennial Taunton kale, seeds of the fig-leaved gourd and many other exotic and unusual seeds.

I’m most excited about the American Groundnut (Apios americana) though. I used to grow it many years ago and it is one of the most beautiful greenhouse climbing plants with edible tubers that look like necklaces and have the most beautiful flowers. Apios americana new.jpg

Ian also grows Solanum aethiopicum in one his polytunnels. This brought me right back to my travels to Uganda many years ago when I visited a group of organic farmers there. In Uganda , the plant is called ‘Nakati’. Here it is known as the bitter tomato or African eggplant. It is more like an aubergine than a tomato. In Uganda they use the leaves and cook it like spinach.

solanum aethiopicum new.jpg

Unfortunately I didn’t get the most delicious fruit plant but I certainly tasted quite a number of them. It’s the Chilean guava (Ugni molinae) which thrives in Fota Island arboretum and also in Ballymaloe Cookery School. I’m so puzzled that I only recently discovered this amazing plant and that only very few gardeners and chefs know about it. It’s strange because it has been grown here as an ornamental for a long time and even Queen Victoria declared it as her favourite fruit. I could smell a sweet scent of strawberry a good distance away from the plant. We’ll definitely grow lots of them at Tilled Earth. They will even like our acidic soil in Tilled Earth!

Christmas Gift

Book: The Self-Sufficient Garden & 15 Seed Packets (€39.95)

Give someone the gift of growing their own vegetables this Christmas. The book ‘The Self-Sufficient Garden’ and a gift box with 15 vegetable seed packets is the perfect gift for any type of gardener.

Have a look at our website on: Christmas Gift 2025 – The Self-Sufficient Garden & 15 Seed Packets – Green Vegetable Seeds

New Seeds

Great Mullein (Verbascum thapsus)

The great mullein is one of our most beautiful wild flowers and also medicinal herb. It is a biennial plant which produces softly haired leaves that grow in a rosette in the first year. In the second year the plant produces a tall candelabra like flower stalk with yellow flowers up to two metres tall. After producing the seeds in early winter, the plant dies and starts again from seed.

Apparently in medieval ages, the flower spikes were dipped in wax, hence the German name ‘Koenigskerze’ – King’s Candle. It also has various medicinal benefits and is a host for a wide range of creatures. The leaves are food for the mullein moth caterpillar and the seedheads are an ideal hibernating place for ladybirds. Apparently the Carder bee uses the soft downy growth of the leaves of the plant to build their nests.

I recently collected seeds and these are available now on our website: www.greenvegetableseeds.com Mullein.jfif

Upcoming courses and talks in 2025

Date: Wednesday 8^th January 2025

Talk: Grow Your Own Organic Vegetables and Fruit

Venue: Station House Hotel, Clifden, Co. Galway – 8pm

Contact: Breandan

Email: [email protected]

Date: Monthly Day Gardening Courses in Ballymaloe – starting in February 2025

Course: Grow your own food in healthy soil

Venue: Ballymaloe Cookery School

Contact: Karen on [email protected]

This course is suited for anyone who plans to start a food garden. It is filled with practical tips and demonstrations on how to prepare the soil; compost making session, seed sowing demonstration and how to avoid pests and diseases. The course is held at the productive and beautiful gardens in Ballymaloe.

Date: Tuesday 11^th February 2025

Talk : Grow Your Own Organic Food

Venue: Carrigtohill Gardening Club (evening)

Contact: Caroline Horgan

Email: [email protected]

Date: Thursday 27^th February 2025

Talk: Growing food in healthy soil

Venue: Kilkenny (evening)

Contact: Lucy

Email: to be confirmed

Weekend Course in Renvyle House Hotel

There will be another gardening weekend at Renvyle House Hotel in Connemara with myself and Anja Gohlke – the Head Gardener at Kylemore Abbey.