After a couple of quiet weeks it’s time to get busy in the veg patch again, this time with harvesting. Our onions are ready to pick so it’s a job for a quiet Saturday, if the weather plays ball. Gathering onions and getting them ready for winter storage is one of the bigger harvesting jobs… Read more »
A few months ago, I was giving a talk about growing things (as you do) to a GIY group and was discussing the growing of spuds when a woman put up her hand to comment. She told us about a tradition in her family when the first new spuds of the season were being harvested…. Read more »
Tomatoes have a long growing season so to get good fruit you need to get the plants started early (if you are growing from seed). I sow my tomatoes on a heating mat in the potting shed in mid February, so by early March they have germinated. This year I am sowing five varieties of… Read more »
2015 is the UN FAO’s Year of Soil. The year-long project aims to raise awareness in society about the ‘profound importance’ of soil for human life and promote the sustainable management of soil. FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva said that we are not paying enough attention to soil, our silent ally, which I reckon… Read more »
New Year’s resolutions sometimes get a bad wrap, because they seem to represent the folly and flightiness of the human spirit. We start off the year with grand intentions to eat only salads, walk/run/swim 100 miles a week, and to do Bikram yoga in a sauna until we weigh as much as a baby sparrow…. Read more »
This year I managed to fill three large hessian sacks with spuds for storage and we’ve been tucking in to them every other day as required. It’s very handy to have them there, waiting patiently in the garage for their moment of destiny in the kitchen. I have to admit however that we’ve lost more… Read more »
With Halloween soon over, the countdown to Christmas is truly on, and as a result we have turkeys back in our garden again. Each year we rear about four turkeys, with one becoming the centrepiece of our Christmas Day celebrations, and the balance jointed and put in to the freezer. It’s an arrangement that has… Read more »
There’s always a moment in every GIYer’s year when things pivot from a focus on the current year to preparing for the next. It always amazes me how suddenly it happens (and how early—I mean we’re still in peak produce mode from this year’s growing). I was clearing a bed the other day in which… Read more »
It’s hard to fathom, but it’s already August and the seed-sowing year is almost over—this month is the last opportunity to sow seeds and marks the end of seven months of fairly intense seed sowing activity that started way back in the dreary days of February. May and June were the busiest seed sowing months,… Read more »
I know that sometimes I can be guilty of hyperbole, but recently I visited a garden that I think could transform Ireland. One of the recipients of a community food growing grant from AIB via the GIY Get Ireland Growing Fund last year was the Headlands Community Garden. Headlands is an attractive housing estate in… Read more »
Could soil be the new Prozac? This is a question prompted by a recent research study, which found that treatment with a specific soil bacterium, Mycobacterium vaccae, can alleviate the symptoms of depression. Scientists set up an experiment whereby mice were put in a beaker of water and watched to see how long they would… Read more »
Each month, I try and think about my seed sowing in two categories. The first category is those veg that we must sow pretty much every month to guarantee a consistent supply (without gluts)—so for example: lettuce, spinach, oriental greens, calabrese etc. Between March and August, I sow a little of these at the start… Read more »
