Fruit Trees

And after the planting of vegetables and fruit bushes, we now have fruit trees as well. These came from the local Lidl, and look like being excellent. We put in one each of a Golden Delicious apple, a Cox's Orange Pippin apple, a Buerre Hardy pear, a Conference Pear, and an Opal plum.

Here are the hard fruit:



And this, in front of the onion and lettuce bed, is the plum:



And the only problem I ran into is that the handle of the spade I was using snapped. Just plain broke off, right above the metal haft. I'm not THAT strong, so I reckon there must have been some flaw in the wood.



The shovel we have sufficed to finish the job, and I'll look for another spade.

It's immensely satisfying to be coming into the winter with a dozen different crops already lined up for next year!

Autumn Planting: Carrots, Onions, Fruit

My order of seeds came in from Thompson & Morgan, and you can see some of the packets here:

The peas aren't to be planted until late October, but the onions and lettuce were ready to go in straight away in September. So I and Junior Cat started into getting a bed ready for them. Junior Cat's contribution was in tangling up the string I was using to mark the edges of the bed, which I'm sure we all recognise as being a vital effort.


First, I cleared back the sod on an area about 3m by 1.5m. It was a nice sunny day, and the work was not as hard as it might have been - the lawn in this part of the garden is only a few years old, and there's been nothing else there since it was last bare soil, so there aren't many deep roots.


Having put on the edging - which in this case is made of planks intended for decking - it was time to double dig. The soil from the first trench went into the big yellow bag, and we were off.


Half-way down the bed, I was developing strong respect for those people who double-dig whole gardens. This 4.5 square metre plot had a go at completely exhausting me.


But I did, eventually, finish it. This is the plot with onion seeds (left hand end) and lettuce (right hand end). It's got a good load of compost for the onions, and I hope they appreciate it - there were not as many in the pack as I was expecting, so I may fill in the gaps with a spring planting crop as well.

And then it was on to the fruit bushes. Having tried B&Q, and been disappointed, we were amused to find blackberries, raspberries, blueberries, blackcurrants and gooseberries in, of all places, Tesco. So we bought two of the blackberries and raspberries, three blackcurrants, one gooseberry bush, and one blueberry. They're planted in a long row up alongside the shed, and onward to the corner of the house.

The canes are a little frustrating - the other fruits have clearly taken well to their new places, and have some new leaves to convince us. The canes are just sitting there, though, and while I reckon they're rooting away happily, there's no sign of it above the ground. We may have to wait until spring for them to show any action, I suspect.


And finally, here's what the seed bed looks like three weeks later:


The lettuces are coming up in huge quantities, and if you look really carefully (they're probably just not visible in this image) you can see the beginning stalks of the onions. I'm very pleased with the seeds, as it looks like something close to 100% germination. And where the lettuces have not come up, I suspect the paw of cat, rather than the hand of Thompson or Morgan.

Greenhouse Blown Over

Disaster! My wife let me know on Tuesday evening that the greenhouse (and a pavilion structure we had up in the back garden from a barbecue) had blown over. By the time I got home, in with other stuff, I hadn't time to deal with it, so it had to wait until Wednesday evening. I saw this:


Whatever way the wind was on Tuesday, it contrived to push over the whole structure, pulling out the pins that run through the bottom bars and into the ground. Some of the bars are a little bent, but it stayed mostly intact. It did, however, pull over with it one tomato plant, one cucumber, one butternut squash, and one sweet pepper. Most of them seem ok, considering, but I'm not sure the cucumber is going to survive the experience.

I stood everything back up, re-pinned it, and put the plants back in:


And then while I was standing inside, it had a go at blowing over again. I was able to catch it and hold it down, but not to prevent the squash and cucumber from falling again. I then arranged two strings over it, tied to the shed on one side and pins in the ground on the other. I reckon it was a coincidence of wind direction and strength, because it's shown no sign of budging otherwise.


I have no idea if that will hold it, but it'll have to do for now. Before I put it to serious use next year, it's going to get a properly level area under it, and be attached firmly to the ground.

I'll let you know how the plants do, and if they survive bring tipped over...

Garden Food Production

The garden hasn't exactly had the chance to over-produce this year, since the only plantings were experimental. But we've had a good batch of potatoes, a courgette (more on the way), about ten tomatoes, and some spring onions. It's enough to prove the case, at least, that the place can produce food.

However, in conversations about the garden - and I apologise to those people whose ears I have talked off in recent weeks about the topic - it's starting to come up that many people's experience of food production at home is that they end up with too much. I've been thinking about that, because while anything that gets produced can be either eaten, given away, or preserved in some manner, I'd like to spread things out a bit. The ideal, I reckon, is to produce all the vegetables we need (and can reasonably grow in Ireland), and at least some of the fruit, and not to under- or over-produce.

Actually getting to precisely that state is probably harder than it sounds. You really can't predict, when you sow seed, how much is going to come up, and you can't know in advance what the depredations of slugs, blight, or other problems are going to be like. So you have to sow more than you really want to reap, just to be on the safe side.

I also think we're going to have to change our eating habits. At the moment, the main vegetable we use is the bell pepper - and unless we really do well with the greenhouse, I can't see us producing enough peppers to last the year. So there's going to have to be some adjustment toward eating the things we can produce - which is probably better than buying in peppers from elsewhere anyway.

The notion of overproducing any one crop is making me think, though, that the way to go is a wide spread of different crops. Staples like onions and potatoes can have reasonably large numbers, since they keep well. Carrots will probably get in there as well. And after that, I'm starting to think that single rows of lots of different things forms a good plan.

Where To Paint First?

We've a decision to make, some time in the next few weeks, and that's what room we're going to paint first. We're not going to do anything fancy; just get the furniture away from the walls, strip the wallpaper (two layers in most places), and paint it plain white. Other colours, feature walls with wallpaper, and so on, will follow when we know what the light is like. At the moment, though the existing wallpaper is just not doing the place any favours.

The kitchen will be awkward to work on, and I think I'd really like to get another room done first. That would be the upstairs bedroom or the sitting room/library, really, and I'm leaning heavily toward the latter. Sure, there are lots of bookshelves in there, but the books are not in any real order at the moment, so taking them off the shelves and putting them back half-randomly won't do any harm. In the bedroom, there's less furniture to move, but we need to sleep in there, so I'd like to get it done in one day, if it were at all possible. And knowing if that's possible needs the practice of doing another room first.

I've never actually done wallpaper stripping before, though. I was considering the notion of just painting the wallpaper, but I'm told that the result is inevitably unpleasantly sagging wallpaper and uneven colour. So that's out.

Expect "before", "in progress" and "after" photographs when we get going.

Winter Garden Seed Shopping

I had a plan all worked out for the vegetable garden next year. I had drawn a plan of it to scale, done the research, worked out what would go where, allowed for the perennials I want to put in, and everything. Can I find it now? Not a bit of it.

However, it may be as well, as I've started to think about what I could actually sow now for winter and spring cropping. Winter lettuces are one definite possibility - sowing now would mean I could harvest from October to May. "Winter Gem" is a variety that comes highly recommended. Thompson and Morgan don't seem to carry it, though, and they have the best recommendations on seed quality. They do carry the "Arctic King", and "Butterhead" varieties, though, and they seem to be pretty hardy. I'll try Butterhead.

Turnips and swedes will grow through the winter, certainly, but the only times I ever use the things are in stews. And there's a limit to the number of stews I can make. So they're probably not a going concern, unless some of my local readers will volunteer to take some of the things off my hands.

There's a breed of carrot called "Autumn King", which is specifically for autumn sowings, and could be harvested as early as October, if I plant now. Carrots are good filler for stews, pies, soups and so on, and can be grated into salads, so I reckon we'd have a use for them. T&M carry "Autumn King 2", so that gets added to the shopping basket as well.

Peas are very favoured, and an early crop next year would be very nice indeed. T&M are out of my preferred winter option, "Meteor", and don't seem to have any other autumn-sowing varieties. I'll have to look elsewhere for those.

For onions, which I'll always have uses for, I'm looking at something called a "Hi Keeper F1 Hybrid". Technical name, but it can be planted in September, and not thinned until spring. Ideal, so into the basket with that, too.

So lettuce, carrots, and onions, and I'll have to look elsewhere for peas. I seem to recall that some varities of potato might do for autumn planting as well - I'll have to do some more research.

Courgettes & Greenhouse Crops

Things are growing well in the garden. We had the first real produce two weeks ago; potatoes. The plants were starting to fall over, having not produced flowers, so I figured that for sprouting supermarket potatoes, they'd probably done all that they could. Up they came...



... and as you can see, the crop - this is from a plot of about two square feet, at the very most - was respectable enough. I steamed them, and they turned out very well indeed. Even the Lodger pronounced them excellent.



In the meantime, the courgette plant, the single one that came up, has gone from this protected little specimen:



... to this monster:



... and since then has gone into actual production. If it keeps going at the current rate, I reckon we'll be eating the first courgette around the end of this week.

In the greenhouse, things have boomed:



The front left is a butternut squash,the front right a greenhouse cucumber. They're already about twice as big as in this picture (taken only a week ago), and are starting to produce flowers, so I'm hopefully of some cropping from them soon. I recall having to pinch out the tips of squashes before, but I'll do some research before I try it on this one. The cucumber is doing a rather cool thing where any joint of the plant that reaches the ground starts to develop roots. Behind them are the two tomato plants, which have thus far produced two fully ripe tomatoes and host of as-yet unripe ones, and the sweet pepper, which has just today developed some tiny buds that look like they might yet become peppers.

And finally, we have blackberries growing in our hedgerow:



I clipped back the ash and hawthorn that make most of the hedge today, and left about six good brambles protruding, all of which have berries at various not-quite-ripe stages of maturity. There's also a few good bunches well out of reach in the hedge, but they're close enough to the house that I think a ladder and some not-too-precarious leaning should reach them.

Rainproof House

We had record breaking rain in Ireland yesterday, and I'm happy to note that effects on the house were minimal. The back door, which was facing directly into the oncoming rain, had some water creep in at the top, and even lodge on top of the door itself, but I'm putting that down to the sheer quantity, and the west wind driving it in. All the other windows, or at the least the ones that were closed, kept out the rain perfectly well, and the drains nearly coped. Given the volume, I think some overrun was allowable. I do need to get some sort of rain butt for the garden, though - it's a complete waste of water to have it run off into the local drainage system, and overburden the already swamped drains and sewers.

The rain itself was spectacular; a dense haze of water, thicker near the ground where raindrops were rebounding by about a metre off concrete and tarmac. We were just in the door of the local supermarket when it started, and even the roof there sprang a few leaks. Other people weren't so lucky, and I understand there's been plenty of flooding, with the M50, M3 and M1 hit badly.

Greenhouse

On Saturday, after a visit to the National Botanic Gardens in Dublin with some friends, where they have a wonderful new vegetable and fruit garden, we dropped into a branch of B&Q to get various goods, mostly for the garden.

The main purchase was a plastic greenhouse and some plants to go in it. It's a Gardman one, and was very easy indeed to assemble.



This is the space pre-Greenhouse, with the box leaning up against the shed. As you can see, there was blazing sunshine on the day I assembled it.


This is me in the process of assembly. Note elderly garden work trousers (which have been to India when they were still wearable in public places). Also note slight canting of poles, due to uneven ground. The nettles by my right foot are not really visible in this picture.


Fully assembled, with some plants bought from B&Q installed. That's two tomatoes on the top left, a sweet pepper on the top right, and a butternut squash and a cucumber at the bottom left and right respectively. I know it's cheating, but I don't think anything planted from seed now will grow by the time it gets too cold. The nettles have done their fill of stinging at this stage.


And here's how it looks when it's zipped up, and the day has naturally dulled by a bit.

I'm not entirely sure how well it's doing. The plants are certainly still alive, but it never seems that much warmer in there than outside, and I'm a bit worried by the sheer number of bugs that wind up inside and don't get out. On the other hand, there are a few spiders in there, so maybe the mini-ecosystem will balance out. The uneven ground means that there's a fair bit of air getting in at the bottom, and I'm not sure if that's a problem or not. Most of the permanent greenhouses I've seen are pretty solid around the base.

I might construct something with some tiles and bricks for next year - a sort of semi-permanent base.

House Pictures from Portugal

We're recently back from a short holiday in the Algarve, in Portugal. I spent a good bit of the time there, when I wasn't reading or zoning out, rubbernecking at the architecture and design. I was fascinated by the houses; all steps and softened corners and white and tiles. I think there must be a strong remnant of Moorish influences, because really, they're like nothing I've seen anywhere else in the West. Here are a few pictures, which I'm keeping for inspiration.

This one I like because of the sprawl of balconies and roofs and chimneys. Note also the solar panels - we saw a lot of those, often on houses that were quite old, and on modern apartments and the like as well. The level of greenery was unexpected - there had just been a three week spell of cloud and rain, and it showed.


These outside steps are typical of the houses - built as integrated parts of the structure, decorated with tiles and arches and small details of paintwork. All this is facing the Atlantic coast, and in the blazing sunshine, the white walls are almost blinding. My prescription sunglasses usually give a sepia tint to things in Ireland, but confronted with this light, all they could do was dull it enough to let me escape without a headache.


And this house was just over the hill from the hotel we were staying in. I love the combination of round and angular structures, the way in which it combines wall and roof and stairs to form one frontispiece, and the organic look of the whole thing. The picture doesn't quite do it justice, unfortunately, but as with many other buildings here, it was impossible to find a place from which you could take a single picture that showed the whole building - there were always details out of sight, or trees blocking the view. In some ways, that was part of the charm of the buildings; there were always new details to be found.

(All pictures by my wife, whose camera skills trump mine every time)