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)

Plant Life

My mother-in-law has brought us some roses from my wife's grandmother's house. These are actual plantable roses, I hasten to add, and are now planted in the back garden, equidistant from the tool shed and the Experimental Potato bed. They look to be settling in nicely. This inheritance-style arrival of plants is something I like greatly, although I'm going to have to consider carefully my brother's offer of a small oak tree, since, like oaks anywhere, it won't remain small. Nonetheless, with a few more inherited plants, a few foundlings and volunteers, and the usual selection of planted and bought ones, we should have a nicely eclectic selection in a few years time.

The Experimental Potatoes are also doing nicely, and the rain washed away a little soil in the bed; enough to reveal a large-marble-sized new potato. I reburied it, rather than carry it off, which I think shows great self-control. The spring onions in the bed beside them are not showing any great level of growing, though; there are half a dozen now starting to look properly like onions, and no more. Since the seeds were a freebie with a magazine, I'm a little more inclined to blame those than anything else - especially since the courgettes, from the same pack of free seeds, have thus far produced only one viable plant from about twenty sown. Although I gather that if that plant gets going, it may well supply our courgette needs all on its own. To be fair, I suppose, the onions should perhaps be someplace a bit sunnier - there's more shade from the trees in the western hedgerow than I expected.

There has also been the discovery of some climbing roses by a fence near the back of the garden. At least, we think they're climbing roses. For my level of knowledge of garden flowers, they could be anything. Something leaning in from a neighbour's garden at the front of the house has big pink flowers, and some brambles in the hedgerow have flowers, leading me to hope for blackberries in the autumn. I'm wondering if it's possible to encourage blackberry brambles in any useful way, should that be what they are.

Rain

It poured rain here for much the afternoon (I was in work, but I'm assured it rained even where I wasn't) and on into the evening, only stopping half an hour ago. This is the first time we've seen serious rain in the new place, so I've been out poking around to see what the effects are. First and foremost, of course, unlike the rented house we were in last, no parts of this one leak.

Second, neither of the sheds leak noticeably, not even the full-of-holes one that's in the main part of the garden. This is welcome news, and means that it'll get a coat of paint later in the summer, and some patching up, rather than the complete removal I had considered.

The clayish soil is showing itself, though. There's one point where there's a dip in the ground, with slightly hardened soil. The rain water is pooled in it, showing no signs of draining away, and I suspect that the soil is holding a lot of water as well. It doesn't look like it's going to be a problem as such, but it's another argument in favour of raised beds, I think.

Courgettes Planted

Well, the courgette seeds are in the ground. I'd take a picture, but really, it doesn't look any different yet, apart from being a bit darker from the compost that's dug through it. I also have my computer set up again, in one of the rooms that faces onto the back garden, so if any of the plants suddenly decide to head for the sky, Beanstalk style, I'll know immediately. More usefully, I can keep an eye out for neighbourhood cats going digging.

In the other, smaller bed, the experimental potatoes are starting to leaf properly, and the spring onions are just barely coming up. I was about to pull out what look like some very un-onion-like little double leaves, but then remembered secondary school science telling me that all plants start off with those two little round leaves. So I'll leave them until they turn into onions or something else before they come out or stay in. The recognisable onions have very thin stalks (leaves?), some of which have odd angles in them, or fall over at the ends. I'm not sure if that's expected, or if they want more water - but considering the rain yesterday and some of today, I can't think they could. There'll be pictures of them when there's enough there to pick out from the background.