Hannah the Potter and the Polytunnel of Seeds

The week began with a couple more barrows of manure into the tyres next to the damson tree. I have decided to put my beetroot in these for the reason that last year some broad beans were growing in them. Beans and other leguminous plants are great as they replenish the soil with lots of nitrogen thanks to the nodules of bacteria that live symbiotically in their roots. Adding an extra bit of manure will hopefully give all the nutrients beets need to grow and be delicious. As I am worried that there may still be a few frosty nights through the beginning of spring, I covered the tyres in cloches to protect my (hopefully) germinating seeds.

Preparing garlic and shallot
 bulbs. Yummy yummy!

My rows of carrots

The doors are back on!
Its a cosy plastic house now.

I then started getting to work on growing carrots. Normally you would plant these outside in deep, stone-less, finely raked soil, but there is none of that in a place that is named ‘Place of stones’ in Irish. So it’s easier to plant them inside in my lovely, deep, stone-less beds. First I made sure that the soil was loose and got rid of any lurking weeds. Then I made mounds and grooves in the soil on top of which I poked a shallow hole and sprinkled a few carrot seeds in, then covered them up. These mounds are mainly so I know where I put my carrot seeds in case I’ll be planting anything around them. Then a good dousing with the watering can and that’s all I can do for now. Fingers crossed!

Of course, the doors to the poly-tunnel are still off, leaving room for the cats, dogs, and howling gales to come breezing through and make mischief. So I got a couple of new hinges and up they went with a bit of help. Now hopefully my carrots will be toasty warm and sheltered from frosts and will feel like germinating right away.

In the other big bed in the poly-tunnel I planted last year’s garlic and shallots all around the edge of the bed. This again was so I could keep track of where they were so I don’t dig them up, but I’m also hoping the strong smell and taste of the leaves of these plants will deter any pests away from tasty things that I will plant in the middle of the bed. 

I got in some potting compost. Although I have made up my own compost using left over bits of dried soil from here and there, I wanted to get my plants started off in substrate that was sterile. Unfortunately I didn’t have time (or internet, thanks countryside!) to research where I could get alternatives from a peat-based compost. This is something I wanted to avoid as Ireland has been continuously destroying peatlands, which is of our most biodiverse and functionally important habitats. But convenience overweighs time and money for me in this case.

Peas, Beans and Tomatoes
potted.

Preparing potting compost.

Strawberry tyres. They
look a bit floppy and sad here
after being weeded.

To prepare my own soil for potting I have to sieve it to get rid of large bits and chunks I don’t want in the pots. As I am standing still and quiet, I have started listening to podcasts and at the moment I am listening to The Infinite Monkey Cage with Robin Ince and Brian Cox, plus amazing guests where they talk about everything science. Very entertaining!

Once I put my home-made soil into the pots, I put a handful of the bought potting compost in, plant my seed(s) and then cover them with more bought compost.  

Come on, Spring!

This week I started potting peas (irish green and nordland snow) and beans (broad, dwarf, and French) and put all my tomatoes in seed trays with covers. Grow grow grow little guys! I’m hoping the weather will stay mild with no cold snaps so they will be encouraged to grow soon. But all of these growing plants will be staying in the poly-tunnel for now. If it gets too cold I can bring them inside.

Other things I have been doing in the garden include lots of trimming with my new secateurs. They’re so sharp! I also planted some seeds of rocket around the rows of carrots. Rocket is delicious so I am looking forward to them coming up. The strawberries got a bit of a tidy up. They had sent off shoots in all directions which where rooting themselves everywhere.

 Thats all for now folks,

Hannah

Seeds and Weeds

After spending some time thinking over what I want to grow, and drawing out a rough plan of where to put it all, my mum and I went off to Irish Seedsavers, situated just outside Scariff. In the summer they have a cafe and a shop to sell their seeds, and although the cafe was closed during the winter months, I could peruse the seeds they had on offer at my leisure. They were very helpful and gaveme advice about which seeds to get and when to plant them.

Some of the seeds I bought

I’ll just make a list here of all the seeds I bought and the variety name:

Courgette: ‘Gene bank marrow’

Cucumber: ‘Wautoma’

Spinach: ‘Giant Noble’

Lettuce: ‘Garnet Oak Leaf’ and ‘Verde A Foglia Riccia’

Peas: ‘Irish Green’ and ‘Nordland Snow’, and a Sweet Pea for the bees

We have a bee hive. They looked pretty
happy on a particuarly sunny winters day
last thursday. Hope to make them
happier with lots of flowers.

Tomato: ‘Broad Ripple Currant’ and ‘Polen’ (I only like cherry tomatoes)

Basil: ‘Sacred’- a much hardier version with smaller leaves

Beetroot: ‘Formanova’

I also discovered some seeds hiding away in a container I hadn’t looked into yet. Of the seeds I thought could be used (some were out of date or eaten by fungi/insects/something) includes courgette, little gem lettuce, early purple sprouting broccoli, and a seed multipack containing beetroot, perpetual spinach, tomatoes, more little gem lettuce, carrots, and leeks. I also saved some bean seeds when I took the dead bean plants out. So lots to work with!

One thing I would like to add here is about the wonderful advantage of buying seeds from Seedsavers; all their plants are open pollinated. This means that they will all produce viable seed that I can harvest and save to use next year. 

This is in contrast to F1 hybrid seeds, in which two somewhat genetically different parents (e.g. two different varieties of maize) are hand pollinated (crossed) to create hybrid seed. This is desirable in many crops as F1 generations are often stronger, bigger, or produce more seed, or are sterile in the case of cucumbers or grapes or many other types of fruits with no seeds in them, which effectively ends their reproductive line. In the F1s that do produce seed, it may produce an F2 generation that is sterile or has less seed, or more susceptible to disease, just generally worse than either the F1 or the original parents. This crop science technique has been very useful across the world in producing large amounts of food as the population grows bigger, but it also means that using F1 hybrid seed I would have to spend money on new seed every year. But with open pollinated seed, genes are mixed around as the pollen from many types of parents or crossed back and forth, creating a genotype (its genetic makeup) and phenotype (what it looks like) that is stable generation after generation.

Creepy roots/horseradish.
Could be from another planet.

Back to the garden. I mainly worked on various beds around the outside of the polytunnel, and started with the rock raised bed. This was easy enough; I just needed to put fallen rocks back in the little wall that creates the bed. I then dug out the weeds that were in there and cut out shrubby shoots that I think have grown up from the fruit tree next to the bed. My original plan for this bed was a herb garden, but as it was such nice soil and in a large clear area I may put the peas in there instead.

The next raised bed I worked on was the tall wooden one right next to rock bed. It looked like much easier work than the rock bed as it is half the size and mostly cleared earth, but in the end it took an hour to dig up as there was all this creepy-alien- triffidy roots growing in them. Apparently it is horseradish (bleugh). But now I have a wonderful cleared bed for something else. Maybe carrots? Courgettes?

The rest of the work involved trimming. As I don’t have secateurs, I had to use a mini saw, but I cut back the blackcurrant bushes, which were happily spreading themselves in many directions (I didn’t know they could do this!). I also tidied up the lavender and rosemary, which was very pleasant.

Almost all the roots I pulled out of
the wooden bed behind

Lastly, I have started moving some tyres around. I am removing tyres that are directly behind the polytunnel and are in the way a bit. As I was moving the soil that was in them, I found some potatoes, which went into my dinner that evening. I also moved two tyres of heather out of the way (actually turned into 4 clumps).

Next on my to-do list is fun exciting things like planting my first seeds, and rather boringly: moving more manure. A LOT more. And probably gathering up more pots.

In other news, a few tulips are peaking through, and the daffodils are getting ready to bloom. Spring is round the corner!

Two beds I cleared and are ready for
plants

Adventure continues..

Hannah

Muckin’ around.

The weather is getting colder. There have been many snow and hail showers when I've been working outside. However the pots are all nearly gathered and neatly stacked, the tulips are in and watered, and the beds are cleared and turned.

The next task to do was to put more soil in the beds, as I could see it was quite sandy and also my friend and an organic gardener, said it needed lots more nutrients. Luckily my mom owns two poop machines in the form of horses, named George and Breeze. Thanks to these two we have a glorious pile of manure which has turned into some very rich, very wormy compost. However, the glorious pile is behind the big barn through a very wet area thanks to the rain storms we’ve been having. So first I had to build a little bridge for the wheelbarrow and me to cross by just laying a few planks down. Then I could shovel the glorious wormy dark compost into the barrow and wheel it past the shed up and around to the polytunnel. Hard work! My poor wee soft scholar hands aren’t used to this and were red and raw after day one.

The other bed plus surprise cameo:
my dog, Zippy. 

Cleared bed with added manure.
I think it will need more but I am
pleased with my progress

Daffodils have started to peak through.
I have no idea who planted these!

I decided I wasn’t going to kill myself doing this so I’ve done 10 wheelbarrow loads in 2 days into the two main beds, which has pretty much covered them, though they may need more. I also realised I was putting nice, wet, wormy soil on very dry, degraded soil and thought all my worms might die if they wanted to venture further. So I fixed the watering system: this is composed of eight sprinklers that hang down from the roof that connects to a hose and tap outside. It was working pretty well although many of the sprinklers were clogged, throwing water all over the place and not really in the beds. But all fixed now. In hindsight it probably would have been better if I watered the soil before putting in the compost, but I’m hoping it won’t make much difference.

Compost creators:
George and Breeze with
their winter woolly coats on

I have also started to think about seeds, and started a wish list of veggies, fruits and flowers that I want to grow. I am also thinking
about where I want to get my seeds. My mother is an advocate of
cheap and easy, and has bought her seeds online in the years before from big seed companies. However I know that about half an hour drive away there is a great resource in the form of Irish Seedsavers. They grow and maintain crop plants that are adapted to Irish climates, which contribute to our agricultural heritage. I also know from my botany degree how important genetic adaption can be for growing crops, and feel it would be nice to be able to help this conservation cause. My mother counter-argues that her online seed guys specialise in sweet peas. But admittedly,Seedsavers will be much more expensive, so I will have to decide what I want from my future plants, and how much money
I have to spend on this project.

Hannah

Adventure into the tunnel

I moved away from home to go to University in Galway, Ireland in 2009. There I discovered the wonderful world of plants and science, and from then on I endeavoured to become one of those romantic scientists quietly discover secrets about the natural world while traipsing around in the wilderness or in their pottering away in their garden shed. In 2013 I ventured slightly further afield to attend more plant-based university in Edinburgh. But as that marvellous year ended I found myself with a big dark horizon of nothingness, no aim, no job, with expensive bits of paper. So I found myself back home in September of 2014.

At home, in the back end of nowhere of East Clare, Ireland, the skies are thick, low and raining for most of the year. The road is half pot holes, half badly filled-in potholes with a stripe of grass growing up the middle of it, and forests (mostly plantations) loom up from every corner.

So we have a polytunnel at home, built when I was still in school (8 years ago, maybe?). I think its been very neglected for the past 2-3 years with not much care or management put into it as I think growing food is not a priority. Both doors at the front and back of the polytunnel have flown off this winter, and the beds are falling apart. There is a second smaller polytunnel too, which I think was built to grow things on from seed as there is a small potting table and a couple of small beds. It also has a grape vine which has wound itself about the place. Outside, where there is an area fenced off from the horses and other animals (it's a free-range situation) with some fruit trees (of which the only one I know is a Damson tree as it had a mega bumper crop this year!) and some randomly placed beds and tyres with unknown things in them. Everything is over grown, but thankfully no brambles or bracken.

The first thing I did was clear out all of the old tomatoes plants and weeds. This was very satisfying as it was so easy and looked like I did a lot with not much effort. But there was nettles hiding among all of these so they had to be dug out. And then the docks. Dock roots are tough! But the beds are now cleared except for some thyme, parsley and mysterious spinachy stuff.

After weeding

The main polytunnel before weeding

Next, the pot gathering. SO. MANY. POTS. And they were strewn everywhere! I’m still gathering pots, as I find them under overgrown grass or hiding in a tyre (along with mice, that was a surprise) or in buckets of water (with dead frogs, a horrible surprise). All the broken pots and other bits of plastic were all heaped into a pile and sent off to be recycled. Ah I wish I took a picture of all the bags full of broken pots, t’was a satisfying sight to see the back of them.

The pots were gathered and stacked. 

The first thing I planted this year was tulips. I went to Amsterdam in January and bought tulips on a whim (not really I spent AGES deciding whether I wanted them or not). But I felt I should give them a go even though I think it’s a bit late for them. I will update on the Amsterdam Tulips if any emerge.

I should probably stop rambling now and get down to some business. My plan for this garden and this blog is:

• 

  The Tulips from Amsterdam.
  Got my fingers crossed that
  they'll pop up soon

  to grow food that I love to eat
• to see if anyone else wants to read about this
• to be fulfilled in earthy, planty goodness and satisfaction
• to not be bored in housedaughterness
• to document how my garden grows 

I should say that although I will not be strictly growing an organic-based garden, I hope to keep it as chem-free as possible. If anyone has any advice as the garden progressed, please let me know. I’ve never grown anything before that wasn’t potting for my mum’s projects or a coo-ing over a houseplant.

First post done. Adventure begins.

Thanks for reading, 

Hannah