DRYING – STORING – SOWING… FOR WINTER STORAGE AND GROWTH

August 8, 2015August 8, 2015 | gaiainaction

It is this time of summer again when thoughts turn to harvest, saving seeds, drying herbs, sowing winter vegetables, and pruning some of the soft fruits. It is also time to make a note of what to, and what not to do next year, and where to grow what. Every season I learn more and so the garden is ever changing as I try to make it all better and more productive for us and also for the rest of nature, so incorporating plants, flowers, and berries for the birds, the bees and for any other creatures in the ecosystem that this urban garden is.
So the last few days I collected different leaves, among them dandelion (leaf and roots), mint, lemon balm, hawthorn, and nettle. I am working towards having a good store to see us through the winter months, and as these plants contain lots of valuable minerals and vitamins I think that it will be a valuable addition to our soups and stews. Some I will also use as teas.
Last week I sowed some winter vegetables, kale, salad leaves, and beetroot mainly, they are coming up well and some I potted off in order to become stronger so they can go into the soil outside. I will make use of the cold frames this winter. The temperatures drop to around -0C or just below it during the night, and daytime temperatures mainly around +5C so it is an ideal climate to grow winter produce. Leeks do very well here in my garden and I have planted out dozen of them during the past few days.
This morning, being Saturday and time to take a stock of what I have been doing and looking for ideas and information, I went to the library and again got a great selection of books, among them, two that I want to mention, one is about Winter vegetable growing by Linda Gray, and the other one is a book to relax with at night, it’s another memoir of a gardener, (Just Vegetating by Linda Larcom), I have read some good memoirs lately and enjoyed. Great inspiration can be got in books, it is a never ending pleasure.

Mint, delightful scent!

Nettle, and lemon balm, great for teas, and or soups, broths etc… And more seedlings, I am looking forward to winter growth. Making meticulous plans right now, find it exciting and motivating. Taking the providing role very seriously, that is, providing or rather enabling mother nature to provide us with lots of lovely foods. So enjoyable, and good for the soul.

Garlic, and dandelion leaves, very fond of both. A huge crop of dandelion leaves this year, due to the rains.

Peas and broad beans, it was not a great harvest this summer and so I will need to change the type I am actually growing, though I think that this year’s bad summer had something to do with it too.

SHALE – A COLOURFUL ROCK

August 5, 2015August 5, 2015 | gaiainaction

While documenting a procedure at Ian’s boat the other day, I had the opportunity to take a few photos of some of the local rock structures. I found these particular rocks, which had been exposed when the owners of the boatyard wanted to extend their working space, and just had to photograph them.

I believe these rocks are shale, but I am not a geologist. The whole rocky outcrop looked amazing, the colours of the shale quite bright and beautiful. I read that the yellow colours are caused by iron oxide or iron hydroxide which can cause reddish, yellow or brown colouring. The shale came apart in my hands, very poorly compacted material.

Ireland is an excellent place, like so many other places on the earth, to look at and have an interest in rocks and minerals. I have a large rock collection, I only wish that I knew more about it all, something that I always wanted to get absorbed in when I retired. It is a fascinating subject with plenty of examples all around us.

GROWING BITTER GOURD

August 4, 2015August 4, 2015 | gaiainaction

My first attempt to grow bitter gourds – Momordica charantia.
It’s a sentiment thing really, that is what was big on the menu of everyday foods which I ate while spending time in South India, and I developed a taste for it, it is a walk down memory lane for me, a pleasant one.
While there I learnt that bitter gourd is a healthy vegetable, reported to be of some help in lowering blood sugar among other things. I learnt to cook it too, quite simple really, we stir fried it either with a tomato sauce, or with potato, or onion, or on it’s own. It can also be served with yogurt to help set off it’s bitterness.

A dear friend of mine sent me the seeds early in spring and I went about to sow them, it took a while for the seeds to germinate and I had to put the container on the radiator for it to happen, so I lost some seeds, but finally I had five healthy plants that climbed on netting which I had put up on a sunny window. I was so excited when the plant started to flower, lovely yellow flowers with a faint, delicate fragrance. Even more excited was it to discover a ‘female’ flower one day with a young gourd forming. This gourd is growing slowly but fine. Meanwhile, and this is about two months ago, there have been many flowers but only ‘male’ ones. I fear that we will only have one precious bitter gourd this year! As the summer has been very chilly with minimal sunshine I think this will have added to the problem of growing this plant here. But I have kept some seeds and next spring will sow it again as this climbing, trailing plant with brilliantly green and beautifully shaped leaves has given me much joy.

THE UNIVERSE

August 3, 2015 | gaiainaction

“The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction.”
Rachel Carson

“Through our eyes, the universe is perceiving itself. Through our ears, the universe is listening to its harmonies. We are the witnesses through which the universe becomes conscious of its glory, of its magnificence.”
Alan W.Watts

CATCHING UP

August 1, 2015August 1, 2015 | gaiainaction

Having had a break from blogging, not out of choice, but collected my laptop today and it seems to be fine again, so I am happy, and have a lot of catching up to do. In these last few weeks a lot has happened in the garden.

Due to fluctuations in temperature and cool weather the produce has not been plentiful, but most of all there was trouble with slugs and snails this year, there has been quite a bit of rain which did not help. In order to keep some vegetable plants alive I had to do something, and urgently, so I asked around as did not want to use regular slug pellets, and people said to go pick them off every night with a torch, which I did. One of the first nights I collected about four dozen of them, and for a week the story was the same. Eventually they started to become fewer and by now I collect only about one dozen a night. In order to help things along I also put out little bowls of beer. Yes the beer is working too. Meanwhile I had become quite enthralled by these little creatures, there is a large variety of them and they are beautiful, gentle and the slime is not as bad as I thought it would be, before washing you use a dry paper tissue and it wipes off very easy. I have also realised that the paths around the vegetable beds needed to be clean and free of leaves etc… so I started a great clean up. The hedges had been cut and some leaves were still lying around, a great place for slugs to hide in.

Meanwhile I sowed more winter vegetables and bought beetroot plants as all my young plants had been eaten. I almost became discouraged when a cat again used the newly prepared soil and disturbed more plants. So off to the hardware store and bought piping (which was very cheap) stuck them in the ground and covered with netting which worked really well, kept cats out. I then started to prune some of the overgrown vegetation and the garden started to look real good again. Planted out leeks, sprouts, and beetroot for a winter crop.

One of the biggest permaculture lessons I learnt this summer is that when the wild plants start growing in spring, rather than just let them take over, as I did in my garden, I would give them some direction, and pull up a few here and there. When I decided last spring that I was going to let my cleavers (goosegrass) grow as I now considered it as food, I did not realise that they would take over several of the raised beds, they were entangled in the bean plants, the garlic, the fruit bushes and as for the back of the garden, that was totally overgrown.

As always, the garden keeps challenging me in different ways, giving tremendous joy and inspiration.

PURE SUMMER BEAUTY

July 12, 2015 | gaiainaction

“A human should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

PERMACULTURE – A LEARNING CURVE

July 10, 2015 | gaiainaction

Two weeks ago I used this wheelbarrow. Today I found it totally overgrown with cleavers, or goosegrass like we call it. And so it is with quite a few other areas of the garden. During the last week or two growth has been fierce due to weather conditions, it has been very damp with temperatures between 15 and 17 degrees.
Last year I started to try and apply permaculture principles in the garden. My main reason was that I am very interested in foraging, in wild plants. I noticed that these plants, such as dandelions, nettles, or goosegrass would grow really well, while some vegetables were having difficulties. I thought that maybe mixing them all, letting them grow together so to say, would help keep pests at bay. So I read up on permaculture and found that it is all about getting a balance in the garden, or rather getting the ecosystem balanced. Therefore when during the early months of this year the dandelions started to grow well, I used a lot of them in our foods, same with nettles, and even goosegrass. But then I made a mistake, for which I am now paying, I let all these wild plants grow without disturbing them at all. The goosegrass has totally taken over, I guess I did not use enough of it. I now realise that I should have kept the upper hand and at least tamed the wild plants a little.
So today I made a start at clearing.
The other motivation to clearing up around the raised beds is the problem with the slugs and snails. Everyday now I gather them, but the supply keeps coming, and my plants are being attacked and eaten faster than I can replant them. This morning I discovered two mature broccoli plants, and one kale plant with leaves full of holes. In desperation I started to cut the hedges around the raised beds, and cleared away any leaves lying around, sure enough I filled a jar with the culprits in no time.
I went and googled permaculture and slug control and learnt a lot. It said in the article that it was no good transporting the slugs to another area, this only un-balances that ecosystem there, so I got to stop doing that. It gave quite a few good ideas to deal with this plague, one I liked is the use of beer, and tomorrow I will purchase a six pack and hope to have a lot of drunken slugs! Not sure which type of beer to use though 🙂 so will get the light beers I think. Some of the other options mentioned in the article, such as frogs, hedgehogs, nematodes, toads, or ducks etc… did not appeal to me, one other option though I liked, it is the encouragement of the carob beetle, a predator of slugs. It explained how to build a nest for these creatures, something I might try out at some stage as I quite like beetles.

One of the principles of permaculture is that one should just observe the garden, see what goes on, and take note. I do that on a daily basis and have found that the beds that have herbs, such as oregano, lemon balm, rosemary, calendula, sage, and mint growing in them, have much less damage from said slugs and snails. There is also one type of lettuce that survives every time, so that is the one that I should definitely sow next time round. The broad beans remain untouched, they are also growing on the bed with garlic.

Its a learning curve, exciting and challenging – it can be very discouraging when so much of what you sow or plant gets eaten, but there has got to be a way around it. I am sure to be getting on top of this particular problem.

Goosegrass taking over part of the garden!

Snail and slug, two culprits which while I love them, I must rebalance the eco system of my garden.

Some of the damage in the above photos, damage of mature plants!

The type of lettuce the slugs don’t touch. And around the beds clearing up is being done seriously now!

AN INTERESTING DIG IN SKIBBEREEN

July 9, 2015July 9, 2015 | gaiainaction

We recently had an archaeological dig here at Skibbereen in West Cork. The work was undertaken by students of the university of Maryland in US, under the supervision of their professor Stephen Brighton and Drew Webster.
Seems that during the 19th century there was a lot of activity going on at the site of the Rock, which towers above the town of Skibbereen behind the town hall and the houses of North street and High street. It was called Windmill hill. Prior to the structures hewn out from the rocks being used as houses, six of them, the place was probably used for industry, perhaps related to the windmill. The houses would probably have had grass roofs at first Dr S.Brighton told me, you can see where timbers had been inserted into the rock. It’s a very interesting site. By the time I reached it and made photos, the students were filling in the sights again after six weeks of excavations. Artefacts were found at the site, like potsherds and other bits and pieces. Please visit the Facebook site for more photos and information. And also the WordPress.com site at:
Archaeology of the Irish Diaspora and Modern Ireland

Where the dig is situated above the town of Skibbereen

Seen here are what is thought to be indentations where timber would have been fitted, probably for industrial purposes when these sites were used previous to when people were living here in the 19th century.

More indentations seen in the rocks and pieces hewed out. This site has been filled in again by the students.

The type of rock found here, slate or shale. And students at work.

More sites of the houses, there were six in total. The floors of the houses consisted of flat rock, and a drain would have been hacked out in the ground to allow water running from the rock behind to drain away from the house. It must have been uncomfortable living quarters. Who lived there? It’s quite an exposed area of Skibbereen, but high up and far away from the flooding which sometimes afflicted the town. Then again as there was a windmill a few meters away from this site, there must have been work available for people. A lane (Windmill lane) is there still today and one wonders if this lane linked up to other boreens (Irish for lane) in the area. The houses were inhabited at the time of the Irish potato famine 1847-49, one can only wonder at what tragedy played out here among these rocks as the famine claimed so many lives here.

It’s all very interesting and I will hope to find out more.

This overgrown site is where the windmill would have stood. It is only a few meters away from the ruins of the houses.

MAURITIUS JOURNEY PART 2

February 18, 2015April 27, 2023 | gaiainaction

The beauty of the island of Mauritius, experienced some years ago when I went to visit a friend of mine from over there, and I was warmly welcomed by all his family and relatives. Situated on the less touristy South side of the island, It was a very interesting journey, with an introduction also to Mauritian foods, cooking, flora and fauna, and golden sand beaches where the women would dance to very cool music. Very friendly and lively people, many are from Indian descent. I was and am still very impressed. I took so many photos some of which I am revisiting these days.

Some fruit tree, not sure what exactly it is called.

At the village of Chamarel, the coloured Earths, this natural phenomenon is due to decomposed basalt gullies. The hot and humid climate helps in the decomposition of the (volcanic rock) basalt into clay. As a result of total hydrolysis (chemical breakdown of minerals by water, leaving a large composition of iron and aluminium which constitute a ferralitic soil. the iron sesquioxydes have a red and anthracite colour, whereas the aluminium sesquioxydes have a blue or purplish colour. It is a most beautiful sight to behold.