SEEDLINGS AND A MYRIARD OF PLANT POTS

March 27, 2025April 3, 2025 | gaiainaction

I’m sitting at the window looking out to our garden from our sunroom, which actually used to be called a Conservatory but when the old roof started to deteriorate and started to leak we got it covered in slate and put in two Velux windows, so now I call it the ‘sunroom’ and that will suffice.

And as I look out to the garden I can see some beautiful shrubs that are flowering right now, the forsythia is a patch of yellow and then there is the Berberis Compacta fully decked in orange, it’s beautiful to see even through my still blurred eyes, I’ve had cataract surgery last week and I still cannot see clearly. The Azalea both the purple and white one are coming into flower too, and the Rosemary is one blur of purple and dark green.

I’ve been working with my seedlings this morning; I’ve been repotting some of them. The room is filled with all sizes of pots, which I’m filling with soil, and I am planting seedlings like there is no tomorrow, I have got so many seeds coming on and this whole room is absolutely turned into a greenhouse. I’m so happy with having this space and being able to get my young plants going. I haven’t been able to set up the small plastic greenhouse in the garden yet but that’s the job that’s got to be done. I will then move all these young plants in there and get them to grow strong before I can put some of them out in the purposed plot, the soil needs to be prepared yet. The grass which I had covered with cardboard needs to be either dug or else I will just throw soil on top of it. The soil for the potatoes is ready though, and they have been chitin here on the press, so weather allowing, they are next to go into the ground.

Right now, the sky is gray and there’s a bit of wind, but my chestnut tree is starting to come into leaf, its buds are bursting. The sky out there is filled with birds flying in all directions, seagulls and crows especially, they’re all happy to be alive I think, yes there is lots of activity, for one I have seen our resident blackbird couple eyeing the thick hedge which is where they made their nest before.

It does look like rain and so it probably will rain but there is a lot of inside work and that’s what I’m busy with at the moment. I have 28 kale plants, they’re very small yet but that’s ok as they are only for use next winter, I sowed some extra to be able to share them with others, because that’s fun.

A week later and now we are April!

Despite my limited vision at the moment I was able to plant my potatoes, which is great as it puts me ahead. Meanwhile the sun has been shining for days and there is a warm wind today, my washing has been dancing on the line all morning, a lovely sight to behold because I can now put my clotheshorse away for the summer (I hope). Young plants and seedlings are coming along great and I’ve sowed more. The garden has dried out in the meantime, mud has become hardened already. I now urgently need a gardener, that is, a person who can do some of the jobs I cannot manage. My grandson has advised me to do proper fencing around my new vegetable plot rather than just put pots around it. The idea is to keep the cats from doing their business in the soil where the vegetables are growing. But I might just settle for keeping an eye on it daily and using a shovel. Not decided yet, but note that I have five different cats, not my own, visiting the garden!

Project not finished, watch this space!

CATCHING UP – TAKING STOCK

January 26, 2025 | gaiainaction

It is time for a bit of stock taking, and for catching up with many friends and followers of my blog. Personally the year 2024 has brought many changes, some challenges, some sad, and some good. Worldwide it’s been a sad and chaotic year too I think. Many of us have asked ourselves serious questions about our general humanity, our deeds towards our fellow human beings. A lot of good has been happening too during this past year, a lot of compassion has been shown, and brave and good people have shown to be always around.

I visit Ian, my husband, in the nursing home every week, something we both look forward to very much.

And now January is almost over and I’m still organizing my activities inside the house and out in the garden, and in society. Lots to do, all good things. During the winter I’ve availed of webinars and zoom meetings a lot. Webinars about grasses and rushes, and other natural subjects. Regular zoom meetings of a lace making group. And an introductory course in tree identification. Collage making or painting with my grandchildren is very rewarding too. Locally there have been meetings of the Early Retirement Group which has fabulous and interesting (mainly) other women as members and a good program, one of the things we do is a weekly chair yoga session which keeps us all quite flexible. Then the monthly book club and the poetry circle are such a joy, as are the very regular and hugely interesting art exhibitions. Skibbereen has it all. There is simply not enough time to do it all.

And then there is the weather which during winter can be quite challenging, storms, heavy rain, frost, the type of weather that makes you want to crawl behind the stove with a good book. Christmas and New Year celebrations seem to have come and went in a flash this past year. The dark days are now getting a little lighter and soon it will be the first of February, for Ireland that heralds the beginning of spring, it is also the feast of St.Bridgid and has now become a public holiday. And so…. I’m chitting my potatoes to have them ready for planting in March. My garden is still my focus a lot of the time.

This coming season my main big plan for the garden is to plough up half my little grass field so I can plant more vegetables. For the past five years I have added more and more shrubs because I had much less time to garden and thought it was the better way. This meant that I now have less and less space for vegetables. So space will have to be made. My grandson Ruben who is now a strong teenager and very willing to help me has already cleared one plot in the back of the garden, he wants to do more. We are great mates and I love him coming over and working alongside me, and afterwards we have pizza and watch a movie.

Luckily during the last storm none of our trees suffered, we have seven trees in a small garden. We live in a terraced house and the garden is relatively small. Ours are a birch, oak, chestnut, hawthorn and elderberry, and in the front garden, a currant tree and an acer. Our hawthorn tree was affected by blight last summer and lost all of its leaves, we’ll see what happens this year. The chestnut had been trimmed five years ago and has some rot in an outshoot and that will need looking after.

Gardening and planning a garden, as many people know very well, is a great joy, and keeps us fit, it’s also hard work at times, but that can be done in part, an hour here and an hour there on a daily basis, weather allowing of course (I’m a fair weather gardener). To be out in nature is such a joy, the fresh air, the scents, sounds, and seeing the growth is all delightful and will keep me going for ever. The observation possibilities of seeing insects, birds, wild plants and herbs growing, as well as tasty vegetables and trying out new types. And then there is the digging up of potatoes and the harvesting of edible produce, how much better can it get I think it satisfies one of our most basic instincts as humans, that of survival.

Not being sure what 2025 will bring for us all, I wish many blessing for each and everyone.

Loving thought to all.

MIDSUMMER

June 22, 2022 | gaiainaction

A windless morning in the garden. A lone robin is singing in the birch tree. Some sounds are travelling up from the town in the valley. I’m having my morning coffee outside on the patio and enjoying this beautiful and peaceful scene. Our foxgloves are almost totally in seed now, only the tops of their long stems are still a beautiful pink, they have been very good for the pollinators. This morning only a few bumblebees have visited. Seagulls and crows are flying over our airspace shouting confident cries. Sparrows are chirping in the hawthorn tree, many of them. How I love all those sounds.

Of the usual two dozen that years ago were, there are now only four swifts visiting in our area, I so miss their summery sounds above our houses and gardens.

How I enjoy all this activity in nature, and this morning is a rare break in my own daily activities, a solace to the soul, a much desired rest for the body. And yet it is there for the taking – whenever and free. A true blessing.

FEED THE SOIL NOT THE PLANTS

May 12, 2018 | gaiainaction

For the past three weeks we have both been working in the garden. I am told that it was an extraordinary wet spring and we have had a fair bit of rain since we came home too. We lost one of our trees, a pine tree that stood at the back of the garden where water is inclined to collect. Ian has found that the roots were totally rotten so no wonder that the storm caught and tumbled the tree.

And the garden was totally overgrown as would be expected, Ian soon had the little bit of grass in the middle of the raised beds strimmed. and the grass that was invading the path cut away. While I started with the beds, some of which were full of Ranunculaceae with very tough roots systems. The whole garden was also covered in Three Cornered Leeks with their lovely white flowers as usual. One of the days I had some help from two of my small grand children and we sure had a day of fun, and yet we achieved a lot.

To our delight we found all sorts of vegetables that had survived the long winter rains and storms. And then out of the blue I received an email from FutureLearn (https://www.futurelearn.com/) to remind me that a course I had registered for had started, and this has been occupying my time totally these past few weeks. The course is called – Citizen Science: Living Soils, Growing Food – and is run by the University of Dundee, Scotland. It is immensely interesting and I have been enjoying every single minute of it, and learnt such a lot. I had decided even last year that it is my soil that I should be putting time and effort into, and educate myself about what it needs, and running tests to see what it may be lacking, and what to do about it. Anyway, all this the course taught me and more. I also learnt about the C3 and C4 food types and how the increase in CO2 is affecting the nutrients of our vegetables and fruits, and the relationship between nutrient depletion in our soils, and less nutritious foods. Something I knew very little about, and found interesting.

Anyway, together with Grow Observatory (https://growobservatory.org/) students were invited to take part in a communal worldwide experiment. (This was for certain areas but not my area in Ireland) so I did not take part in it. However, the Citizen Science was also running an experiment as well as inviting us to ask our own question and in that case run our own experiment, and so I asked myself the question: What will give a better crop? If I use compost from the garden compost bin to improve both the fertility and the texture of my clay soil? Or if I use a combination of leaf mould and organic seaweed liquid? The course took us right through all the factors that are important to carry out our tests with hypothesis, controls, variables, data taking, analysis, and so on. My experiment is set up, my bean plants have been sown and test kits arrived by post, I’m all set up for this experiment.

The two beds are totally ready for the experiment. One is treated with compost from the bin and the other is treated with leaf mould, and later in the experiment I wil be adding the organic seaweed fertilizer to the latter. Hedges have been cut real low to allow maximum light reaching the beds. A rain gauge is in place in both the beds to measure precipitation. And I am testing the actual consistency of the soil, though I know that it is mostly clay, has quite a bit of stones in it, and as I’ve already found out not enough organic matter. Half the beds will be planted and the other halves will be controls. Spinach is the other crop and radish also. It is going to take up time but will be lovely to eat all the produce and enjoy taking all the measurements and learn a lot about my soil.

Not sure where all this is going to take me but I am sure enjoying it all.

I came across this lovely quote from one of the books by Jan Shellenberger. that’s also where I took my post title from: I quote:

“Our most important job as vegetable gardeners is to feed and sustain soil life, often called the soil food web, beginning with the microbes. If we do this, our plants will thrive, we’ll grow nutritious, healthy food, and our soil conditions will get better each year. This is what is meant by the adage ”Feed the soil not the plants.”

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And the view from our back garden, the minute the hedge gets clipped – I know I need to work on it a bit more – behind that rocky hill lies the sea.

PART TWO OF A WINTER GARDEN IN CAMBRIDGESHIRE

March 6, 2016 | gaiainaction

So we had just walked through the arch and entered that part of the garden where nature does more or less its own thing, though on the right there is a productive kitchen garden, which put my own to shame when it comes to neatness. And on the left we walked across grass overshadowed by a variety of lovely trees, mostly native to the Uk, and some already fully in blossom. This is the wilder part of the garden, it is a very important area, thinking of the many bees, bumblebees and other insects which are near extinction, or have decreased in number in recent years, it is good to have an area where they can be undisturbed and feed to their hearts delight. Here is more shadow because of the trees, it is also the quieter part of the garden, where one could sit and read, or just watch nature’s magic happen.

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Then in the yet another part of the garden a lot of clearing had been done just recently, overgrowth of roses from a neighboring garden had been removed. In a garden this size there is always some work to do, and this is reflected in the beauty and the variety of the plants.

Here the borders, even though it was so early in the year show a lot of different colors and textures, as reflected in my next collage. A variety of different Hellebores is to be seen nearer the house.

Mahonia aquifolium

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Ferns, and also Euphorbias make a lovely display.

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The colorful leaves of the Epimedium versicolor are a great ground cover.

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A succulent creeping among the black foliage, the black thin leaves conjure up images of being at the beach looking at some type of seaweed.

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I see boxes for a variety of birds which I am sure they are happy to use, and the white bell-like flowers add a lovely touch, all these early flowers are so important for insects, it is where they get the first nectar of the season which will help them recover after the lean winter months. All of this has been thought of and planned for.

DSCF2244 — Winter scenting Sarcococca confusa sweet box

This is one more subject that I would like to highlight, it is called Sarcococca confusa or Sweet Box, its scent will delight anyone and perfume a whole area, and its black berries are very attractive too. I am glad that I got to learn about this plant, as one of my future plans is to bring more scent into my own garden.

I’ve really enjoyed my visit to this garden, there is more one could say about what grows there, I have not even touched on the herbs which grow close to the house. Of course as my visit was in winter, I am sure that there is a lot more to see in summer. I am already looking forward to my next visit. I get ideas from visiting other people’s gardens, some of which I will try and use in my own garden. I’m certainly very interested in creating colour for my garden in the winter, it would cheer us all up during those dull and misty days.

My thanks go to Ruth and Colin for their kind permission to use their garden in my blog writing.

MEDITATIONS

August 22, 2015 | gaiainaction

“Your nature is absolute peace. You are not the mind. Silence your mind through concentration and meditation, and you will discover the peace of the Spirit that you are, and have always been.”
Anonymous

I’ve been walking the garden now every night to check on the slugs. This has turned into a real meditation which I now look forward to. Taking my time, I go out rain or not with my torch and a jar, I check all the vegetation for the little night creatures, the garden at that time of night is usually still, so still that I can hear the slugs move, or chew on a leaf. The scents come out too, the sweetpeas, privet, and other more earthy scents, or just the fresh air give pleasure. In the light of the torch things become more intensely focussed, things like plants or parts of plants that are normally barely noticed, strange that.

I treasure that time now, a good ending to the day. I guess I owe a thank you to my slugs, by creating a problem for me they gave me a gift, and that sure is very much appreciated.