Growing Foods

ENTHUSIASTIC PLANS FOR OUR GARDEN

| gaiainaction

It is nearing the end of March and though the weather is still quite wet, it is time to put some of the plans that I have made for the garden into action. The frost is gone and the temperature is now around 18 degrees. The soil temperature was 11 degrees Celsius today. However, the soil is still very wet. I’ve been working at the back of the garden taking roots out of the soil, roots from ivy, black currant, and nettles from a patch where I want to grow our potatoes this season. It’s hard but rewarding work and I just love working with the soil, feeling it and finding little creatures in it, even the colours of different soil is interesting. The plot that I’m currently working in has always been used to dispose of organic matter, and it has benefited this soil very much, its colour is more brown than the surrounding black. Originally our soil was mostly clay but over the years I’ve been changing it to loam by using lots of composted garden and kitchen refuse. So anyway, my plans for this year include introducing some of my favourite perennials and annuals, some of these I will be sowing and some I am buying. We do have two excellent garden centres here in the town, I can get anything I want. Talking about anything I want… one of my dearest wishes for many years is to get a small green house, think of what I could grow off season…

This is only the start of getting the plot ready, lots more work to be done.

During the winter I covered the patch that I planned to use for the potatoes with canvas, it did make a difference when I uncovered it yesterday, a lot of the grass had wilted. Two robins where looking for grubs in the newly disturbed soil, they are so lovely and not a bit afraid of us humans.

Some of the vegetables that are currently growing still and ready for eating.

And some of the flowers that are heralding spring, they seem to brave the wind and rain so easily!

Feverfew
Dandelion
Nettle and Cleavers
Wild violets and ramsone
Borage

And these above are some of my more wild plants which I treasure too, some for cooking, and some for the enjoyment of the flowers when they show later in the summer. They all grow so easy and start to grow very early in the year, such a joy, so green and healthy looking. In fact most of these plants overwinter here as the climate is mild, we did get some frost, even a little snow, but mostly temperatures are a few degrees above zero during the night and in the day they vary between 8 and 10 Celcius.

During the past three years I’ve added several shrubs to my collection, and this year I’m thinking of buying a Mahony shrub, I see them growing in tubs around the town and love them. Their honey scented yellow flowers are beautiful and also flowering early in the year. The leaves turn a lovely colour in autumn. Inside I’m starting a Ribes plant from a cutting, and I’ve got a Skimmia sapling still sitting on the kitchen window-sill ready to plant out soon, it is a male plant so I will be looking for a female to join it, it is the female plant that develops the deep red berries. I have sweet pea seedlings on my bedroom window-sill, a bit too soon those plant out. It’s time to sow a selection of summer flowering annuals inside, but the marigolds I’ll be sowing outside during the next week, they thrive very well in our garden. I’m also setting a myriad of gladiola bulbs.

Rose grow real well here
Hydrangea ready for the season
Tiny solitary bee
My plan for 2023
While digging I disturbed this centipede
Years ago I planted this Forsythia so that we would have some colour early in spring, this year is the first time that it blooms so lovely!

I am not your regular gardener, though I love the physical work that gardening involves, mostly I like to experiment and I like to see what comes growing into my garden without me planting it, I like the element of surprise and discovery. I like taking note of what my soil needs and so testing the soil, taking its temperature, making note of how much light a certain plot receives, how acid the soil is, and much more. I also like to propagate plants, grow from cuttings etc… It’s something I’ve done all my life. And I like to provide fresh vegetables for my family… well, my husband and myself that is, I love cooking with fresh produce that I’ve just plucked from the garden whether it’s wild or cultivated, a combination is great. Right now the wild plants that are plentiful are three cornered leeks, succulent tops of cleavers, young dandelion leaves and tender nettle leaves. The earth gives abundantly!

Gardening can be such a pleasure.

FEED THE SOIL NOT THE PLANTS

| 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.