Website design

I have recently setup a new part-time business doing website design for professionals and small business. This should help promote people in the Clare and Limerick areas get their small business online and help promote their business. Web design and working with technology has always been a secret interest of mine. I also enjoy helping others especially helping those that are skilled in other ways other than technology. Can be very trying for others to follow the "tech buzzwords".

Web Clare

Please let me know what you think of my website - all feedback welcomed.

A handy PDF guide to growing Vegetables from Teagasc that I found online

Vegetable Growing

The selection of fresh vegetables now available in shops and supermarkets is
probably greater than ever before. But there’s a huge amount of satisfaction
to be had from growing part of the food we eat. A well managed garden or
allotment is an asset to any family and vegetable growing can rapidly develop
into an absorbing hobby.

The quantities of vegetables to grow will naturally depend on circumstances.
It can be as simple as growing a pot of parsley on your back doorstep or you can
make it as big and fancy as you like. If there’s only a small area available
preference should be given to items where freshness is especially valuable such
as lettuce, herbs, spinach, parsley, peas and beans. If there’s more ground add
brassicas, onions, carrots, beetroot, rhubarb and early potatoes to the mix.
It will also add interest to try out some new or unfamiliar kinds each year.

http://www.teagasc.ie/publications/2011/889/Guide_to_Veg_Growing.pdf

Using Seaweed as fertilizer

Strawberry bed with new seaweed addition

I was away on my holidays in Lahinch Co. Clare and decided to bring back a bit of the beach with me. I have been reading for years on the benefits of seaweed fertilizer so I decided to give it a go.

Some of the benefits of Seaweed fertilizer:

• Saves water, keeps soil moist at ground level
• Eliminates the need to weed
• Repels slugs and other pests
• Enriches the soil
• Boosts lethargic plants
• Helps lighten the soil
• Does not contain weed seeds, unlike bark mulch

 I collected 3 bags of seaweed once the tide had gone out. I put those bags of seaweed on 2 of my strawberry beds (as they have just finished fruiting) -  the other I left to do another day, please don't leave seaweed for any length in bags, the stench a day later is intolerable! 

Lahinch beach with the tide in

I had always read how quickly it composts down, but couldn't believe the changes in just a week - see photos below. What was a good mulching of about 4 inches was reduced down to powdery thin covering. I can see now why they recommend doing 2 coverings. Now I just need to head back to the beach.

After one week

Close up

Some links I found useful details about using seaweed as fertilizer:

http://eartheasy.com/blog/2010/09/how-to-use-seaweed-to-mulch-your-garden/
http://www.no-dig-vegetablegarden.com/seaweed-fertilizer.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seaweed_fertiliser

Slugs and Snails ... and keeping plants safe from them!

Snails and slugs ... a gardeners enemy!

They attack many kinds of plants, especially young plants and the soft, succulent growth of herbaceous perennials and vegetables. Slugs provide a useful function by eating dead plant tissue and they are more prevalent on soils with high organic matter where manure and compost have been applied. They are more active in wet years.

Don't the thoughts of them slimming their way over your plants make your skin crawl! Personally, I wouldn't mind if they had an odd nibble, but they never seem content unless causing havoc and inviting all their relations and friends over for a good feed until they have damaged the plant. 

I think the term snails pace does not do justice to the speed at which they can demolish a young plant after a lovely rain shower!

There are many ways of dealing with them ... here is a link to how to deal with them organically. With some of the ingredients of slug pellets being banned shortly, we must look to new methods and or course for our environment. 

New Method - using recycled glass

I tried a new method on a few plants this year. I was lucky enough to be given a bag of crushed glass ( the type they use mixed with sand for sand blasting) from my friend Donal. See below for some before and after pictures of how successful it was. It would have been more successful if my cat didn't like digging in the bark around the beds! This trial was done over approx 4 weeks. 

Crushed glass:

The glass with a stanley blade to show size

The glass is very fine - there are different sizes you can order. I didn't need any special protection and didn't get cut handling it without gloves. See below for contact details if interested in trying it.

The before and after photos:

Lemon Thyme ( 2 plants)

Before:

Note - more glass was applied after this photo, but I didn't take a more up to date photo

After:

As you can see there is a huge difference in the improvement. It would have been even better, but I didn't notice for the first week that there was a slug hiding within the barrier. Lesson learnt for future to check the inner circle for these pests! 

Lupin:

For some reason the slugs/snails were only attacking one of the plants - think they were keeping the other plant for the following week. Here you can see how deep the glass was applied - and this was the depth for the others, I just forgot to take the photos again! 

Before:

Including the lupin that was untouched. 

A close up of the slug/snail damage.

After:

Much more healthy leaves

Even a beautiful Lupin flower!

Summer bedding

Before:

After:

After 4 weeks - most of the glass still intact in this bed

Even some beautiful flowers off plants I had given up for dead which they would have been without the glass protecting them. Here you can see the cat wasn't as active at this bed! 

Result:

The trial was a huge success as you can see from the above pictures. I found in cat busy areas, I would need to reapply about every 2 weeks, but in the less cat traveled areas, I would only need to apply or touch up every 4 weeks. I believe that if I wasn't using bark for ground cover, this could even be elongated - perhaps even yearly!!! 

The product is pet friendly as it didn't bother my cat around those areas! 

Details of Supplier ( for Ireland):

Donal Whelan 086 - 849 8501

Delivery can be arranged. 

Mushrooms

A quick post - just found this site on foraging for mushrooms in Ireland and I thought I would pass it on. Someday soon I have to get out on one of these walks to learn about how to forage mushrooms - I have picked some from fields in my youth, but would love to know more about which to pick, where to pick and when to pick! Please comment with any good sites on them.

One great gift idea for those of you that enjoy truffles - how about growing your own! Haven't tried this myself and have no ties with the company, but its definitely one for my wish list!
http://www.mushroomstuff.com/asp/index.asp?ObjectID=1061&Mode=0&RecordID=39&ParentID=39

Bought a grow your own mushroom kit in B&Q, just been waiting for the weather to get consistently warmer to try it out. Will let you know how I get on!

I can't wait to pick a basket like in the photo - just have to get my knowledge level up - as its a risky business should you pick the wrong mushrooms!

Grand stretch in the evenings!

The weather yesterday was glorious - rushed home from work and straight out to the garden after dinner. So much to catch up on after the cold weather we have had over the past couple of months. Big difference yesterday in the weather compared with the gale force winds the night before and of course today has changed back into heavy showers, so doubt I will get out again this evening.

Finally we got around to putting up some posts and wires for my fruit bushes. I am growing redcurrant, blackcurrant and raspberries and I have a gooseberry bush and a blueberry bush as well. Some of them were trailing along the ground which made them easy prey for slugs etc ( and also our lawnmower!). Also we had no defined edge for the border against the lawn, so this was needed to be put in. Above is the view along the side of the back garden.

This is the section behind the garage. I moved a few raspberry plant suckers (daughters) during the winter to this spot along with a blackcurrant bush cutting and so far they have all taken - can see new growth on them all. At the top left is my gooseberry bush which I hope to pick from this year as it was planted approx 18 months ago. 

Good link if you are thinking of transplanting your own raspberry suckers - 

How to Dig and Plant Raspberry Runners

This is the other side of the back of the site - the raspberry bushes have gotten very tall in places ( some same height as me 5ft 6"!!). There are still a few suckers I will have to dig out - more presents for friends! 

First posts and wire up - I am using the same wire they use here for electric fences - so it should be both very strong and durable. Also we got the edging in the whole way around.

I tied up some of the branches to wire to prevent them trailing along the ground. Also, should make picking from those branches a lot easier at harvest time.

We still need to put down some compost to help feed the bushes and clear the last weeds from around the plants and then we are going to put bark down to help control the weeds and moisture.

My garlic plants are coming along nicely. Onions planted to the front haven't started yet - but only down two weeks. I had a lot of trouble with birds and cats pulling up my garlic bulbs - had to cover the bed in a net until recently. Thankfully it doesn't seem to have bothered the garlic too much - great tough plant!

My broccoli is growing well in its mini cloche. I have some Pak Choi seeds planted or which a few have started to germinate under the cloche. 

I just love the colour the purple sprouting broccoli is giving to the garden at the moment - as well as the delicious veg for my dinner! 

In this photo, you can see the stump of the floret I cut two weeks ago and the new florets that grew around it once the space was released by the cutting. 

The rewards - a full bowl of broccoli! Great to have and to share!

I love self-seeding plants (and I don't mean the thistle in the above photo!) - above I have some violas that have self seeded in the bed just inside the gate. I usually buy some winter hardy viola annual plants in mid-autumn and I find that they usually survive the winter to produce a brilliant showing in spring/early-summer far exceeding the showing you get from ones brought in spring time. Also, they love to self-seed - which makes my job all the easier :-)

Now all I need is the weather to improve so I can get back in the garden!! 

April update 1

What a great start to April. Lovely sunshine last weekend finally which enabled me to get out in the garden. The weather is promised to change to wet, but warmer so now I am going to risk getting the garden started. Ten day weather forecast for Shannon here (time for umbrellas!) :

http://www.weather.com/weather/tenday/Shannon+Airport+Ireland+SNN:9

As I went around the garden, one thing I did notice was there was a marked difference in the temperature in the soil of the raised beds compared with the ground.

Of course - I did pull in a favour off my hubbie to get the potato drills started. Planted my Sarpo Mira potatoes on Sat - these are a main crop variety. I spaced them about 12-14inches apart in the ground and covered them with a few inches of soil. I will build up the drills as the shoots appear. Sarpo Mira are supposed to be a good blight resistant potato - time and summer will tell. Fingers crossed! Only doing half the potatoes I did last year as I had such issues with blight due to the wet summer despite spraying them weekly.

Planted out my broccoli (calebrese) plants too - these I covered with a mini cloche tunnel to keep them from getting too damaged in the wind/rain that is forecast. This will also increase the temp for the seedlings so they should grow quickly. I also planted a small number of radish and pak choi (my first time growing from seed) seeds under the cloche - these will be well gone out of the way by the time the broccoli needs the space. 

My last remaining parsnips were evicted from their bed to make room for the onions which are following them in my bed rotation policy. Great to still be picking fresh veg even at this late stage. I don't think I will grow parsnips in my raised beds again though - they grew too well (poor complaint I know!) - as my raised beds are 2 ft - the parsnips were almost impossible to dig out ( help was needed again) and we had to break some of them to get them out.

I have now my first raised bed full of garlic, onions and shallots. I will be planting more shallots and onions directly into the soil in a couple of weeks - weather dependant. I am also waiting for my purple sprouting broccoli to finish before I can dig it up and use the space for the onions.

I brought out my spring onions that I had growing inside on the window sill to my temp greenhouse. Planted a few other seeds in there too to see how they do. As it is only a plastic greenhouse with a couple of holes, it wouldn't be as warm as a glass greenhouse. Also brought out a few other garden plants (morning glory, nasturtiums, tomato) to start to acclimatise them,

We got a gift of new gloves and I cannot rate them highly enough - I normally end up flinging my gloves aside to get fine work done or handle small plants, but these gloves above were absolutely excellent. The only thing I wasn't able to do with them was handle fine seeds, but really managed to wear them for everything else. Some of the gardening gloves I have tried in the past are either too bulky or else you still have dirty nails afterwards which often negates the reason for wearing them.

Found a website below that sells them in the UK (note, I have no connection with the company - just one I found through google and I haven't used them).

http://workwearcornwall.co.uk/nitrile-gripper-glove~266

Purple Sprouting Broccoli

First year ever growing Purple Sprouting Broccoli and definitely not my last!! So great to be able to go out and pick some veg at this time of year. I did get one shock with it which I will describe later.

There isn't a big large head like calabrese (normal broccoli) to you and me - there is a smallish floret at the top and the rest is spears that grow along the sides. 

I have managed 4 picks so far from my bed of about 8 plants. It has been largely ignored during the winter and is in good condition considering. There is another month of a couple of picks a week from the plants to go. Great at this time of year!! 

My first pick!

The purple sprouting broccoli doesn't take as long as calabrese to cook - just took a couple of minutes in boiling water. I cooked it with some parsnips that I had still in the garden ( which had been cooking already).
Discovered then, purple sprouting broccoli looses its purple colour when cooking - the water absorbs it all, and so did my parsnips slightly! Was totally shocked - had people over for dinner and was promising them lovely purple broccoli, but it just looked like normal calabrese! Tasted slightly sweeter, but then again, picking to cooking time was only about 10mins!


Those of you that are fans of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall - he has a couple of recipes for purple sprouting broccoli at the link below.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2013/mar/01/purple-sprouting-broccoli-recipes

More details on the growing of Purple Sprouting Broccoli on the GIY website:
http://www.giyireland.com/articles/detail/growing_purple_sprouting_broccoli

Definitely one for the plot if you have space!!

March update - garlic planted, beds readied, seeds planted

Spent a few hours planting up a few seeds - ran out of both window sill space and containers. Planted some tomatoes, basil, coriander, spring onion and a new variety of basil which I haven't tried before that is supposed to be hardy for Ireland - Sacred Basil Ocimum Sanctum from http://store.irishseedsavers.ie/

Also planted some bedding plants including French Marigolds, asylum and some other plants for different parts of the garden like Morning Glory and Nasturtium.

Enjoying the lovely spring flowers - crocus and mini daffodils. 

We have our light installed by our house name plate now which meant it was finally ready for planting - I had been holding off as even with the best of meaning, they would all have been trampled with the light installation. Planted some violas and 

My strawberry bed after clearing out. Not looking the healthiest after all the frost the last few nights. 

My strawberry nursery - planted my strawberry runners here ready for moving out and passing onto friends in the next month or so before the bed is needed. 

Got my three varieties of garlic planted - though I did have to re-plant a few after the neighbours cat decided to dig up a few!! Think the chicken manure I spread on the bed attracted the cat! 

 These two beds have been cleared down and the manure spread on them in Oct/Nov has mostly broken down in them. Almost ready for planting!

My first glimpse of purple sprouting brocoli! Can't wait to taste as its one I have never had before! 

New paving stones - just put them out in temporary positions at the weekend. Have to figure out what we will do around them for the future with the beds. It does get so mucky when trying to collect the veg during the lovely Irish summer! 

Just a few views around the garden. Looking quiet well - only second year for the rock garden and even now has a nice bit of colour in it.

View back up the garden from the raised beds. 

A lot of digging over still left to be done. 

Strimmed the wild flower section - going to rotivate it again this weekend - it had too much grass planted with the flowers and was taking over. 

So much work to do - so little time ... 

For something different - check out straw bale gardening!