Saturday 30 August 2008

August Photos



Dahlias still in bloom




Eucryphia
nymansensis



Hydrangea and Galtonia candicans (summer hyacinth) by a stone wall





Japanese anemone in front of the old outdoor toilet














Jar of wasps on the stump of the plum tree






Copyright (c) David Lewis 2008.

Lazy Beds

It is difficult to imagine but when I was married 50 years ago there were very few vegetables to choose from – potatoes, carrots, turnips, kale and cabbage – so when I went to live in a house with a large neglected garden I couldn’t wait to experiment with vegetable growing.

The best presents I received were the ABC of Vegetable Gardening by WE Sherwell-Cooper and the ABC of Flower Gardening.

Living in the country the days were long, with one small daughter to look after and my husband all day in business in Derry. It was a gigantic task but a challenge I was determined to face.

My first try was the potato. I read in my ABC that one could grow potatoes in 'lazy beds', which was also a good way to clean the ground.

My husband scythed off the top of weeds, coarse grass, brambles and tree seedlings. We then marked out a small plot with pegs and string.

Sods of about 18 inches square were lifted off and placed grass side down either side of a shallow trench – the potatoes were placed in this trench about a foot apart and covered with a sprinkling of soil. I remember the thrill when the first green shoots appeared. The sods were roughly chopped in situ and used to earth up the shoots in very rough drills.

While the potatoes were growing we took on another strip of land to grow broad beans. By this time my husband had managed to get a load of manure from a local farmer.

A deep trench was dug, the soil well broken up and in the bottom of it we put the chopped up turf then a heavy dose of manure, the soil placed on top then lightly tramped down. The beans were planted six inches apart then covered with two inches of soil.

With reference to my ABC of Vegetable Gardening I decided to try a ‘hot bed’ to grow lettuce. My husband knocked out the bottom of an apple box to give a small frame. A deep hole two spades deep was dug slightly smaller than the frame – this was filled with alternate layers of manure and grass cuttings – well tramped down. The frame was put on top and filled with the soil which had been put through a coarse riddle.

Small rows of lettuce, radishes and beetroot were sown and a piece of window glass placed on top. It was surprising how soon the seeds germinated as the manure and grass cuttings heated the soil. I made the mistake most new gardeners make by sowing the seeds too thickly and then not thinning them out sufficiently.

By this time there was lush growth on the potatoes which my husband had ‘earthed up’ two or three times. When they had flowered and the flowers had died we took a spade to try them. What a disappointment! Loads of small potatoes, delicious to eat, but no weight of crop. Obviously a lack of humus as the sods were still dry and the potatoes hadn’t had the advantage of the manure.

Don’t worry if things go wrong. All gardeners make mistakes. It’s the best way to learn. And although the potatoes were small, cooked with butter and mint, they were still a treat!

Doreen Moody

Growing Vegetables

Growing vegetables is so rewarding. Vegetables fresh from the garden taste quite different and if grown without chemcial fertiliser or pesticides you know they are truly organic.

If you have only a small space you are limited as to what you can grow, so grow the plants which will give you the most return for your labour. Here are a few plants, I wouldn’t be without.

Everyone should have a few plants of everlasting onions, also known as scallions. They are so easy to grow and if you just use the green tops leaving the bulb in the ground, they will go on and on and on. My original everlasting onions were given to me almost 50 years ago!

Used in salads, stir-fries or champ they are very tasty, much more flavoursome than chives which tend to get tough and dry, or the white Lisbon seedling onions which are usually sold as spring onions. They can be planted as the edge to a border or even a clump in a large pot.

Most varieties of lettuce mature at the same time so try varieties such as 'Salad Bowl', which give you a continuous picking over several months. The curling leaves are also quite attractive.
Given rich moisture retaining soil a few plants of asparagus grown at the back of a flowerbed will give you a treat for a few weeks in April/May.

Runner or climbing French beans can be grown up a fence or a wigwam of canes – given a mulch and plenty of water – and picked frequently will give you beans for at least three months.

Spinach can be picked continuously but I prefer a few plants of Swiss Chard which give you a crisp green vegetables for about nine months of the year. You not only can eat the green part of the leaves, in salads or cooked like spinach, but also the thick white centres, cooked like asparagus). There are coloured varieties that can be interplanted in flower borders as can beetroot. Seedlings can be grown on early in small pots to give you earlier crops.

A few herbs such as parsley, Jerusalem sage, mint etc do very well in pots. The black plastic pots which are used for cut flowers, I find can be recycled by making a few holes in the bottom. Because of their size they don’t usually require watering unless the weather is particularly dry and given a weak liquid fertiliser will surprise you with the results.

I grow tomato plants from my own seed, which is an obvious hybrid between 'Gardener's Delight' and 'Sungold'. I grow these in the greenhouse but in recent years have tried growing them outside.

Don’t be discouraged by failure. If seedlings get eaten by rabbits (as has happened to me recently) or shredded by caterpillars, there is usually some other vegetable you can grow as a catch crop, such as Chinese cabbage. Useful for salads, stir-fry etc. No need to cut the whole cabbage, just take off the outside leaves. Of course this can be done with ordinary cabbages – they go on growing just the same. Nutritionists say there are more vitamins in the outside leaves. Whether, this is because they have been growing longer and absorbed more vitamins, I don’t know.

These are some of the vegetables I wouldn’t be without. But every year I like to try something different. Last year it was chicory, black salsify and Florence fennel. Who knows what it will be this year!

Doreen Moody