Month: July 2009

We need more sunshine! Managed to do a blast of weeding in the fine weather we had yesterday, it felt great to have spent the whole day outside with muddy hands. Today it was fine for the first half of the day, so made a shape on the veg patch (remains of)… I actually found some carrots and beans, the stubs of some rabbit mangled leeks and a few forgotten weedy cabbages…. then the heaven’s opened and everything stopped… AGAIN… This weather is just about doing my head in and I’m sure everyone elses!

I live by the sea on the South Coast of England – and have all the issues to contend with relating to winds.

I have a particular interest in growing bonsai’s

My garden is medium size and s divided into various small beds – i.e. Alpine Bed, Rose Bed, Perennial Bed, Summer bedding and a small area for veg. I also grow a lot of plants in pots which I move around at various stages during the year.  

 

hi all , went out to look at the garden today and boy have the weeds loved it, i weeded and weeded and weeded some more. at this stage i am nearly sorry to be going away to mullingar , hubby coming too , leaving tomorrow back sunday, i will probably never get on top of the weeds!!!!heard there was a bad storm on saturday , two phormiums practically split in two , all phormium flower spikes lying on the ground  my very large dahlia (dont know the name) flowers as big as my head , battered into the ground.

 am leaving early tomorrow , do a bit of shopping nice dinner  a glass or two of wine and bed . see you all on saturday.

will put up photos of hampton court next week . it was wonderful, will go again. but before you all decide to run off next year , get into training!!! its huge!!

Why am I doing this late evening!!  Well I start at about 8ish and find I’m still here at 10.30.  Wanted to moved photo on to journal but instead it’s gone to ‘garden’ or ‘profile’!!!   Just showing my cottage gdn which was the latest project started 2 yrs ago.  Now it’s a riot of colour, especially since returning from hols.  Spent today weeding it.  Also cut back all my aubretia which lines either side of my driveway.  Perhaps I’ll try to send a picture of driveway which is flanked by borders and lawns, tomorrow.   Have had lots of advice from Sue via text and phone – obviously it’s not sinking in.  Lovely sunny calm today wasn’t it?

This spring I got my first greenhouse. It is wonderful – 10ftx20ft. As you can imagine, I am now trying different gardening techniques and I hope to overwinter some plants in the greenhouse.

I have also dug a fair number of new borders this year so the greenhouse will come in handy for helping me propagate plants to fill them.

If you do successfully kill them, you don’t pluck them and have them for dinner because the meat is too leathery.  You now have to dispose of the remains.  Honest to God, I can’t remember what happened to ours.  They didn’t end up in the compost heap, we most definitely did not dig a grave for them and we didn’t eat them so something must have happened to them.  But it was different times when you used to see signs on gates “Land laid with poison” so maybe that’s where they ended up.  I must ask at home.

As you have probably guessed at this stage – a box of eggs in the supermarket beats that any day of the week, in my estimation.

When we were children, my mother kept hens.  She always purchased them as pullets – the stage just before they start to lay eggs.  Originally, they were housed in a timber structure but one night there was a very bad storm and the timber house was damaged beyond repair.  From there on in, they were housed in a solid structure. 

We had our front yard and the haggard – the typical 2 entrances from the road and a gate up at the top between the two.  Every night we were told to close the gate between the yard and the haggard and to let the hens out.  Once the hens were let loose, they automatically made a beeline for that top gate.  Even if you had forgotten to shut the gate and when running (well actually sprinting), they still managed to get to that gate before you did.  In to the yard and over to the back door and then, they would poo!   That resulted in an immediate telling off from Mother because we hadn’t done what we had been told to do. 

Now, hen poo – it has the most annoying ability to squelch up between the grooves in the soles of your shoes.  It is a job in itself getting it off.  If you are lucky enough to spot the offending material before you step in it, the quickest way to clear it up is to get pour some sand over it.  The excess moisture is absorbed by the sand, then with a shovel lift up everything thus making the disposal process an awful lot easier.

Food for the hens in those days was purchased from the Avonmore shop/outlet.  From memory, it came in a bag roughly a 15kg bag size except it wasn’t kilograms in those days.  I don’t know if the other creameries did it then and I don’t know if Avonmore still do it.  The bag had to be keep indoors because once that food gets wet, it sort of mats together and is gluey.  Disgusting really, when wet.  Normally, they would be fed once a day with this feed and then whatever they would find when they were let out.

Hens also need water.  From memory, I think we used to change their water every day.  Now, please don’t get offended anyone but when they are eating their food, I suppose a bit like us, they like a drink and little bits of the food would end up in the water container.  So imagine the food, now wet, turning gluey and sticky either in the bottom of the container or along the sides and then having to handle this to wash it out and refill.  Not pleasant, to say the least.

Straw is what we used for bedding.  Nowadays, the bales of straw are the hugh bales that you see all stacked up in piles in the fields.  This too has to be kept dry because it is of no use if wet.  They love fresh dry straw.  Rats do to, by the way – just a little bit of useful information – great for raising a family in and all that.  Every Saturday, we had to clean out the house and put in clean straw.  Nauseating is the only word that comes to mind.  The smell was shocking – you would be in that house gagging.  It was stuck to the floor in parts so it had to be scraped off with the spade.  Yes, we used an old garden spade because it had a bigger front section compared to a shovel.  It had to be loaded into a wheelbarrow and brought to a different section of the farm where it rotted down.  I suppose the worst part was actually being in the house but emptying out the wheelbarrow wasn’t the nicest of tasks either.

The house itself, apart from having the feed and water containers, also had a nest for them to lay their eggs in and a roost.  The roost was about 3.5ft / 4ft high from the ground.  A while ago, there was a woman on with Ryan Tubridy talking about keeping hens.  She mentioned that she didn’t have a roost and that if she had, the local wildlife wouldn’t have taken them.  I don’t know if she meant foxes or the local young lads who traditionally would have hopped over the orchard walls and robbed the apples.  Foxes do like them.  One consolation is that the hens create a hugh fuss if they see one so they would nearly wake you up if there was a fox around.  But then, would you want to be woken up from your sleep for nights on end?  What would you do with the fox?

When they are getting old, the shells on the eggs are soft.  I’m afraid it’s not a case of hormone replacement therapy for them at that stage – it’s the chop.  I never had to wring one of their necks but I do remember my mother and the next door neighbour talking about it.  From memory, you have to catch them (not an easy task, let me assure you), tuck them under one of your arms, making sure the wings are restrained by your body and arm and the feet are restrained by one hand.  Otherwise they would cut the face off you.  Then, with the other hand, quickly snap the neck.  Apparently, they are also very good at pretending to be dead so when you would put them down, expecting them to stay on the ground, they get up and walk off.  I can guarantee you that you wouldn’t catch them again in a hurry. 

My garden, front and back was just grass, which had never been cultivated, so it was hard work to get it in order. The front is bigger, but the back is my pride and joy, though small. The front gets a lot of praise from neighbours.

I am going to St. Annes Park with Bree, my friend and Paddy tomorrow and then we are going to Wexford for the weekend. Looking forward to seeing the garden. Its been three weeks and I’m told the weeds are winning again. Cannot do much about it with my arm in a sling. But I’ll direct Paddy 🙂

today i didnt do much. mown the lawns and watered the polytunnel.i am off to the uk tonight and i will be back sunday evening.next week i hope to post up in y journal 10 good reasons for keeping poultry in your garden.i think alot of people want to keep hens in their garden but are not sure about keeping hens.another person as posted up on their journal about their childhood cleaning and looking after hens.she makes it sound like a nightmare. well its not.mucking out sheds and laying new bedding weekly is something you do with horse’s and cattle.

 

Hi everybody. Just logging in to say to all who are heading to Belvedere House tomorrow, have a brilliant time. I am so disappointed that I can’t be there to meet everybody. Enjoy. And maybe some time, in the not too distant future, there will be another meeting.

hi everyone

got alot done today, spent the morning staking and then in the afternoon i put the membrane down on the long border, i am nettle stung and rose prodded, there are scraps and scratches all over my arms . ready now for the stone. hope to get another bed weeded tomorrow. there are weeds everywhere its driving me crazy. i will put some photos up now. happy gardening. dont know if the rain will be here tomorrow, didnt get any until bout nine this eve

A Lucky Escape is what the garden had, somehow the horses got out of their field and luckily didn’t go on the rampage eating trees and pulling out plants. David our 2nd son was coming home from a party and had forgotten his key, if he’d had it with him he would never have heard the horses rattling around at the stables.Luckily the ground is reasonably dry and although there’s hoofprints on the lawns no real damage done. I did think I heard horses last night but thought I was dreaming and I didn’t get up to look. Priority will be to get gates up on the entrance from the stables carpark and off the lane as I’d be devestated if I wook up to find the garden destroyed. Possible temporary measure is an electrified spring.

Well off to work now, have to finish organising event tomorrow, weather overcast but dry.

Not impressed because I can’t go to Mullingar today :o(

Head

Ok so its been a while – have trouble navigating the site 🙁 went to Belvedere house today and met some lovely people, Rita, Spider, Sally Sarah (or was it the other way around?) sorry, Marian, Collete, Ena and ‘Head Gardener’ but to name a few, was with Jools O it was lovely to meet you all and will now make an effort to use this site more to keep in touch with you all – was glad to find out that it was raining here in East Galway all day whilst I was ‘basked in the sunshine’ (ok thats the wine talkin!~) now looking out at my garden ~(wet) and thinking of how to get rid of more grass in order to put more plants in – will post more photos during the week – ideas always welcome…….

hi everyone got a lot of work done in tunnel today. well it rained most of the day and i couldnt stand it any longer so i went into the tunnel and started to sow carrots to replace my wonky ones, and beetroot and potted on cabbages and repotted the strawberrys, then i cleaned up the wind burned tomatos that were looking very shabby, with weeks of feeding they have really come back to healthy plants, cleaned the tunnel and feed everything. i stood at the door of the tunnel afterwards and said to myself, all sorted.

hope all that went to mullingar had a bril time and will tell us how it went. will hopefully plan for next year to go.

realised something lately, i have become a dab hand at the typing lately, get a lot of practise with my journals, wasnt this good when i was at school, garden.ie is better than any secretarial course. yipee!!!!!!!!!!!!!! to  garden.ie

i am posting a few pics now of my work in the tunnel today.

happy gardening everyone

It was great to meet everyone yesterday at Belvedere House — though I will admit I felt a bit strange looking at people’s nametags searchingly before I even focused on faces.  The meeting about the website was a necessity but the ‘car-boot’ sale was the highlight.  Thanks to everyone for swapping and taking plants off my hands.  Special thanks to Drumanagh who thought to bring me an Astrantia — very thoughtful (by the way, does anyone grow Astrantia from seed or know anything about it? — I lifted some seeds yesterday as well, as you do.).

It was great to meet Rita and hope to see her again and Sally again soon (a trip for Olga, perhaps, but we’d better ask her first….).  And Spider and his flamethrower and double-barrelled shotgun.  Bill the HG and his shivering Tithonias; Cooper and the lovely invasive yellow flower her husband wouldn’t let her bring back home 🙂   Rachel, who thought I was an old lady until she met me (I’ll take that as a compliment… wiser than my years [cough cough, NOT]).  Who else?  Oh yes, Mairin.  Am planning on building a bot that will hit her page over and over again so that she becomes the most visited page….  Swapped plants with Joybells (thank you for the only shrub I got and I have very few yet at the house).  I met a nice woman named Liga who, like me, likes to grow things from seeds — she gave me some Penstemon and something else, I forget.  And Michelle of course — thanks for the Cistus.  There was a very nice lady who gave me 2 very healthy-looking Lynchnis — but I didn’t get here name.  Anyone know who that might have been?

And the garden was nice to walk around in though I found it completely depressing because the borders were so natty looking — maybe it’s just at the awkward stage where late summer stuff isn’t quite there yet.  I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt; they probably don’t have a lot of manpower.  There were some really nice perennials and shrubs that they should be propagating and filling in a little more creatively instead of just lumping geraniums in everywhere.  I found it a bit depressing.  Didn’t make it down to the vegetable garden cottage thing — too hungry and getting a bit tired of looking at how to grow veg, to be honest.  Always happens to me this time of year.

On an unrelated note, my friend and I just got new propagators since we are starting to sell (or swap 🙂 a few plants of our own growing.  But talk about putting the cart before the horse… in our excitement we just kind of blindly ordered the biggest one we could get.  It’s the jumbo one that holds 8 seed trays.  Well, hers won’t fit on her utility room counter (counter too narrow); mine won’t fit on my utility room counter (propagator too high).  So hers is for the garage (requiring a gro-lite) and mine is for the back bedroom (aka The Black Hole of Calcutta, or Calclutter, as I should call it) where I currently have 4 big things of cutting trying to root — in fact, must go mist them now.

I think we should hold regular plant swaps — high summer might not be an ideal time (my perennials looked much better a month ago).  Wonder if there is anyone that likes organising this kind of stuff that would take the bull by the horns?

By the way, if you are ever passing through east Galway, you are welcome to call in and see the garden.  It is, to put it mildly, a work-in-progress, but then, aren’t they all??

So, I thought I would put up some photos – thought I would be able to label them after uploading – oops – perhaps thats something else that can be done! – anyway photos of my greenhouse, tomatoes – am getting impatient now want them red, peppers getting big now – so just have toms and chillies/peppers in the greenhouse – couple of melon plants but I don’t hold out much hope!

The tunnel (my office) which is now home to the trifids (squash and giant red cabbage!) and various out door veggie beds some extra tom plants (did I sow too many again this year? hmm) courgettes, green beans peas, mange tout and kale, have just also sown some carrots for the winter (earlier attempts failed miserably!)

Front garden is the one with the tractor which is the grass area that I am going to get rid of. It is roughly 60ft x 60ft give or take.  Long front border roadside and corner bed by house, at the ideas stage at the moment and this is changing almost daily! watch this space.

Various flower beds around the house with perennials and climbers.  Some nursery beds where I have divided and sown stuff and have no where to put them (so whats new!)

Outdoor raised beds with onions, leeks, cabbage, broccoli, gladioli and various other bits and bobs! 

And some photos of poppies just for Jools O 🙂

The usual early morning opening of the tunnell,greenhouse,coldframe,etc was done shortaly before 7.30am.Nothing else went on in the garden today. After lunch we ventured over to Tullynally gardens.Some of the family wanted to admire the surroundings,buildings,trees,flowers etc but my time was spent in the veg area looking through some brassicas,roots,salad greens,veg fruits etc.An enjoyable day was had by all.I will add some photos later in the week.

Thoroughly enjoyed visit to B.House.  Rita did the driving.  Nice to put faces to names!!  Came home with lots of plants generously given out at the end of plant exchange in carpark!!Spoke to lots of nice people.

Most unexpected meeting – met a member who came from Tooting Broadway, London, where I lived during my early teens.  We went to the same convent school (at different times as Mary is much younger than me – but then isn’t everyone….) and it turned out that we both married in the same church.  She is Mary 20 from Ballyjamesduff.  We are going to keep in touch

Afterwards Rita and I went off to see Nadine’s garden as Rita had some plants to give to Nadine.  My goodness – what a garden she has.  It is wonderful, amazing – I could use another 10 adjectives to describe it, but that wouldn’t be enough!! It’s a garden I could easily live with!   She has the most amazing Australian trees, all grown from seed.  Has lots of shrubs I’d never seen or heard of before.   In my opinion her garden should be featured in the Irish Garden Mag!   I won’t even start on about the two sheds she has built with her bare hands……..  She has so many features in the garden, I could go on all evening.   And then to top it Nadine  sent both Rita and I off home laden with plants and cuttings.  What a lady!!

 

 

To those I met in Mullingar It was nice to meet you. To those I did not meet all I can say is I am shy and like the line in the famous song "we’ll meet again. To Gerry and all his staff all I can say is THANKS. You see in all the talking that was done we all forgot to thank Gerry. With-out the magazine we would lack in knowledge, with-out the website we would have to struggle on without assistance of garden friends and assistance from Gerry, and most importantly of all what is the chance of any of us meeting or chatting in our lifetime if Gerry did not create the opporunity for us to meet. Not only has he created a gardening club but he assisted people to become friends with people who they may never have met. So all I can say is THANKS VERY MUCH. 

after the get together in Mgar yesterday i went to my mams for a while. lovely evening. late evening. tired today. tidied up kitchen with karen. then sat down for 40 winks. woke up. decided to mow grass. put it off to read the paper. when i eventually did go out to mow i’m not joking the sky clouded over and i only got 5strips of the lawn done before i had to abandon the whole thing. what a malarky!

have finally put up photos of hampton court, it took ages . note last few pics, gardens of henrys wives.

 off to bed now(11.30) talk tomorrow

I had an interesting conversation with STENO on saturday. He was telling me that his veg was not as succesful as he hoped and I on the other hand was telling him that I had great success except with me carrots. On the way home I was thinking about the conversation and I came up with this theory.

IN A GARDENERS LIFETIME HE IS GRANTED A PERFECT YEAR, everything he plants grows to perfection, weeds fail to show up in the garden, slugs migrate for the year, garden pests hibernate during the summer and the garden is covered with the greatest floral display which would be worthy of a gold medal at Chelsea. This is the perfect dream of all gardeners.

I believe this can happen, but I cannot expand on this theory at the moment as I must feed the pigs who have just landed in the garden and trampled all over the elves who were having a rave in the cabbage patch.

Was on computer really early this morning to try and add photos going by Nadine’s written instructions – as you can see from photos I’m getting there.  My goodness, though, it takes ages to download 1 photo as I am on ‘dial-up’.  While ‘drive-way’ was being uploaded I went out into garden and picked rhubarb to make R.Crumble (that’s how bad it is)!!  Broadband is supposed to be coming to our area in September – I can’t wait!!   I know daffs photo is going back season-wise but I think that’s a nice photo.  The daffs go right along the wall in front of the two lawns.  My neighbours in the lane tell us that they really enjoy the Spring Show!   Now I have bedding begonias in, which seems strange for a country gdn, but it works and plus, they stand up to the wind.  Will put a photo on (God I’m showing off now) when they ‘meet up’ more.   So between Sue and Nadine’s instructions I have got there with the uploading of photos.

Spent yesterday sorting out all the plants that Nadine kindly gave me.  She also gave me loads of pieces she pulled off shrubs, so I have potted all those up and hope they ‘take’.

I think this journal entry is enough for one day – off now to make crumble!