Trevor's Kitchen Garden How I grow my own food and how you can too.

Travelling by wheelbarrow at allotments in Brandan, Warwickshire, near Garden Organic, May 2011

Visiting new allotmenteers after successful campaign by Louth Green Party to establish allotments in Drogheda area.

A very good friend sent me an article there from the UK’s financial website of the year www.thisismoney.co.uk. The title was Grow your own food and chop £1,300 from the grocery bill. It refers to research by the UK’s National Society of Allotment and Leisure Gardeners, which has found that allotment holders spend on average £202 growing vegetables and fruit every year that would sell for £1,564 in the shops. The article goes on to say, ‘With the cost of the weekly grocery bill rising by an average of 6.1% in the past year, interest in growing your own vegetables is expected to soar – and allotments are an ideal place for most people to do it.

In my humble opinion, a bit of a back garden is the ideal place to grow food yourself, if you have a back garden. Two steps from your back door to your salad bed is much handier than a possible two miles of a trip to a local allotment, before you can harvest your lunch. It is the needs of children to kick a ball about in the garden or play with the dog, which points to an allotment being a good idea in my opinion. The allotment has many other advantages, however. Meeting other growers on nearby plots can become  an ad hoc ‘agricultural academy’. Tips on what to do and what not to do, offers of  spare seedlings and communal picnics can create a whole new circle of friends of the earth – so to speak!

The place to start is an email or phone call to the local authority and ask for the allotment officer. Either join a waiting list and/or enquire about private allotments in the locality. Private plots are generally more expensive, but some really go all out to make allotmenteers welcome with picnic areas, water taps, a weeding and watering service if you are away for a while, tea making facilities and toilets, complimentary manure, etc.

It may well require a couple of  hours on your plot per week but if you can make it  an enjoyable activity, then just consider it a pastime with a purpose, a financially sensible purpose. Another bonus is that it is a fairly healthy, peaceful pastime, unlike the allotmenteering during the Second World War when food was grown on bombed out sites. Mr. Middleton, the BBC gardening expert at the time mused, ‘Won’t it be grand when we can sit on the old garden seat, and listen to the birds instead of the sirens!’. Enjoy the birds!

Sunflowers before they wilted and made way for the broad bean sowing.

The harvest of beetroot from a 1 by 2m patch

The beetroot crop which shares a plot with the remains of the spinach and chard, is ready to be harvested. Once that space is vacated, the organic Vallelado garlic ordered by post from Manfred at Fruit Hill Farm in Bantry, Co. Cork, can be sown. www.fruithillfarm.com is one of the few places I can reliably buy supplies of organically certified garlic, onion sets, shallots etc at this time of the year.

Having carefully dug up the beetroot, leaves and all, with a garden fork, I rubbed off the loose soil and laid them in a cardboard box, ready for the kitchen. If my garden and harvest were bigger, I would have had a wooden box and a bag of damp sand ready, with a view to storing the beetroots until they were needed for the kitchen.

While thinking would I bottle, bake, boil, grate or store these beets, my eye turned to the lush leaves which resemble chard. I twisted the leaves off (twisting is better than cutting to avoid the beets ‘bleeding’), washed and steamed them for the dinner. Well, the taste was rough compared to chard. While edible, I won’t bother cooking the leaves again.

Next I roasted a few beets in tinfoil in the oven for an hour or so, very tasty. Next day I boiled the rest to compare flavours. The boiled beets tasted excellent also when hot and also cold the next day in a salad mixed with apple, walnuts and mayonnaise.

Instead of bottling this year, I will freeze the remaining cooked beetroots. Now I can make more of those delicious beetroot dishes through the coming winter once I defrost a portion of my harvest.

GARLIC: The patch left vacant after the beetroot is quite fertile from previous composting. Before planting the garlic cloves, however, I forked a sprinkling of old wood ash in to the top few centimetres of soil as alliums are partial to a bit of potash, which wood ash contains. Turf or coal ash are not recommended as a soil supplement.

Once the garlic bulbs (certified disease free, unlike the grocery bought garlic) are separated in to cloves, I take them out to the plot along with a dibber and trowel. They are spaced out a span of my hand apart (20 – 25cm). Then each one goes underground about 2cm where it will grow to maturity in late Summer of next year.

I had planted last year’s garlic with a 10 – 15cm spacing. However Klaus Laitenberger in his book ‘Vegetables for the Irish Garden’ says wider spacing gives bigger bulbs, so time will tell.

BROAD BEANS: While the recent harvest of garlic cloves are happily drying away in a griddle in the greenhouse before I hang them up for storage, the old garlic plot is now to be forked over and made ready for the broad bean seeds to be sown. The soil is quite fertile. Teagasc tell me it is TOO fertile, so no additional compost needed I guess.

The wilted sunflowers can now be removed to make more space for the bean seeds. Last year I planted the broad beans in a circle, just like the runner beans and peas which cling to wigwam structures. However this year I hope to get a better broad bean crop by sowing 25 seeds in a 5 by 5 pattern covering the quarter of the plot allocated to the broad beans. These beans, variety Supersimonia, are strong enough to stand upright except in a very strong wind. The support I will construct therefore will be like a mini boxing ring, so when a gust gets up, they can hang loose on the ropes and grow on, bowed but unbroken, when the wind subsides.

The spacing for the broad beans is similar to the garlic, a span apart and 2cm underground. In this mild Autumn weather, I expect the new broad bean and garlic plants to appear above the soil surface in a week or two.

I look forward to all horticultural shows, and the show put on by the Naul Gardening Club is famous throughout the island of Ireland. Accents from Carrickfergus to Carlow mingle with the dead pan humour of North County Dublin and neighbours from Meath. Over 700 entries made up the vibrant displays, and it was the gladioli, dahlias, roses, pot plants and floral arrangements which caught the eye first of any visitor coming to admire the show in Clann Mhuire GAA Sportshall.

However the more understated displays, the photography, crafts, baking , preserves, fruit and vegetables all shone and impressed the judges and spectators alike. Trevor’s Kitchen Garden entered in three categories and the entrance fee for each entry was the princely sum of 50c each, great value!

Carefully, before 10am on Saturday, I laid out my best looking six French beans and nearby six fairly uniform runner beans. Amongst the dessert apple entries, I displayed five of my best and most uniform looking James Grieve apples. Each card with the entrant’s name is left upsidedown on the table to ensure no bias in the judging.

On Sunday we returned after the judges had been and gone. Whaddaya know, I picked up a second prize for my apples and two third prizes for the bean entries. Like the entry fee, the prize money is meant as an acknowledgement. €3 for first – €2 for second – €1 for third. Technically, I could have gone home having made a profit! However, better to leave the cash with the organisers in the hope they are up for holding the show again this time next year. Who knows, I may have something to enter from my greenhouse next year!

The greenhouse has needed three hours or so of work, but I’ve been busy writing ABOUT ‘organic growing in a small garden’ instead of looking after my own patch. There are publishing deadlines at present which take precedent over a number of outstanding jobs in the garden. One of these jobs is the harvesting of the potatoes from those sturdy potato bags. My plan has been to use the excellent soil left behind after the potato harvest as soil to kit out my new greenhouse.

However the greenhouse is sited on what was the lawn. If I had poured soil in there, the grass would quickly grow up and take over the space. First goal was to kill off the grass. A couple of months ago when the greenhouse was installed, I covered the grass with black miopex. Today I set aside the time to remove this light excluding membrane. What I found underneath was brown grass, but with some moisture, this could green up and grow again. However, it was easy enough to skim the top couple of centimetres off with a garden fork and remove the wilted grass sod.

Now the grass sods were gone for composting, I could assemble the wood I had bought and cut some time ago, and make a narrow pathway and raised beds from timber planks to create four plots. The plan is to rotate the protected crops just as the outdoor crops are rotated. For the moment the plots need more good soil to make the raised permanent beds.

Harvesting the potatoes is therefore a win-win operation. I gently lift a full potato growing bag in to the greenhouse and empty it out in the space created for a raised bed. Once the potatoes have been removed to make a few dinners, the remaining soil, full of worms thanks to the addition of seaweed to the potato bags. All that remains to be done then is to level of the heap of potato-less soil in readiness for use as a new raised bed.

Time now to sow Winter salad seeds in the new greenhouse and start making a slow return on the small but beautifully formed glass and metal investment, much of which was a gift for my 50th birthday from my Fingal Green friends. Go raibh maith agaibh, a Chairde Ghlais!

I used to wonder why veteren beekeepers always exude a humility about their craft, never claiming to be experts and prepared for the worst but grateful to the bees if they got a crop of honey. I don’t wonder anymore. Last year was my first year keeping a hive and I was delighted to have 30 jars of honey to keep me and several friends aswell as a few hay fever sufferers happy over the Winter with supplies of Balbriggan honey. This Summer, however, the hives did not thrive. Having a three year old queen in one hive and an ‘invisible’ queen in the other was less than ideal, one could say.

About a month ago, John Killeen, a well respected beekeeper with the County Dublin Beekeepers organised for me to collect a new nucleus colony of bees with a new unmarked queen. To free up a brood box for the new colony, I united the two ailing colonies in the one brood box, sterilised it all and scorched with a blow torch all the nooks and crannies of the empty box. With the help of local beekeeper John, we introduced the  new colony to their new Balbriggan home. It is great to have a vibrant full colony again giving my friend’s orchard the appearance of a busy bee airport, with departures and arrivals criss-crossing all the time during daylight hours.

The bees are striving to build up sufficient honey stores to get them through winter. When the temperature outside drops below 10 degrees C, they will start to cluster inside the hive to keep warm. With no foraging in cold weather, the bees depend on the collected stores of honey for food until the warmer Spring temperatures return. My job is to help this new colony to survive by feeding sugar syrup now and treating the hive with Apiguard, a natural slow release gel containing thymol, which will hopefully kill any varroa mites present in the hive. The varroa mite is a major reason why wild honeybees have been largely wiped out.

Ben Harden, the well known beekeeping supplier in Arklow, sent me by post a feeding tray which sits on top of the brood box. I have one for each hive. To make sugar syrup, I buy 4 kilos of white sugar at a go, mix this with 2 litres of boiling water, and bring it in two 2litre washed out milk containers to the apiary. I am sure people must wonder what I am at when they see the vast amounts of sugar in my shopping basket! To date I have given the new hive 12 litres of syrup and they have taken down into the hive everything I have given them so far. I must make more tomorrow.

I also ordered from Ben the Apiguard treatments. They come in small metal trays with a foil seal. A spacer called an eke is placed on top of the brood box. This means the apiguard tray is not squashed when placed on top of the frames where the bees are working to build up their stores. In a fortnight another tray of Apiguard will be inserted to complete the treatment before the activity levels in the hive drop off as the weather gets colder.

One year on I have learned important lessons about beekeeping. The critical one is to keep regular and useful records of dates, bee observations, measures taken and requirements for the next visit toi the hives. I owe huge thanks to Milo and John in Malahide and Jim in Mullingar for the mentoring. There is always next year to look forward to, I hope the bees feel the same way!

Last week the glut of courgettes had me planning ways to cook these generous  mini-marrows. Most of the recipes I found involved frying slices of courgette. What I learned from a better cook than me afterwards was – make sure to have the pan really hop before frying the courgette. This will sear and thereby seal the courgette. Courgettes, like aubergine, are quite absorbent. Unless they are sealed in the pan, they blot the oil.

Since then I have discovered more courgette recipes thanks to Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall who published a few in the Guardian newspaper on August 11, 2007.  They include ‘Courgette Moussaka’, ‘Slow-cooked Courgette on Toast’  and ’Courgette Chutney’ (which he calls ‘glutney’) The chutney sounds like a good idea as it uses green tomatoes and apples, of which I have a few too many also. Meanwhile a courgette moussaka and a glass of red wine sounds like a good way to toast the garden’s generosity!

Looking at Medieval Herb Garden, Tully Castle, Lower Lough Erne, Co Fermanagh

I’m writing this having returned from fantastic holiday put-put-putting along in a hired boat on Upper and Lower Lough Erne between Cavan, Fermanagh and the border with Co. Donegal. From the jollity of the Fleadh Ceoil in Cavan to the spirituality of the monastic ruins on Devenish Islands, the break was so diverse it seems longer than it actually was. The ‘busman’s  holiday’ aspect of the trip included visits to the walled gardens at Tullynally Castle near Castlepollard on the way to Cavan. Then going ashore in Upper Lough Erne to speak to the allotmenteers in the walled garden of Crom Castle. On then to Enniskillen where we cycled about 8 miles south to Florencecourt and another old walled garden where the National Trust in Northern Ireland is developing a community garden. Onward to Belleek and stopped off at Tully Castle where a medicinal and culinary herbal 17th  century garden, complete with box hedging has been re-created to evoke a feeling of travelling back in time about 400 years.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Trevor’s Kichen Garden was fending for itself. I am glad I weeded before I left as the growth in two weeks was impressive enough. Good sign that growth however, as it indicated a fair number of showers fell keeping the legumes, brassicas, spuds, beets alliums and the fruit and herbs watered without a watering can in sight.

Before I left I did of course give all the important plants a good water and liquid feed with comfrey tea. The upturned mineral bottle funnels were filled to the brim from the watering cans. Further to that I pressed in to service those mineral bottle porous lids shaped like a dunce’s hat which dibber-like are shoved in to the soil near container and greenhouse plants with a water filled 2 litre mineral bottle screwed on to each watering dibber lid. The bottle of water is slowly released by this clever device in to the surrounding soil, keeping the tomatoes ( and me!) happy for the 2 weeks absence.

Nice to get back to runner beans, courgettes, chard, french beans, broccolli and cabbage all ready to be picked. I have a recipe to try out this weekend to use up the healthy supply of courgettes. Depending on how I get on making the dish, I may say more. In this case, no news will not be good news!

It is great to see the coming together of food businesses including local farmers getting together with Balbriggan Town Council, Balbriggan Chamber of Commerce and Fingal County Council and Balbriggan Fish and Farmers’ Market to organise Balbriggan Food Fest 2011 once again with sponsorship from Bridgestone. Apart from making and selling tyres worldwide, Bridgestone has been a key driver in raising standards in restaurants and encouraging artisan food producers throughout Ireland with John and Sally Mc Kenna and their Bridgestone Food Guide and Awards.

This year Balbriggan, locals and visitors alike, will be savouring by the sea, the best of local produce and dishes created specially in local restaurants to suit every taste and dietary requirement. My own stall at Balbriggan Fish and Farmers market will be supplying herbs from Trevor’s Kitchen Garden and from the Sonairte organic walled garden, near Laytown. Each Friday morning on the Square in Balbriggan, I sell herbs in pots for growing on or transplanting as well as giving away free sprigs of rosemary, sage, mint, bay and a few other herbs which people use for cooking at home.

On Saturday, 20th August, there will be no need to cook at home! Come to Quay Street, Balbriggan from 12 – 3pm for food tastings – local produce displays – cooking demonstrations – great food – live music – and much more! For more information, check out www.balbrigganfoodfest.com.

Wednesday 3rd August was very educational during the Balbriggan Grow It Yourself group tour of Ardgillan Walled Garden by head gardener Domenica Mc Kevitt, of which I was delighted to be a part. The tour took in the all the sections of the garden covering flowers and shrubs, fruit trees and bushes, vegetables of all sorts and a huge selection of herbs too.

In my small kitchen garden I need to replace my ‘Conference’ pear tree, which never thrived for me, with a fig tree perhaps. After the GIY tour of Ardgillan Castle gardens near Balbriggan, I now have options of apple, pear, plum, cherry or fig.

To grow apple against a wall, parallel wires are strung horizontally about a foot apart. The newly planted sapling is cut back to the height just above the first side branch, which is trained along the lowest length of wire. As the tree grows the next side branch which suits the wire height is chosen to be tied  along that length. As apples fruit on the same wood year after year, this espalier system works for apples as it works also for pears.

Espalier growing does not work for plums and cherries. For a start, this group of fruits does not like being pruned and summer is the only time to prune them if you have to. Plums and cherries can be grown against a wall, but only as a fan, not as an espalier. This cherry family of trees fruit on newer wood only. After maybe three years fruiting on a particular branch, that branch ceases to fruit. Meanwhile newer branches grow. As old branches cease fruiting, newer branches develop which will fruit, so these need to become part of the fan, while older branches can be pruned off. Remember only prune plums and cherries in the Summer period only.

As for figs, their main need seems to be having their roots confined. Otherwise they apparently focus on leaf growth instead of producing fruit. In this regard my garden is perfect, at least in the root department. The semicircular stone pots along the west facing wall.#

Now all I have to do is find two organically certified fig trees in pots small enough to grow in Trevor’s Kitchen Garden.

My treat for my birthday was a day out . A trip to the ‘garden county’ on a scorcher of a day that was the 27th of July was memorable, enjoyable and very interesting. Mark Winterbottom and Alan Pierce the farming partners hosted the large crowd at their rented holding called Gold River Farm Ltd at Balleshall, just outside Aughrim, Co. Wicklow. The dry warm day reinforced the importance of the irrigation measures including large water tanks close to the crops and tractor mounted water dispensers.

The farm has diversified further still from a huge range of vegetables, fruit and herbs to rear pigs organically. They now have 400 pigs. Their production rates at 11 – 14 piglets per sow twice a year, are very impressive and just as good as the best industrial pig breeding units. These organic pigs are much in demand and the order books are healthy just like the pigs.

Polytunnels are a big part of the farm also. We saw the  five and a half tonne cherry tomato crop in full production. The cherry varieties were proving more blight resistant than the beef tomato varieties. After the tomato harvest, the tunnels are cleared out for a crop of baby leaf salad and then cucumber and basil. The pepper crop had been a disappointment. This being an innovative farm with a keen eye on market demand, it is a credit to the guys that they take the chance to expand their range when they see a market opportunity. As they say, you win some, you lose some.

Coriander and parsley were growing outside which was impressive. However this was a warm south facing slope of a holding, reminiscent of the vinyards of Lombardy (or so I am told!).

Weed control was a difficult challenge, especially with alliums where the crop does not have a canopy of leaves and so never excludes light from surrounding soil. A flame weeder is used from time to time. However grasses are difficult to control with this device it seems.

Stephen Alexander from Teagasc in Kinsealy was there to make a presentation and do a demonstration on vegetable pests and diseases. I am told to go ahead and compost the rust affected leaves of the garlic as it is a wind borne disease. Only keep soil borne diseases like white rot and club root out of the compost and soil.

Alan and Mark were lucky to have the expert chefs like Evan Doyle of Brooklodge Hotel and Spa nearby on hand to lay on a great feast. One of the pigs made the ultimate sacrifice for the occasion! Between weather, the farm and the hospitality, everyone visiting went off to the four provinces well satisfied with the day. Thanks to the organic bodies Organic Trust and IOFGA, and Teagasc Advisors James Mc Donnell and Elaine Leavy and the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food for all the work before and on the day. What a crowd! What a farm! What a day!

PS  Take a look at the organic bodies or Teagasc websites for more details of other organic farm walks.