The garden becomes a place to have breakfast this week as the weather is warm if a little overcast. The cabbages, kale and broccoli are under attack however. The cabbage white butterfly has become very active. The advantage of having a small garden is I can easily enough inspect the leaf undersides for eggs and [...]
Posts Tagged ‘July’
20 Jul
TIME OUT TO CELEBRATE WITH THE ORGANIC CENTRE, CO LEITRIM – THIRD WEEK IN JULY 2010
The garden at home is bursting with produce right now. The peas and beans, kale and cabbage, chard Swiss and Rainbow are all featuring in the kitchen. Courgettes and pumpkins are in flowers. The raspberries, strawberries and blackcurrants often don’t make it as far as the kitchen. The tomatoes are ripening and the sunflowers are reaching for the [...]
15 Jul
SOWING RADISH AS A CATCH CROP WITH ANTI-SLUG DEFENCES – SECOND WEEK IN JULY 2010
My 8 courgette plants are growing, but not as fast as I expected which leaves some areas of bare soil. Nature does not ‘do’ bare soil unless we’re talking earthquake aftermath or mudslides. I’ll have a go at sowing a few radish seeds to use this vacant space but the slug threat needs a response. [...]
14 Jul
TIME TO BRING IN THE FIRST FLUSH OF THE BLACKCURRANT HARVEST – FIRST WEEK IN JULY 2010
Fellow kitchen gardener Cathy Gaffney from down the road and her daughter Jenny helped this year to pick and share blackcurrants while the weather was dry. I get a generous crop from just two blackcurrant bushes – or ‘Ribes Nigrum’ as the Romans (or Michael Palin in ‘The Life of Brian’) might have said! A [...]
21 Jul
HARVESTING SECOND-EARLY POTATOES AND GIVING THE GARDEN SHED ROOF A ‘HAIR-CUT’ – FOURTH WEEK IN JULY 2009
The growing of Duke of York in car tyres and Carlingford in large 2 foot diameter pots has yielded a reasonable harvest. Both varieties are second-early potatoes. However the tyre grown Duke of York produced larger tubers and a heavier crop overall. It seems the tyres retained moisture better than the pots. The tyres were [...]
13 Jul
RONDO PEAS WIN PRIZE AT RUSH HORTICULTURAL SHOW. MEANWHILE STRAWBERRY RUNNERS NEED PLANTING UP – THIRD WEEK IN JULY 2009
Rush and District Horticultural Show was held at St Maur’s GAA Centre, Rush, Co Dublin, on Saturday 11 July. I chanced my arm and entered a 3 pod set of Enorma broad beans, 8 strings of blackcurrants and a 6 pod set of Rondo peas. Considering there were 11 other pea class entries I was delighted [...]
5 Jul
FARMERS’ MARKET GOOD OUTLET FOR SURPLUS HARVEST – SECOND WEEK IN JULY 2009
When the only chance to cook is a Saturday or Sunday, the harvest from even a small garden can be more than enough at this time of year. Thank goodness therefore that the weekly Balbriggan Fish and Farmers’ Market has a Garden Produce Stall where surplus produce can be sold. In my case, the income [...]
29 Jun
ENCOURAGE BEES, MAYBE TAKE UP BEEKEEPING – FIRST WEEK IN JULY 2009
The honey bee does so much more than produce honey. A by-product of collecting nectar is crop pollination. The value of this farming service has been estimated per colony of bees as around €1,500 worth of pollination a year. In order to collect a pound of honey, a bee flies on average a distance equivalent [...]
