The Price Of Coal, Logs And Kindling.

 Taken from the outskirts of  a Cork city garage forecourt on Monday afternoon.

I read online that the Irish government puts 5.85 Euros carbon tax on a bag of coal or solid fuel.

They are putting another 80 Cents on a bag next Spring and 17 Euros on a tank of heating oil.

We are burning wood offcuts from a boat thats just had a revamp.

I hope it's not a cold winter like 2010.  How much do we spend heating our homes from September to March?

I haven't ordered any oil yet.  We light the stove in the front room and have put more blankets on the bed. 

I read also a certain supermarket is selling a really cheap electric heater that only costs 22 Cents an hour to run.  I am thinking of getting one.  Anyone know if they any good?

If you fancy an hot Toddy nightcap remember you pay 11 Euros in VAT on a bottle of whiskey or whisky if it is Scottish!

Annoying Weeds.

My weeding bucket containing Couch grass or "Twitch".

I inherited this weed when I turned a cow pasture into my vegetable plot over twenty years ago and made it into my allotment in the countryside next to the sea.  

Couch grass or "Twitch" is a nuisance and pernicious weed and a lot of new allotment holders soon learn they have inherited a lot of such weeds.

Rotovators break up the grass and make lots of little plants.

I have seen it survive being smothered by black plastic sheeting for months.

Some people would use glyphosate weed killers to destroy it.  I am an organic gardener and for me this is not an option. Plus I believe glyphosates cause Cancer.

I live with the weed and compost the roots.  If I had a bonfire I could burn it.  Onions love the potash from wood ashes.  Some weeds you just put up with and pull them out and throw them away or compost them

Another option would be to plastic sheet the area and make raised like mine in another days post.  You could import topsoil and well rotted fym and fill the containers.  Hopefully not importing any annoying and pernicious weeds.

What annoying weeds are the bane of your garden?  How do you control them?   I very rarely see Rosebay Willow Herb growing in Ireland.  I wonder why not?

 

Digging Up The Well Rotted FYM From Scruffy Allotment Corner.

 

Scruffy Corner.  Here lives a big pile of fym.  It was recently covered in weeds and nettles in particular.  

"Where nettles grow.  Anything will grow".

That is an old country saying.  I suppose I could have covered the pile with a sheet of black plastic to make it sweat and kill any weed seeds?

Garden videos and books will tell you should turn your compost heap and not let it get too wet.  I just left it for twelve months to decompose and the worms and the beneficial anaerobic bacteria did the rest.

See all the lovely wriggly brandling worms.  It takes me back to my Coarse fishing days.

Black and brown gold.  Lovely friable compost and all for free.

Do you have a scruffy corner in your allotment or garden where you store your fym, weeds and grass clippings and weeds?  Plants love Mother Nature made compost.

I spent four hours potting up and making cuttings today.  Gardening need not cost you any money if you use organic methods of feeding the soil and propagating plants.

Nasturtiums Grazing Piglets.

 It seems I am not the ones who likes growing and eating organic vegetables.

They are grazing the Nasturtiums that have self seeded under and along the green windbreak netting that is supposed to protect my polytunnel from Westerly gales from the Atlantic.  That's the windbreak netting mesh I mentioned about on your blog the other day JayCee. 

I noticed something had walked over my wooden decking plank Japanese onions raised bed and grazed my Brassicas yesterday .  I thought to myself:

"The slugs and snails have been busy".

Now I see who are the real culprits.

Our free range pigs like to pick their own whether the crops are ready or not.  

"Don't Be Late".

 It's that time of year when "Me, myself and I"  ( Joan Armatrading song) and my  old friend email each other about ideas for festivals and line ups next year.  He lives in Poland and I live in Eire.

I am sure the organisers of Cropredy and A New Day Festival could do with a few suggestions?

My first suggestion would be Canadian Prog band Saga.  They must be one of the best and most underrated bands in the world.

Great rock fans like the Germans appreciate so many rock bands that seem to go unnoticed in Britain and Ireland.  

So many rock bands tour Germany and not here or England and the other home countries.  Imagine being big in Germany or Japan and not in Britain? If I had been in a band I would be big in Iceland or Lidl😊.

One band who I would truly like to see tread the stage boards of the above mentioned festivals would be Saga.  Their lead singer comes from Wales and perhaps they will play Killarney or Cork?🎸🎶🎤?  

Is there a rock band you would love to see play live at a music festival?

I will offer more festival headliners suggestions on some other posts.  I don't want to be called a "one trick"pony blog writer.

A smallholding post tomorrow.

The Plastic Bottle Cloche Plant Factory.

 

Plastic bottles cut in half and turned into plant cloches.  They act like mini greenhouses.  Retaining moisture and protecting cuttings from predators like slugs and snails.

I have made lots of shrub cuttings using the plant cloches.  

The ones above have all rooted. I have taken the plastic bottles off them and I will use them to propagate more cuttings.

There are Cotoneasters, Hydrangeas, Hypericum, Hebes, Rugosa roses and are rooted cuttings propagated from our gardens.

You don't need money to make plants.  Anyone else making shrub or hedge cuttings?

More Hedging Cuttings.

 I gave a Laurel hedge a good cutting back last week.

Of course I saved some of the trimmings to make hedge cuttings.  There are over twenty of them.

Laurel hedge cuttings planted in sand.

Normally I place my cuttings in my homemade compost/well rotted fym. 

I thought I would use sand this time for a rooting medium.  I don't use sea sand because this contains salt and the plants will not like it.

Apparently Laurel is poisonous to animals and us human folk.  It gives off a Cyanide gas if you chip it in a wood chipper.  

I know if you don't cut it back it can grow up to forty feet high.  It also is not very fond of living next to the sea.  Oh well!

It will be good to compare rooting with compost and with sand.

This time of year is a good time to take cuttings.  Just dip them in organic hormone rooting powder and plant them in a pot and overwinter them in a greenhouse or polytunnel.  All they need is a drink now and again.

It's a good and cheap way of making hedging for nothing.

Anyone else making hedge or shrub cuttings at the moment?