Mulching With Leek And Dock Leaves.

Japanese Onions mulched with Docks and Leek leaves today.

I have been thinking.  "Oh no!"

I will have to have a lie down.

One likes to experiment with different mulches in the veg garden.  Previously I have used, grass, hay and straw and fym to mulch the beds.

Today I experimented by using dock leaves and leek leaves.

Rather like how trees in forests shed their leaves and blacket the ground and keep it warm and provide plant and tree food.

I thinks it is Mother Nature composting.

Hopefully the worms and anaerobic bacteria will take the mulches into the garden soil and 
 provide plant food for the vegetables?  The leaves should also suppress any weed growth.

There are not many falling leaves near me.  I might go bagging leaves in a woods this Bank Holiday weekend?  Only Ireland could have a Bank Holiday werkend in October?

Anyone else use weeds or leaves for mulching?

Anyone got any leaves they don't want?  I will give them a good home and compost and mulch my veggies with them.

Don't take your leaves to the tip use them for a mulch or compost them.

 

Our Plastic Raised Beds Planter Vegetables Progress.

Organic veg growing in repurposed plastic raised beds.  The leeks don't mind living in an old heating oil tank.  They taste delicious in our home grown and home made leek and potato soup.

Leeks doing well.  

Japanese or Winter onions growing in old baths.  They need weeding.  That's fym top dressing for you.  I don't mind the weeds.  It shows your ground is fertile.

Swedes.  I pick the leaves for the rabbits.

More swedes growing in cut down IBC tanks.  I of course drilled holes in them all.

The fish box container allotment in the polytunnel.

Celery for the rabbits and yours truly.

Brussel sprouts.

Japanese onions growing in a wooden decking planks raised bed in the polytunnel.

I gave the rabbits an hearty Celery breakfast.  There is only them and me that likes it.

The old oil heating tanks, IBC tanks and plastic baths and wood raised beds have been a great success for growing my veggies this year.

They drain well and the growing ground is nearer to you.

Once again my plastic raised beds demonstrate to me that you don't need to have a garden or allotment to grow organic vegetables.  All you need is something to grow them in.

Another thing is you spend your time weeding just the growing areas.

Anyone else growing their bed in raised beds instead of on the flat soil?  

They are easier on the back and they drain quicker than the ground and it some times very full water table.

I am getting older and I am trying to make my vegetable gardening easier.  I never want to stop growing my own and it's the only way of getting "fresh" vegetables and organic ones at that!

Lucozade Mini Greenhouses.

 I have been taking lots more cuttings over the last few days: Cotoneaster, Hypericum and Rugosa rose and Photinia or Red Robin cuttings to be precise.

If I took the fully intact Lucozade plastic bottles to the "Return" machines in all the Irish supermarkets.  I would get a receipt for 25 Cents per bottle.

Incidentally I was reading online the other day and it said none of the "Return" paper receipts can be recycled.  I suppose it's the ink?  🤔

There are also no machines petfood tins or one for bottles.

Instead of taking the bottles back I have cut the bottles in half and made cuttings cloches or mini greenhouses out of them.  

They retain the moisture after watering them and protect tender plants from slugs and snails damage.

My plastic plant propagation method is a good way of making new plants for free.

Anyone take cuttings?  I seem to make them most days at the moment.  Perhaps I am a plant propagator addict?  

A Cheap Ceramic Plug Heater.

A ceramic plug heater that only cost 10 Euros.

Number one son and his girlfriend came back the other night  with some electric heaters and shopping for the cats and dogs and us from a certain discount supermarket near us.

The small ceramic plug heater is only small and costs 22 Cents or 14 Pence an hour in England to run.  It's not that big going off the size of the plug socket, but it does  gives off tremendous heat.

It reminded me of that joke about a poor family who used a donkey jacket (poor donkey"!) for a blanket.  The mother says to her kids: "Don't call it a jacket call it an Eiderdown".  A while later. Mother is entertaining  posh guests downstairs and her son shouts down the stairs: "Mum the sleeves fallen off the Eiderdown".

It will be great turning on the plug in the morning and getting warm whilst we eat some biscuits and have a brew.  Real ground black coffee of course!  I can't stand the instant stuff. 

I will post  another keeping us warm post another day.

Here's an old rock song favourite of mine:

 

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.