Planting The Winter Onions At Last!

An old washing machine drum I repurposed and filled with well rotted fym and soil and planted my newly bought Japanese winter onion sets.  I normally plant them in September but I am a bit late this year.

 One of my repurposed plastic heating oil tanks newly weeded and planted up with onions.

My veg plot looks very neglected and overgrown at the moment. My late dad once said it only takes 3 months for a veg plot to become overgrown.  My three months of grieving are proof to that.  Hopefully we'll get some dry weeks over winter and my plot will look loved and the pigs will get plenty of buckets of grass and weeds to devour along with their ration

 I thought I had lost my mojo to grow anything again.  J was the seed sower and carrot weeder and cook and I was Boxer the cart horse to barrow the muck and weed and dig and harvest.

I dunno if I will grow so much again and I will not be going carbooting again with my shrubs and perennials.  

I have been thinking of starting selling plants from home but I might just plant up the plot and make a veg and flower garden in remembrance of Jean? She would have liked that.  

Have you planted any vegetables this Autumn/Winter?

A Pilgrimage Along The Goats Path Road.

 I walked fifty one miles last week.  I just have to get out of the house and pound the tarmac at the moment.  It's far too wet the walk the Sheep's Head Way and hills above where I live at the moment.  Not that you see a soul at this time of year.

Last Monday I decided to walk  to the pieta on top of the Goats Path.  It's somewhere I would sometimes walk to and J would collect me when I had walked enough.  

My pilgrimage this day was not for a religious purpose.  It was for exercise and to go to a place of sheer beauty where my wife would meet me after a long walk and drive me home. You can see the three peninsulas of Mizen, Beara and Sheepshead where I live and my dad's ancestors came from.  The peninsulas remind me of 3 bony fingers pointing like finger posts to Boston and the world beyond.

Mike Harding the great hiker and Lancashire comedian featured the pieta statue in his book: Footloose In The West Of Ireland.   I have a copy of it somewhere in a box? Jean would know where it was like everything else resides.

 Yorkshire Pudding once met  Mike Harding I do believe.  Mike once said that God gave us belly buttons so we can peel potatoes when we are in bed.😊

After a couple of miles the road gets quieter and I might not see a passing car or lorry for at least ten minutes may be more.

A farmer on a old  red Massey Ferguson tractor drove passed and waved and probably thinking: "It's strange to see tourists at this time of year?"

West Cork and Kerry people after hearing my broad Northwest English accent often ask me how long am I on holiday and I reply:

" Nearly twenty five years".

The walk on the north side (Northsider Dave) looks over Bantry Bay and over to the Beara peninsula and Hungry Hill and Sugarloaf mountains.  Regular blog readers know I can see them from our back garden and kitchen windows.

I decided to walk all along the road and I took in the view, talked to two walkers and I thought about Jean collecting me and all our memories living here for the last almost quarter of a century.  I shed a few tears and I even talked to my wife.  I know she's not with me physically but I still believe she's with me in spirit and I still feel the love we had ("have!") for each other.  

I still haven't dreamed about her yet.  Which is odd.  Perhaps my head is making me sleep? Her death and the funeral keep playing in a mental video and jukebox in my head.

Here's some photos of my walk for your perusal:

Snow covered Hungry Hill.  A talcum powder like covering.  I took this from my back garden.

There's never enough of these signs.

A wind swept tree.

The holy well.  I have read that girls from the former national school use to visit the well in May and look in the waters to hopefully see the reflection of their future husbands faces.

No dogs allowed.

Sign for an holy well.

Donkeys watching me.

All the way to Bantry looking East.

Seefin.

Take your litter home and a sign for Seefin.

Mary carry Christ in her arms.  J use to meet me here and drive me home east along the helter skelter that is the Goats Path road.

I even managed to capture my shadow.

A guide to Seefin.

Deserted ruins empty since the Great Famine.  Some people died or emigrated and even today there are buildings that nobody  knows who owns some of the  ruined buildings in Ireland.

Walkers sign.

Which road to choose?

It's like that Hovis advert walking up the steep and deserted road. This ain't Gold Hill in Dorset.  It's  the Sheepshead Peninsula in West Cork.  I could feel the warmth of the Gulf Stream hitting the land while I walked.

Sign posts for the Goats Path.

Map of the Sheeps Head Way and suggested walks.

Churn stands revamped all along our road.

Cows tucking into a round bale of silage: " How's tings boy? Anything strange?"

Walking West and a glimpse of the bay and Hungry Hill.  This was near  the beginning of my pilgrimage. 

The health app on my mobile phone told me I had walked 18 miles or between 30,000 to 40, 000 feet.  There is life in the old dog yet!  My feet really ached after my route march, saunter, pilgrimage. 

I sometimes think why do I need to travel when I have got all the walks and scenery where I live?

Hope you enjoyed my hike?

Newly Built West Cork Stone Walls.

Guess it's time I put in a blog appearance? The last eleven weeks have been heart breaking and I have never experienced such profound sadness.  

Now my chauffeur and pal is no longer here to ferry me around.  I have been doing lots of walking.  Last week according to the health app on my mobile phone I walked 51 miles or 102000 steps to the average person.  Last Monday I walked 18 miles.  Yes I'm fit again.  I will be 62 in a couple of weeks.

I have took some photos on my travels and my next blog will about my 18 miles walk along the boreens of our peninsula here in the SouthWest of Ireland.

Any road or anyway.  A few of my blog friends like Yorkshire Pudding appreciate dry stone walls and stone walls even made with sand and cement.

 I have noticed two newly constructed stone walls on my walks recently:

A new stone wall next to a brook.  Notice the hole in the wall with a pipe draining any surface water off the country lane/boreen.

A newly constructed garden wall.  It reminded me of the herring bone basket weave style of dry stone walls you see on our peninsula.  A legacy of when the Cornish miners mined metals like copper, lead and tin here in the nineteenth century.

It's  good to see natural materials like stone being used to construct walls.

Hope you're all ok and I will try to catch up with your posts and write some more blog posts.

A Month's Recycling.

 A car full of dog food cans, packaging and glass bottles.

Number 2 son visited down here in his new to him 7 seater car and suggested I might want to take the recycling I stored in the back of J's Berlingo.  It had given up the ghost a week or two before her passing.

Like most household routines like paying bills and housework and cooking and cleaning and washing .  J took on a multi task of roles.  It's been an awful difficult few weeks trying to know where anything is or where to pay the electricity.? I spent four hours  looking for birth and marriage certificates.  I wish someone would write a booklet for grieving widowers on how to manage house affairs.  Do you know where your marriage certificate is Mr?

I was mainly in charge of the outside of the smallholding, gardening, mucking out the ponies and pigs, chopping wood and carrying anything heavy.  Oh and burying dead rats, removing spiders and catching a bat that had flown down the chimney.  " Just get it outside"  J once screamed at me😊.

I couldn't believe how many bags of recycling I had crammed into the little van in the last month.

We took it to the waste recycling centre in Bantry and paid 3 Euros.  I wonder how much we pay individually for our packing and dog food cans and glass bottles?

We came home and filled up the car with the " Return" beer cans and plastic bottles and took them to Lidl and it was closed.  They had no electricity.  So we drove to Super Valu and started to put each individual can and plastic bottle in the return deposit machine.  We took the paper receipt to the check out and got back 22.50 Euros in cash.  

It's a pity they don't have a return machine for pet food and tinned food and glass bottles.  Are the supermarkets only interested in metal and plastic that makes money like Aluminium beer cans?

Sheep Near The Sheepshead Way.

 It's been a beautiful day today on our peninsula down here in West Cork.  

Thank you all so much for your heartfelt comments at the parting of my  children's motherand my beloved wife.

The funeral service was so beautiful and the Canon conducted it with such skill and kindness and he read our Eulogies.  One wrote by myself and one by our youngest son.

We had traditional hymns like All Things Beautiful and The Day Though Gavest Has Ended and I chose some popular music favourites by Paloma Faith, Chris De Burgh, Heart, The Beautiful South and Whitney Houston.  There was a lot of tears shed that service, mine included.

I not only lost my wife I lost my friend and chauffeur and fellow carboot sale Womble.  It's  difficult getting to town with a very limited Local Link bus service on a Tuesday and Thursday which went last Thursday through the flooded boreens and twenty odd miles picking up four of us.  It cost me 6 Euros including the return fare.   Thankfully the return journey is less than six miles home.

I have got back into walking again.  The Saturday after the funeral I visited J's grave and walked thirteen miles via Durrus and back home.  

I am also reading a book by CS Lewis called A Grief Observed.  It's brilliant and only cost me 74 Cents to download on Kindle.

The last month is probably the hardest month of my life and I like all of us have been through some very difficult times.  I don't know why God took my wife.  I know she wouldn't want to be separated from us.  I had nearly thirty one years of happily married life and she gave me two wonderful sons.

Thanks again.

Dedication.

 I lost the love of my life and sweetheart and pal J last Tuesday.  We buried her on Saturday in a graveyard overlooking the bay.

The people of Bantry and beyond showed J  and my family and myself so much love.

I don't know when or if I will post again for a while.  But I will publish any comments on here.

God bless you all.👍

Sedum Autumn Joy And Bergenias. Winter's On It's Way.

 The pinky red flower is Sedum Autumn Joy.  The cabbage like leafed plants are Bergenia.

Sedums like Buddleia attract butterflies 🦋 to the garden.

They are also a sign to me that Winter is on it's way.

Sedums are one of these easiest perennials there are to propagate from cuttings.  Just cut off a little branch and stick in a pot of sand or compost and I guarantee it will root within 3 to 4 weeks.  It really is that easy.

The Bergenias also nicknamed Elephants Ears and Pig Squeak change their leaf colour through Autumn, Winter and Spring.  The go pink to reddy purple.  They also bring some out of season cheer with a pink flower.

That great English plants woman Gertrude Jekyll  used to make Bergenia like borders in her planting layouts. Going slightly off topic.  Her brother was a friend of Robert Louis Stevenson and he borrowed their family name for one of his most famous literary characters.

They are both old garden favourites of mine and prolong our summer that little bit longer.   I think they grow and look better in big clumps or drifts rather than just individual plants.

I like to see the Butterflies hovering and feeding on the Sedum at this time of year.  The Sedums seem to melt through Winter and eventually appear and grow next Spring 

A View From Inside The Rosette Room.

 More rosettes pinned up with the sashes for our prize winning 🐖 🐷.  

The latest rosettes were awarded at Tullamore Agricultural Show a couple of weeks or so.

Joke.  There was a fire at a sleeping football giants stadium.

A rather concerned Chairman asked the fire chief if they had got to the cup room yet.

The fire chief replied:

"No we haven't managed to get into the canteen yet?"

No it wasn't MUFC.

I have been grafting hard all week and haven't had time to blog.  I'm trying to get a few extra quid/ Euros together for my forthcoming Prog Rock festival roughing it trip.

Storm Amy is knocking about our shores tomorrow night.  Batten down the hatches and hopefully it won't visit us.

Potting On The Newly Rooted Plants.

 I potted on all these new plants that I divided and took cuttings of a few weeks ago.

My neighbour down the road had his drive rechipped and tarred.   

They gave us the old top surface It's a very sandy mix.  These are the kind neighbours who leave us the bag of vegetables peelings under a upturned plant pot for the livestock on their garden wall.

One of the contractors came up and asked me if I could find some where for the scrapings?

"Something for free?" 🤔 thinks me.

Two Bobcat skid steer buckets later I had my very own cuttings mix.  On inspection it's very gritty sand and contains soil and well composted plant tissue like leaves.

A nice sandy mix for my cuttings. 

A bucket full of free draining cutting mix and it's  free!

It's  got absolutely perfect drainage and not too rich in nitrogen to start off cuttings.

I took lots of cuttings and divisions and used the scrapings for my cuttings mix.  Remember when I showed you my cuttings floor several blog posts back?

Yesterday I gently tugged the cuttings to see if there was any resistance and pulled them out of the sandy rooting medium.

One rooted Osteospermum (Cape Daisy) cutting.  I never cease to be amazed when I see newly formed roots.  I think Mother Nature sews them on to the cuttings while we sleep.🤔

It's always worth taking some of these frost tender plants cuttings at this time of year.  I lost most of mine in 2010 when we had the biggest snow accumulation for fifty years and we were snowed in for a fortnight.  

I could also have waited for leaves to form and roots to appear out of the drainage holes in the plant pots.

I wanted the room to take more cuttings so I began potting up the newly rooted plants in their own individual plant pots.

There are Osteospermums,  Shasta Daisies,  Bergenia, Hebes,  Hypericum, Cotoneasters, variegated grasses, Phormiums, 🌹 🥀 and Hydrangeas.  Rugosa cuttings are my next project.

Plant propagation costs very little.  All it needs is a pair of scissors ✂️,  some free cuttings, free plant pots (I have hundreds that people have gave me!), a watering can, water and some plant rooting material like that's  preferably free and most of all patience!

Are you propagating plants at the moment?  My plant nursery is getting ever fuller.  I must grow more veg.😀

By the way I have had two thousand seven hundred views so far today.  Either blog stats have gone crazy or there's a lot of folk out there who like Prog Rock?

Prog On A Friday.

 I found this fantastic video on good old You Tube recently.

It features ex Genesis axe man😀 even guitar genius:  Mr Steve Hackett and his band and Marillion lead guitarist 🎸 Steve Rothery on the Genesis track: Fly On A Windscreen.

I have featured Steve Hackett on here several times.  I have also posted on here  about his super book: A Genesis In My Bed. 

Before joining  Genesis.  He rang a NME advert for a band requiring a guitarist one night and someone called Mr Peter Gabriel answered the phone.  The rest is like they say: Prog Rock history.

Did any of you see Genesis in the early seventies?  I have always liked Steve Hackett and Peter Gabriel especially.  Not forgetting the work he's done with the English/Irish rock godess/Banshee: Kate Bush!

I saw Steve Hackett and his band with Nad Sylvan (vocalist on this video) playing his Genesis Revisited set at Cropredy festival in 2022.  I blogged about the concert which was amazing.

I first saw Steve Rothery with Marillion and rock poet Fish at Garden Party at Milton Keynes Bowl in 1986.  What a great day and line up that was.

Then I saw Marillion at The Night Of The Prog in Loreley in Germany in 2017 which I also wrote about on here.  

Steve Hogarth is the Marillion singer these days.  He's only been doing it since 1989.😀 

However he is a Red Devils supporter like myself and I am not talking about Salford Rugby League Club.  Or maybe I should do?  

Why couldn't the Caraboa Cup have been replayed at Old Trafford.  Grimsby would have had a kings 🤴 ransom share of the gate receipt and United might have won?🤔  

Any way or any road.  This 61 year old and several months will soon be going to Blighty to see them again in late September.  I hope they  do some early Marillion stuff like Script For A Jesters Tear or Misplaced Childhood...

It will be time for donning my shorts and showing off my donkey knees and a few days roughing it on one of my rock festival trips, Wetherspoons (cheap real ales and Cornish cider) and pasties.

Enjoy the track:

You can't beat some prog rock can you?

Have a great weekend🍺👍.

Shoulders Of Pork And Ham And Spam. Oh And The Price Of It!

 Another what we are having for our tea tonight or had for our tea last night post.  This time it's a Lidl version of Spam.

Apparently shoulders of pork and ham is where the word spam comes from.  Rather like the laboratories of New York and London jointly invented NYLON.

 On further Google research.  Spam was invented by Hormel Foods and Jay Hormel in 1937.

It was created to utilize Pork shoulder which was not a popular cut of meat at the time.

"Spam" is believed to be a combination of the words: "Spiced and ham".

My email often says: nothing in spam.

But I think there is.  Especially if you eat it!

The price of petrol station ⛽️  Spam.

We spotted this when fuelling up a few weeks ago in County Kerry.  I thought it a tad bit dear.

I remember Spike Milligan writing ✍️ in his book My Part in Hitler's Downfall.  He was serving in north Africa in the middle of a jungle.  He walked into an Arabic tent cafe  in the jungle and said to the waiter: "Spam and chips twice please!"

Do you like Spam or Shoulders Of Pork And Ham?

This sketch is over fifty years old.  1970 in fact.

You learn something new everyday. 😀

Could this be my blog post magnum opus?  Or even a Spam magnum opus? 

Reacquainted With An Old Gardening Work Mate.

One thing that I know when am gardening.  If I lose something eventually it will turn up.

It could be days, weeks, months or even years.  But eventually I will find my lost item of gardening equipment.

I have moaned and ranted on here before  about why don't garden tool manufacturers paint everything bright pink or red instead of green or brown?  Green and brown are natural habitat colours.  

If you don't want them to get camouflaged paint them in bright colours .  I have a pair of red handled loppers and I find them in seconds.  My green or black handled loppers can take me five to ten minutes to find.  Perhaps they think if we paint them green or brown the gardeners will lose them and buy new ones?  It's  the garden equivalent of The Man In The White Suit.

Secateurs are another one of my how to lose garden specialities.  I have dug up a few rusty pairs in the compost heaps  in my time.

These days I only buy cheap secateurs from a car boot sale or Lidl.  I know they will either break or lose them.

Any road or any way.  I was digging out some fym the other day for my raised beds and I uncovered the top of a big black tree plant pot.

They are briiant for putting weeds or  small stones in.  I bought the said plant bucket for five Euros a couple of years ago from a carboot sale.  It's  been used hundreds of times and I found it very useful.

I managed to eventually uncover and dig round the pot and prize it from it's fym prison.

Here it is for your perusal:

My old friend.  Big black bucket!  Or if it was in Keeping Up Appearances: Black bouquet.

Do you lose your gardening tools in the garden, but you know they will turn up some time?

You know you have been writing blogs for over fifteen years and you can find an old tree plant bucket interesting enough to write about.  Perhaps I am turning into an Eric Olthwaite and could write about ' interesting' coal shovels?😊

Still Got It.

 I never went to Cropredy or A New Day Festival this year.  Thankfully though I can watch some of the great You  Tube videos that other kind festival punters have recorded for the world wide web.

Here's Robert Plant from Cropredy a couple of weeks ago.  He was a special guest for the Deborah Bonham Band.  Yes you're right.  Debby is the late and great Led Zeppelin drummer's John's sister.

Robert Plant still seems to have got it!  What a magnificent voice:

Any one else planning on going or been to any rock festivals this summer?

It's  been brilliant weather the spring and summer of 2025.  The best ever me thinks 🤔  

A Scene From The Cuttings Floor.

The crowded floor of my proposed new potting shed/ man cave.

People have been very busy lately and my new potting shed seems to have been put on hold.

This plantaholic however decided to press on with my plant propagation area.

I took a piece of old polytunnel plastic and laid it on the ground to hopefully suppress any pernicious weeds.  Then I moved some small patio flags and pig slats to make a level ("ish") area to place my potting bench/ tables on.

Bob's your uncle!  I have a new area to take cuttings and divide plants and start veg seeds off.

I am not buying potting compost at the moment.   Instead I am experimenting with my potting mix.

Sand, home made compost and topsoil all combine.  I even place cuttings in just sand.

So what cuttings are you taking Dave?  Good question Dave.

I have been cutting back Shasta Daisies. Taking cuttings about a pencil length long.  Removing any leaves except a couple at the top which I could in half.  Then I get about ten cuttings to a large plant pot.

Of course I could divide the Daisies in September or next spring but I get great pleasure in seeing roots and leaves appear.

I will buy some good potting compost before they stop selling it for winter and pot them on individually.

I have also been taking Osteospermums (Cape Daisies) cuttings and dividing Bergenias and small Phormiums.

I water them most mornings at the moment.  But we are starting to get dews.  We even lit the stove in the front room last night and we weren't roasting.

My new potting shed floor is getting full already.  Soon they will be going outside into the plant nursery in the veg plot.

This is how I use to propagate my plants before I got my polytunnels which alas are no more.

I hope we get the sides and roof on before the Irish monsoon and gale season begins.

Are you propagating plants or making a potting shed/ greenhouse or polytunnel?

 

"Bye Jove He's Got It".

A bag of cheap discount supermarket daffodils.

I never thought any of our lads would become obsessed with gardening like yours truly and me, myself and I.

Number 2 son moved a couple of hours away last year.

We weren't happy bunnies and it's the same feeling most parents have to experience and all little birds have to fly the nest some time.

One day we visited them and somehow I was talked into digging off a big border of gravel courtesy of a borrowed shovel from next door and pulling up a big sheet of polythene.  The gravel was deposited on top of gravel on another border.

I pulled out any weeds and was impressed with the rich and fertile soil.  He was going to make a flower garden.

I visited him again and gave him the left over plants from a close by car boot sale we had just visited.  Then we arranged them on the border and guess who got the job of planting them?

He also bought bedding plants and a rose tree and we gave him some more plants.  Especially my Cape Daisies and Shasta Daisies.  Daisies are my plant autograph and you always know when I have planted up a garden.  It will contain my Daisies. 

He purchased some ornamental bark and a lot of his neighbours commented on his 'new' garden and how they would like a garden like it.

He's actually taken an interest in gardening and he even grew lettuce in a hanging basket.

I can't persuade him to put his name down for an allotment yet but he does want to container garden next year and grow vegetables.

Now we text each other about his garden and the latest plant offers in Aldi or Lidl.

I told him he could get a big bag of daffodils from Lidl for ten Euros.  

The other day he drove home and presented me with a quarter of a bag of daffodils.  He said he'd got tired planting his ones.

I have planted them in one of my old decking plank raised beds.

When I was planting them I thought:

"Bye Jove He's Got It!"

At least one of our lads like gardening!
 

When You Plant A Buddleia You Get Yourself A Butterfly 🦋 Bush.

 

Butterflies and Buddleia. 

The 🦋 🦋 butterflies love the Buddleia that I planted to make our patio a bit more private last year. You can see the bay and Beara in the background.  We live in the countryside next to the sea.

Regular readers will know this particular shade of purple/ lilac specimen is an offspring of a Buddleia  cutting I took when I lived in Cheshire.   I filled two wheelie bins full of my shrubs and perennials and manhandled it into the back of a Luton hire van.  

Last year I planted another cutting that had successfully "striked" rootsand now it's attracting the Red Admirals.

When I was trying to sell my Buddleia and other plants at a carboot sale the other week.

I had a conversation with a lovely lady and I told her about the Buddleia or butterfly bush.  I told her if she planted it in her garden it would attract the butterflies 🦋.   Then I said that apparently that butterflies serve no natural purpose other than being beautiful.  We both agreed what could be better than that?  She bought my potted Buddleia and went away happy.

My Sedum Autumn Joy's are now turning pinky purple.  These also attract the butterflies.  Sadly when I see these in flower and the butterflies hovering round them.  I know winter is on the way.  Rather like seeing farmers making second or third cut bales of silage.  So the cattle will have forage in winter. 

Anyone getting lots of butterflies on their Buddleias?

Here's a song by American heavy rock  band Heart.  I saw them play at Birmingham NEC back in the late eighties.  I think it was 1988🤔? Crikey!  That is thirty seven years ago.  Where does the time go?

A Text Message And Some Windfall Apples 🍎 For The Livestock.

I had got a text message from one of my neighbours when I was working in the veg plot.

He had left me a wheelbarrow full of apples that he had collected from his orchard and I could give them to our livestock

Happy apple eating pigs.

Apple munching  ponies.

The pygmy goats 🐐 loved their 🍎 🍎. 

Wheelbarrow of windfall apples.  

It's been a great year for fruit, vegetables and 💐flowers.

 

 

Homemade 🌭 Hotdogs.

 Another snacky post or: "What We Had For Our Tea Last Night!"

Our homemade hotdogs 🌭  made with our organic homegrown Japanese onions 🌰. 

A jar of cheap Bratwurst Lidl sausages, hot dog rolls, onion, mustard and tomato sauce.  Very nice.  Quick and easy.  Perhaps I should get a hot dog van and paint "Dave's Dogs" on it?

I could go to rock festivals and charge a 🤴 ransom or  a "tenner" for one of my hotdogs and listen to the music?

I watched Robert Plant at Cropredy festival on You Tube at the weekend.  I went last year and in 2022.  He's still got an amazing voice.

I never got to see Led Zep but I did see Jimmy Page play at: Monsters Of Rock festival once.

Hope you like the tune?  

I wonder what other snacky snacks we can come up with?  Vinegar butties, banana 🍌 butties..🤔

Growing Beetroot Vegetables Which Are Really Swiss Chard.

 You know how "Algarve' and "Portugal " my beloved polytunnels plastic were ripped and torn by the Atlantic gales?

We still haven't got round to building my new sturdy potting shed/man cave yet.

I bought quite a few of our vegetable seedlings in trays from a garden centre up in  County Kerry.  Their vegetable plantss are excellent.

Unfortunately they had not labelled the seedlings and veg plants.  I had even remembered to bring my Lidl reading glasses with me

Old Clever Clogs (me) jumped in with my size 11 boots and picked what I thought (" I taught I saw a puddy tat") were beetroot.

I have been watching them growing with caution and wondering why no beetroots were not forming under the leaves?🤔

I was weeding the repurposed plastic tanks yesterday and the penny finally dropped:

"They're Swiss chard".

Yes I know they are related to each other in the vegetable family.  Same factory, different department:

Swiss chard with some Nasturtiums invaders.

Anyone else grow Swiss chard?  Do you eat it raw or cook it?  I believe it's a good idea to cut out the hard spine before cooking or eating it?

Snacky Time.

 I am a great believer that the sun feeds you when it's so hot like this fabulous summer.  I have never known a summer so good.

We have a big Kenwood Chef mixing bowl of new potatoes waiting to be ate.  But it's just too hot and we much prefer snacks like corned beef toasties.

I have blogged  about the Kenwood Chef stainless steel  bowl before.  I bought it for a pound on a car boot sale twenty five years ago and we still use it every week.  Especially for collecting new potatoes from the veg plot.  There are still plenty left for me to dig.

Of course I am using our home grown onions and lettuce to accompany the corned beef and toast:

What I had for my tea last night.

What's your favourite snack at the moment?

Do you hear yourself saying:

"It's far too hot 🔥 for 🥔 potatoes. "

"Is it hot or is it me?"

Here's a little bossanova tune to go with this post:

Leeks Growing In A Fym Filled Cut Down IBC Tank.

 I went out this hour to pick one of my Redina lettuces for a corned beef toasty for our tea.

I noticed my leeks growing in a cut down IBC tank.  They seem to be absolutely flying it.  

The docks and weeds outside the tanks seem to also be flourishing   My raised beds have drilled drainage  holes and no doubt the soil nutrients feed the weeds.  If the weeds don't  grow.  Nothing will grow.

I am so pleased with our repurposed plastic tanks filled with fym and planted with organic bought vegetables.

One often praises clay plant pots.  I rarely see any over here.  I am starting to praise plastic pots and containers.   I think they warm up the growing medium and the veg plants flourish.  Have you had similar thoughts?

We harvested one of our first leeks the other day.  It tasted wonderful.  You can pick stuff young and fresh when you grow your own.

The vegetable sugars have not got old and turned into starches like a lot of supermarket old vegetables.

I definitely think the better the depth of soil.  The better the vegetable grows.

A Gunnera And A Tree Fern Growing Here On The Irish Riviera.

 I spotted this Tasmanian tree fern and this Chilean Gunnera growing side by side in a garden on our peninsula in the south west of Ireland.

We live on the Gulf Stream and it is remarkable what will grow in such a mild climate.

Tree ferns or man ferns go for astronomical prices.  You can buy small ones for about 30 Euros.  

If you go to Kells over on the ring of Kerry there is a tree fern forest, garden centre and their head gardener recently won a gold at Chelsea flower show.   I think they also " put you up" or accommodate you even and there's a restaurant.  I have been there once and featured it here on my humble blog.  Way back in 2015.  It's  on my blog search.

The tree ferns were originally used for convict ship ballast returning to Blighty after dropping off deportees in Van Diemen's Land.  The ships returning were empty so they cut down tree ferns and used them for ballast for the long sea journey back to Falmouth.

On return.  They threw the plants into the bay and some people planted them in their estate gardens.  Amazingly they grew and have aerial roots and people started collecting them.

Gunnera originate in Chile and Brazil.  They look like giant rhubarb and their leaves and stalks go brown in Autumn and they do not like frost.  Fuschia is also a Chile native and it grows profusely here in West Cork.  I have also seen growing happily in Devon and Cornwall. 

It was good to see to two plants from different continents growing side by side.

Would you have them in your garden?  I would love a tree fern.

Topping Up The Repurposed Oil Tanks/Raised Beds With FYM.

One of my tv gardener heroes was Geoffrey Smith and I often still watch his gardening videos on good old YouTube.  Here are two gardening quotes by him:

"Put the brown end in the soil, the green end above it , and you're in with a much better chance."

"If I am depressed,  or I think the world's  a filthy place, I just go and look at a flower".

Geoffrey like myself came from Northern England and he believed in hard graft and forking over the ground and leaving the rough clods for the Winter frosts and rain to break them down and make lovely friable soil.

My gardening digging habits have evolved to the Irish climate.  Ireland gets its fair share of gales and very wet winters.  But we rarely get the snow and frost like they get in the north of England.

I am 62 this December and I still grow some crops like new potatoes in the ground.  But in recent times I have been repurposing containers like plastic baths, heating oil tanks, Belfast sinks, rear wheel tractor tyres, mussel and fish crates and IBC tanks...

They give me a lot deeper depth of growing medium and I am gardening at waist or knee height.  I am not no dig and I climb on top of them and dig them over after a crop is harvested. 

The weather is very good this spring and summer.  I took the black plastic cover off the dung heap and filled up my weeding big bucket 🪣(tree plant pot) with fym and filled up some of my vacant plastic raised beds:

Topped up raised beds.  Already for next spring.  The fym contained a lot of fat juicy brandlings worm.  They reminded me of coarse fishing days when I would use such worms 🪱 to lure Perch and other fish to the hook.  

Fishermen are the watchdogs of our waters and gardeners and allotment holders monitor the soil.  The worms will take the fym down into the soil.  I could cover them up with plastic but I will allow the rain to add nitrogen and wash the goodness from the fym into the soil.

I have had great harvests this year in my repurposed raised beds.  You don't  need to have a garden or allotment just some containers to grow your veg and some muck and magic.

Anyone else making use of the fine weather and getting their veg plot topped up with fym and ready for spring?