Sallygardens Smallholding

Selecting Seeds for Spring

It's that time of year again when the seed catalogues arrive in the post. It's a great lift for the spirits to leaf through the pages and begin selecting whats to be grown this year. After a few months of pretty much nothing happening in the garden you can start to look forward to the beginning of the cycle all over again. It won't be long now until the seeds are placed in compost trays and their small green tips push up through to the light. The miracle of these tiny seeds growing so vigourously in the spring and summer seasons is always a thrill to watch ... and eat!

Sitting in front of a winter fire and discussing what varieties and types of plants to grow is always a pleasure and something to be savoured. This year we have quite a few seeds left over from last year which have kept well, so we don't actually have to buy a lot of stock.

One thing that's always tempting is to buy too many varieties of each thing, but  I've learnt to concentrate on a few items and try to do them really well, rather than become bogged down with tons of seed packets, which I'd never realistically be able to sow and grow!

The vegetables and polytunnel have always been my 'department' but now that I'm on the traditional Irish music course every morning himself will be learning to take the lead in the garden and I'll be his assistant when I get home. It's a good thing that we both learn the logistics of all the various farm areas.

So what are we sowing this year? A sample includes mange tout, sugar snap peas, dwarf purple, golden and green French beans, spinach, chard, courgette, sweet corn, kale, mixed salad leaves, pak choi, stir fry oriental leaves, onions, garlic, pumpkin, parsnip, carrot, potato, kohl rabi, brussel sprout, brocolli to name a few.

If you are starting out growing for the first time I have an eBooklet that gives advice on how to get started. The main points are to choose hardy and reliable plants so ensure success but also to start small with just a few items and add to that each year.

Sallygardens eBooklet Store

At long last I've managed to create a Paypal store which will make it easier for you to purchase our Sallygardens eBooklets. Instead of having to email me first to request a Paypal invoice you can place a direct order via this store front. Of course you can still use the old way, this alternative just provides another easier option . Look to the right hand side bar to find the store. Come on in and have a look around.

Ripening Tomatoes

The polytunnel has well and truly finished it's summer flush. It's with a little regret that I mark the end of summer and the beginning of autumn by snipping off the remaining tomatoes from the plant. I bring them inside and hang them up in the south facing kitchen window, still on their vine. I think of summer time whenever I glance at them. The family just graze on them, picking them off as they ripen up. Delicious.

One way to encourage the green toms to ripen is to hang bananas amongst them, the blacker the better! A gas emitted by the banana speeds up the ripening process.  Another way to use up and green toms is to make a green tomatoe chutney or, as a recent visitor told me, fry them in butter.

Reaping the Harvest

As autumn takes over many of the vegetables have reached the end of their productive season such as the tomatoes, French climbing and dwarf beans. Other crops are still bearing fruit, the last of the cucumbers are still in the tunnel, some runner beans are waiting to be picked as is a good crop of carrots that will last another few months.  Outdoors the pumpkins are at their best. As winter approaches Kale comes into it's own, the cabbages are being used and the leeks stay in the ground until needed.

The garlic and onions have already been saved are hanging in the kitchen.We haven't got a full years supply of these but as each season passes we add another vegetable bed so eventually there will be enough produce to tide us over for a full year, but one step at a time!

Successful Strawberries

At long last I can report that there has finally been a successful crop at of strawberries at Sallygardens! This is our third season trying  and I had sworn that if we didn't get a decent return we would cut our losses and never try again. In year one we bought some plants and eagerly put them outside in a well prepared bed. Anticipation rose as a huge spray of flowers appeared promising us a big bounty. The fruit all set and we watched them daily as the white strawberries began to swell. One day we saw the first blush of pink and the next day ... they had all been demolished by slugs! Lesson learned.

The following year we bought a beautiful terracotta strawberry pot. We positioned the pot by the back door, off grass, on the footpath which did a great job in deterring the slugs. The fruit got a stage further this time, a beautiful rich red colour, but on closer inspection the strawberries were almost hollowed out by ants. We put a thick coating of vaseline around the base and upper lip of the pot and that stopped the ants in their tracks. However waiting in the wings for their opportunity were the birds who swooped in and wiped out most of the remaining fruit. Smeared in vaseline and surrounded by a cage of chicken wire the once attractive terracotta strawberry pot had become quite an eyesore.

Year three and the polytunnel was our final stab at growing our own strawberries. We planted them into a mulched bed along the southern edge of the tunnel. No slugs, ants, birds or other vermin managed to attack the young crop. Indeed we've had three massive helpings so far with full bowls for all the family. It's been such a mouth watering success that I'm going to devote three times the area to the strawberries next year.

My friend Mary has come up with a great way to grow strawberries out of harms way plus it utilises every inch of potential space to grow food. This method would be ideal in urban settings with restricted space. She has used plastic gutters against the wall of her house. The guttering contains a length of seep hose and each section slopes gently downwards to assist drainage.

Hanging Basket Tomatoes

Last year we grew eight tomato plants in the polytunnel and realised that you just can't ever have enough of them. This year we've made space for eighteen plants on the ground and having got the lust for home grown toms I decided to milk every possible available bit of space... including the air!  I'm experimenting with 'tumbling toms', a variety that's perfect for hanging baskets. There are two baskets in the polytunnel, each with three tumbling tom plants. I also have two hanging baskets beside the back door of the farmhouse and they contain sweet pea (for heady aroma), busy lizzy (because they were cheap at Lidl!), pot marigold (petals for salads), nasturium (again, salad leaves & flowers) and of course each basket also contains one 'tumbling tom'. It'll be interesting to see if the ones in the polytunnel do much better than those outdoors.

Last year we also grew several varieties but this year we only have two on the ground; Ailsa Craig and Gardeners Delight both grown from seed. There's a very good reason why these are the favourites of gardeners world wide and that reason is that the flavour is absolutely superb. So even if you live in an urban environment you can grow tomatoes in hanging baskets. They would be especially well on a south facing wall.

Raised Beds

The days this time of year are busy with sowing, planting and weeding. Growth is so sudden and prolific that it's hard to keep on top of it all and the choices for dinner expand by the day (just as time to spend cooking it diminishes!). Gone are the days of late winter when kale and chard were just beginning to fall out of favour and instead we are now spoiled for choice. Everything in the polytunnel is doing well. Melons, grape vines, strawberries, peach, mixed lettuce, chop suey greens, golden and red beetroot, broad beans, peas (pod, mange tout & sugar snap), french beans (purple & golden teepee), runner beans (Lady Di and Polestar), artichoke, chard, rocket, carrot, herbs, tomatoes, pepper, chilli, aubergine (black beauty), courgette and sweet corn are all coming along nicely. I did manage to kill off six lovely cucumber plants (paska and marketmore) by planting them out too early, the cold nights were too much for them so that's set me back a few weeks on one of my favourite vegetables.  I just couldn't help planting them even though I knew it was too early! One melon plant also copped it out of three, but luckily I've a couple of spares in a seed tray ready to take it's place. Having a few extra of each thing is a great insurance policy, then if they're not needed they come in as great birthday gifts ... just pop a selection of salads, or a couple of tomato or melon plants into a grow bag or even a hanging basket.

One thing I haven't really indulged in greatly are brassicas. We always have purple sprouting brocolli but this year I've tried my hand at a handful of cauliflowers, cabbage and calabrese. To accommodate these we've been working on a couple of new raised beds. With this extra outside space I'll also experiment with some swede, turnip and kohl rabi, parsnip and leek. Hopefully these things will mean we'll be providing ourselves with food during the winter this year too. It's all been a lot of hard work, but it's well for some ...

Wildflower Meadow

Last autumn we decided that we would try to replace part of our lawn with a wildflower meadow. Several reasons led to this decision. The garden already has plenty of lawn and keeping it mowed is a major undertaking particularly when there's so much other work to do on the smallholding. I also like the idea of reducing the area I mow due to the fuel that's consumed simply to keep nature under 'control'. So I thought, why not let nature run riot in a mass of colour that will attract plenty of wildlife and feed my bees with nectar for the hives. It will also provide a little hay for the goats as it needs cutting once a year after the flowers have set seed.

The first thing to do in order to convert an area to wildflower is to remove whatever's growing on it already. Enter pigs stage left. We put them on the front lawn for about a month when they first arrived and they did a good job turning it over. Three months later there was quite a lot of new growth grass sprouting up so we put the pigs back on the lawn, and being much bigger by then, they turned the lot over in less than two weeks. With a wildflower meadow less is more, it prefers a nutrient poor environment, which in practical terms meant any pig poo had to be removed daily and put in the compost.

The soil has laid fallow since October. It's clay and so digging it while wet is next to impossible. This week the soil has dried out quite a bit and so I've begun digging over a couple of meters a day and seeding it with a native wildflower mixture that I bought on-line. It's very hard work, perhaps it won't all get done this year!

I can't wait to see some of the widlflower seedlings begin to push through. Hopefully by the end of the summer, or perhaps next summer, I'll be able to show you the transformation from muddy slop to a meadow of flowers.

Sowing Seeds

This month is a very busy one in the garden. I am spending a lot of time in the polytunnel. I have bee sowing a lot of plants in seed trays which I leave in the polytunnel to germinate ... things like lettuce, amarynth, chop suey greens, beetroot, swiss chard and pak choi. There are a few things that I plant direct into the soil because they are tough enough to survive without the luxury accommodation of a seed tray to start off. These include radish, rocket, perpetual spinach (beet), carrot and a range of herbs. We are building a new raised bed for the brassicas which won't be ready for a while so I'm also planting cabbage, brocolli, calabrese, cauliflower, swede, turnip and brussel sprouts in seed trays.

A month ago I planted three potatoes in the polytunnel and these have already pushed up leaves. I've earthed them up ... that means I've piled some more soil over the emerging leaves to cover them which promotes production of more potatoes. You can earth up a potatoe plant two or three times. These three plants will give us an extra early treat of new potatoes, but I wouldn't plant more than that in the polytunnel as the space is needed for everything else. The rest of the spuds are to be planted outdoors in a lazy bed like last year, but with St Patricks day being the traditional day for planting potatoes we are already a week behind schedule. You see, stress can still exist outside the rat race, it just takes on different guises!

Seedlings that need special care in terms of extra warmth have been sown indoors in a heated propagator on our bedroom windowsill. The plants that need this care to survive include tomatoes, cucumber, melon, aubergine, sweet pepper and chilli. These plants all need a long growing season and so they are started off that little bit earlier than other plants. I have just potted all of  these up into individual pots.  I will keep them indoors on our hallway windowsill for another few weeks before planting in the polytunnel. The propagator is now ready to receive a new sowing of another batch of warmth loving plants, this time sweetcorn, courgette and squash seeds.

Most of the hard work is done now but the seedlings need to be watched closely for a couple of weeks in their seed trays. They are at risk of drying out so I need to check them a couple of times a day when the sun is shining. To lose all the trays now would be a huge set back, so vigilence is required to keep them safe from a variety of possible  calamities ... cats love black seed trays to sleep on, dogs run through polytunnels with glee, hens would scratch through seedbeds and devour seedlings, visiting children unknowingly 'play' with  seed trays etc etc. Its a tense time!!! Going away on an Easter break is not on the agenda, but luckily we have no desire to head off anywhere soon because what we are doing here is so rewarding.

If you are tempted to grow your own vegetables for the first time an easy way to start is to visit your garden centre where they sell seedlings that just need planting into a prepared bed. The initial cost of the plant is miniscule in comparison to the money you will save from harvesting your own crop. Its a great way to dip your toe into vegetable gardening. If you get hooked and grow from seed next year, the savings are even greater. With the way the world economy is going, the rising cost of fuel is impacting on the cost of food on the supermarket shelves and space for food crops is now competing with the growth of biofuels. There has never been a better time to start your own veg garden because as months pass the percentage of your monthly income you spend on food is going rise considerably. If I lived in the city and had a garden I'd be utilising available space to grow edible plants and would be lobbying my local TD/MP to provide allotments for those who don't. If I were designing cityscapes I'd be including fruit trees and fruit bushes instead of pure ornamentals (bravo to Drumsna in Co Leitrim who recently planted up a significant part of their roadside with a selection of apple trees). Are there any urban readers who grow their own? What space restrictions do you have, what do you grow and where? Are there urban readers who would like to grow their own but don't know where to start? Depending on the response I could begin a series of articles on this subject.

This Years Crops Make an Appearance

There have been a few new arrivals of a vegetative nature in the garden and the polytunnel. The first exciting crop of the year to harvest outdoors is the purple sprouting brocolli. I grew it from seed which is hard to believe now, as it stands a couple of feet high bearing a very impressive crop of spears. I picked the first spears last week, and naturally, they were delicious! I planted two varieties, an early and a late cropping type (approximately 12 plants in total), so we ought to have a good stretch in supply over the next four months. As long as we keep harvesting the spears before they begin to burst into delightful little yellow flowers the plants will continue to produce more and more spears.

Inside the polytunnel there are  several crops that have continued to provide our table over the winter including chard, perpetual spinach, a range of oriental salad leaves, kale and a few herbs such as parsley, savoury, rosemary and sage. But in the last couple of weeks the chives have pushed up their pointed green tips through the soil and a tray of seedlings have sprouted.

The broad beans were planted in October, and a few more have gone in  three weeks ago. They are doing well, about half a foot high now. I'll sow a small batch every three weeks until the bean bed is full. The peas too are coming on although they are so delicate and look quite vulnerable. This year I'm also trying out a couple of dwarf pea varieties (mange tout and sugar snap), they'll fit the small side beds nicely that don't have much height due to the over arching plastic.  Its all very exciting waiting for this burst of growth, which all seems so two dimensional at the moment, to literally hit the roof in a few weeks time.