Worldwide festivities, the adventures of travelling sharon....

Well I'm finally back from my travels, I've spent the last two weeks travelling to conferences and training courses for work. I spent a week in Ettlingen Germany, came home for the weekend and a spot of allotmenteering and the following week was off to Columbus Nebraska, USA so needless to say the jetlag and travel tiredeness hit home fast. But I'll include a few photos just to prove that I was actually there and not skiving off the allotment or updating the blog. Ettlingen is a very pretty medieval town in Germany on the edge of the black forest and the first thing that struck me upon leaving the airport was the amazing use of every available patch of space for growing crops. Even the green spaces in front of industrial estates and the edges along motorways were crammed with the withering remains of neat rows of summer crops. We had a lovely location for the conference in Ettlingen castle the front of which is unusually painted to look like a highly decorated building but is in fact pretty flat and not as decorative and moulded on the outside as it would appear. The town itself was full of very pretty typically german buildings and cobblestone streets and in full seasonal spirit pumpkins and squash adorned the strees in abundance.

It was nice to see such an Autumn harvest theme associated with Halloween in both Ettlingen and in Nebraska, originally a pagan festival of the Harvest and signifying the coming of the new year, a display that seems to be sadly lacking in Ireland considering they grow relatively well here in our climate. Ireland has become very commercial when it comes to this time of year and its sad to see the old traditions fade and be replaced by commercial western glitz and glam. It has inspired me to perhaps try growing a few unusual shaped squashes and have another go at the pumpkins next year. This was a festive display shown outside my hotel in Nebraska, showcasing the seasonal harvest of corn, squash and pumpkin.

Unfortunately our own spooky purple halloween pumpkins did not fair so well up on plot 103 this year I suspect due to going in too late. At the weekend we surveyed the end of the plot containing the pumpkins and courgettes to find powdery mildew has completely taken its toll on the plants which have now withered and died. We dug up the plants to level the ground for our plastic walk in greenhouse for next year only for Cillian to notice something lurking in the grass on the other side of the deer fence by the river. We walked around and found that one of our pumkin plants, bravely making a break for freedom,had escaped through the fence with a long 10 foot vine containing a single immature pumpkin. Unfortunately we had pulled up the plant before we realised the extended arm containing the fruit. At this stage it would be too late for the pumkin to ripen anywayso we've resolved ourselves to trying again next year a little earlier in the season.

Our Brussels sprouts look ready and very healthy, I'm hoping for a bit of a frost over the next week or two before we harvest as I believe that makes them sweeter. They are definately a little too early to have for Christmas but I will post up a query on the gardenplansireland forum and see if the good people there can tell me how long I can leave them on the plant before they blow. If I can't leave them too much longer we'll harvest them and freeze them for Christmas, I'm sure they'll taste just as good and we'll be eating our own veg for Christmas dinner. They've proven to be one of our resounding successes with no problems at all through the growing season.

Over the last 2 weeks Lidl has had the autumn planting fruit deals going so I had to take advantage and stock up on our raspberry canes and we also bought two cherry trees 'stella', a desert type of cherry for plot 103. At E5.99 a tree, and E2.99 per pack of soft fruit canes I just couldn't say no. I bought 2 packs of 3 raspberry canes and one pack of 3 redcurrant canes so hopefully our fruit will be in abundance next year as our existing raspberry canes and strawberries will be in the ground a year and should give a better crop in their second year.

Here they are gracing the edge of plot 103 which will hopefully provide us with a 'soft fruit walk' for next year along the length of the allotment.

We spent the last couple of weekends preparing beds for next year as this years stock of manure has arrived on the site, so we're filling our nutrient starved soil with it and covering with weed suppressing membrane to enrich the soil over winter. The garlic and shallots are in with the help of my parents who took a trip up the allotment and were surprised to find out just how brussels sprouts grow. They were rewarded for their offer of manual labour with a few freshly pulled carrots and a savoy cabbage which we are still cropping in abundance.

Our onions are unfortunately very small, but should still give us something. I've bent over the tops in the hope that this will bulk up the bulbs a little, and then we'll start drying them. Our leeks unfortunately were an abismal failure and never got bigger than an elongated toothpick. Again, I think due to getting them in too late in the season. We'll try again next year and be able to sow them much earlier in the hope that they will be ready to plant out by June or July. Our 60 metres of 5x1 inch timber arrived on the plot, courtesy of Martin the allotment owner, which we got at a good price to edge the beds for next year and add a little structure to plot 103. We harvested the last of our courgettes which had turned into a marrow and tasted gorgeous stuffed and baked. Far from being what I would have thought of as a quiet time during winter in allotmenteering, theres a lot of work to be done on plot 103 for next year. Roll on harvest 2010!!

It's garlic time!!

First off I must apologize for not updating the blog in so long, but we have been down to plot 103 and have been harvesting carrots, cabbage, potatoes and french beans and peas for the last couple of weeks which have all been delicious when eaten fresh and frozen when there has been too much to enjoy at its peak. Things are beginning to slow down up in Annamoe allotments as its coming towards the end of the season and so begins the new one as we start preparing our beds for next year. There is still a good bit to come yet though and we are still waiting for our onions to 'fall over' which signals that they are ready for pulling up. They are small, due no doubt to the poor soil, but we did pull some red ones which were full of flavour in a ratatouille and we're looking forward to our white ones over the coming weeks. Our raspberries are putting on another show of fruit and these ones are huge compared to the berries we got earlier in the summer. As soon as the last fruits have been picked we'll cut the canes down to the ground and new ones should sprout next spring and provide us with a bigger harvest. We will probably invest in a few more canes over the coming months to supplement the 2 we have. Their flavour this time round is not quite as strong as last time however this could be due to the fact that the plant has already fruited this season and its probably a little tired now as the days get shorter. I'm also not sure if its a summer or autumn fruiting type as we've gotten fruit in both seasons! I'll have to do some research. Now if only I could find the tag that came with them!!

We pulled the last of our cauliflowers a couple of weeks ago which was once again very tasty, and although small were definately a success.

Our Cabbages are also continuing to provide us with fresh head every week and we've still a good few weeks supply left for the remainder of the season. The cabbage seems happy enough to stay in the ground until its needed and so far has not shown any signs of going to seed so we'll keep harvesting as needed. It does however have to fight with the weeds which we've given up on at this stage due to the end of the season.

Our sprouts are buttoning up nicely!! and the plants look as healthy as ever, even though they are squashed in the nets I am still wary of taking the nets off as there are still a few butterflies about and poor William the allotment guru's brassicas have become covered in cabbage white caterpillars which are feasting on his purple sprouting broccoli. So my nemesis, the butterfly, is still a little too active for my liking. Our sprouts look like they may be slightly early for Christmas but they freeze well and will still hopefully taste great on Christmas day sauteed with some garlic and chopped bacon with perhaps a few roast chestnuts thrown in for good measure.

The sweetcorn now has lovely healthy tassles and cobs are forming large and healthy on every plant. When the tassles go brown the cobs will be ready to start looking at the kernals to ripen. According to my a-z of allotment vegetables book, when the tassles go brown peel back a little of the covering and squeez a kernal gently. If the resulting liquid is clear, the cobs are not yet ripe, if the liquid starchy cloudy and thick they have gone too far. Somewhere in between is just about right, still a liquid but slightly cloudy. Sweetcorn takes up a lot of space for quite a long time so I'm yet to be convinced that it is the most efficient use of so much space for such a low yield of only 2 cobs per plant, but we'll wait for the taste test before we decide if its worth growing again next year.

Our pumpkins unfortunately have officially been a failure. They have now got powdery mildew, are looking very sorry for themeselves and still no pumpkins formed. At this stage its far too late in the season for pumpkins to form and ripen. One did attempt to form but doesn't seem to have gone much further than a cricket ball sized deformed swelling. I suspect they may have been planted a little too late in the season and are not too fond of the slightly colder weather up in the wicklow hills, but we may try again next year and now that we have the full season will be able to start months earlier.

Now that preparation for the new season is upon us we got stuck into digging last weekend. It's garlic time!! So I got to indulge in my weakness for garden centres without Cillian trying to drag me out by the hair, although I'm sure he considered it when Id chosen not one, but 5 varieties of garlic after I couldn't decide, considered a sixth and sneakily threw in some shallots on my way past the stand for autumn planting alliums! Now understand I absolutely love garlic, I put it in everything and can on occasion easily go through 2 bulbs a week. So I really do need 5 varieties of garlic!! yes....I do.....really.....! The varieties I've chosen to grow are Germidour, a mild garlic supposedly good for roasting, Thermidrome, a full flavoured large cloved garlic which is supposed to be very reliable, Cristo, considered the garlic of choice for chefs due to its excellent flavour and can store for up to 9 months!! so will keep you going almost until your next lot are ready for harvest, lautrec white, which is well I'm not sure, supposed to be good but at that stage I was caught up in a seed buying frenzy and completely lost sight of anything other than buying more garlic, and the previous week it had been sold out and this was new stock. So if it was good enough to go out of stock that quickly its good enough for me to absolutely need it to go into our garlic beds this year, and finally Iberian wight, possibly for the same reason as the lautrec wight. Although I believe the varieties ending in 'wight' are farmed on the isle of wight and are therefore acclimatised to the British and Irish climate so should grow well. I threw in some jermor shallots as at that stage I was just frantically grabbing anything that could be planted now and these popped off the shelf and strangely fell into my hand! don't know how they got there but they're going in.

We dug the bed for the garlic, removed the weeds and put in some manure and a good bit of compost. We'll rake in some fish blood and bone fertilizer to tide them over at planting time until the spring, when we'll mulch with some more compost to keep the nutrients flowing. As I'm going to Germany next week with work, and Nebraska, USA the week after with work, it will be the middle of October when we plant the garlic cloves and shallots. Garlic needs the frosts of winter cold weather to split into cloves and form bulbs. So it can be planted any time up to November as it must have just enough mild weather first to form roots to tide it over the winter. If it doesn't have a good spell of cold frost after that, the danger is that the clove won't split and you won't get nice big bulbs, but rather one large clove more like a spring onion. So we're full steam ahead, with hopefully proper ground preparation and a full seasons growing this time I'm hoping for a bumper harvest next year. Now all we need to worry about is rust, onion root fly, white rot and any other potential diseases or pests, but at least our ground will hopefully have the nutrients to give us lots of great veg next year. We also dug up the last of the potatoes, our blight ridden roosters, which are small but have not shown blight in the tubers so are very tasty. This bed was dug over and lots of manure put in and covered with weed suppressing membrane to prevent any weeds germinating until planting early next spring. We've ordered lots of timber also which will be delivered to the plot over the next week or two and will then begin digging and preparing the remaining beds as the veg in them finishes up, edging them with wood to try and halt the spread of weeds from our 'sort of paths' into the beds, filling them with lots of manure and compost ready for next season. While our beans and peas have finished, our carrots and plenty of other veg is still going so its full steam ahead!

feast or famine!!

Well, it looks like we're gonna need a bigger freezer! We've found we're in the position where we have to start thinking about how to manage a glut of vegetables. All of our broccoli and cauliflower came to fruition at the same time more or less, far too much for us to eat fresh so I've broken out the freezer bags and got to blanching and freezing our veg for eating over the coming weeks. Next year we can resolve this problem by 1)Buying another freezer! and 2) sowing successionally from early in the season right through with a number of different varieties of veg, not just the one or two. Unfortunately due to getting the plot very late in the season, we couldn't do that this year, but next year we will begin sowing in early February and continue through the season so we should hopefully begin harvesting from May onwards right up until Winter.

Our sprouts are really trying to burst out of their cage of netting and you can see the beginnings of little sprouts forming at the intersection between the leaves and main stem. I have high hopes for out brussels sprouts this year, they seem to be growing healthy and tall, with no sign of any diseases or deficiency, so heres hoping for homegrown sprouts for christmas dinner. This picture was taken the weekend before last, and since then they have started to push the netting right up and look packed underneath.

Our onions are finally bulbing up a little. We sowed them around the 26th April and so far they haven't exactly thrived, probably due to the poor soil, and the leaves have grown relatively small in comparison with everyone elses, with slightly yellowing tips but other than that they have faired ok. Many other peoples onions up on the allotments have bolted and gone to seed and I'm wondering perhaps we did the right thing not manuring the onion beds that late in the season. Yes the growth hasn't been as lush as some other peoples onions, but they haven't bolted or gone to seed and seem to be bulbing up now. The veg growing books I have recommend a growing time of 22 weeks for onions growing from sets which would mean we are pretty much right on schedule to have our onions ready by the end of september. If too much manure is added too late in the season onions can bolt and go to seed as they grow too quickly in the rich manure. I believe the general rule is you manure in the Autumn and lime in the late Winter so this year we will manure the beds around October or November, allow the winter weather to break it down and settle the nutrients into the soil and then come January or early February, we will lime the beds we didn't do this year. Hopefully between this and growing as much of our veg as possible through weed suppressing membrane next year, and successional sowing, we should have even more success with our veg next year.

Our sweet corn is finally putting out male flowers, I'm hoping its not too late in the season to get cobs, (I suspect it may be!) but the seed pack did say harvest from end of September to October so theres still hope yet. The sweetcorn has shot up and looks tall, strong and healthy.

Now that our broccoli and cauliflower is pretty much done, the next thing we are looking forward to is our cabbages. We had one pointed cabbage and one savoy ready for picking and another 15 or so cabbages we hope will be ready over the coming weeks. Unfortunately I sense another glut coming on and I'm not quite sure cabbage takes to freezing as well as cauliflower and broccoli so any ideas on what to do with excess cabbage? Answers on a postcard please! (or in the comments section.)

Our pumkins are making a break for freedom!! I definately underestimated quite how much pumkins spread out. Our plants are putting out vines all over the place! here you can see one of them making a B line for the sweetcorn. The traditional native American Indian way of companion planting is to plant pumkins, sweetcorn and beans together and I can certainly see the pumpkins have an affinity or affection for the corn. This vine is about 6 feet long and is budding with new flowers. Traditionally the pumpkins are grown around the base of the sweetcorn which suppresses weed growth due to the enourmous pumpkin foliage. Beans are planted around the base of the sweetcorn and use the height of the corn to climb up and the flowers from the bean plants attract bees and insects to pollinate the flowers of the pumpkins. So the three veg, or holy trinity, all help each other out and there you have it! Companion planting at its finest.....in theory..!! We'll try this way of planting next year and see how it works. In the meantime with our pumpkins making a break for freedom we just do our best and hope for pumpkins at halloween. Below you can see one plant edging towards the sweetcorn, and another climbing through the deer fencing trying to escape towards the river!!

Cornucopia!!!!

Not only the name of one of my favourite vegetarian/vegan cafes in Dublin city, but also the glorious scene we arrived to at plot 103 last weekend. Our broccoli, cauliflowers, more beans, peas and another courgette were ready for harvest!


Our chard bright lights was looking delightfully colourful and I really hope it tastes as good as it looks!


I'm not quite sure but I think we may have the first pumpkins showing a hint they they are going to turn up on plot 103 for halloween.


However celebrations weren't to begin just yet. We had a look at our potato bed and in the space of a week all the plants had deteriorated drastically with confirmed blight. Once it strikes unfortunately theres not much you can do but try and prevent the blight spreading to the tubers in the ground and rotting the potatoes. So we cut down the foliage to ground level, earthed the mounds up and I dug up 2 of the plants to see if there was any hope of salvaging some spuds. The roosters are small but thankfully no sign of blight in most so we'll leave them in the ground for another week and then just harvest what we can of them. Unfortunately with the foliage cut back there is no possibility of the spuds getting any bigger so the best we can hope for is baby roosters. It would seem that most peoples potatoes on the allotments succumbed to blight including William the allotment guru who generously gave us a rather large bag of his spuds, british queens. (Thanks William, they were very tasty!!)


Overall not a bad haul at all though up in plot 103. This is the beautiful table full of food we managed to harvest and provided us with plenty of veg for the week. The broccoli and cauliflower went into a very tasty broccoli and cauliflower gratin and tasted absolutely fantastic. For the first time we discovered just how cauliflower is supposed to taste and it was surprisingly different from the shops, not quite so bitter and much sweeter. The heads are small but his is probably due to the lack of manure in the soil this year and can be fixed for next season. I loved it before but now!!! I'm an addict!


Finally I had plenty of opportunities to continue my rehabilitation programme to eliminate my fear of butterflies. The plot was crawling in them!!! There are so many up there now we are very glad we put nets over our brassicas, but even so one or two still managed to get in as we found a couple of stray caterpillars in the broccoli (thankfully before I cooked them!!) theres nothing worse than enjoying the wonderful taste of home grown food only to look down on your plate and see half a caterpillar!! So heres a picture of one of the butterflies sunning itself on one of our marigolds around the pea and bean bed. I have to say, with so many butterfies flitting about I have definately begun to run slightly less, I didn't really have much choice, if I ran away from one of the fluttering monsters I ended up running into another 2 of them dancing in the air so in the end I just gave up running and closed my eyes momentarily instead. I think my rehab plan is working!!!

Making progress!!

There were definate signs of progress at the weekend up on plot 103. Our sprouts are starting to grow tall with thick stems and will need the nets raised soon.

We had hoped to have these sprouts for christmas, but I'm wondering if we might not see them sooner.
Our cabbages are hearting up nicely and this one was ready to take home with the rest of the weekends bountiful harvest comprising of, yes more baby carrots and more beans which were all absolutely delicious.


Our corn is growing nice and tall and looks quite healthy. We would hope to see cobs around the end of september or so.

We were met with a bit of a surprise when we inspected our raspberry canes. It would appear our raspberries were not quite happy with their performance this year and have begun flowering again to give it another go. Hopefully this will mean we might have some autumn raspberries aswell as the small few we got in June.

Our brassica bed was hiding a little secret among the weeds and overcrowded cabbage and cauliflower. I gently pulled apart some of the leaves on our cauliflowers only to reveal these cricket ball sized heads looking tight and unblemished. I'll wait a bit to see if they get bigger before picking and keep and eye out in case the head splits before harvest. Hopefully we should be harvesting some over the next 2 weeks or so.

We had a rather scary visitor to plot 103 as we continued to wage our war on weeds. This guy was a good inch and a half long and got us thinking, hmmmmm I'm not sure this thing belongs here!!!! and that massive sting type barb looks absolutely terrifying....but I crept close enough for a picture anyway. I did some research to find out what it is and it turns out its a great horntailed wasp!!! Particularly large, and very mean looking, but apparently relatively harmless and quite common in Ireland where the female lays her eggs in wood using that enourmous stinger like barb, which is not in fact a sting at all.

Unfortunately it appears that our rooster potatoes may have blight. These were not sprayed and we found that some leaves had these brown blotches which seemed to go through to the underside of the leaf. I will post the photo up and ask the good people in the gardenplansireland forum if this is well and truly blight and if so, can our spuds be saved if we cut down the foliage early and hope that the tubers continue to develop for a while to an edible size.

A Summer Bounty!

We were quite naughty last weekend and abandoned plot 103 to enjoy a weekend in Co. Cork surfing in Inchydoney! Thankfully the weather picked up on Saturday and we had a fantastic day learning to surf, a new hobby I think we will definately keep up. We're already looking at wetsuits! On Monday evening we went up to plot 103 to see what if anything was available to harvest as last week our beans were forming and in order to keep the plants producing, beans and peas must be picked regularly, otherwise the plants think they've done their job and produced seed and will die off. Our peas are forming well although not quite ready to pick yet. 2 pods were nearly ready and we couldn't resist picking them and eating the peas straight from the pod like sweets, they were absolutely gorgeous and I am in danger of never eating another cooked pea again.

To our delight we found our calabrese (broccoli) plants are forming nice tight heads which will hopefully be ready over the next couple of weeks for harvesting.

Our courgettes have finally started to produce female flowers and one small courgette was ready for picking. Courgettes are supposed to be sweeter, tastier and best picked when only as thick as your finger or a little bigger making this one perfect. Its hard to find courgettes in the shops at this size as they are usually left to get bigger on the plants which makes more watery and a bit less flavoursome. This one was perfect and full of flavour. I'm looking forward to more of these over the coming weeks.

We thinned the carrots, again, but this time we were rewarded with proper baby carrots from our rows of Autumn king, yellowstone and chantennay. We left the carrots thinned to a spacing of 1 inch or so between them so that we could thin them gradually to their final 3 inch spacing by picking and eating the thinnings as baby carrots, that way we don't waste any and get a bigger harvest. Hopefully by the time they are thinned to their final spacings they will be full sized. We should regularly be in baby carrots from now on.

Our beans have been a success!!! After all our troubles with them the beans are producing plenty with more later sowings yet to come. We picked a small bag full and these ones were absolutely gorgeous blanched along with the baby carrots and stir fried in some olive oil and garlic. Thankfully we managed to escape the dreaded carrot fly also in spite of the failure of our carrot fly barrier. Not a single root was tunneled or damaged and they grew straight and strong with a flavour that was unlike any shop bought carrot you will ever get. The flavour was almost overpowering and deliciously carroty!! This was todays summer bounty!

Our chilli plants on the balcony are also laden with chillies now ripe for the picking and I've been using them for the past two weeks. I've been cooking a huge amount of indian food, which I love! due to the abundance of chillies to use some up however we've had to take a break from it this week due to certain..em.......episodes of ....well flatulence really.....human beings are definately not meant to eat that many onions, chillies and spices...ahem..

Nevertheless they are a true success and so easy to grow I'm doing a chilli list for next year. Martin, the allotment owner is considering getting some polytunnels on the site which will come in very useful next year as I intend to grow a few different varieties including this years successful apache chillies. The apache chillies are extremely tasty, and you really get a nice chilli flavour from them but they are not particularly hot and I do like a good bit of heat in chillies. So next year I'll try and grow some other varieties such as thai birds eye type chillies and cayennes along with some others if the polytunnels come through. My tomatos have also begun putting out fruit in abundance and I'm hoping for a bumper crop at the end of the summer. Lets hope it keeps on coming...

Wiggly Wigglers!!

We got some new pets!!.....well, actually about 1000 of them.... My Can 'o' Worms composter arrived today so we set about getting it set up and getting our new tiger worms settled into their new home. I haven't named them all yet but we're getting there. From now on, hopefully these guys will eat all of our kitchen waste, contributing to our green revolution, and turn all the veg peelings, egg shells and any other organic waste into lovely nutrient rich worm castings and compost for the plants. It will also provide us with 'worm tea' as any of the liquid that leaches out from the composting process provide a nutrient rich liquid plant feed which is apparently great for vegetables.

Lady Isabella Harveys nose, however, seemed a little out of joint now that she is no longer the only pet in the apartment. After running around like a lunatic looking for attention, she finally decided to sit in one of the tiers of the wormery and look at us as if to say ' look, I can compost too, If you want worms, I could be one!!'

The time had come to try our chateau 103 elderflower champagne!! It had been fermenting away in the bottles for the last 2 weeks, thankfully without any explosions, so we popped open a bottle last night and it was deliciously fizzy and and delightfully sweet. Definately a success which we will be doing again next year.

Our courgettes are in full bloom but only male flowers so far. Apparently this is quite common, the plant first produces a flush of male flowers and follows with the fruit baring female flowers. The flowers are apparently quite delicious stuffed and deep fried in batter, something I'll definately be trying over the next couple of weeks.

Or peas and beans are both setting their first pods so hopefully over the next couple of weeks we can begin harvesting them.

The carrots are starting to look like carrots and now when we thin them we are benifiting from some tastey morsels just big enough to eat sprinkled whole in a chicken salad and todays thinnings were absolutely gorgeous. Such a strong flavour for such a little pre-baby carrot, I can't wait till they get bigger.

One of our cabbages unfortunately looks like it has black rot. Black rot is a Brassica disease caused by a bacterial infection of the plant. Apparently it can be carried by the seed or picked up from the ground. There is no cure and no prevention. It starts with 'v' shaped yellowing in between the leaf veins, after a while the veins begin to blacken and growth in mature plants is stunted and seedlings can be killed. As the disease seemed to have just started I pulled off the affected leaves in the hope that the disease may not spread to the rest of the plant. All other cabbages, and brassicas look so far unaffected but I'll be keeping an eye out. Apparently the disease is quite prevalent in warm wet summers, which we've certainly had over the last month or so.