Spring has finally sprung!

At long last I feel like it is Spring; the spuds are down!

It has been so cold and the garden has been so un-inviting the past few weeks that I was beginning to think we would never get our potatoes planted.

Two weeks ago I ordered top soil to top up our old beds and fill a new one. It is a shame really that our own soil has such heavy clay but having raised beds is brilliant for a garden that tends towards waterlogging!

Four tonnes of soil arrived and a new raised bed made, the last of the 16ft x 4ft ones that we planned on having in the garden. Thats six altogether now, plenty of room for crop rotation!

I got the boys out doors last week (thank God for Easter break!) to help me with the weeding while I started emptying the top soil into our new and old raised beds.

It wasn't the easiest of weeks for working out there; we had a few showers of snow sending us back indoors once or twice. But it had to be done!

Yesterday was a lovely day; not too cold. So we managed to fill the new bed and plant our Sarpo Mira potatoes in it. These were great last year; blight resistant and we got a good yield from them.

 In another bed we planted our Red Duke of York potatoes (earlies); never tried these before so hoping we get a nice crop from them, even if they are being planted very late....

Our Peas are up too, it is so lovely to see them sprouting, they are so cute!

The Sungold F1 Tomato seeds I planted are up too (all 8 of them) but I think I need to buy a few more seeds; don't think 8 plants are enough (we had 20 last year).

It looks like a gorgeous Spring day out, and theres loads of work/gardening to be done, hope it is gorgeous where you are too!!

Happy Gardening!!

The Garden in Hibernation

Winter is my least favourite season in the Garden.

This is our third Christmas in our home and is definitely the wettest.

The entire garden is waterlogged (have the moss and reeds to prove it too).

This afternoon was nice and mild and I decided I would try and get a last blog post in before the New Year. I stuck on my wellies (I wasn't hopeful about how waterproof my walking shoes would be out there) and grabbed my camera to take note of the 'mess'.

And oh what a mess!!

Our poor Lavenders

Think theres something under there

So much for investing in copper tape!

Grassy wet muddy mess

In need of a wash

Goodbye 2012, looking forward to 2013 and getting more plans finished; the biggest one being drainage!!

Heres to a drier and slug free New Year!!

Our love of the humble Potato

If I was to name one vegetable that I remember being planted every year as a child growing up in rural Ireland it would have to be the Potato.

Every farmer I knew had a field of spuds growing;  no such thing as first or second earlies or main crop in our house, it was one type of potato and that was it. No such thing as chitting either! the seed potatos that were planted were kept from the previous years crop to use.

It wasnt some small raised bed for the crop either but a half an acre, at least!
My father would have the field ploughed and the drills made using his tractor and plough. Then my mother would have the boxes of seed potatos placed at intervals along the drills.

With a bit of instruction myself and my siblings would follow our parents lead to plant our main veg. Its wasnt easy, I have memories of my back being very sore by the time those boxes were emptied and the day was over.
Its a bit different for our kids......(a few less spuds to plant too!)

 We (sorry the boys) planted our First Earlies the other day, Home Guards.
Now that they are down it is time to make another raised bed, for our main crop, which are still chitting on the bedroom windowsill!

Oh and heres a picture of a very welcome friend in our garden, hopefully one of many.

The hard slog before the nice stuff

If there was one thing I dislike about gardening its weeding ( I have mental scars about weeding as a child that will take years to erase! lol).

I can tell you that digging and making raised beds is much easier than digging out stubborn weeds, whose roots run alot deeper in the soil than the stems above the ground! (Or maybe I have conveniently forgotten how hard it was to do the beds last year!)

If the weather had been kinder to us over the past few months I might have gotten to the weeds earlier but alas Mother Nature had other ideas and left us with a waterlogged garden.

Now the grass has turned to meadow and I have very little motivation to go back out tommorow and do more. I suppose its not that bad, I did get a bit done today so I will have less to do....
This was once the Carrot bed ......

I turned the compost heaps today, some nice compost but still plenty of rotting to do before I can use it in the garden. I even found some Rocket growing in it!

While weeding the beds I found loads of these, great to get rid of some before they hatch or whatever its called with slugs...

But I did come across this wee guy in our polytunnel so maybe slug control wont be soo hard this year.. (they were regular visitors in the tunnel last year)

Have left some polythene in the corner under the potting table in the polytunnel esp for him to hide under so he might stay around for the growing season..