Swans at Westport house
Highlights of the Gardening Year
Well what was your gardening highlights this year? How did the wet summer and the beautiful autumn treat your plants and crops? Our garden has developed a bit more this year, and the wet summer seemed to do the plants good. The only plants that seemed to suffer a bit were plants in hanging baskets. They tended to get a bit of a battering in the storms we had. There were certain plants that didn’t do well at all and I won’t be growing them next year. I will be concentrating my efforts on plants that will tolerate adverse conditions.
As for the veggies, our crops did OK generally. We didn’t get as many peas as we got in previous years, but we got a good crop of courgettes and broccoli. We got quite a few spuds too and we haven’t planted any for 2 years! Most of them came from potatoes left in the ground after harvesting. They kept us going about 6 weeks. We sat down to Christmas dinner with vegetable spaghetti squash and Brussels grown in the vegetable patch this year. I think I’m turning into my parents on this matter. I remember when I was young and my parents used to go on about the homegrown vegetables on my plate. I remember muttering under my breath that their time would be better spent growing me some chocolate. It’s my turn now to be ignored by my children on the virtues of home grown produce.
More mulching
A few years ago I was living in Westport, Co Mayo, and I was looking after a five-acre garden. The garden had twelve large raised beds for growing vegetables, and when I took over looking after them, they were very overgrown with weeds. At the time I took a whole day to clear the weeds out of one bed, then I had to find somewhere for the weeds to go. The whole process was hard on the back, painfully slow and tedious. What I have learned this year is that there is an easier way. That easier way is mulching. If I were to have used old cardboard and mushroom compost the bed could have been ready for planting in an hour without breaking into a sweat (far more cost effective for my employers who were paying me by the hour)! Mulching has for me made my life so much easier in the garden, no more tedious weeding for me.
Well what was your gardening highlights this year? How did the wet summer and the beautiful autumn treat your plants and crops? Our garden has developed a bit more this year, and the wet summer seemed to do the plants good. The only plants that seemed to suffer a bit were plants in hanging baskets. They tended to get a bit of a battering in the storms we had. There were certain plants that didn’t do well at all and I won’t be growing them next year. I will be concentrating my efforts on plants that will tolerate adverse conditions.
As for the veggies, our crops did OK generally. We didn’t get as many peas as we got in previous years, but we got a good crop of courgettes and broccoli. We got quite a few spuds too and we haven’t planted any for 2 years! Most of them came from potatoes left in the ground after harvesting. They kept us going about 6 weeks. We sat down to Christmas dinner with vegetable spaghetti squash and Brussels grown in the vegetable patch this year. I think I’m turning into my parents on this matter. I remember when I was young and my parents used to go on about the homegrown vegetables on my plate. I remember muttering under my breath that their time would be better spent growing me some chocolate. It’s my turn now to be ignored by my children on the virtues of home grown produce.
More mulching
A few years ago I was living in Westport, Co Mayo, and I was looking after a five-acre garden. The garden had twelve large raised beds for growing vegetables, and when I took over looking after them, they were very overgrown with weeds. At the time I took a whole day to clear the weeds out of one bed, then I had to find somewhere for the weeds to go. The whole process was hard on the back, painfully slow and tedious. What I have learned this year is that there is an easier way. That easier way is mulching. If I were to have used old cardboard and mushroom compost the bed could have been ready for planting in an hour without breaking into a sweat (far more cost effective for my employers who were paying me by the hour)! Mulching has for me made my life so much easier in the garden, no more tedious weeding for me.
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