This was a big responsibility for me. From my first days there the foreman dished out responsibilities, some of which I rose to, others made me crumble. In my six months of working with them, they had trusted me to look after hundreds of budgies and care for the bowling greens as well as allowing me on the road in a tractor and trailer, all of which I achieved with honors. Then there were times when I was asked to dig trenches five feet deep by a mile long, across wasteland. If that was a test, I failed and spent the day watching trains go past on the local freight line from the colliery. I was ready for the responsibility of a key though- it’s wasn’t too physically demanding. “First thing I need you to do”, continued Jim, “is to define the edges of the paths on the allotment sites around the town.”

Off I went in my tractor to hole up the traffic and visit the first of five allotment sites. I pushed the key into the lock of the heavy steel gate, and with a satisfying click, I was in to another fabulous world of lush green growth, recycled pallets, old plastic bottles, manure heaps and a very knowledgeable group of gardeners.

The allotment sites were created in the war when it was necessary to Dig for Victory. Food was scarce because of the lack of workers, but in the area where I was working the mines had to stay open to keep producing the coal to make the trains run and to smelt the iron to produce tanks, planes and bombs and anything else the war asked. The allotment sites were all near to largely populated areas, and over the years had matured to be central focal points for the communities. Home made huts, greenhouses and polytunnels were dotted around the allocated sites and everyone on the allotments were on hand to give tips and advice in the art of vegetable and fruit growing to their neighbours. My job was to re-instate the edges of the paths with a spade. It should only take a few days to shovel the fallen soil, but I managed to spin it out for a few weeks, as there was so much to learn from the men working the land.

Being close to the houses meant that the gardeners only needed a wheelbarrow for their tools and picked products. They could get home in two minutes with enough vegetables to feed their street.

The golden key meanwhile played a big part in my teenage years mainly due to the fact that it unlocked the cricket pavilions on the parks, where I would sleep undisturbed for hours on foggy mornings.

Boom times
The boom times in the economy caused allotments to fade in popularity in some areas and unfortunately it was more profitable to develop the land, destroying the culture and history of the social allotment. So much so that nearly a whole generation have lost the art of working with the land. Other social initiatives such as the LETS system of bartering without exchanging any money dwindled in interest as people opted to buy new instead of making do and mending. With the recession though has come a resurgence of interest and popularity in community based projects as we realise just how important these are for a healthy life. The growth of new allotments around Ireland is unprecedented with new initiative springing up in all the counties, the old skills are being re-taught.

Comparing the allotment to a Community garden
There is a bit of confusion about comparing allotments to the new trend of community gardens and although they both serve to supply people with healthy home grown food and a more active lifestyle, there are a few differences between the two.

Allotment
An allotment is a green space, which is divided up into small plots of land of which individuals, or families rent from the town council, county council or entrepreneurial landowners and farmers who put unused land back into being productive in return for financial payments, usually on a yearly basis.

Community garden
A community garden on the other hand is more focused on communally growing crops. Individuals are guided by more experienced gardeners and all work together as a group. The produce from the community garden can be divided among those involved in growing the particular produce, divided equally amongst the members and in some cases sold to raise funds to enhance the facilities on the site. They provide spaces for community interactions and social events, for learning and creativity, for experiencing nature and for exercise. Community gardens bring people together, build relationships, re-connect people to nature and the soil. They can be places to educate young people about where food comes from and how it is grown. Community gardens help subsidise people who are on low incomes, saving money on regular trips to the shops It has been demonstrated that the growing of food, either as a community, on an allotment or in your own back garden can build self-esteem, confidence and encourages medium levels of exercise.

The titles are different but the positive results speak for themselves. Statistics from the Cuban crisis back in the late 1990’s speaks volumes. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the country went into a severe economic crisis as Soviet subsidies dried up, generating severe food and fuel shortages. People were forced to slash their calorie intake, eat more natural food and to travel everywhere on foot or bicycle.

According to a study in the Journal of Epidemiology, between 1997 and 2002, deaths in Cuba caused by diabetes declined by 51%, coronary heart disease mortality dropped 35% and stroke mortality by 20%. Another interesting point about this is that as the economy improves, obesity is rebounding. Around 30% of adult Cubans are now overweight and a quarter have a tendency toward obesity.

More reading
There are a couple of websites where you can get more information about community gardens. GIY Ireland, set up by author Michael Kelly, which has groups all over the country and are setting a couple up in Donegal this year. There is also the Irish Community Food Growing (ICFG), which is an all-Ireland network of Community Food Initiatives (CFIs) – community gardens, allotments, school gardens, education gardens and market gardens.

I’m finding myself talking to the radio; I suppose it makes a change from chatting to the tomatoes on the windowsill in the front room.

Making comparisons
Grass is more labour intensive than growing your own vegetables, I tell the unresponsive box. If you think about it, most of us are out every week for hours in the heat of the day looking after our lawns. No sooner have you finished cutting and composting, it looks untidy again as the weeds start to appear before the mower goes back in the shed. It’s a constant battle with the mower, buying petrol, coaxing it to start in the first place, unblocking the grass without chopping your fingers off. It’s not good for the environment either with more and more chemicals on the market claiming to give you that bowling green finish and insects being sliced by the mower blades.

A vegetable patch on the other hand, when set up in early spring will only need a slight tickle with a hoe to keep the weeds down once a week. The rest of the time can be spent relaxing in the garden (without a noisy mower and strimmer), harvesting the peas and beans and munching on the strawberries. Its not that we need to completely get rid of lawns but there can be a balance. A manicured area of grass, a patch of meadow, fruit trees and bushes and of course a veggie garden.
Positive mental attitude
The person is telling me that her parent’s incentive for the edible garden was to be more self-sufficient and save money. But after a few years of hard labour and poor crops the father gave up and put grass seed down instead. The crops that didn’t perform were beetroot; they were tiny specimens because of the poor soil (see last weeks article), and peas. It wasn’t that the peas didn’t produce but that as a child she loved eating them straight from the pod so few reached the plate. It’s simple, I shout, stop growing beetroot and grow more peas.

Muddling through
The hardest part of changing your lawn to a bed is not just growing the veg, but growing your confidence and getting a little bit of know-how, I think to myself as I navigate a roundabout. I recall when I became a parent for the first time. I bought the parenting books, watched the DVD’s, listened to endless stories from other parents and bought all of the equipment that was supposed to make the transition from self-indulgent singleton to responsible parent. When the baby was born everything I learnt went out of the window and I found myself just muddling through from one day to the next, with the least amount of discomfort for both the baby and me.
Switch off your brain
The same fate can befall someone who is considering starting vegetable growing. It’s the thinking that’s the hard, tiring part, and on the whole should be avoided at all costs.

“Switch off your brain for a while”. I’m telling the person on Miscellany. I’ve been gardening now for 30 years and I still can’t get to grips pests and diseases. Why clutter up your brain with a load of information about pests that you don’t have? If something does start munching your crops then it’s time to ask a friend or go on the internet. I’m still muddling around myself in the garden and every year pick up more pearls of wisdom.

Of course there will be an initial learning curve –which does take time, preparing a bed, making sure that you give appropriate space to each plant but it’s a slow process –if you make a mistake in one year, its not a disaster, just change it next year –this time scale is maybe why older people like gardening more than younger people who don’t do delayed gratification well. There is never any rush, what you can’t do at one time, you can even leave for another season. Sit by a big open fire in winter to plan your planting. Prepare the feeding of the beds with compost and manure late autumn when it’s cooler and you are not being chased around by midges and dopey flies. The edible garden has a relaxed, all year calendar, not just a few mad months of growing in summer like a lawn.

Is it just a fad?
The woman on the radio feels that growing your own might be a fad and after waning interest, will re-appear in 30 years time. Hopefully then, she says, she might have enough time to grow her own like her parents used to do.

Do it now. I am encouraging the voice over the airwaves. Start small. Try planting some salad –lettuce, radish, spring onions, Maybe a couple of strawberries and a currant bush, something easy and that you will enjoy eating.

Her fantasy garden could become a reality a lot more easily than she imagines. There are companies springing up around the country that will make you a raised bed, fill it with soil, plant the vegetables in it for you and even come back to do the weeding throughout the growing period, if that’s what you want.

Thankfully the Suburban Farm piece on Sunday Miscellany is only five minutes long. She concludes by saying that her parents found the vegetable gardening “backbreaking and tedious”. They are two words which I may associate with looking after a large lawn, but not my raised beds.

The voice fades out and another person pops up to talk about leaving school when she was young. Thank goodness for that, I am feeling my blood pressure lower and fall back into the verbal comfort that makes this radio show generally so relaxing.

Yea Butt No Butt yea Butt….

Water seems to be a bit scarce this year.  Our natural garden watering hole is usually brimming with aquatic life at this time of year, but at the moment it’s bone dry.  I have even had to use one of our washing up bowls filled with tap water for the poor tadpoles to live in.  Most of them died scrambling around in the resulting mud when the last of the water drained away.  Water rationing is probably not far away so collecting rainwater from the roof is the perfect alternative.

Mickey usually specialises in making garden sheds, hen houses, bird feeders and more recently, raised beds for the garden. But today, I’ve popped in to see how he is making good use of one of our natural resources- rainwater.

Reasons to make your own butt

By making your own water butt, you will benefit in a number of ways.

· You can site several water butts around the garden or allotment, so that you don’t have to trek to and from one water source.

· Rainwater is free, so if you have a lot of watering to do, you want have to rely on your drinking water supply – extremely handy if you’re on a water meter or the well is drying up, like our pond.

· Some plants really benefit from rainwater, as it is slightly acidic

· Making your own water butt helps the environment and can use recycled materials.

BUILDING YOUR OWN WATER BUTT

· Find a suitable container to hold the water. Mickey used an old wheelie bin, but you could use anything that is watertight that hasn’t had any toxic chemicals in it (steam clean if in doubt).

· Stand the butt on a firm base of gravel and concrete slabs, preferably slightly above the ground so you can get a watering can easily under the tap, or in Mickey’s case allowing gravity to expel the water.

· Check that the water butt has a secure, childproof lid. As well as protecting children it will also prevent debris and midge larvae from entering. If it opens like the wheelie bin, you can access water from both the top and bottom of the container.

· Select a downpipe that is not in a prominent position with plenty of room to stand a butt nearby, Mickey chose to use his on a large shed away from the house. You can always mask the butt with some willow weaving if you feel it’s unsightly.

· Cut the downpipe at the desired height and fit a diverter, you can get these from any DIY shop.

· Make sure that any water butts have an overflow pipe fitted so that any excess water will drain away from the house wall and check everything is watertight.

· That’s it, job done, all we need now is a drop of rain.

Other Options

Let’s have a look at some other interesting options to save water.

Rig up a plastic sheet over a hole in the garden, with a stone weighing it down in the middle and an old baked bean can underneath, then watch drops of condensation collect as the sun passes overhead. It has saved many a life in the desert.

Underground water storage tanks such as the one used in the gardening area of Buncrana UDC could be installed into your garden.  Collecting water from the house roof could supply the toilet, washing machine and any other use besides drinking (although you can get filters for this if you wanted to be totally independent of the mains water)

Water facts

· Water is the most common compound found on Earth.
· Four fifths of the Earth’s surface is covered in water.
· 99% of the World’s water cannot be used because it is either saline or is locked up in glaciers and ice sheets.
· Most of the remaining water is present in rocks as groundwater (approx. 0.6%), while just over 0.3% is present in rivers and lakes.
· Our bones contain about 72% water, our kidneys about 82% and our blood is about 90% water.
· Each of us need an intake of about 2 litres of water per day. This water may be taken as part of our food or drink.
· A person can live about a month without food, but only about a week without water.
· A person uses about 150 litres of clean treated water per day.
Dublin City Council offer water butts for €40.  Hopefully soon all local councils will follow suit.

If you are interested in contacting Mickey about a shed, bird feeder or his other wooden products you can phone him on 086 607 2194

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Closing date: August 15th 2010

The number of wild honey bees in Ireland and indeed worldwide has dropped dramatically in the last few years.  Putting Alberts profesy aside, the implications of the decline is alarming.  Most of the world’s crops depend on pollination by bees.

However, there is one encouraging development – despite there being fewer wild bees, more people are keeping beehives near their homes in Ireland, and many more want to learn about the activity.

The sight of bees is a sure sign that warm weather has arrived but almost all the bees in Ireland live in hives, because in the past decade the wild bee population has been decimated by a mite called Verroa.

So, is there any hope out there for our ailing bee populations?

What are your own theories about why bees are suffering? And what are your proposed solutions?

Should we be optimistic or pessimistic about the plight of our bees?

But, perhaps, you have some good news to report from the region where you live? What methods do you use to encourage bees to flourish? What are your own theories as to why bee numbers are in overall decline? And what, in your view, would be the best solution to restoring bee populations back to health?

Skipping along

I used to spend a lot of time upside down in skips. Here you could freely rummage around inside the rusting containers to see, and be amazed, at what people were throwing out. I enjoyed the thrill of finding something that was only slightly broken or looked as though it might double up as a thingamybob for some project I was working on in the garden. I used to come home with all sorts of rubbish that might come in useful one day. I did get some good stuff occasionally. Mostly all I was doing was slightly delaying the inevitability of the junk ending up in the landfill. At least I was in control of what was being dragged down the driveway though. It hasn’t always been like that.

I still hesitate to give an answer to my friendly stranger.

You’re barred

I was working behind a bar in a town outside of Nottingham in my early twenties. It was an extremely busy pub at the weekends, with ten people deep at the bar all waiting to buy their pints of lager before beating each other up. I chose to work on weekdays when the odd passer buy would pop in for a snifter before going home. It was far less stressful but did have its problems.

A small sweaty man used to pop in every so often for a half of bitter and one day produced some items out of a well-used carrier bag he was holding. “Here”, he said throwing something over the bar. “I don’t have any use for these anymore so you can have them if you like”. The man brushed aside his comb over hairstyle and showed me a pair of shoes, two sizes smaller that I take and a pair of jeans that were at least six inches too short both around the waist and length for me. “I’ve no use for them anymore”, he continued. I watched a bead of sweat roll down his forehead to his cheek and for some reason took pity on the blokes needy look. “Yea, I’ll have them, thanks”. I said taking the bag. I didn’t want him bursting into tears.

The following week the man came back “Half a bitter please”. He beamed at me over the counter. I duly obliged and passed the drink over to him holding out my hand for the money. “What?” He asked indignantly. “I gave you that stuff last week, surely that’s worth a drink or two”, he said with a wink. I had been bought, tricked into a one sided contract. He tried to get a freebie drink from me the next week too, but I was prepared and threw his jeans and shoes back to him over the counter. He left spitting obscenities, no doubt to try it on in the pub down the road.

Still no decision and in a flash I recall another instance.

Hang ‘em high

I was working in an office when a boss asked me if I would like some “Really good wardrobes”. Not wanting to miss this bargain I took a van to his house and came away with hundreds of dismantled panels and a big bag of screws that were once grotty old wardrobes that should have been smashed up years ago. I was too spineless again to say no, as my boss was so enthusiastic about them I didn’t want to disappoint. They went straight to the bottom of the garden when I got home and stayed there finally rotting into the soil.

Pluck it

My next brush with spinelessness was when a friendly neighbour asked me if I wanted a pheasant for my tea. Having only just moved to rural Ireland from an English city, I had an image of the bird being delivered to me ready for the oven so again I said yes. “There you go”, my neighbour walked into the house barely suppressing his humour heaving the freshly shot bird onto the table. The blood trickled onto the floor and the beady birds eye followed me to the kitchen drawer where I kept the knives. It took Julie and I all day to pluck and prepare the poor thing. There’s a lot to be said for oven ready birds from the butcher.

On yer bike

My final incident with my lack of assertiveness saying no was when an acquaintance was getting ready to go home to Spain and offered me his bike before he left “For a fair price”. Always open to a bargain, he suggested I went to have a look at it first to make sure it was what I wanted. There were two bikes in his shed; one was fantastic, lightweight frame, all the extras. The other was a dull looking neglected specimen that was crying out for oil. I made the assumption that it was the better bike of the two for sale and accepted the fair price he was offering. When it came to doing the deal the following week, I produced the money and he produced the oil starved neglected bike from the corner of the shed. I handed over the money, kicking myself in the process and swearing to myself to learn to say no.

This last incident happened over 20 years ago and of course now I am ever assertive. In my head I am politely refusing the plants, determined to keep my own space clutter free. My words and actions let me down. The shrubs are being delivered tomorrow.

DAY 1

Day 1- Sunday –8pm

Bit grumpy, so Julie suggests I go away for a bit. I ask her how long I should go away for. Tells me to come back when in good mood. Might be gone some time.

Day 1 Sunday 10pm

Found great looking hostel in County Sligo called the Gyreum Ecolodge in Castlebaldwin. Looks like a spaceship built from wood and bitumen sheets. Was voted the country’s most unusual hostel. Just the ticket. Bags packed and ready to go.

DAY 2

Day 2 Monday 9am
Lads to school, dishes washed, bags thrown into the boot of car complete with pillow just in case. Kiss Julie. Off to ecolodge spaceship.

Day 2 Monday 3pm
Time on my hands. Stop off at Rossinver Organic Centre. Paid €5 to walk around garden . Great place, well worth a visit. Found Gyreum spaceship in middle of nowhere. Parked up and saw man called Brendan on roof patching up gaps. Told me I could have a 6- bed room to myself. Happy days. Asked more questions about ecolodge. It’s powered by geothermal pumps, wind turbines, has a reed bed system and eco toilets at the bottom of the garden should I decide to use them. Vegetable patch looking bare yet but showing loads of promise, just like at Rossinver.

Day 2 Monday 9 pm
Fixed TV. Owner Brendan hadn’t watched for two weeks. Thought it was broken. Pushed scart lead into the back. Can now watch Corrie in the morning. Great place, fine design with big round open plan area for gatherings, green weddings and sleeping. Welcoming hearth in the centre with seats. Rickety staircase going to library above. Big hole in floor upstairs, looks good but makes me feel a bit wobbly when I look down. Staff really friendly, feeling at home. Cook up some noodles and hot chocolate and off to one of my 6 beds for an early night.

DAY 3

Day 3 Tuesday 1pm
Long lie in. Great rest. Brendan still on the roof blocking holes. Has no problem with me hanging around looking lost. Decided to visit friends in Boyle. Warmly received. Get fed loads of healthy soup from home grown veggies. Tempted to stay the night but spaceship is calling me back.

Day 3 Tuesday 11pm
Get back to Gyreum Ecolodge. A couple have arrived, but still have the 6 beds to myself. All very friendly. Was told of a group of 15 people coming to visit for a Viking re-enactment fight on a neighbour’s field. Brendan going away tomorrow leaving them to look after the Ecolodge. Time to move on. Make cheese sandwich and plan the route for tomorrow.

DAY 4

Day 4 Wednesday 2pm
Got up late again. All quiet before the Viking warriors arrive. Decided to go to hostel in Donegal town as it’s on the way home. Don’t want to travel far. Hostel busy but room to myself. Have shower as couldn’t find the one in the spaceship. Go into Donegal town for a walk. Quite busy and bump into people I know. Too close to home.

Day 4 Wednesday 11pm
Woman that owns the hostel is a bit strange, comes into TV room and takes the remote control off me and turns volume down saying people need to sleep. No-one, but no-one takes my remote control. Woman locks up hostel complaining about latecomers, looks at me as though I should call it a night. Feel uncomfortable so creep upstairs to bed.

Day 5 Thursday 3am
Can’t sleep. Heating on all night, room like a sauna as only 7 feet by 5 feet. Open windows but traffic noise keeps me awake. Missing the spaceship.

Day 5 Thursday 7am.
Woman from hostel shouting giving early morning calls. Walk downstairs. Woman is sitting outside kitchen looking at us all wishing we would leave. Grab a banana from the fridge and duly oblige.

Day 5 Thursday 8am
Can’t get out fast enough. Strange woman with staring eyes turns cooker gas off at the bottle every time someone finishes eating and keeps looking at her watch. All my food still in kitchen. Daren’t go back in to collect it in case eyes meet. No doubt it will be in the bin by 9am. Leave the room keys on table near door to avoid seeing woman. Time to go home. I can be back for 9:30 am.

Trip worked. I’m happy. Don’t have to go far or be away from home long before realising I’m onto a good thing.

More pics from Rossinver in April

More pics from the Gyreum Ecolodge

I have a few images from the Bloom Show  in Phoenix Park and the North West Show in Castlefinn. 

More Bloom pics here

More Castlefinn pics here

My step dad tried for years to get a grass sward in his back garden so smooth that you could play snooker on it. He would be out there everyday with his penknife taking out weed seedlings and threatening earthworms for making casts. He was very particular in general. He once took the whole car to bits because of a rogue squeaking noise coming from the dashboard. He never found the source of the noise and it took weeks to put the car back together again. He never managed the perfect lawn either. Our two female dogs made sure of that with their acidic urine.

Thankfully for our nerves, most of us make do with the lawns we have and give them an odd feed and cut the tufty bits down when we get chance. As the grass is growing quickly now, let’s have a look at some ways to keep the grass healthy without becoming too obsessed (I did cut mine twice this week though. Where’s my penknife?)

Turf or Seed?
If you are laying a new lawn, April to May is a great time to be sowing grass seed. It’s best to keep off the seedlings until this first cut so you don’t trample and break the baby blades of grass. By the mid summer you should have a respectable lawn.
Turf is quicker but much more expensive and requires equally good soil preparation and lots of watering to help it settle in and grow. Try to keep the footballing kids and digging dogs off for the first few weeks. If you mow keep the cutting height up on the mower.

Maintaining the lawn

Feeding
Feeding properly with an organic lawn fertiliser will make grass greener and thicker. This also helps resist weeds and moss. Overfeeding can have really negative effects on the grass though as it increases the chance of disease because of the fast growth. It could mean cutting it more often too.

Filling hollows
If your lawn has a sunken patch, repair by making an H-shaped spade cut across it with a half-moon edging tool and then peel back the two flaps of turf over the hollow. Add some topsoil, level and firm down the flaps. Fill in the gaps left by the cuts with more topsoil.

Removing weeds
Learn to tolerate a few weeds in the lawn or you will be out every day pulling them up, but if small patches or single weeds need to be removed, pull up by hand with the help of a fork. This helps to get the deeper roots of perennial weeds out.

Surviving dry weather
During long dry spells, mow less frequently, let grass grow longer and resist the urge to use summer feeds that make lots of new growth. Don’t worry if the lawn goes brown this summer, it will recover in autumn.

Worn areas
If part of the lawn is used regularly as a path, prevent it from becoming worn away by laying stepping-stones. Dig out paving-slab slices of turf and set these just beneath the surface of the lawn so a lawn mower can pass over them safely. Try to keep off the grass if there are any late frosts.

Trimming edges
Tidying lawn edges keeps the grass looking neat and prevents it from spreading into borders. After mowing, trim any grass that overhangs the edges with long-handled edging shears or a rotary trimmer.

Repairing edges
Parts of an edge that have been severely damaged are easy to repair. Use a spade to slice through the turf, cutting out a small rectangular piece from around the damaged area. Lift from the ground with the spade and turn it around, so the damaged part now faces the lawn. Press down firmly and fill the damaged area with compost. Sow grass seed over the compost and water.

Bare patches
Bare patches attract weeds, so re-sow them now. Fork the soil to break it up, then firm and level it before applying an appropriate grass seed. Cover with fleece or polythene to keep the birds off and water regularly. Another method for covering bare patches is to use a strip of lawn from a rich growing area to patch the bare area (you’ll need to re-sow the area where it came from).

Coping with moss
Show me a lawn that doesn’t have moss in it and I will be amazed. There is a tendency to scalp the grass to get rid of the moss but this isn’t really a good idea. Close cropping weakens the grass sward and gives the moss more room to grow. Correcting the drainage is the way to go but if this isn’t possible give the lawn a dose of sulphate of iron. This will burn off the unwanted moss. It can then be raked out.

Clippings
Leave grass clippings on the lawn as they rot down and release up to 30 per cent of the lawn’s required nutrients. Remove the clippings from the lawn at the beginning and end of the growing season when decomposition is slow and compost them either in your bin or a separate area set aside. Mix with plenty of coarse twigs or cardboard and paper, turning occasionally to let the air in.

Compaction and thatch build up
If your soil is compacted, fork over the area and brush some sharp sand into the holes to aerate it. If there is a large area to treat you could consider going mechanical. The hire companies have tools to cope with large areas of both moss removal and the build up of thatch, (dead matter) which can restrict growth.

KEEPING THE WEEDS DOWN
I have been putting weed-suppressing webbing down on one of the beds. We were given some red onions a few weeks ago and although we said we were only going to be growing vegetables that grow upwards this year, we thought a few salad onions would be useful. I made a few small holes in the webbing then pushed the baby onions into these. The sprouting bulbs will hopefully push their way out to the light, leaving us free of weeding for the season. As they grow I am sure we can make good use of the space in between the onions by planting broccoli and kale. To clear the bed completely I pulled up some old leeks as they were tiny and aren’t doing anything as they were left too long last season before being transplanted. Still they were pretty tasty in a soup with the last of the brussel tops and a few rogue spuds that had been left in the ground over the winter. There are even see some old parsnips surviving even after the soil has been turned. I dug a few up to check them out and added them to a stew. I had to cut off quite a bit of rust though.

GETTING STUCK IN
Before putting the webbing over the onion bed I forked in loads of organic chicken pellets. Unfortunately the new dog seems to be rather fond of them and as I pushed the fabric down around the bed, she was scratching and digging the webbing up and chewing on the hard smelly nuggets. The only solution is to get the pepper out and sprinkle it everywhere. This sounds a bit cruel, but it is doing a good job stopping her sitting in the plant pots and also stopping her eating through the internet cable outside the front door. I just have to remember to sprinkle more down after it rains.

I’ve never had a dog like this one for eating things. Only last week she was leaving us deposits that contained half a roll of silver foil, which would no doubt been more uncomfortable for her as it was inconvenient for us to tidy up after her. The other day she also got through nearly a jumbo bag of guinea pig food that she had managed to push onto the floor in the garage. Not wanting to go into too much detail but we were left with messes in the kitchen that resembled Muckish, Sleeve Sneacht and Mount Errigal complete with small seeds that resembled the rocks and topped off with the remains of the silver foil to give a look of the last of the snow. Not very pleasant, especially for Julie as she was the one that cleared it up.

CLEARING THE SHED
My other job earlier today was to clear out the shed. Where on earth does all of the rubbish come? I found ten pairs of Wellingtons in sizes none of us are, old mouldy spuds, leaky fishtanks, old cardboard and everything else that hasn’t had it’s own place over the long winter. I have also been finding my precious tools scattered around the place too. I am one of those people that enjoy seeing the painted silhouette of tools on the wall like in a mechanics garage complete with a hook to hang them from. It shows you at a glance if something hasn’t been put back. I haven’t got around to doing that just yet, so when I need my secatuers, it usually takes me a while to track them down.

No one takes the credit for moving the tools around of course, so it’s obviously the new dog that’s responsible. She gets the blame for everything. There was a day over the Easter holidays when the dog managed to get one of the lad’s large chocolate eggs out of the box in the front room. It then proceeded to open the gold foil around the egg and scrunch it up into a small ball then eat all of the chocolate, leaving not a speck on the floor. I got the blame of course, but I know it’s a personal battle between us to be top dog.