A Year on the Land

The Documentary that we participated in last year is going to be shown on TV3 on Sunday at 6.15pm. There is a promo for the series here: http://vimeo.com/20637172

Dancing on Rocket: Day 3 of Seed Saving course

The workshop today was about threshing and cleaning dry seeds and hand pollinating peas with a view to creating new varieties. The picture above sows Ciara pollinating a Bijou pea which is a giant mange tout pea, with pollen from a sugar snap pea, Sugar Anne, with the intention of breeding a larger snap pea. Lets hope some of the crosses took.
Mike demonstrated his cunning technique for cleaning round seeds by pouring them down a piece of guttering. The round heavy seeds roll to the bottom and the debris and flat broken bits of seeds stay higher up and can be removed

Then the dancing began and we threshed out a nice bit of rocket seed that had over-wintered in the polytunnel.

The Living Garden

We went to Dublin for the launch of Jane Powers' fabulous new gardening book, The Living Garden. Sorry the picture is a bit blurry. It is available here, the book, I mean, not the blurry picture. I hope I find time to read it.

Diamond Aubergine and Maca

For some reason the seeds of the new variety of aubergine, Diamond, that we grew last year, didn't germinate well, in the tests before Christmas. I didn't get around to putting the maca seeds onto the internet either. They are both germinating fine now and are up on the website. There is just about time to sow aubergines if you haven't done so already, I am not completely sure when maca should be sown. It doesn't like hot weather, so perhaps it is better sown in late summer. The maca in the picture was sown in spring 2009, none of it grew bigger than a golf ball, and if flowered quickly, during the following spring. One plant went to seed in the first year and produced lots of seedlings with no swollen root at all. I pulled these out to discourage that sort of thing. The plants in the foreground are the result of this cull. It was interesting that the seedlings grew and survived the winter as there were no self sown seedlings from the spring flowering plants. This picture was taken in May 2010. You can read more about maca here.

Being from the Ukraine, Diamond is an early aubergine, and did well for us last season. We haven't got a lot of seed because we ate too many of them.

St Patrick's Day 2011

We have Zach and Maggie here again. they have almost completed their year in Ireland and came to celebrate St. patricks day with us. They made us a great float using a car trailer and we had good fun taking part in the parade. The Grand Marshal was Nell Levis aged 102, you will get tiny peak at her at the end of the video.

Winter Roscoff Cauliflowers

The first few Winter Roscoff cauliflowers are ready to eat. They come at a great time of year, when the rest of the winter vegetables are coming to an end. A few have leaves coming through the curds and I suppose I should rogue them out but it doesn't make them any less nutritious. We haven't got any seed left now so we will grow these out for seed. Any cauliflower cheese we have will be made with the small imperfect ones.

I would like to know when others get there first Roscoff, to see if they are much earlier down here in tropical West Cork than in other parts of the country.

Seed Swap Sunday at Knockvicar

For the second year running we attended the Seed Swap Sunday at Knockvicar. The first time I think I was so tired by the journey that I didn't take in the importance of what this community is doing. The gardens are in a field near the very small village of Knockvicar in Co. Roscommon. Here a group of people grow food for them selves and the wider community in ten polytunnels as well as outdoors. They also take care of the commuity hall which is an old school, testament to a larger population in the past. They also run courses in all sorts of sustainable activities like gardening, soap making and poultry keeping and once a month they have a meal in the hall together. Its a pretty international group with Irish British French and Hungarian members so the dinners look really interesting. On Saturdays they have a market from 11 to 3 which features Maison Djerbi Bakery and Patisserie. Mari-Aymone of Maison Djerbi provided delicious food for the seed swap. Other delicious items were provided by Bridget of Arigna Natural Gardens. There was no sign of a recession at Knockvicar as lots of seeds were bought by them. I hope they learnt enough from the seed workshops to be confident about growing their own in future, but all the same it would be nice to visit again. The community there is a great model for sustainable rural life.

We had a request for catalogues during the week from Pierce O'Reilly of Mayo Abbey Organic centre, so we decided to hand deliver them on the way home. We arrived into the lunch break of a FETAC organic horticulture course. It was a lively group who took us in and fed us tea and biscuits as well as buying seeds. The project is run by the community council and its goal as a rural community organic centre is to empower people with the knowledge to be self sufficient. It is another great example of how well organised communities make things happen.

Now its time to start sowing the seeds of next years seeds here.