3rd week of June 2011

The longest day of the year was not, by far, the hottest. But every little helps: soft fruit is now ripening, producing enough for the Knockvicar Gardeners to pick and munch walking by the bushes. Soon the birds will discover the crop, and we have to arrange the harvest – before they do. I’m friendly with the idea of sharing, but not with the idea of letting the blackbirds to eat the result of pruning and mulching and strimming. This year will try how a ‘pick for yourself’ system works.

So it is officially launched: customers can harvest blackcurrants in Knockvicar Organic Garden. Your basket/bowl is weighed in and out, and you pay (€ 2.00 / kg) for what you picked. Of course, the customer is requested to do a tidy job: harvest thoroughly and be gentle to the bush – just as he/she would do it at home, or for that matter we do it when we pick some for ourselves. ‘Pick for yourself’ is not a consumerist experience. It is a sharing-the-crop experience.

We lit the first serious fire in the clay oven. I wanted to greet Mari-aymone with a hot and good-smelling oven on Saturday morning, so I lit a fire at around 8. Then at 9. Then at half-past-ten. But eventually it kicked in, and at around 2 I threw in a few potatoes to bake. They were delicious. Slightly charred on the outside, smoked and hot inside, they were the perfect messenger: it works! I threw the last bit of wood in the oven at around 12, and next morning at seven the oven was still hot inside.

Winter Brassicas are planted out. Under a net, they are: we have to protect them from the dreaded Cabbage White. Actually, it is the larvae, cabbage caterpillar that harm the crop, but it doesn’t happen without the butterfly.
Butterflies are highly mobile pests. Their host plants include several wild species, so they are and will be around. But we can keep their larvae off the cabbage patch, if we know how to trick them. Mummy Butterfly, you see, is a caring type. She wouldn’t lay her eggs in a place where the babies (those cute little ones, you know, like a worm with legs, the ones that chew and poo all the time) have nothing to eat. So she lands on leaves, and licks them. If the leaf tastes nice and cabbage-y, she climbs underneath and lays her yellow eggs in neat rows.
The good cabbage-y taste is important. You all know Nasturtium, the yellow-red flowered climber with the round leaves. This plant is not related to cabbage, and in fact shouldn’t be called Nasturtium at all. The scientific name Nasturtium officinale had been given to the watercress, a relation of the cabbage. The reason we call the yellow or red flowered Indian ornamental Nasturtium (its scientific name is Tropaeolum, by the way) is the taste: it tastes like watercress. And if there is no cabbage around, the Cabbage white is quite happy to lay her eggs on Nasturtium. Every year we see a few plants devastated by the caterpillars.
On the other hand, if Mummy Butterfly cannot lay the eggs on the underside of the leaf, there won’t be any larvae, there won’t be any damage. That is why we pull a light white net over the young Brassica plants. Yes, butterflies can land on the net, they can lick the plants as much as they like, but they aren’t allowed to go underneath and do all sorts of smutty business – and the problem is sorted. Easy, isn’t it, to be an organic gardener.

Laszlo’s Garden Update…
Well, we still hold Met Eireann close to our hearts. To entertain us, and to add a bit of variety to the weather menu, here comes the frost. Early morning frost, when (because if not now, then never) pumpkins and runner beans are planted out, and at last the spuds’ foliage is up and lush and green. Until the frost pinches it; then it turns black.

Orla, the other potato variety we grow indoors is at least as good as Collen was, only tastier. At this stage some brown discolouration shows on the leaves and lower stems, but I don’t think it is blight yet. You see, Met Eireann hasn’t issued a blight warning lately. And they know.

Late Potato Blight is a disease caused by the pathogen Phytophtora infestans, a fungus. As a fungus it is on the simple side, no charming toadstool and no fluffy, green mould, just single cells that sometimes join into a slimy mass to do some fungal hanky-panky, then split again and keep turning the leaves brown and the tubers rotten.
We know where it came from: America. We know it triggered the Great Famine of the 1840-s and ’50-s. We know that it is the curse of Irish farming. But we don’t know where it stays when there is no potato around.
Potato blight attacks in warm (15 Celsius-plus) and humid weather – that is what Met Eireann can predict. First there is an incubation period, when the cells settle on potato leaves, start feeding from the cells, multiply, and at this stage start destroying leaf tissue. The first sign of blight is browning on the underside and edges of the leaves (the top is always drier). Then the rot spreads to the stems, and eventually underground, on the tubers. This can happen in two ways, one is by the fungal cells washed down by the rain; the other is within the plant’s stem. But it is important to keep in mind that the fungus’ life on the plants begins 4-7 days before the first symptoms show. Whatever we do to protect spuds from blight, we should do it in a preventive manner, not when the disease is already there.

So what can we do? Actually, quite a lot. We can choose resistant varieties: Sarpo Mira, Axona and the Mexican Toluca are supposed to be the best. We can spray with copper (permitted even in organic production, although in a strictly limited dose) – there is no fungus up to date that would be copper-resistant. Copper can come in the form of Burgundy- and Bordeaux mix (made with bluestone and washing soda, Na2CO3 or hydrated lime, CaOH – the resulting compound is the same), but it is also available in liquid forms, like the organically approved Atempo mix (copper-octanoate). Seaweed, freshly collected and laid in between the drills is supposed to protect potato from blight. I have only anecdotal evidence (plenty, mind you) of that, but this year we try it, so later I will be able to report on it. Nobody seems to know how or why it works though. It could be salt, could be iodine, could be sulphur (another chemical element that tends to kill fungi in certain compounds), but it doesn’t matter as long as the blight goes. Or doesn’t come, I don’t mind.

It is June, orchids are abundant, birds sing, and Artists visit the Garden. We had forty of them, in two flocks, last week. County Council is running their Artist in Residence programme again, and of course we participate. All forty seemed to be nice and pleasant people, with nice and pleasant ideas (except the guy who wants to know when is the time when there are NO PLANTS in the tunnels, so he can do art there – there are such times, mate, but as a basic concept, the tunnels are there FOR PLANTS).
The souvenir of last year’s Residence, our clay oven is almost functional. I wanted, really, to wait for Mari-aymone to light the first fire in it, but run out of patience. So far we talk about small and slow fires: the oven has to dry before the first real burning can take place. But it works: the air goes in, the smoke comes out, and it gets lovely hand-warm on the outside. (Wayne tried to bake some spud in it, they came out hand-warm too, but it’s just a pre-production run. And they were lovely after he fried them in a pan, on the gas.)
Yum.

Cold, bless the heart of Met Eireann. (One of my Mum’s theories: the Met service must be responsible for the weather: how else would they know what it’s going to be like?) But the April heat did a wonderful job. The current bushes are loaded with fruit: it was nice and warm when the flowers were out. Apple trees, plums and sloes seem to be the same – in other people’s gardens.

Half of the early (indoors) potato crop is already gone. The variety was Colleen, first early with all the properties of a first early: waxy, moist, tasty. The other half is Orla, a second early variety. They seem to lag behind; a lesson for next season: go for Collen and leave Orlas for outdoors. In place of the Collens we already planted a row (17 plants, to be precise) Uchiki Kuri and Butternut squashes. One problem with indoors potato crop is that the few tubers which remain in the soil will keep producing shoots all season. Squashes (the plants) cover the soil with dense foliage, which should suppress the rouge spud – I hope.

Outdoors the cold weather seems to hold back the potatoes. This year we have a fancy plot: ten different varieties, one row each, so we can see (and show) the differences. So far some prove early (Colleen, not exactly a surprise), some robust (Sarpo Mira), and some are quite sickly and sad looking. By far the least impressive variety so far is Toluca. It is a pity: this Mexican spud is supposed to be very tasty and very blight-resistant too, but if the crop is like what the foliage suggests, the ten-foot row will hardly yield enough to fill a pot.

At least frost seems to stay away from Knockvicar. Last week Met Eireann threatened us with ground frosts (the garden is in a frost pocket), but a it seems, they decided to go for the cold, northerly winds instead.

Cold or not, days are long. Very long, and it is an often overlooked feature of the Irish growing season. Any plant lucky enough to be protected by tunnel or glasshouse is growing in a stunning rate. Tomato plants (Matina, Sungold F1 and a newcomer to Knockvicar: Quadro) are chest-high and vigorous as Triffids. Courgettes and French Beans (dwarf ones; I personally don’t see much point in growing climbers: they take ages to crop and half of the pods get lost in the foliage) are cropping already.

Leaf vegetables are fast and lush, but this is something you’d expect this time of the year. Also expected, greenfly showed up on lettuces and even tomatoes. Amazing creatures: most of the year they multiply via parthenogenesis, effectively a self-cloning process. Mummy greenfly give birth to baby daughters, without any involvement of daddy greenfly. Baby daughters are already pregnant with their baby daughters, and this goes on and on until September, when they finally decide to produce a generation of males, just for the genetic variety and, I presume, the fun of dating.

Fun it might be, but time consuming, so for the serious business of infestation they ditch the idea, and breed in such a rate that in heated greenhouses forty generations were counted in a year. (For humans forty generation means over a millennium!)

To spoil the fun (and save the crop), we employ bacteria. Bacillus thuringiensis (BT for the organic gardener) is the E. coli of the insect word. (Actually, it is a cousin of Anhtrax – nice pedigree.) Sprayed on plants and soil, it gets into the fly’s digestive system, blocks it, and the fly dies. So does our friend the cabbage caterpillar; and if we are lucky (and spray the preparatum, commercially available, on the ground) the soil-dwelling baddies do too.

The other bugbear, lurking around the door, is the potato blight. We talk about it next week.

If you haven’t been down recently to see our clay oven, do drop by. Its looking great!

Upcoming workshops for June:

Weaving on a peg loom

Peg loom weaving workshop Weave yourself a rug from raw sheep’s fleece on a peg loom. Sat 18th + Sun 19th, Cleen Hall, 10am-12.30pm, €45

Peg Looms are a very old way of weaving.  Participants will use raw sheep’s fleece to weave a rug to take home. More details can be found here.

COOK & DINE 3 quick curries with Tom Ronayne. Mon 27th, Cleen Hall, 6-10pm, €15

Plant Swap Sunday

Free Event, Sun 15th,  Cleen Hall, 12-4pm

Our plant swap is a popular event and a great place to bring any extra seedlings you have. After last year we expect a wide variety again. We will also have garden supplies for sale, and will be on hand to provide you with helpful advice!

Wild Food Forage Welcome to The Wild Larder!

Starting at Knockvicar Garden, Sun 22nd, 10-3pm, €30

COOK & DINE with Maison Djeribi.

Mon 30th, Cleen Hall, 6-10pm, €15

Another chance to learn to cook some lovely dishes with a small group of people and enjoy eating them afterwards!