Category: broad beans

1976, Abba, Al Stewart, Allotment, Allotment Gardening, Éire, Beetroot, Brian Friel, broad beans, Bugsy Malone, courgettes, cucumber, gardeners, Gardening, Gooseberries, heatwave, Jack O'Lantern, Jam, Jam Making, Malahide Allotments, pumpkins, Rocky, Shallots, Siegfried Sassoon, staycation, Stevie Wonder, summer 2018, summer in Dublin, summertime, The Boys Are Back In Town, The Merchant of Venice, Thin Lizzy, thundering disgrace, weather, William Shakespeare, Wings, Zoltan Kodaly

Seeing Both Days: Tipping Day 2018

I remember it well: it was The Year of the Cat, Silly Love Songs were Songs in the Key of Life, The Boys were Back in Town and some Dancing Queen was saving kisses for just about everyone. Rocky Balboa battered slaughterhouse daylights out of refrigerated carcasses and was doing it all for Adrienne, while, on the flip-side of things “we could have been anything that we wanted to be” with Tallulah and Blousey and Fat Sam. Yes I remember it well; the Bic white razors and Blue Stratos aftershave, the plaid patterned kick flairs, the big heels, the brass toecaps, and the migration from barbershop to hair dresser. And I remember it was warm, very warm, with water shortages and rent strikes. It was warm too in the Venetian court as one of literature’s earliest cross-dressers extolled the quality of mercy, and warm too as Kodály’s Hary János met Friel’s Potato Gatherers and all stopped by woods one snowy evening to discuss the allegorical significance of red socks sown into the futility of human greed in Sassoon’s Base Details. Yes, I remember it well; well most of it; well, some of it.
It was 1976, the whole country was a ‘thundering disgrace‘ and that was the last time we experienced a spell of weather as warm and as dry as we’ve experienced thus far this year. It was the last time we experienced a bona fide prolonged heatwave.

  Ireland was a different place back then; grubby and dreary, still striving to come to terms with the reality of developing its own terms, and still trying to find some direction for the head-spun inertia experienced since it had taken its place among the Nations of the earth just a few decades earlier. Dublin too was different back then; the city centre was –as it had been for over a hundred years-crumbling, and the newer suburbs both north and south which had been initiated just a decade earlier now stretched out to the green country fields with no shops, schools, churches or hospitals and whence prevailing winds veered from that certain direction memory of what had been left behind would still catch olfactory orifices off-guard on light winter mornings as plumes from the distant hop house surfed the wavelength between the lifting smog and the Liffey’s perspicuous stench. And that was then; and this is…well, forty years later…
It has been a good summer, this summer of 2018. It has been a very warm and very dry couple of months. It has been a good summer, and upbeat consumer sentiment is reflected in the latest quarterly index retail figures, benefiting no doubt from the sunny feel-good bounce with sales in beverages and foods and BBQ’s and stay-cations way, way above average and expectation. It has been a very good summer and those lucky enough to have been visiting from abroad this last couple of months will have seen Éire at her bright and shiny best. The sun has been shining for weeks on end, the whole population is tanned and suddenly there is renewed talk of the necessity of increases in net inward migration as we are at full employment levels once again, something not seen since the heady days of the Celtic Tiger.
It has been a very good summer, and the country is on a high: those who needed to be held to account have, (well some of them have) at last, been held to account. We are become an all inclusive and an all encompassing pluralistic society. We’ve paid our international debts in full and on time and we are now squirreling away for the other type of day, the rainy day; and boy oh boy we know the rainy days here too!

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The monster’s entrance…

It has been a good summer so far, but the monster alas, is struggling. The effects of the summer’s drought-like conditions are now unmistakable. We have had some wonderfully early cucumbers and courgettes, and we’ve wiped out most of the early lettuce, salad leaves, kohl rabi and radishes but the broadbeans and potatoes are struggling big time and dare say the crop will not be so good as we hope for. The strawberries are finished, the shallots are curing and the onions have been lifted. The gooseberry crop struggled to plump so we opted for a crop in the hand sooner than the crop on the bush and managed to get a dozen jars of jam. We’ll be doing likewise with the blackcurrants this weekend. The pumpkins are swelling and the Florence fennel has germinated. We tasted some of the beetroot and it is fabulous, and once the Red Barons are cured we’ll chutney about 10 lbs. We’ve summer pruned the plum and dwarf heritage apple trees, and we’ve put the french beans and swede seed to bed and in so doing we have set the monster up for autumn and winter.
Today being the 19th July means it’s Tipping Day on monsterinthecorner, the 200th day of the year, the day by which high summer almost always recognizably wains. The young finches, sparrows and linnets are fledged, robin chicks have been rescued, fox cubs and leverets are making their own way and the early summer lush greens are beginning to look just a tad jaded. Some of the monster’s beds and drills are emptying fast, and at last there is a forecast of a substantial rainfall over the next 24 hours. And slowly, but surely, it all turns. And sooner than expected we’ll be saying “we saw both days”… and we’ll remember them and hopefully recall these days with fondness.
It has been a truly good summer thus far, so good so that in the last number of days we’ve found ourselves wondering what (?) if anything, the abiding memory of this great summer would or should be, should we be fortunate enough to live to reflect upon it forty years hence.
But, this is where we’ll leave it, for now.

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firewheels and poppies and peas and robins… monster images from the summer that is 2018 images compliments @janpaulkelly (aka Mrs. Dirtdigger)
Allotment, Allotment Gardening, broad beans, June, Malahide Allotments, May

Making Up For Things

Marvelous May more than made amends: warming breezes with bee-buzz and late apple blossom.  It sprang; it sprung; it’s spring: it’s sparrow-chirp and blackbird songs, with frolicking new born fleeces and days stretching out to where summer belongs.

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Onions, Pumpkins, Shallots & Beans

Yes, May has more than made up for things:
Lilacs hang heavy, early foxglove and Lupin spires stand proud and every bloom is bombarded by winged wonders that now seem frantic to make up for the month long delay in bud burst just a few short weeks ago.

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Yes, May has more than made up for things; and with that all is forgiven. All the bare beds and drills are green again and all the seedling which had to be kept under cover for far longer than expected have been grounded at last. The polytunnel tomatoes, peppers and aubergines have set bloom and trusses at last. And softly, almost imperceptibly May morphs, and merges, and June…Glorious June, and for the first time in many decades the fulfillment of the promise of an early summer is fully realized, with thoughts drifting on waves of meadow grasses and buttercups. Tits and thrushes and warblers, and poached-eggs and heady irises, and the first roses of summer, Port Sunlight and Young Lycidias; and there is a time for all things, for constant watering and thinning-out, for hardening-off and sowing out, but there is also a time for leaving the hoe and trowel rest a while, and allowing the misplaced weeds thrive an hour or two longer, or a day or two longer; a time for prosecco and Ice Cream, and balmy nights with clammy skin and late outdoorsy activities, and long bright evenings sitting in the dappled shelter of the broad beans, gooseberries and blackcurrants and wondering what it would be like with a whole summer of early June, a thought as fluttering as the Holly Blue butterflies.

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Bright & Shiny Buttercups
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Bearded Iris ‘Killiney’

All looks well in the early summer sun, and the monster is no different, but the gardener’s eye still catches on the after effects of the atrocious winter and spring; the space where the peach tree used to be, and the gaps in the border where the dahlia and geraniums just didn’t make it.  But, it is still early June, only early June, and for more years than we care to remember at this time of the year we would idly content ourselves wishing for the onset of a decent run of summer, sometime soon…
So, here’s to a decent run of summer, sometime soon, a run of summer like this year’s early June.

 

Allotment Gardening, Beetroot, broad beans, cold, Cool Weather, cosmos, damp, darkness, gardeners, Gardening, Hibernia, Malahide Allotments, New beginnings, Parsnips, Seeds, weather, winter

When The Weather Clears

The days are dull, dark and damp. It is most definitely mid January and unmistakably deep winter. The Christmas decorations are once again consigned to attic or shed for the next 11 months, and the New Year’s celebration bubbly bottles have been emptied and recycled through the local bottle banks. Something which only a few short days before still held a certain charm and relevance can suddenly find itself out of place and out of time once its sell by date is reached, and once Christmas’ celebrate by date is passed, it is definitely passed. That which was full of bright promise in the latter days of December can seem abruptly garish and jarring just these few short January days later.
I suppose when it’s time to go, it’s time to go.

The same of course must be said of things here on monster in the corner. No longer can we say that we are working our way through the first year on a new plot. Everything we said we had planned to relocate in the moving to our new plot was relocated, and everything we said we had hoped to sow and grow on that new plot was actually sown, and thankfully most of it grew as expected. This time last year we set ourselves some new year’s tasks and we experienced quite some pleasant success when late last August monsterinthecorner was awarded the prize of Best Overall Allotment 2018 at the annual awards. So no longer can we say that we are only in our first year for we are not, and in all truthfulness the monster is now well and truly established at its current location. When it’s time to go it’s time to go, and last year was last year; and that was then and this is… well, now.
The monster’s new year begins midst squally, sleety, stormy weather (in stark contrast to its beginning at this time last year) and where the last three years saw us experience relatively mild and generally uneventful winters, this year the winter season is providing us with plenty of weather.
In a posting from a frosty November morning just as this season was setting in we wrote that perhaps, if we were lucky, we would get just such a winter; noting that a little sharp vernilization in general, is a good thing for the kitchen garden.

So, reminder to self…be mindful of what you wish for!
It has been a very wet and notably cold winter to date, and once more this week we are subject to influences of large polar maritime air masses which seem set to dominate things again for the next seven to ten days. Regardless of how mild -or otherwise- any given winter can be, according to Long Term Average analysis the coldest period of Ireland’s winter season is from mid January to mid February, and it would seem all is right on cue.
With winter truly bearing its teeth this year, there is little that can be done on the allotment. Any attempt to turn or cultivate growing areas will backfire spectacularly, and any pruning which needs to be done and hasn’t yet been done is best long-fingered till things at least dry up a little. There is still ample time to shape and coax next year’s fruiting spurs and blooms from the present dormancy, and where cold weather pruning is par for the course, it’s best done during a dry period to minimize damage to newly exposed wound wood by extended exposure to wet conditions.
Other jobs for the allotment at this time of year are the standard housekeeping requirements for all gardens and plots and are, and have been, well documented over the decades. There are however one or two activities that can be undertaken now which are not so weather dependant and these are some of the gardening year’s gentler activities. While waiting for the weather to clear you can busy yourself perusing the gardening supplements and seed catalogues which suddenly seem to be arriving two-a-penny with every weekend newspaper, offering hints and tips together with design and advice to amateur and professional alike on everything from soil nutrition and pond depth, the latest must have celebrity endorsed tools, to current developments in Hydroponics and what it is that you simply must do now to ensure bigger, better blooms and harvests later in the year. All standard commercial fair mind you, aimed at planting that persuasive seed of need into your plans in the hope it will germinate in your pocket or purse. Or you may, if you wish, undertake something that we here do annually before the gardening season gets under way in earnest. About this time every year we at monsterinthecorner take out our seed storage box to examine and inspect the contents. It is a curious exercise sifting through the packets and envelopes and recalling what it was we had originally plotted to do the previous year. There are always a number of wallets and pouches that will have remained unopened and as such unused, and it is often puzzling trying to remember why we never followed through with the plan that made us buy them to begin with. But, we suspect most gardeners have such a box of curious perplexities. Of course, having opened the box it then becomes necessary to assess the viability of its contents, and this is where you need to be ruthless. Fresh seed looses its viability over time and the process of degradation is speeded-on once the original storage packet has been opened. How long seeds are likely to retain their viability largely depends on two things: the seeds own inherent shelf life, and secondly how they are stored once packaged. Moisture and unnecessary heat are two of the main conditioners contributing to seed deterioration, and seeds last longer if stored in a cool, dry environment. Nonetheless, regardless of how you store them some seeds naturally last longer than others: parsnips, celeriac and parsley will not last much longer than one year; whereas peas, tomato seed and some beans can remain viable for over a decade. Most leafy vegetable seed should last for at least 5-6 years; beetroot and radish for 3-4 years while carrot, turnip and swede seed will last for 2 years if you’re lucky. By and large this is in line with our own experiences over the years of sowing and growing, and though we’ve only outlined vegetable seed here, much the same storage guidelines apply to bloom and meadow seed as well, although with that said, it is generally accepted that a lot of flower seed has a much longer shelf life than most kitchen garden seed.
And so once again we’ll pop the lid on our seed treasury chest and we’ll scrutinize. We will examine the remaining basil seed purchased in Malcesine 4 years ago, the beans and sunflower seed sourced by the Dirt-Digging missus herself in Toulouse 3 years ago together with the beans and pumpkin seed brought home from Toronto in August 2016. It’s something we do while on our travels, a potential living memento of our foreign excursions should we be lucky enough to get them to germinate and grow in our home clime: some warm sun-filled reminiscences to help buffer January’s dreary days. We’ll also need to check the condition of the foraged poppy, sunflower, pumpkin and cosmos seed collected from the monster’s own beds and borders last autumn.

And then we’ll wait; wait for the weather to clear; wait till there is not so much weather about; wait till we can get out and about once more and the monster’s ways are trafficable enough to allow us empty some of those packet contents into pots and trays and beds and get the whole process under way once again; but, only when the weather clears.

Allotment, Allotment Gardening, Autumn, Beetroot, broad beans, cosmos, gardeners, Gardening, GIY, Sunflowers, winners

This Year’s Next Year’s What It says On The Tin!

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Beets & Beans & Tomatoes & Cucumbers & Pumpkins all in a days work…@JanPaulKelly

September is a most conspicuous month, parading nature’s catwalk in ostentatious seasonal apparel, flaunting its gold and vermillion treasures. In the September garden nothing is concealed and every detail of the allotment plot is revealed as once again we are invited to the annual show of pomp and pageantry wherein the garden displays its spring and summer efforts in autumn’s showcase collection: large blousy dahlia blooms together with bright white cosmos and smouldering tithonias; sedums, rudbeckias, anemones and echinaceas; late autumn sunflowers with second flush roses; boughs laden with ripening full blushed apples and pears, and all embellished with the first touches of gold and yellows now clearly discernible in the leaves of the horse chestnut trees and the berries of the rowans.

September, if we’re lucky, is not only summer’s parting gesture it is also the garden’s glorious swansong; an envoi to the gardener’s due diligence throughout the growing year.
And there is no hiding place in the September garden. Midst the mellowing magnificence there is often a murky mess and beneath the splendour there can be spoiling, for at the heart of the every garden’s golden grandeur there is -de rigueur- decay, and underlying September’s radiance there is often a raggedness not immediately obvious to the untrained eye.
The pea and bean crops have finished, and unpicked pods mildew and blacken on unkempt poles and frames; the summer cabbages left in bed at this late stage begin to look forlorn, and any remaining lettuces and wild rocket bolt; early chards, spinach and beetroot go over in the blink of an eye, and even late planted onions begin to break their own necks and lay themselves down. Pumpkins may be ripening fast, but, as with the courgettes the vines are brittle, grey and spent, while the outdoor tomatoes and cucumbers noticeably slow in ripening and betray the inability to cope with the overnight light loss and fluctuating temperatures by splitting spontaneously. The annual herbs such as coriander and dill have set seed as has the fennel, while the flowering thyme(s) and sage(s) bloom is withering fast. The rhubarb stools are done for the year and for the first time since April their crowns are visible, now sitting proud in their own patch, hemmed by a sprawling carpet of dying yellow leaves.
The September garden is one of the gardening calendars great celebrations with its glitzy, showy, razzle-dazzle richness with all accompanying tinted tones, and when taken together with the burgeoning harvest from the vegetable and kitchen garden it is little wonder that September is perhaps the gardeners’ favourite month of the year.
Although with over 3 months still remaining to year’s end, here at monsterinthecorner we can say –and with some quiet confidence-, that 2017 has been one of the best years ever on our allotment. Having completely shaken the dust of our previous allotment from our feet we relocated monsterinthecorner to our new plot at the beginning of January. We spent weeks and months earlier this year clearing and cultivating our newly acquired overgrown eyesore; we raised our beds and set our drills; we composted our leaves and mulched our runs, we laid out pathways and built and stained our shed, and we sowed our seed and we watered and weeded; then we weeded and watered, and watered, and weeded. We’ve had success with practically everything we sowed, and we’ve been enjoying the home-grown fruits of our labours since late April. We made our jams and chutneys; we shared our successes and we’ve jarred the excesses.
The monster’s beds are emptying rapidly, so we’ve collapsed the bean poles and pea frames and stacked and stored them away till next year. There is a creeping bareness about the monster at present, but we’ll be top dressing the bared patches with compost over the coming weeks, and after that we’ll cover-up to protect against the wetter excesses of winter.

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The Jack O’Lantern Pumpkins starting to turn

We still have dwarf curled Kale and a later sowing of Tuscan Kale Negro on the go. We have the Tweed Swedes and some leeks coming along still, not forgetting the parsnips for later in the season. Our onions are cured and strung, and in the last week we’ve actually set some erysimum cuttings in pots, and sown some lupin and echinacea seeds for next spring. And there, right there is the constancy of the garden and allotment plot.
We faced a serious challenge at the end of last year, but having risen to the task, the dirt-digging Mrs and I have enjoyed ourselves no-end with our new venture. We’ve met some wonderful new acquaintances and have been recipients of many gifted seeds and seedlings throughout the spring and summer form new allotment neighbours. During our allotment site’s annual harvest festival at the end of August our immediate plot neighbours Daniel and Beata were deservedly awarded best large plot. Another neighbouring plot holder Pat won largest beetroot in the largest root competition for her 5lb 2oz specimen, Helen won tallest sunflower (after a good natured stewards enquiry) and Joe the Gardiner Street gardener won longest carrot and having accepted the judge’s decision in the sunflower category (i.e. that a sunflower has to have a full and open bloom to be suitable for inclusion in the category) acknowledged that he had, in fact, a 16 foot 2 inch bloomless green stalk. It was little comfort for Joe that his fabulous specimen actually showed its face 4 days later, and he can take some pride in knowing that he grew the tallest sunflower of the year, just not the tallest flower for the competition. That’s the thing with the garden and gardening; things happen in their own time, and if there was a packet or tin into which all our garden plans could be poured, we’d have to be very careful indeed regarding the packet blurb, for experience has shown that mother nature does not necessarily have to do exactly what we think it should say on the tin. Best small plot category was awarded to George, who keeps a very good allotment on the far side of the allotment site, and unbelievably the best overall plot award 2017 was awarded to the monsterinthecorner, and genuinely there was no one more surprised than Mrs Dirt Digger and myself.

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Some of Elaine and Bob’s good stuff

The monster is cropping out, and activity all across the larger allotment site is slowing down. We’ve picked blackberries from the sprawling brambles which fence the allotment site from adjacent fields, and the growing starling numbers are beginning to gorge themselves on the now ripened rowan berries. Autumn is well and truly arrived and the monster has come through its transition in right royal style, we’ve been amply rewarded in every way for our efforts, and are puffed & chuffed that one of the plaudits (we’ve been reliably informed) is that the monster is now considered one of the “must have a look at” plots on site: No bad for 8 months, not too bad at all. However, there is an unfortunate after-effect with our small success in that we’ve now set the standard for ourselves. But, we’ll just enjoy this year’s monster success for what it is, and we’ll leave next year to this year’s winter plan.

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Putting on a happy face!!!