Category: Gardening

Allotment, Allotment Gardening, Blogging, Diary, Gardening

Waiting on the weather to turn…

Daffodils and Beans...
Daffodils and Beans…

April 26th and it’s another cool, bright and blustery spring day with temperatures still below average and a forecasted return to night frosts for the next 3-4 nights.

Everything in our allotment garden is at least a week, if not two, behind for the time of year. Germination is slow and patchy, and anything that is germinated seems simply to be marking time as though waiting on that rise in temperatures that will make it worth the while stretching their necks and reaching for the sky.
With things suppressed on the meteorological front, activity on the Monster’s Face has also slowed, and there is little point in popping peas and beans into drills of Terrum Frigum, for once ground temperatures recover to near normal, sowings made then will soon catch earlier sown seed-lines that will have slowed and stood still with cold feet.
With most of the springtime activity on the plot presently curtailed by weather (or complete lack thereof! ) we can at the very least still cultivate the monster’s blog.Or can we?
Writing a blog is no easy thing; and the fact that just about everyone with access to a smart phone, keyboard and an internet connection can begin blogging-or invariably already is blogging- does not mean that writing a blog is easy.
To blog is to create a weB Log of personal activity or interest on a chosen subject. Our blog here on Monster in the Corner is a web diary of our activity and experiences on our allotment plot and in our garden.
Our aim is to develop the personal story diary of the day to day activity on our allotment, and to keep it as topical and insightful as possible. A diary entry lacking one of these fundamental tenets should still communicate a great deal; it could be topical and insightful but lacking in personal content; it could be a personal and insightful entry but not very relevant or topical, or even a very personal and topical entry, yet lacking that certain insight on the subject matter or situation to hand. Yet each of these diary entry scenarios could and should still be broad enough having at least two reference points ‘twix which to draft an update of interest.
A blog update entry however, lacking two of these 3 principled reference points will not hold the reader’s attention for long: a personal blog written purely for its own sake but on no specific topic, runs the risk of offering little or no insight into anything in particular and as such becomes a personal rambling account probably concerning nothing much at all; just as a topical diary entry without a little personal filler and qualified content will most probably read like a tedious trudge through a dried -out tea bag. So what precisely do you blog about? What do you put in, and what do you leave out?
Perhaps one of the best things about modern blogging is that it is immediate. Perhaps one of the greatest drawbacks of blogging is that it is just as immediate. Gone are the days of the handwritten diary page updates and entries. Gone are the days of writing, and re-writing and copying and proofreading. Gone too the posted letter to your favourite gardening magazine and the month long wait to see if your entry had been chosen by the editorial staff for publication.
The speed and capacity of digital devices and social interface platforms has developed at a mindboggling rate. If you’re not constantly Tweeting or Pinging, Facebooking Snapchatting and Instagraming you begin to feel positively Jurassic and not very Pinteresting at all.
Today you can sit on your plot or in your garden with your Smartphone or Tablet, and if your signal is good enough or there is an open Wi-Fi connection available you can thumb-type a log entry with predictive text, take an instant photo of some fluttering by butterfly, or your broad bean bed right there beside you, then copy and paste, upload and post to the freshly pressed World Wide Web and all while sitting on an upturned barrow on your allotment. An instant What you’re doing and Where you’re doing it so to speak.

Now that’s Blogging for you: in your face; instant and immediate and at times wholly unforgiving. A smidgeon of the personal hoping to be relevant and with a modicum of insight thrown in for good measure; blogging a lá Monster In The Corner.
Et viola! a flash lunchtime visit to your plot becomes something of something; something to blog about; something you do while waiting on the weather to turn…

Allotment Gardening, Cool Weather, Gardening, Spring, Victoria Rhubarb

Cool on one hand, Cold on the other…

imag2382_1.jpg
Victoria Rhubarb With Gooseberry Bushes

Once again April has spluttered and stuttered its way from Fools Day to Mother Earth. For the 3rd year in succession the April weather in Ireland is being dominated by an anti-cyclonic blocking pattern steering in easterly winds and a continental air mass.
During months of high summer this would be welcome, but this early in spring it not only signals that drier air which is always welcome after the winter’s deluge, it also introduces weather patterns which steer air currents from the far eastern continental land mass, Scandinavia and Arctic regions meaning that it is also the harbinger of cooler than average air temperatures.
At least this year we get to say that April has been cool. Last year it was cold: the margin between 1 degree below average for time of year and 2½ degrees below average making all the difference between cool on one hand, and cold on the other. Spring and early summer last year was a disaster for most gardeners, eventually proving the coldest spring on record since records began. Nothing germinated, nothing flourished, and bud burst was 4-5 weeks late with almost all bloom stunted. This year things are moving; moving slowly, but moving nonetheless. Last year we had to sow and then re-sow parsnip seed 3 times before we hit green; whereas this year we’re out of bed on the first occasion. They may have taken their own sweet time in getting up, but at least the Gladiators are up in mid-April. Much the same with the bunching onions: last year’s seed were only beginning to show through by the end of May having been sown at end of March, this year they’re displaying crook necks after 3 weeks, which is about average. The Aquadulce are taking a stretch at last, and we will have to get the supports in place like yesterday before they start banging their heads on the clay, and the lettuce and rocket sown 3 weeks ago have finally put their feet down. Although still on the cool side we’ve put our beetroot (Solo) and radishes to bed, but we’ll leave the haricot and the peas a week or more yet.
The Victoria rhubarb is leafing up well at last and our plan is to have some this weekend; and once gardeners begin harvesting their rhubarb all seems good with the gardening world for another year.
Everything we’ve sown so far this year has germinated, but that is not to ignore the fact that the cool dry air has played its part in interrupting spring once again. The lack of Atlantic rain is also marked. For the third year in a row there has been a noticeable absence of those pulsating downpours we generally call April’s showers, and it seems the north easterlies are set to bring us right to the end of the month with this weekend’s forecast not faring much better.
With cooler than average and drier than average air a careful balance must be struck with watering newly established and germinating seed beds, for although the days are bright and dry, experience has taught us that most germinating seed can just about tolerate such naturally challenging conditions, but not with artificially dampened feet. One single day of intermittent April showers will develop your garden in a way that a whole month with a watering can never will, so easy with the hose while the easterly blows! We will see a welcome return to the prevailing south/south westerlies, and not a moment too soon I might add, but, the truth is that this year’s April showers will now most likely arrive sometime in May.

Allotment Gardening, Gardening, Greenfingers, Greenfingers Day, Seeds

Two Days To Greenfingers Day

greenfingers 2 days left

Today being the last day of March means there are now only two days remaining till we celebrate the 1st ever International Greenfingers Day (Gardeners in their Garden Day).

It will be a day for celebrating gardeners in their gardens, everywhere; in every town and county of every country and continent. Gardeners are those who toil tirelessly at greening our world and filling our lives with seasonal colour, and though there are many great gardening shows and festivals celebrated across the globe each year, there was no one day set aside to acknowledge and celebrate those who actually work throughout the year at providing the splendour we all admire.
It’s not meant to be a day for big token displays. Here in the northern hemisphere it is being celebrated right at the beginning of things, while gardeners are busy with the day to day hands-on of spring sowing, and as such won’t mind getting hands dirty.
In southern climes it is falling at harvest, a time to perhaps to reflect on the garden’s bounty and also on what has been achieved in the last year, but here also some bulbs for next year’s blooms can be planted simply to mark the occasion of the day.
What is suggested is that all gardeners everywhere sow and/or plant some small token of trust in nature on this day, the first Saturday of April each year ( this year being Saturday 2nd April 2016) except when that day falls on April 1st, and then it will be celebrated on the 2nd Saturday of that year and on all such years when April 1st happens on a Saturday .

Perhaps you could buy yourself, or the gardener in your life a small packet of seed to sow on the day; then take a picture, a sowing selfie so to speak, and when nature has played her part and your hope blooms and the promise is fit to harvest in a number of months, take another picture, for posterity if nothing else.
It’s not a day for extravagant power tools and sit-on gifts. It’s not a day for new sheds, new BBQ’s and outdoor summer furniture settings. It’s a day to be marked by some form of sowing and planting on a personal scale: a day to plant a rose bush, or a potted fruit bush; a day to sow some summer salad leaves; a day for beetroot and summer turnip seeds, for cosmos and zinnia seeds, for sunflower and cornflower seeds, a day to sow some seed in the trust that nature will play her part so long as you play yours; a day to buy a small gift of seed to yourself or for someone else and perhaps help get them to grow their own; a day to celebrate all that gardeners do best in their gardens…
If you wish post a comment here on monster in the corner, or a copy of a picture so we may all share in your effort  on instagram       #internationalgreenfingersday

It is but the seed of an idea,..

Gardening, Greenfingers, March, Seeds, Trust

Trust March to be March

Sowing the seed...
The beginnings of trust… Sowing onion seed.

Trust me; the only way to develop the skills of a gardener is to get out in the garden, and garden.
Read all the horticultural books and manuals you can lay your hands on; renew monthly subscriptions to your favourite magazines and periodicals if you so wish; plough that daily furrow across the World Wide Web as you Google endlessly in the hope of unearthing some old (or new) wisdom that will enable you become a better gardener, but it is worth considering that nothing will be more formative in your quest than to feel the soil in your hands and the air in your face as you cultivate the dream in your head.
Trust in Nature and your part in its scheme. Trust March to be March, and trust April’s showers. Trust summer’s sun and trust winter’s snow. Trust all that you know, and that you don’t know. Trust the instructions on the packet and what it says on the tin. Trust in past experiences and future dreams. Trust old wives tales and harsh realities. Trust that the seeds you sow will grow. Trust all the mistakes you’re likely to make, and learn to return the trust which fashions us out of the universe’s dust, and trust me, the only way to become a better gardener is to get out into your garden and learn to trust yourself.

the world is made of faith and trust and pixie dust…J.M. Barrie Peter Pan