Carrots and Sticks

This year the plan is to experiment with growing more commercially. If there is a hope in hell of getting me off the laptop and into the garden on a more productive basis, it is possibly to be found in the idea of threatening to a) take seedlings, salads, herbs to the local Farmers' Market this summer and autumn and b) apply to IOFGA for grown up organic certification.

It takes 2-3 years to formally obtain the right to sell produce as ‘organic’. As I've never grown any other way, it's less about converting away from ‘normal’ chemical practices and more about ensuring (through record keeping and inspection) that the food produced really has been grown to the organic standards laid down in law. It previously seemed OTT to go to the bother of getting certified for such a small, non-commercial plot (1/2 acre), but the fees are so much cheaper than I thought (under €150), and going through the certification process itself can only be useful for other work. Plus additional land can be added to the same licence at a later date.

So basically, one needs to get ones arse into gear. Less typing; more growing.

Forgiveness: giving up all hope of a better past

In the first year of growing I found it sad that all the work that goes into the kitchen garden seems to be brought to nothing at the end of the year - beds covered up, all the glory gone. Now I appreciate just how forgiving it is, the cycle of the seasons. You can let things go bedraggled and tough, forget to sow in time, be erratic with watering. You may suffer the consequences with diminished harvests. But then you can clear it all back and start again with new packets of seeds, growing plans, art pads full of rough sketches and diagrams of the rotations. Inevitably it all gets a bit more throughother as the year goes on, but just now it’s like going back to school - in a nice way - with a new pencil case, fresh notebooks and a rucksack full of good intentions.

I love this definition of forgiveness; it is from a very mellow Buddhist mentor on the fantastic Zencast resource - here you can download everything from mediation timers to talks on compassion, loving-kindness, and those well known afflictions sloth and torpor...

'What Fresh Hell Is This?'

As Dorothy Parker used to say each time the phone rang, I now find myself saying the same whenever I lift the lid off the compost bins. Having survived rats in Year 1 (do not locate bins in tight cosy corners) and forced to abandon a more open plan wooden affair (plastic: I know, I know), by Year 2 I enjoyed perfect compost from my first bin, and added a second bin. In Year 3 I got careless about the vital green-and-brown combination of material. This is the most common way people mess up their bins – (another is adding tons of lawn mowings). It's vital to have a good mix, preferably in layers, of garden and kitchen waste, (‘green’) and other matter like prunings, twigs, leaves, scrunched up waste paper ('brown') in order to create the right environment for the compost to do its thing. I've been hefting tons of green waste in and forgetting the rest. Big mistake.

These are not just slugs, these are M&S Slugs. Fat, splodgy, grey-brown, about 7” long and another 1” wide. Multiplying like rabbits inside each bin. (Bring back Rabbit, all is forgiven.) They are the stuff of nightmares. Chucking in straw and letting the bins dry out was suggested and this has been done in one. I put leaves in the other one and am avoiding using either for the moment. It’s all very well to volunteer tips to random people who ask me about their compost-sludge-hell, but I really need to follow my own advice.

Rabbit

Since the very start of the New Year an escapee has been coming most days to feast on the overwintered brassicas. Virtually the only thing left growing are a few underperforming kale and calabrese (broccoli) plants, but now Rabbit is doing the rounds nibbling everything down to the stalk.

Clearly not a bog-standard breed, the neighbours reckon he was an unwanted Christmas present released into the wild (appalling if true) or an escaped pet. Either way he is not going hungry. He has breakfast at Neighbour-Next Door’s veg patch, and makes it here for his next course around 1030am most days. To divert him away from the scarce winter greens, I am giving him organic carrots and sunflower seeds. The plan is to tame him enough to catch him and take him to an animal sanctuary for re-homing but so far he is having none of it.