Grandad's 1941 Dept of Ag leaflet's - cost 2s 6d ! Solid advice to kitchen gardners, still valid and helping the family 70 years later. Thats value.
Sea Kale is a perennial green, hardy and reliable once established, and that's the trick.
My initial batch had a very poor germination rate,this is because the seed is contained in a cork like husk that allows the plant to propagate with the tides in nature.
After some research I found that removing the outer seed casing help's and speed's up germination.
Put the seeds in a bowl of water for a few days,then using a very sharp knife, like a craft knife or scalpel, very carefully and gently take off the outer husk. It's a little like a tiny avocado
Seakale seed, de-husked and ready for pots
Apparently germination usually takes place in 3 to 5 weeks at 15°c but -as I found -can be slow and irregular.
I have already planted out 4, 3 failed but the fourth is doing well under a cloche for now.
As the plant is perennial, and lasts many years, the main aim I have in the first year is to establish at least four plants to make a start.
Paper pots ready to take seed
A new tool I got myself this year came in handy. From Seedaholic in Mayo I got a Nether Wallop paper potter.
Now, I have made my own in the past, but that was all flour glue and lacked uniformity.
The paper potter saves time and bother, recycles newspapers and gives good, uniform starter pots.
It's a very simple, clever and cute addiion to the seed box.
The pots will not disintegrate until planted, even if soaking because their walls are several layers thick so will only bio-degrade after they are put into the ground.
Using the system means there is no root disturbance or damage because the paper pot goes straight in the ground will rot down and the roots will grow through it.
It also looks and feels good and could not be simpler to use. It's a once off investment and well worth it.
As for the seakale, I really look forward to getting it established and growing well, with a bit of luck.
The Fresh, creamy-white stalks of sea kale are a seasonal delicacy at the deadest time of year.
They were harvested from sandy beaches in Victorian times when it was a popular vegetable.
Collectors covered the stalks with sand to keep out the light and develop a delicate flavour.
But over time, wild supplies became so over picked and endangered that it was made illegal to harvest from the beach.
Seakale can be forced like chicory or endive to maintain delicacy to a similar height to rhubarb.
Unlike rhubarb, the frill of leaves at the top can also be eaten.
It can be eaten raw or cooked with melted butter. The Victorians cooked it with a white sauce and served kind of like asparagus. So here's hoping this batch will do better!
According to my blog control panel thingy, this is post 100!!
This is a blog after all about an Irish Kitchen Garden, so I think there is one particular vegetable that is associated with us as a nation - the potato.
Before writing about growing them, I want to touch on the potato in Irish history.
On April 2nd 2011 with many other descendants I attended a commemoration for the 100th anniversary of the 1911 census. The commemoration took place in Shannadonnell.
It was at the house of my Great Great Grandfather, Tom Joyce, who lived through the famine.
The homestead consists of a few ruins, and in the surrounding gardens you can see the old traces of lazybeds.
At the commemoration a poem. Peace by Patrick Kavanagh, was read out, and bought to mind a couplet in another poem. The Wayfarer by Padraig Pierce, his last poem, written on the eve of his execution in Easter 1916. Some quiet hill where mountainy man hath sown, And soon would reap; near to the gates of heaven;
Thisrefers to the potato ridges, the remains of which can still be seen, that reach up into the hills of Connemara. My father always felt it was a specific reference to Shannadonnel which is by mountain track close to Rosmuc, where Pierce had a cottage.
It makes one think - has a nation ever been so blighted or shaped by a single crop?
And that one hundred years, one week and two days later, I am sitting in Connemara filling out a new census form for a new Government, and planting potato's in the same way as Tom would have done.
As a nation, when Tom was a young man, we faced our darkest days from the summer of 1845. The Irish potato famine was not simply a natural disaster. It was a product of social causes that still had resonance in 1916, as it does today.
Like the current financial crisis, when the right conditions arose, despite clear warnings, a weak and distant government failed to deal with the problem in a realistic way, believing their own hubris.
Between 1801 and 1845 there had been 114 commissions and 61 special committees dealing with Ireland who - without exception - prophesied disaster.
Like today the root cause of the disaster was the failure by the political caste and the reluctance to admit and fix the problems of Laissaiz-Faire, the prototype of modern market economics, which at the time was regarded as the only viable economic system.
The inadequacy of relief efforts by the government worsened the horrors of the potato famine.
Initially, the Government believed (as they do today) that the free market would end the problem.
In 1846, in a victory for advocates of free trade, Britain repealed the Corn Laws, which protected domestic grain producers from foreign competition. The repeal of the Corn Laws failed to end the crisis as the Irish lacked sufficient money to purchase foreign grain.
About half of Ireland's population depended on potatoes for subsistence. The result of this was The Great famine, the most severe in the history of European agriculture, from 1845-1848.
Irish peasants subsisted on a diet consisting largely of potatoes.
A "blight of unusual character" devastated Ireland's potato crop, the basic staple in the Irish diet. After potatoes were dug from the ground, they began to turn into a slimy, decaying, blackish "mass of rottenness."
"Famine fever"--cholera, dysentery, scurvy, typhus, and infestations of lice soon spread through the Irish countryside. Observers reported seeing children crying with pain and looking "like skeletons, their features sharpened with hunger and their limbs wasted, so that there was little left but bones." Masses of bodies were buried without coffins, a few inches below the soil.
Over the next ten years, about a million died from disease and starvation, another 2 million left for Britain, Canada, and the United States. Within five years, the Irish population was reduced by 25%.
The 45/48 famine was known as the great famine, or An Gort Mhor. The failure of one commodity, the primary food crop, led to starvation and disease.
Other commodity crops such as grain were exported in large quantities to service debts due to absent politician's - a tiny percentage of the population.
We see the same thing today where our tax's are spent to bail out the bank's and speculators.
A hundred years before, in 1740/1741, there was another famine – the Year of the Slaughter.
10% of the Irish population are estimated to have died.
However – the government at the time took pragmatic action, docks were closed and food exports reduced and curtailed to alleviate the famine and a greater disaster than might have been was averted.
The 1740/41 famine, for example, did not result in the mass death and emigration of the 1848 famine.
So we have already seen when the accepted economic model collapses due to reluctance to change from ill-advised economic concepts and political distance, then people on this Island suffer shortage's and emigration - Tout ca change tout c'est la meme chose - Despite the last election, the current Government still pursues the failed policies of the last lot - Ave! Duci novo, similis duci seneci
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HOW TO GROW POTATO IN A LAZY BED
Anyway, on with the guide on how to grow potato's the traditional way - using lazybeds.
These are the traditional way of growing potato's, giving the advantage of providing more heat and drainage to the crop, First thing is seed potato's, and best advice is always to buy certified seed.
You can get these in any decent garden centre.
If you are developing a garden or keeping unusual varieties as I am, you can also save your own seed.
You can also take a chance and use potato's that have run to seed, but these may be more susceptible or even carry blight spores.
Now, if you are starting out, you can put the seed into the ground, it will grow, but there are two simple way's to improve yield - Chitting and Splitting (say that fast after a few pints)
CHITTING
To ensure a good crop you should ‘chit’ your potatoes before planting them. This simply means getting them to produce nice little sprouts – just like they do when you’ve kept them in the cupboard for too long.
Chitting potatoes is rally good for producing good crops of early varieties and can also make a difference to maincrop harvests.
Set your seed potatoes out in egg boxes or trays with the ‘rose end’ facing up. (The rose end is the end with the most ‘eyes’ in it.) Place them in a light, frost-free room – the greenhouse or spare room is fine – and leave them be for a few weeks. It takes about four to six weeks for potatoes to sprout shoots, by which time you’ll be ready to plant them out.
SPLITTING
You can increase your seed stock by cutting them carefully. If the seed potatoes are small to medium sized, plant the whole potato.
If they are large sized, you can cut them in half, or quarter them. Each section should have two or three 'growth eyes'.
Top left, Axona - certified seed.
Bottom left, Mr. Littles Yetholm Gypsy - home saved seed.
Bottom right, Orla - certified seed.
Top right, Mona Lisa - shop rejects.
Cutting seed should be done in a warm room. After cutting, leave the cut sets for at least one night to let the cut surface dries and forms a callus before planting them out.
GROUNDWORK
I hope all readers do not have the same problems as I do. The ground which I am planting has not been cultivated for 30 years, and that needs a lot of reclaiming.
Even if you have only grass on a plot it is well worth giving it a close cut or strim before starting on the lazybed.
The first thing I had to do was clear the ground of rushes and briar's. Then it was draining. Gardening in Connemara can be very tough, especially when opening up new ground.
The soil is poor and waterlogged. This was partially caused when Galway coco 'improved' the road and managed to block loads of old gluts along the road.
This was quite a bit of work, but with the chillington hoe, a spade and a drag, I got through it and ended up feeling positively Dutch! Once the drain was in, I went over the ground again, clearing briar and rush.
Connemara canal!!
The drain was further extended to provide better water flow.
Once you have the ground cleared/strimmed/mowed it is time to set up the beds.
LAZYBED SETUP
The beds I grow are 3 feet wide as is traditional. Normally the gap between ridges is 1 foot, but I go for 18 inches. So, using lines you lay out the bed.
Next is the base, this suppresses weeds beneath the spuds and provides nutrients.
I use a mix of seaweed and farmyard manure, but compost or pelleted chicken manure can also be used.
Lay out the fertilizer as evenly as possible along the planned lazy beds.
If, like me this year, you are laying out beds on virgin grassland, I would urge you to apply supernemo's to the area. This is because you will have a lot of wireworms, cutworm's and other pests in the ground that will devastate a crop.
I know from experience that last year, on virgin grassland, the potato beds treated with supernemo did very well. The Kerr Pinks sown in a different bed and not treated were destroyed and I did not find nemasys at all as effective as supernemo.
If you are in a wet area, it is also well worth treating the area with nemaslug. Snails will burrow into potato's and destroy them as well.
It is best to leave the manure or seaweed on the ground for a few days before setting the seeds.
The next step is laying out the seed. With the three foot lazy bed system, it is basically a 1 foot/30cm elongated grid. The seed potato's are layed out 1 foot/30cm apart.
Starting from the edge inwards it is 6 - 8 inches in to the first set, then 1 foot to the second, one foot to the third and 6 - 8 inches to the other side of the lazy bed.
Along the length of the lazy bed, the next row is 1 foot along.
lazybed potato spacing
The next step is, using a spade or chillington hoe, cut into the soil along the edge of the lazybed. Then move your line out to the other side of the drainage channel. I use a gap of 18 inches/45cm, but traditionally it was 12 inches/30cm.
Cut along this line as well, and turn in the sod, breaking it up gently and covering the tubers. Trim and whack in the sides as best you can to give the lazybed shape and form.
Cut out and lift in sod, break up.
Repeat on other side of ridge
cover up and tidy the sides
Repeat the process
You will have spare space at the end of the bed to grow something else. My Dad would stick cabbages at the end of each lazy bed.
From my research, it seems that horseradish is a good companion plant for potato, so I will propagate my plant in the ridges this year. So, here are 3 of 5 planned ridges.
And this was what it was like before.
So, even without rotavators and powertools, you can create even from the roughest ground a space for food.
Some might ask why go to the bother when good spuds are cheap and available, especially if space is limited - and it is a valid question.
My answer is threefold.
Firstly, I like to grow my own, and new spuds straight from the ground are delicious.
Secondly, I feel it is important to keep heritage varieties going, so I have taken on board Mr Littles Yetholm Gypsy's. Mine are possibly the only seedbank of the type in Ireland.
It's not just the name that I liked, it's a bit of history. The type comes from the Border Village of Yetholm in Scotland. It was the Gypsy capital of the borders. Local farmers - the Little Brothers - developed it.
It is unusual because it is the only potato to show red, white and blue skin. A boiling potato, the flavour is a mealy and quite delicious.
Thirdly, for me, it gives me a rewarding way of opening up new ground. Rather than just drain and turn the soil for its resulting field of mud, this way I open up the ground, clear it, drain it and have a reward at the end.
Part of my local rights is being able to collect beach sand to mold the potato's later in the year.
This will also improve the condition of the soil after the crop is harvested, and with relatively little more work, the space will be developed into bed's next year as part of a crop rotation program.
Anyway, if you found the blog of use I welcome any comments you might have - please feel free to do so.
Just watched that new RTE program on Monday - How to Create a garden. Not a patch (pardon the pun) on Garrai Glas that I finally caught up on with their website.
I have to say at least it is a gardening the How to Create a Garden is a gardening show - and fair play to the people who make it, but I found it of little use.
At first I felt was it just me, but the program got pretty badly slated on by others as well on boards.ie as you can read here.
I think it is well meant, but in fairness it is a re-development of a patch of well cultivated land at Fota house that has been cared for over centuries, hardly typical.
I'm fairly sure the average back garden or small holding has not recieved one tenth the attention before being set over for crop's or a kitchen garden.
The use of roundup was disturbing. Why not show people how to make their own weedkiller or support a small Irish company making organic weedkiller like OWK? I feel that RTE should when possible try to promote Irish companies.
Also, there is one piece of advice I always give people when developing a new garden for veg from grass is use supernemo's - again - an Irish company but vital against cutworms and wireworms - in particular when starting a veg garden on virgin grass land like a lawn. If you don't listen to anything else I say, that's the one thing you should heed - I speak from bitter experience.
Garrai Glas seem's a lot more practical and is certainly better made, presented and interesting.
Today I spent most of my time opening up a new area of the garden. Rather than well tilled and maintained land this is what I faced into.
Thats briar, rush, heavy udergrowth, waterlogged and pine boughs. It is this area that will either be used to grow oats or spuds, depending on how things go with seaweed collection, weather ain't great at the moment.
Today it was back to basics, and it was time to get communist in the garden. With all the rock, water and pine trees a strimmer - even if I could afford one - is not really an option, very much back to basics - the heavy curran or sickle.
Not the easiest job in the world - but effective. The long briars that I pulled from the undergrowth were big, and impressive. They are also a very hardy plant that produce fruit. Because of the boggy ground, the root stock was reasonably easy to lift. This gave me the idea of using them to my benefit - a coppiced hedge over a drain.
Tomorrow I will need to put in a drain to make this new patch productive.
The drain will serve three purposes.
Firstly, obviously, to provide irrigation.
Secondly, it will be a place to grow watercress.
Thirdly, with the drain and overhang of bush I hope it will attract frogs and toads to eat slugs.
The flowers should also attract bee's and make use of otherwise lost space - that integrates into the overall plan for the garden long term.
Finally, it will provide a boundry to the veg patch, backed by the idea of a fruit producing but prickly hedge.
My plan is to put in a coppiced hedge, made up of fuscia and rosa rugosa cuttings with pine branch off-cuts and laced in the briar's I pulled from the undergrowth.
I am lucky that I live in a place with abundant roadside fruit - but as this recession bites that resource may well come under pressure and there is an increase in interest in home produced and wild food.
I am going to try my hand at coppicing them into a hedge to protect the veg patch and provide blackberries closer at hand. Using the hedge as an extra space to produce food or fruit is - in a way - another form of complimentary or companion cropping
I have the base materiels from what I pulled today to make a start. I have a lot of stripped pine branches, those pulled from the undergrowth or trimmed off have been laid on the raised bed paths, and the needles and small twigs stripped off as part of the anti-slug program.
I also intend to try and incorporate other cane type fruits like rasberries or thorny ones like gooseberry in future.
One thing for sure, before any root crops go down on a virgin grassland patch, the site will need to be dosed with supernemo's - which I anxiously await in the post.
Now, before anyone takes my advice on growing Oca, there is one other blog I would strongly recommend.
That's Ian's Oca test bed blog, this is only my second season growing Oca whereas Ian has been at it for a while. The basis of my knowledge of Oca is based very much on his blog and advice, just an attempted adaptation to the colder, wetter west of Ireland climate.
Last years tubers, this years seed
Well, to be stuck between a rock and a hard place in a Connemara kitchen garden is not an unusual predicament, it sort of goes with the territory.
The back yard
Last year I grew Oca, sourced from Christoph at Macalla farm on Clare Island.
It was a good day to start on the tuber tube, I felt it was appropriate having heard the first cuckoo of the spring. Macalla is the Gaelic for the cuckoo.
I was delighted that the Oca grew last year, but a bit disappointed at the yield in terms of tuber size and amount - so having heard of people doing something similar with potato's I have decided to do a tuber tube.
This has the advantages of saving space for starters. It is designed to fit in a nook in the garden that would not otherwise have been utilised on very shallow ground.
Rock should provide extra warmth
In addition, with a little thought this method will also increase the heat and soil depth available to the crop throughout its growing season, at least that's the theory.
So, where to start? Well, my seed tubers were saved from last year with the intention of growing them again.
Over the winter they were kept in a basket on news paper in a cool dark place.
As Ian advised me, when they are ready to be planted they let you know, they start sprouting fresh green shoots.
Tubers sprouting, ready to rock
So it was off to a local garage in Cill Ciaran where 6 tyres that would probably have ended up as landfill were very kindly given to me free of charge, and more if I wanted.
It should be possible for any one who knows a garage / tyre centre to be able to source these.
Seaweed base, rocks in cavity
Now, rocks retain and radiate heat, so the first tuber tube was placed in a very rocky corner dug out of a crag to give an even base using a chillington hoe, straight forward.
The cavity of the tyre was filled with the fist sized rocks that came out during digging, soil set aside.
The base of the tube was heavily lined with seaweed to provide nutrients, deter slugs and retain moisture.
Old turf dust
From the base of last years turf stack I pulled a few buckets of small, powdered turf and roughly sieved in what is best described as peat moss, again the idea being moisture retention and slug deterrent.
Sieve setup
There is no need to shell out €25EUR on a garden riddle, chicken wire between two tyres will do the trick, just dump on turf dust / stoney soil and give it a bit of going over with a hoe, it's another job for my now favorite tool, the chillington.
Sieve in use
Onto that went a thin layer of roughly sieved soil, throwing away weeds and roots, adding the small stones into the tyre cavity.
Onto this went the oca tubers, I am doing three in one tube, four in the other to explore growing capacity and yield.
Tubers in place
Over this went a layer of soil mixed with a little more seaweed and manure.
First cover
As usual, prevention is better than cure. As a slug and snail deterent, I surrounded the base with ash, and will dump some pine needles there as always.
Basic anti-slug measure - turf ash boundry
Because I am using a lot of virgin soil for this, the tube will be dosed with supernemos next week.
As the season goes on, as the Oca grows, more tyres and soil will be added to force the plant up by earthing in a what that would not be achievable on a normal bed.
I hope that the additional heat and depth will produce bigger tubers, and a bigger yield later in the year.
One important thing to remember is that one can buy stacked tubes for potato's, this is not a new idea, but by going to a garage and getting a few tyres, your saving money and taking stuff out of landfill.
Potato growpots do the same thing, but cost about €25EUR for a three tier version, and just use up more hydrocarbon's. In addition, I think the rubber will provide extra insulation.
The tyres on standby to be added later in the growing season are also being used by me as nursery beds for slow growing plants like leeks that will replace fast growing plants or harvested crop's later in the season.
As always, thanks for reading - if you have anything to add to this post, or any comments or even if you found it of use - please do take the time to comment, I really appreciate the feedback.
OK - I have been cooking a lot of herring recently, but one thing I overlooked was the roe.
Most people throw it away, but doing so is a waste as you buy fish by weight and it is delicious.
When you clean the fish, the females have two large roes, or egg sac's, in the abdominal cavity. They are a dark red - like the colour of liver. They are worth keeping, as this makes a great breakfast treat or starter.
Males have white, fatty looking sacs for Milt (thanks to Mellor from boards.ie for that one) in the same area.
These are not to be used for this recipe.
Had it yesterday as a starter, but forgot to take photo's so I will update the blog in the future.
INGREDIENTS
500g herring roe
2 tbsp plain flour
sea salt and freshly-ground black pepper, to taste
50g Cuinneog butter
1 tsp lemon juice
A few drops of Tabasco sauce
A good pinch of paparika
2 slices wholewheat toast, liberally buttered with even more Cuinneog
Method:
Place the roes in a colander or sieve and pour boiling water over the top.
Dry with kitchen paper.
Season the flour with salt and freshly-ground black pepper - Use a fair bit.
Toss the roes in the flour before and set aside .
Melt the butter in a pan and when foaming add the roes along with the lemon juice and Tabasco sauce and fry for between three and five minutes, or until dry, almost crispy.
In the meantime prepare the toast. Butter it generously.
Cut into triangles, then spoon the cooked roes onto the toast.
I like to sprinkle over some mild, finely sliced sliced shallots.
Garnish with a pinch of paprika and serve with a little dressed salad.
For something that normally ends up in the bin - or in my case the cat's - it's a great snacky meal that takes about 10 minutes to prep, cook and serve up.
