Recycled Eco Buildings and Wildlife Friendly Food Forest Garden. Mosaics and Glass Bottle Walls.
When I moved from Sweden to Ireland in 2004 I was most struck by the lack of winter. Coming from a place of snow, ice and soil sometimes frozen solid for months on end, I was amazed when the last leaves falling off the trees and the last flowers of the year were met by hellebores, snowdrops and daffodils without so much as a snowflake to separate them. Read more
November is often thought of as a month when not much is happening in a garden. We can’t agree with that. There are still lots of vegetables to harvest, beds to cover and mulch, areas to clear of unwanted plants and a few cherished newcomers that will need planting.
All of the above is probably the reason why we are a bit behind on posting here on the blog. It is high time for our summary of last month in the garden.
We have entered October and there is a definite change in the garden. All the lush greens of summer are slowly transforming into browns, russets, buttery yellows, we could go on… It is lovely to walk around and experience the slowing down process of nature. All the leaves are turning and falling as the trees and shrubs prepare for the cold in the coming months.
August has been another busy month on the land. There are so many things to harvest and process so that they will keep for the coming months. One unusual and tasty vegetable is the strawberry spinach, Chenopodium capitatum, which we grew from seeds in the spring. The red “berries” taste sweet and fresh in salads and the leaves are good in stir-fries.
July was certainly a busy month on the land. We worked quite hard for the first half of the month, weeding, pruning and generally preparing our garden for the open garden weekend on the 14th and 15th. The weather was very warm and dry, right up to the open days, when the rain and wind created a somewhat dampened but very pleasant event. We made some new friends and caught up with old ones.
For the second half of the month the weather has been changeable and we have not spent a lot of time in the garden, apart from when harvesting vegetables. Our cabbages have grown exceptionally well this year, along with our courgettes and raspberries.
We are just over a week into July and it is time to sum up the past month on the land. So much has happened in the garden. At the start of June plants were still catching up after the very late cold start to the season, but at the end of the month, they were starting to show signs of drought after weeks with next to no rain.
It has been a very busy month here at the Greener dream. We managed to finally get the window into the shed wall and now we are blessed with light in a space that has been completely dark since we moved in five years ago. All we have to do now is go through all the boxes of stuff that have accumulated in there and then we will have a nice work and storage space. We are planning to put in a new door as well with glass panels and one more window, so that even more light can flood into the space.
Looking back at April, we find that spring is about two weeks later than usual here on the land. It took until the end of the month for most plants to start to flower, but by now the bees are making up for any time lost and if you walk out amongst the berry shrubs you are surrounded by a loud chorus of buzzing insects. It looks like it will be a very large berry and fruit crop this year, judging by the amount of blossom.
After a couple of weeks in Sweden we are now back home with our feet firmly planted on Irish soil. Before we left it was unusually cold but in our absence quite a remarkable transformation has taken place.
March has arrived and with it the promise of the heaviest snowy weather Ireland has seen for over 35 years. We have stocked up on food, candles and other necessities, filled up the bird-feeders, brought in firewood and covered some our vulnerable plants with fleeces. We are ready for the storm.
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