Gravity defying carrots !!

A ha !! I can grow carrots after all ! Call it egotism, call it swagger, even call it vaunting. But here I am shamelessly showing off my carrots after my pride was badly injured as a consequence to the previous post. These lads were swiftly dispatched to the dinner plate accompanied by an unsuspecting chicken ( dead of course ! ) Duke of york potatoes and shallots ( which I still maintain give me excessive wind ! ) However regardless of the smell the taste is second to none .... the shallots that is. The smell of the wind .... not so good and thankfully I haven't been unfortunate enough to be caught in a back draft so therefore have yet to do the taste test !!

Now I won't be boastful and say I'm becoming green fingered but LOOK !!

Revenge of the weevil

Weevils are voracious feeders on many narrow and broad leaved trees, shrubs, strawberries and bramble fruits. The adults will do serious damage to the leaves while the larvae will feed on the roots and bore into the crowns. This guy somehow managed to land on my shoulder when I was watering some strawberry plants I have in hanging baskets. I thought keeping them off the ground would limit access to pests. Imagine my surprise when I looked over my shoulder to see this guy trying to whisper something in my ear ! I called him Kenneth as he was a bit of a daredevil but he had a definite link with the dark side. I guess you could call him Evil-Ken-Weevil !!



Rest in peace Kenneth.


Some time later while trying to unstuckify a set of extension ladders I banged my elbow. Damn hard too. It swelled up quite badly and I couldn't help thinking about karma and was the weevil going to have the last laugh on me. Speaking of karma I shudder to think what will happen when the slug karma kicks in, I squished seventeen of the blighters last night around my rhubarb and another eight this morning before breakfast !!



Not the greatest photo but Mrs Foxylock got a weakness and had to sit down upon seeing the bulge ..... on my elbow that is, careful now !! Anyway bless her she's a wee bit squeamish. It reminds me of the time I cut open the palm of my hand and she rushed me to the sink to help clean it up, as the flow of blood quickly reddened the sink my beloved nurse took a funny turn and ended up sitting on the bed with her head between her knees !! And then she goes through the whole childbirth thing without so much as a dizzy spell, but that's another story.

Primulas ???

I love primulas, they bring a splash of early colour to the garden when most others dare not show their heads above ground. I'm impressed by their showiness and hardiness, the fact that they are easy to care for and easy to grow are also a major bonus. So it was with an expectant air of confidence that I received my packet of seeds and wasted no time in sowing them, all 35 of them in fact, no need for caution here as this would be a resounding success.



I followed the sowing instructions diligently ...... well O.K. I read the sowing instructions diligently ...... alright, alright I read the sowing instructions .... sort of !! Look, I put them in modules, covered with compost, watered and waited .... and waited .... diligently. Nothing happened the days became weeks that became months and still nothing. I'm impatient at the best of times in fact when it comes to virtues I think I must have been missing the day they were handing them out ! I moved the tray to my cold frame and low and behold two tiny seedlings began to emerge ( cue the alleluia music ) Did I nurture them seedlings I sang to them, caressed them, made promises I knew I could not keep. I gave them a pot of their own.



It was around this time I began to notice quite a discernible difference between the two seedlings but passed it off as nothing. This was a dereliction I would soon regret. Yes I can see you now as you read this the penny begins to drop " Surely not " you think " This cannot be " but you wring your hands in glee the glow from the computer screen lighting up the fiendish smile that now spreads across your face bringing the warmth of my failure to your toes !! You should take a moment to enjoy this feeling because in all honesty there will probably be more to come, my friends I shall not bear grudges and will share in the titters for I have managed to grow a thistle and a rogue parsnip seed !!



Upon reading the instructions some months later, I learned that one should not cover the seed as this inhibits germination. On a more positive note it seems that I may be flush with strawberries this year.... flush ... oh forget it.

Blue skies and apple blossoms.

I find it difficult to walk past this tree every day without pausing to appreciate it's true beauty and indeed the wonderment of mother nature herself. Every time the wife looks out the kitchen window I seem to be in the same spot, staring upwards with a look on my face reminiscent of a guy who has just seen his first pair of boobs ! It's no wonder I get so little done around the place.



For those interested the tree is called " John Downie " It's a flowering crab. And for the record the fruits are not too bad to taste, I must experiment with making some crab apple jam ..... sometime in the next few decades. I had found a use for the fruit which I thought was pure genius .... playing fetch with my trusty German Shepherd. However it all came to a messy end when the dog developed quite the affinity for these little apples and his binges would end in a lengthy dose of the scutters !! The shovel was always handed to me. I wasn't quite sure was it to clean up the pooh or bury the damn dog ! Anyway, long story short he still lives and so does the tree but just you wait until September .......

The onion experiment.

This year as a little experiment I have planted onions in a number of different ways. The first method is the old reliable of planting from sets, the variety used is the stalwart " Sturon ", secondly I have sown seeds singularly in modules and thirdly I used a method known as multi-blocking where a number of seeds are placed in each module and let to grow on with the bulbs gently pushing each other out of the way as they swell. For these last two methods I used the old favourite "Ailsa craig " and all onions have now been planted, with the last few going in a little later than expected this weekend. The only thing to do now is keep watered and concentrate on weed control as these guys hate competition. A happy onion will become a big onion.

There are pros and cons for each method, onion sets are very easy to grow and relatively foolproof ( something which always seems to attract me !! ) however they are relatively expensive, I paid eight euro for around three hundred and fifty this year. The seed by comparison is much cheaper, it cost me one euro twenty cent for approximately two hundred and fifty seeds ! If germination rates are high that will provide a significant saving. The multi-blocking technique is a fantastic labour saving method because when planting time comes you are essentially planting up to five onions at a time, five times faster. This method can be used for : Beet, broccoli, cabbage, corn, cucumber, leek, melon, bulbing onion, spring onion, peas, spinach and turnip. I'm growing some of my spring onions in this manner and also some in the traditional straight line method, I shall keep you updated on the results.



I planted out some of the Autumn leeks also this weekend, this variety " Autumn mammoth 2, Hannibal " promises an excellent yield from August onwards. You know what they say about promises though ! I sowed the winter variety " Musselborough " in some toilet roll inserts and am hoping to plant them in the bed the early potatoes are now occupying. An amazing thing about leeks is that even after digging them up they continue to grow albeit very slowly. This slow growth diminishes the quality of the stems so fresh is best.



All this talk of onions reminds me of a funny incident that happened way back in the days of the boom. I was slating the roof of a new house which overlooked the next door neighbours fairly substantial cottage garden. I had no knowledge then of vegetables or what it took to grow them so the value of all that lay before my eyes was entirely lost on me. However the wizened old gardener responsible for this creation took it upon himself to educate us .... whether we liked it or not. Every morning we were greeted to shouts of " Look at my onions lads " or " Come down here and I'll show you this " as he pointed at something that really didn't interest us. The man was a persistent old character though and one day partly through curiosity and mostly because the opportunity to evade work had presented itself my slating partner decided to go down for a nose.

The look of glee on his face when he returned with a carrier bag crammed full of the finest of veg that money simply cannot buy .... sickened me. What sickened me more was when he came in the morning after and regaled me with tales of the gourmet dinner his wife had cooked, while simultaneously trying to articulate the wholesome goodness of the prize veggies he had blagged the previous day. The bag of chips I called dinner that night were still repeating on me. The day wore on. My nerves were becoming frayed.

Like clockwork the gardener appeared and the banter began again, they were now friends having shared food, although not at the same table it was somewhat of a shared experience. An experience that was about to take a turn for the humorous, well from my point of view anyway.

The old man headed up through his garden with a large bucket and a rope in his hand. Suddenly he stopped and heaved on a huge iron lid, with a groan of old age he straightened his back, cast the lid to one side and immediately began lowering the bucket into the void. With a manly tug on the rope the bucket flew upwards and landed at his feet with a splosh, the deftness of his movement confirmed a well rehearsed routine. " Jesus is that toilet paper ?" The mysterious contents of the bucket had now been revealed. " Looks like someones septic tank is a bit full " I smirked as the horror of what was happening unveiled in front of my full bellied friends eyes. A casual glance in our direction and the old man set to work .... watering his veggies with the content of the second chamber of his septic tank !! My once boastful friend now looked to be in need of medical attention as he fished for the mobile phone to cancel that nights much anticipated stew.

If there were a moral to be applied to this story, I wonder what could it be ? Something about not rubbing peoples noses in it, or not accepting gifts from strangers. Na ah for me it's " You are what you eat "

The hide and seek champion !!

Introducing the All-Ireland hide and seek champion, the humble parsnip. I found this guy lurking beneath a fleece in a bed full of turnip seedlings I had recently sowed. The suspicious bulge was mistaken for a weed but on further investigation, What did I pull out ? an almost two foot long parsnip !! Sadly it was covered in rust and the slugs had taken the better part of it rendering it inedible. Still it proves that parsnips if left in the ground over winter will regrow in the spring.



I don't know how I missed it as the bed was dug over twice during winter and again when the compost was added and then raked and prepared as a seed bed ! Osama Bin Laden wouldn't have a patch on this guy !!

The cookbook.

With a squeal of delight she tore frantically at the Amazon packaging, the smell of new book wafted upwards and was greeted by the beaming smile that swept across her face confirming my worst fears, the cookbook had arrived. " I'll get started right away " she announced, the sensations now beginning in the pit of my stomach were telling me even my bowels wanted to evacuate. " Which would you like to try first ?" I avoided the question while silently hatching a dastardly plan to make this intruder disappear. " Cheesy chops and chips it is then " followed by another beaming smile. Recklessly I retorted " Why not try something more adventurous ?" Another quip I would soon regret.

Later that evening I came home to an alien smell escaping through the slightly open kitchen window. I cautiously peered around the door to behold a sight that would make most men go weak at the knees, my wife clad in her " Don't mess with the chef " apron lightly beaded with sweat and with a determination in her eye that I haven't seen since those long hours spent in the delivery suite of the CMUH a few short months ago. I looked around the bombsite that used to be my spotless kitchen, every pot and dish we own was strewn around, some at very precarious angles with various substances bonded to their once pristine interiors. " Sit " she said " I've a surprise ." Obedient puppy that I am, I sat. I was now weak at the knees anyway so the chair was a welcome support. The place setting told a tale of no escape, no one to share the pain with. The dinner scene from silence of the lambs flashed across my minds eye and the panic was exacerbated when the dish was proudly plonked on the table in front of me with the shrill announcement " Kerala prawn curry." I think I hid my disdain. But I couldn't hide my disbelief as I tucked tentatively at first, then as the chillies and turmeric numbed every taste bud I ever had, I ate heartily while praising the chef and the exposition of her hidden talents.

The clean up took an age to complete but there's nothing quite like snoozing contentedly on a full stomach. Thinking happy thoughts and planning adventures for the following day. Blissfully unaware.

Some time later it happened, the most unpleasant evacuation process one will ever be involved in is the evacuation of ones own self ! I thought my teeth would come out ! Oh the stinging.... I shall never forget it. My only consolation was my darling wife was on the other toilet with only a wall between us, the consequences of her poor attention span could be heard and smelled by all and sundry. Thank god for that wall it not only spared the blushes, it also spared me the custodial sentence that would surely have resulted were I to enact even a portion of the thoughts that filled my head. Through gritted teeth we jeered and cheered each other on only leaving our enforced refuges to fill up on the liquid of life and try to reassure baby that mammy and daddy still loved him and would indeed return one day, albeit a shade paler and a few pounds lighter.

So now fully recovered from this life changing experience my wife has announced the expected arrival of " 101 cakes and bakes." The old feelings of panic returned as I looked into the eyes of the woman who calls rice krispie buns her specialty and realised...... she's not joking. I suppose the upside to this is the collection of toilet roll inserts which I use in the garden has increased dramatically.Every cloud has a silver lining and all that, this one though was lined...... in brown.