Ryan and Fionn spent a good deal of time this summer standing in front of various pea beds stripping them clean of their fruit…. it was one of the only ways to get them to stand still if we had to get a (very quick) job done in the garden. They love picking, opening (with their teeth mostly) and gobbling the peas inside. They do get a bit confused between round pods that need to be opened and sugar peas that you eat whole (pod and all)… so have given up trying to stop them chewing the whole pod – they like it and doesn’t seem to do them any harm… and who am I to challenge a two year old doing something that they like?
Bees in the garden
The world bee population is in dire danger, and with it, so is plant life everywhere – anyone who has seen ‘bee movie’ knows what happened when the bees stopped working…no bees, no pollen carrying, no plant pollination, no plants. We planted flowers everywhere we could this year – because we like them mostly, but it is great to see the bees buzzing around the sunflowers on a (rare) sunny day – gives hope that we can make a difference! SO – GROW FLOWERS!!!
Pumpkin hunting
One of the jobs that the children love the most in the garden is looking for the pumpkins – it is a treasure hunt and there is great excitement to see who will find the most/biggest hiding under the huge leaves that spread over more than 4 feet for each plant. There are some great ones ripening (hopefully) on the beds now – with our wet weather the beds are soggy, even with the ground cover fabric, so we have put broken slates under each pumpkin stop them from rotting on the ground….
Apple harvest
After a couple of years nursing new apple trees and losing most to birds we are delighted with our apples this year – on the trees planted in 2006 we have had a great crop of elstar apples that looked gorgeous and tasted really delicious. Quite a few were eaten straight from the trees – and they didn’t last long, but they really did taste how an apple should! I recently heard that it has been a bad year for apples in Ireland (no doubt weather related) – so feel even luckier for that.
As Autumn rolls in…
The change of the season is well underway and we have changed over most of our tunnel crops. The tomato plants are still cropping well – most of our other crops had to go to make room for new season planting. The new winter salads, orientals, spinach and herbs are all in place and getting established while the days are still fairly long and relatively (?) warm. Even though the weather has been so wet the growth in the tunnels has been very good for the last couple of weeks.
The new season of root vegetables are coming in – Irish carrots, parsnips and swede turnips are all available now.
We have two beds of pumpkins that the boys love to search for under their huge leaves – they are ripening now and will be ready in October.
There is a calm (at last!) in the garden – everything is growing away steadily, but the intense growth has definitely passed and you can feel the change of the season clearly.
I never thought I would look forward to winter – but, having chased the garden since last March (and not been able to keep up at times…), we need a quiet patch to enjoy what has grown, to think about what we have learned from our efforts (alot!), and to plan how to use our experience to do it all better next year!