The Write of My Life

When I was looking for a home to buy in Rathangan three years ago, I saw the allotments for rent in Ellistown. I stopped to have a look and was very excited at the possibilities. Then exhaustion and back trouble intervened, and now instead, I have created a small vegetable patch in my back garden. How the mighty are fallen! But I am grateful for it all the same. It is in the middle of what was the lawn, and it consists of three raised beds. I also have raspberries and a couple of fruit trees in pots. There is no way you would live off the produce, but it gives me great pleasure all the same. And with all the talk of food security, it is good to know how to grow at least some of your own food.

This year, I grew some spuds from seed that I bought, and other spuds just sprang up. There must have been tiny ones, or poreens, left over from last year. Is there any greater pleasure than digging up some potatoes and cooking them five minutes later? The taste is unbeatable. Something else that did well this year was the tomatoes. I had to take them out of the shed/greenhouse, as it was hitting 50 degrees Celsius in there during the heatwave. They did surprisingly well in a sheltered, sunny corner. And they definitely tasted like the fruit they are, as opposed to a vegetable. Delicious.

The tripod of peas, grown from a packet of dry marrowfats from Lidl, did well too, as did the runner beans. I planted lettuce from seed I harvested last year, and it lasted me nearly the whole summer. I bought broccoli plants, and they did well, as did the kale. I saw on YouTube about planting courgettes in a compost heap, so I tried that. Not a success. The soil was very fertile, obviously, but the location was too shaded. I made a note for next year in my battered crop rotation notebook. As a backup plan, I also planted a courgette in full sun, and it did well and is still producing. The kale went to seed early, but the bees loved the flowers. The plum tree in a pot finally yielded three plums, but only because I got a second tree and planted it nearby. A bird plucked the first plum, took a bite, and discarded the rest. I was raging. If they were going to eat it, they should have eaten it all! I put on a strip of netting to protect the last two precious fruits. But only a narrow strip, to avoid trapping birds in it by mistake. When I finally got to eat those two plums, I was completely present and aware of every morsel. That is another blessing from growing your own food – you focus your attention on the pleasure of eating what your hard work has produced. There are finally three pears on the miniature pear tree in a pot, again, only because I bought a second plant. I have had that pear for four years. Patience rewarded!

What I love about gardening is that it is an ongoing journey of discovery. You continually learn new things: what works, what doesn’t work. With the heat this summer, the ground was so dry it was cracked down a few inches. I decided to harvest rainwater for next summer, because obviously climate change is here to stay. I eventually figured out a way to channel rainwater from the shed guttering into a barrel, as I don’t really have room for even a slimline water butt. Success! In fact, there was a downpour two nights ago and the 210 litre barrel was full overnight. I had no spare hose so I ended up ferrying buckets of water from it to a spare water butt. No need for gym membership when you work in a garden.

I have a fine box of hazel nuts, gathered from the tree in the garden. There were no nuts last year, and the ones from the year before were empty shells. I don’t know what made the difference this year, except that conditions must have suited the tree. I thank the tree for every nut it gives me. Seems only fair.

From being out on the canal bank on my bike, I discovered that the blackberries were ripe early. So far I have only managed to gather one container full, and have it in the freezer to give to friends. But it’s nice to be able to share nature’s bounty with the people who matter to you.