Thursday 1 May 2014

Of wind and weeds

Probably the greatest obstacle to growing stuff here is the wind. We are one mile from the Irish Sea and it's just a windy part of the world. When it blows from the south, which it does surprisingly often, the wind whistles right up the glen. In December we seemed to get gale force or above every three days. So our first big planting job was a windbreak hedge along the southern perimeter. We picked a mix of blackthorn (for sloe gin in years to come), hazel and elder and put in 225 bareroot plants in early February. It's lovely to see them all coming into leaf now, but it's going to be a while before they provide any real shelter.

Our newly planted windbreak hedge
Our newly planted windbreak hedge

In the meantime we've put up windbreak fabric around the fence of the veg patch since our seedlings were showing signs of wind burn. Looks like we'll have to plant another hedge right next to the vegetable garden next winter.

Windbreak fabric around the veg garden
Windbreak fabric around the veg garden

After spending months pulling mountains of thick nettle roots and burning them, we've decided we might as well use our nettle supply to our advantage. First up, a batch of nettle fertiliser is brewing up in a barrel. Apparently used neat it is a natural weed killer. Has anybody used it on ground elder?

If you can't beat 'em, eat 'em
 If you can't beat 'em, eat 'em
Sweet-smelling nettle fertiliser
Sweet-smelling nettle fertiliser

Then, onto the culinary uses. I dried a lot for use as tea, but find it better blended with mint or sage than on its own. Jim was really keen on trying nettle soup and this was a big success:

Yummy nettle soup
Yummy nettle soup

Next up, nettle beer.

Everything's been greening up rather nicely. The beech trees have come out in a beautiful pale green and we've just started a batch of beech noyau this morning. The last potatoes went in yesterday and the tatsoi salad is going crazy. We're very pleased to have fresh home-grown salad every day.

Time for beech noyau!
Time for beech noyau!
Who knew that tatsoi would grow this tall?
Who knew that tatsoi would grow this tall?
The first apple blossom
The first apple blossom

The pak choi is coming along nicely
The pak choi is coming along nicely

We've been carting a fishbox of seaweed back from the beach every time we go down there. We've been using it as a mulch and adding it to the compost heap. Soon we'll make some fertiliser from it as well. Apparently, the crispy texture of the dried seaweed puts off the slugs - I'll let you know if that's true. Fingers crossed.

4 comments:

  1. remember correctly you might need to rinse the seaweed to get some of the salt off it, before putting it on your garden. Inspired by you guy I planted a bunch of rainbow chard last weekend.

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  2. fettlersonland2 May 2014 at 10:35

    Don't worry, we usually leave the seaweed to rinse in the burn overnight before putting it on the beds. Rainbow chard sounds great - that's certainly something you won't be able to buy in the shops.

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  3. Och, forgot about this blog! Thank you for sharing your wonderful photos and stories. Those are truly mountains of nettles...what goes in the nettle fertilizer?

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  4. fettlersonland29 June 2014 at 19:26

    Just nettles and water.

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