GARDENING Time to rethink your veg garden

PLAN NOW Over the next few weeks, decide what you want in next year’s vegetable garden. 

Time to rethink your veg garden


Organic Growing
Hans Wieland

The days are getting shorter and for most of us who work full-time the gardening hours are now restricted to weekend afternoons. It is the time when we remember those glorious summer days, reflect on our year in the veg garden and start planning and thinking about the year ahead.  
Thinking about our garden anew can be the start of an exciting new journey and set us free by questioning ‘common knowledge’, questioning if what we did was actually the right thing to do. Just because everyone believes that a row of onions beside a row of carrots keeps the carrot fly away, this is not necessarily true. Research has shown you would need three rows of onions to one row of carrots. Everyone digs the garden, but no-dig advocate Charles Dowding believes it’s not the best way to keep your soil fertile and the pests at bay – quite the opposite.
“What is the best way to grow food? How can I grow the best food in my garden?” Those were the exact questions that tormented my brain (in a good way) driving home from the recent GIY Gathering in Waterford.
I’d spoken to Mark Diacono from Otter Farm in England, who said forget about growing food that is cheap to buy; I’d argued about blight-resistant potatoes with David Shaw, who grows Sarpo varieties for the Savari Trust; I’d been convinced by Joy Larkcom not to follow any ‘new theories’ that are in fact ‘old theories’; and I’d been inspired by the positive stories of so many gardeners and growers.
Since then, I’ve come up with the following suggestions for the next gardening year.

Next year

• Stop doing what is not working. Rather than being disappointed and getting stressed because your potatoes are blighted again, look for alternatives. Try oca instead, or Jerusalem artichokes. If you really want potatoes, try an early variety like Red Duke of York or Orla.
• Don’t grow what is already available in good supply locally: There is no need to compete with cabbages and carrots from the farmers’ market. Grow what you cannot buy. Try Romanescu, Globe Artichokes, Strawberry Spinach or Kai Lan. The latter produces edible stems, leaves and flowers from May to October.
• Don’t just grow tomatoes, grow fabulous tomatoes. Grow a variety that is not on the market. After my own trials this year I recommend Sweet Aperitif, Rosada, McDreamy, Yellow Submarine and Green Zebra. (More about that in my next article!)
• Heads of lettuce or lettuce leaves? I’ll go for the latter and suggest you grow your own salad bags with a mixture of different flavours, multi-colours and textures from soft to crunchy. Try Baby Leaf Mix, Salad Bowl, Kamalia and Cerbiatta. Sow in small quantities and often (every two weeks) for regular supply.
• Plant fruit trees – growing fruit is easier than you think. If you are short of space grow dwarf varieties. Move on from apples and pears and try plums (outdoors) and grapes and figs in a half barrel in a polytunnel or conservatory.
• Go for Alpine strawberries. Grow from seed and line the edges of your vegetable beds and the borders of your herb garden with dozens of plants. They are productive over a very long season from April until November. Try a red variety like Alexandria and white strawberries White Soul, which I discovered this year – they are delicious.
• Be open to invasions from wild plants and harvest what they offer. The often-maligned Dandelion gives you flowers for lemonade and wine, leaves for salads and roots for coffee. Daisies can be used as chives and chickweed and hairy bittercress can enhance your salad.

Hans Wieland is training manager at The Organic Centre, Rossinver, Co Leitrim, which offers courses, training and information on organic growing and cooking, and runs an Eco Shop and an online gardening store. For more information, visit www.theorganiccentre.ie.
Gardening questions or comments? Contact Hans at living@mayonews.ie.