GARDENING Climate proof your harvest

Facing the elements


Growing your own
Chris Brown

‘Green fingers’ is an expression used to describe somone who is good with plants, and the common thread that links everyone described as having this talent is that they understand a plant’s needs and ensure that the plants get the care necessary to achieve good growth. This knowledge is not difficult to obtain, and if treated kindly, like you would treat a child, providing warmth, food and drink, love and affection, plants will respond by putting on weight.

Climate control
If you grow, say, a geranium on a bathroom windowsill, you will be reponsible for its wellbeing. Ensure that it lives in a suitable amount of space (plant-pot size), and that it gets some light from the sun. You will also need to make sure your plant is warm enough an has plenty of (but not too much) water to drink. Keep and eye out for pests (and take action if you find any). By doing these few simple things, everything should be rosy and smelling sweetly in the bathroom; well most of the time anyway.
The advantage of growing inside is that you can control the conditions, but when planting outside, out in the ‘open weather’, things change. You have to consider the different elements that nature throws at us and take the necessary precautions. But what can we do about the forces of nature?

Outdoor mix
One of the best bits of wisdom comes from a Peruvian farmer who grew potatoes organically. He said that when walking through his patch of spuds he could see evidence of just about every kind of ailment there was. However, because he grew many different varieties, even if some failed completely, plenty survived and he always had lots of potatoes that made it to the table.
We can apply this approach to our own growing regime. Take, for example, the growing of apples. If Jack Frost, with his minus temperatures, turns up late in the year when the flowers are just setting, he will kill this year’s apple blossom, which in turn will mean no apples. But if you have trees of several different varieties that blossom at different times in the spring, the damage will be minimised. The late frost will only damage the few trees in blossom over those couple of nights, leaving the others that may have set fruit already or are just about to come to flower, unharmed.
Similarly, when growing lettuce, it’s sensible to grow four or five different types. If one type just doesn’t suit your soil, and this was the only type you planted, the results will be disappointing.

On the bench
It’s also a good idea when sowing seeds directly into the ground to keep some aside and sow them in small pots or trays. This means that if for some reason the seeds planted straight into the ground fail to show, the ones in pots can be used as replacements (the ‘subs bench’ as we call it). If you set a few lettuce seeds of a few dfferent types (cos, butterhead, iceberg, looseheads, reds, come-gain etc) every two weeks or so – remembering to set a few each time on the subs bench in pots – you will still be rich in leaves even if half fail – a lettuce baron!
Planting often and planting different varieties will definitly increase the chances of a better harvest, but if there are failures it’s important to realise why they happened and see if steps can be taken to lessen the chances of them happening again.

Next time Taming the elements

Chris Brown runs Brown’s Farm, a small farm in Louisburgh. He is an advocate of sustainable, natural farming methods and buying local.