Dear Fellow Gardeners,   We wish you all a Happy Christmas and a fruitful New Year. This year was certainly one of the more difficult years in the vegetable garden with enough rain to put any new aspiring vegetable gardener off gardening.  The good news is that every bad year is usually followed by a great year, so hopefully 2024 will be an amazing year in the garden.  All gardening jobs, especially hoeing and weeding are so much easier and more pleasant if we can do them in the sun. After moving to Newport in Co. Mayo this autumn, I decided to travel a bit less for work, do few ..read more

Dear Fellow Gardeners,   Apologies for not sending a gardening newsletter for the last few months. We had quite a busy and chaotic year, moving from Leitrim to Newport, Co. Mayo.  We are finally in our new house and are absolutely loving it.  It’s right next to the Blackoak River, a tidal river which flows into the sea just round the corner.   I lived in Co. Leitrim for the last 24 years and had such a wonderful time there and now I’m looking forward to a new chapter. This summer we spent a couple of months on the road travelling from Ireland to Greece and back again trying ..read more

Dear Fellow Gardeners, Apologies for not sending a gardening newsletter for the last couple of months.  As I’m writing this newsletter I’m sitting on the WB Yeats ferry back from Cherbourg to Dublin.  After three months of travelling through France, Italy and Greece we are so excited to get back to the Emerald Isle.  It’s so wonderful to hear all the different Irish accents on the ferry. We needed to do this trip as we were homeless travelers, having bought a house in Newport, Co. Mayo and still trying to finalise the sale of our house in Leitrim.   The children will s ..read more

Dear Fellow Gardeners, May is the busiest month in your vegetable garden and hopefully you have managed to do all the other jobs such as bed preparation in the previous months. The soil has warmed up sufficiently to sow and plant nearly all vegetables. So make sure you take time off in May so that you can spend days in the garden! Finish preparing the beds and keep the hoe and rake moving over them. Watch out for late frosts and have some horticultural fleece handy to cover your potatoes if needed. Please do not plant out your courgettes, pumpkins or squash till the first of June or protect t ..read more

Dear Fellow Gardeners,   This is my favourite time of the year when nature starts to wake up from its long slumber.  Hopefully St. Patrick’s weekend will be kind to us for planting our first early potatoes, onion sets and shallots.  You can still plant garlic, broad beans and Jerusalem artichokes.  Apart from these there is little else we can sow outdoors.   This is certainly the time when gardeners get itchy fingers but don’t be too tempted – these days are just teasers.  Apart from the crops I mentioned above there is little else you can sow or plant directly ou ..read more

Dear Fellow Gardeners, November Gardening Newsletter 2022.  The year 2022 has been a very busy and exciting year for us travelling and discovering new and old vegetable crops from Southern and Eastern Europe.  We took our two children on a long road trip through France, Italy, Greece and then back through Northern Macedonia, Serbia, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Austria and Germany.  The excuse for the trip was my plan of writing a new book on Unusual Vegetables.  I certainly found lots of exciting crops on the way such as cardoon in France, Spigarelli and Puntarelle in Italy ..read more

Dear Fellow Gardeners, I’m always looking forward to October.  It’s usually quite a dry and beautiful month and the colours are amazing.  Unfortunately the beautiful autumn leaves don’t usually last long here in the west – a couple of seasonal gales and they are gone!   What to do in October October is the month to fill your larder.  Many crops are harvested and stored safely for the long winter months.  It’s also the month to cover up your vegetable beds for the winter. As the ground becomes vacant after harvesting crops you can put the beds to rest for the winter.&nb ..read more

Dear Fellow Gardeners, Gardening Newsletter May 2022 May is definitely the busiest month in your vegetable garden and hopefully you have managed to do all the other jobs such as bed preparation in the previous months. The soil has warmed up sufficiently to sow and plant nearly all vegetables.  So make sure you take time off in May so that you can spend your days in the garden!  Finish preparing the beds and keep the hoe and rake moving over them. Watch out for late frosts and have some horticultural fleece handy to cover your potatoes if needed.   This newsletter contains: What ..read more

Gardening Newsletter April 2022 Dear Fellow Gardeners,  This must have been the nicest early spring in many years.  It’s wonderful to see all the early awakenings in nature.  The blackthorn (sloe berry) is now in full flower and this should give us some caution.  In the old lore, this time is called the “Blackthorn Winter”.  The warm weather triggers the blackthorn trees into flowering and this is always followed by a very cold spell, often while the blackthorn is still flowering.   Globalisation of Agriculture The recent world crisis is showing us the vulnerabili ..read more

Dear Fellow Gardeners, Gardening Newsletter February 2022 February is generally the month when I get out of my gardening hibernation.  Finally there is work to be done.  The days are getting noticeably longer and every day we can notice the beginnings of new growth and new life. Seeds I often think a seed is the most symbolic and miraculous being.  If you think of an annual plant, a seed is the end of its lifecycle and at the same time the beginning of its new life.  No scientist has ever managed to create a new seed in a laboratory.  They can tamper with existing seed ..read more