Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

livingontheland - Re: [Livingontheland] Year Round Vegetable Production with Eliot Coleman - DVD Trailer

livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Healthy soil and sustainable growing

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: "John D'hondt" <dhondt@eircom.net>
  • To: "Healthy soil and sustainable growing" <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] Year Round Vegetable Production with Eliot Coleman - DVD Trailer
  • Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2011 21:47:20 +0100


Mainly the East coast is taken to be sunnier and warmer. But The coast in the SW used to boast palm trees and warm loving exotics because of the Gulf stream. These got a severe hammering last year. I am 6 miles inland and 600-800 feet above sealevel and that makes a huge difference. Just 300 feet lower down there are people who can grow and ripen tomatoes outside. That has never even once worked for me.
Before we got trees and hedges growing, 25 years ago, there were plenty occasions every year that a strong adult had problems standing upright on an open field in a gale.
Northern Ireland is still under English dominion and there they have kept walled gardens and orchards and beautiful old trees while further South they have done their best to destroy everything "English" such as trees and gardens.

Russion onions are very cold tolerant. These don't make a bulb much but plentiful and strong onion tasting greens to about 45 cm high. Babbington leeks are perennial leeks, multiplier leeks really that do form bulbs that split up in 5-6 parts every year.They go dormant in summer and I now have their bed full with self seeded Turnip rooted chervil, man high plants now from which I want to take seed. After that the Babbingtons get weeded and they will then reappear from themselves ready for winter harvesting.

We don't use bed covers anywhere. Our regulars don't need it and plants like cape gooseberry or passion fruit are too big to be easily wrapped up. We lost those last year but the brown figs are remarkably hardy and are just starting to deliver ripe fruit now. Gooseberries, red and black currants and apricots are almost finished. Summer raspberries too. Blueberries coming up and the blackberries (very thorny) are flowering everywhere but may be short of pollinators.
John

Isn't climate different north/south Ireland? I don't recall your location.
Do you use any row or bed cover inside your tunnel? We do the red Russian
kale and other kales but Russian onions &amp; Babington leeks are unfamiliar.
Of course some things just go by different names, certainly around this
country. I'm partial (understatement) to beet greens sauteed in little
olive oil but we don't do salads at home. On the weather front we finally
got the ground wet once last week but nothing since, and we're supposed to be
in our rainy season. They call it monsoon here in New Mexico but it's
hardly. Talked to a lady at a new country market here, said she
put in rain catchment this year but nothing to catch. ..

We need to know more about conditions &amp; coping in other countries. The more
we learn, the more we find we don't know.

paul tradingpost@lobo.net


"If your experience is that your water comes from the tap and that your
food comes from the grocery store then you are going to defend to the
death the system that brings those to you because your life depends on
that; if your experience is that your water comes from a river and that
your food comes from a land base then you will defend those to the death
because your life depends on them. So part of the problem is that we have
become so dependent upon this system that is killing and exploiting us, it
has become almost impossible for us to imagine living outside of it and
it's very difficult physically for us to live outside of it."
-- Derrick Jensen

*********** REPLY SEPARATOR ***********

On 7/19/2011 at 8:53 PM John D'hondt wrote:

Climate in Ireland is a main problem in that the only thing that is
certain
is uncertainty. So far this year we have not gone beyond 20C. Not that
unusual but it slows down cucumbers and tomatoes a lot to name but two.
Last winter we scored as low as -18C which was most unusual. Some winter
crops took this in their stride outside especially Russian red kale and
Russian onions, Babington leeks, turnips and black radish. In the poly
tunnel were the more sensitive salad greens, misuna, mibuna, green in
snow,
February orchid, malva's and cresses. It got to -14 in there as well.
We expect more or less the same sort of cold winter this year but then
maybe
not. We had years that I could potter away in the garden in T-shirt and
short pants in January but we then got a killing frost in April.
Something always grows.
John








ear round for 25 years Paul. Of course
most
of these vegetables are seasonal but we have a fresh green salad every
day
of the year.
john


Year Round Vegetable Production with Eliot Coleman - DVD Trailer
http://www.chelseagreen.com/tv/episode/3975139/

This filmed workshop on year-round vegetable production offers farmers
and
gardeners the rare chance to sit in with Eliot Coleman, one of the
pioneers of the organic farming movement and author of The New Organic
Grower, Four-Season Harvest, and The Winter Harvest Handbook.


paul tradingpost@lobo.net

Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.
--Henry David Thoreau

_______________________________________________
Livingontheland mailing list
Livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/livingontheland




_______________________________________________
Livingontheland mailing list
Livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/livingontheland



_______________________________________________
Livingontheland mailing list
Livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/livingontheland




_______________________________________________
Livingontheland mailing list
Livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/livingontheland



_______________________________________________
Livingontheland mailing list
Livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/livingontheland








Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page