Seed Sowing in May and a lot of hard work 

This bank holiday weekend was full of hard work and gardening jobs. One of those days where I feel like we worked so much… oh God 😅 But at the end I think its worth it !

We arrived on Friday evening, and it was such a lovely evening. The weather was amazing. The first thing I did was check out the patch. Of course !

Then the next day, we rolled up our sleeves and cracked on with the jobs. I cleaned up the ground in the new tunnel we got for the warm crops tomatoes, courgettes, etc.

I have already some tomatoes, chilis, aubergines and cucumbers in Co.Sligo, they are developing nicely and next time we come back to Co. Offlay, I will plant some in the greenhouse 🌱

Would be interesting to see how these preform jn Daingean as I have never grown any of these plants there.

We lifted the black polythene from another area to start working on the ground there. The soil had become very compacted after being covered all winter, so we needed to rotavate it and loosen everything up again 🌱

While Neil did that, I worked on the strawberry bed 🍓
It had become completely overgrown with grass and honestly, pulling it all out was such a pain 😅

I’m seriously thinking of digging the strawberries out in autumn and moving them to elevated area. Hopefully it would stop them spreading everywhere and make it easier to keep the grass under control every year 🌱

It was a lot of work to tidy this bed but I put some carboard and woodchip between the rows to walk in and stop  the grass coming through, and hopefully it will help that.

I also sowed a few seeds this beginning of the month, we sowed main crop potatoes, and onions.

Last year we tried to grow this tubber which its really lovely, It has a lemony taste. It is a root vegetable native to the Andes, where it has been cultivated for centuries alongside potatoes.It belongs to the wood sorrel family (Oxalidaceae) and produces colorful, edible tubers similar in size and shape to small potatoes. The plant is often known as New Zealand yam outside South America, though it is not related to true yams.

The watermelon Raddish would be a new try for me this year as well. Watermelon radish is a beautiful heirloom variety of daikon radish, originally from China. It looks quite plain on the outside with pale green or creamy white skin, but when you cut it open it has a bright pink-magenta centre that looks like a watermelon.

Now that we have a new tunnel, we also needed to move the herb bed to a different area. I’m really looking forward to seeing the lavender and all the herbs I planted growing there!

We also managed to get some manure for the veggie patch, a mix of well-rotted and fresh manure. It’s great to have that sorted now and not have to worry about it again for quite a while.

Lots of hard work ahead still, but it feels good seeing everything slowly coming together 🌱
I can already picture how lovely the garden will look in a few months time.