With all the rain we have had some people are wondering are they too late to start a vegetable garden this spring. The answer is a definite no it never too late to start.
I've got the lowdown on how you can still sow seeds of success in your garden, even if you're getting a late start. Tune in as I divulge the secrets of setting up a no-dig bed in no time and how grabbing store-bought seedlings can fast-track your path to fresh, homegrown veggies. With the planting window for bare-root fruit trees closing soon, I'll tell you exactly how to get those roots in the ground.
Gardening isn’t just for the well-seasoned; it’s a world ripe for beginners, and I’m here to guide you through it. This episode peels back the layers of gardening mystery to reveal the most beginner-friendly crops that promise big yields with little toil. We're talking about the sheer joy of harvesting your own crisp lettuce, the thrill of nurturing tomatoes (greenhouse required), and the satisfaction of watching your onions and spinach flourish.
But it's not all about the dirt under our fingernails; we're branching out to discuss the delicate intertwining of conservation and agriculture with Ireland's ACRES scheme. Delve into the debate over native versus non-native trees and the threat of diseases like fireblight amidst the rush to plant for biodiversity. Get excited, because I’m also sharing the buzz around upcoming garden events. You won't want to miss the insights from Frances Toppill of BBC Gardener's World at the Laois Garden Festival, where I'll also be speaking.
For those hungry for more, our online gardening course, complete with lifetime access and continuous updates, stands ready to help your garden grow.
With all the rain we have had some people are wondering are they too late to start a vegetable garden this spring. The answer is a definite no it never too late to start.
I've got the lowdown on how you can still sow seeds of success in your garden, even if you're getting a late start. Tune in as I divulge the secrets of setting up a no-dig bed in no time and how grabbing store-bought seedlings can fast-track your path to fresh, homegrown veggies. With the planting window for bare-root fruit trees closing soon, I'll tell you exactly how to get those roots in the ground.
Gardening isn’t just for the well-seasoned; it’s a world ripe for beginners, and I’m here to guide you through it. This episode peels back the layers of gardening mystery to reveal the most beginner-friendly crops that promise big yields with little toil. We're talking about the sheer joy of harvesting your own crisp lettuce, the thrill of nurturing tomatoes (greenhouse required), and the satisfaction of watching your onions and spinach flourish.
But it's not all about the dirt under our fingernails; we're branching out to discuss the delicate intertwining of conservation and agriculture with Ireland's ACRES scheme. Delve into the debate over native versus non-native trees and the threat of diseases like fireblight amidst the rush to plant for biodiversity. Get excited, because I’m also sharing the buzz around upcoming garden events. You won't want to miss the insights from Frances Toppill of BBC Gardener's World at the Laois Garden Festival, where I'll also be speaking.
For those hungry for more, our online gardening course, complete with lifetime access and continuous updates, stands ready to help your garden grow.
How's it going, everybody, and welcome to episode 218 of Master my Garden podcast. Now, this week's episode is actually covering a few subjects, a couple of questions actually, that are coming in about growing vegetables, and I've got to cover off those. They're quite short, the answers will be quite short, but there's also a couple of other topics that I'd like to talk about. The first thing we're going to talk about and it's slightly relates to the question is people have asked in relation to the Grow your Own Food course that I'm running the online course. Are they too late to start? And the answer to that is absolutely not, and it's especially true this year, and I suppose the reason I'm saying that is there has been a tendency and I've spoken about it so many times around sowing seeds and getting started, getting things planted, things sown, and there has been a drive, not just in vegetable growing but in gardening in general, to be, I suppose, earlier and earlier every year, and the appetite for getting started is earlier and earlier and we sort of have, in a way, forgotten about the natural cycle and I speak about it quite a lot that spring-like feeling, that kind of tells you when things are ready to kick off and ready to get started and this year, more than ever, that feeling hasn't been there at all, or certainly not much because we've had so much wet and cold. But of course everybody you know is showing their pictures of how their seedlings are coming on and that makes everyone else feel like they're way behind or that they're too late to the party. And actually that's not true at all, because if you went back to, I suppose, our grandparents time or back at that time, people wouldn't absolutely dream of putting out bedding plants when we currently do like. At the moment, bedding plants are starting to arrive in the garden centres. That's summer bedding plants now. And if 20 years ago you said that, people would just say like it's ridiculous. But there is this drive all the time to be earlier and earlier and earlier, and onion sets is another one. There's a drive every year to be earlier and earlier when in reality a lot of them are sitting in people's sheds for the last month or six weeks or two months in some cases. And that's just. You know the way it is and it makes people feel like they're too late and they're too late to the party.
Speaker 1:
So I'm going to tie the question to the first thing that I want to talk about and to answer that question is you're absolutely not too late. You're not too late to start. You're not too late for almost any seeds. While I have seeds sown over a month, you know some people had seeds sown back in January. There's you know, there has been low light levels so a lot of seedlings are quite slow coming along. They will all come on flying once the weather takes up and, you know, eventually the feeling that I'm talking about will arrive and then everything will happen. But you're absolutely not too late and you can start. There's still loads of time, even if you're starting from scratch. Last Friday I created a no-dig bed, not for grown vegetables but for it's a new patio area, and I created a no-dig bed last weekend using cardboard and mushroom compost and that was created in a few hours really simple to do and can still be done easily at this time of the year. And from a standing start you can be set up and you can be planting vegetables in a few hours once you're organised and have the bits and pieces there, the cardboard and the compost and so on. So no, definitely you're not too late. The initial plantings that you can do can be done with shop bought seedlings or plug plants and then you can start sowing your own seeds and getting your own seeds in. You're still not too late although it is getting towards the end of it for planting bear root fruit trees, you know, bear root fruit bushes, bear root strawberry plants and things like that. So essentially, from a standing start, you can have your own fully fledged kitchen garden, you know, within a couple of weeks, with one or two Saturdays spent creating it. So, no, you're definitely not too late.
Speaker 1:
The weather, just to go back to it a second, is really not playing ball this year and I suppose, again just to talk about like since last October and at several pints during last year, last March and April were extremely wet and cold. If you remember back, february was extremely dry last year and warm, and so the seasons they come and different every year. But one thing is pretty sure, and almost almost true, is that once you get to the end of March, then you're typically heading into April can be a bit mixed, but generally speaking, on the law of averages, april is typically a good month. It's typically a very groty month and it's typically the month where everything starts to wake up and you know you can really get going in earnest. And next week's episode we'll be talking about the seed sowing guide for the month of April and that will be quite a lot extended on the March one, which was a reasonable list, but April is extended for Iran.
Speaker 1:
Again, to give you an idea of rainfall levels in January 23,. I've taken these figures from Metterns Oak Park, which is the closest wetter station to me, official wetter station to me. So they're just a general thing and I know certain parts of the country. Again, I've got way more than other parts and actually, funny enough, this time for the last little while the West Coast of Ireland hasn't got as much as maybe some of the parts in the South and Southeast. So For the month of January in 2023, in Oak Park there was 66mR and in 2024, there was 70mR, so not a huge difference there. Here's where you'll see the next huge differences February 23, oak Park, 14mr.
Speaker 1:
And, as I said, february last year was really warm, really dry, and it felt so spring-like at that stage and that turned out to be quite a false dawn, because March followed on wet and cold and April actually for the most part followed on wet and cold and then we had an exceptionally dry and warm May. So February 23, 14mr and February 24, 66mr. Now, 66mr is not a phenomenal amount of rain in itself, but what tends to be happening is that we're getting these really, really heavy. You know, when it falls it's not kind of slow and steady, it's huge downpours that you know you're getting. A few days, the ground is starting to dry out a little bit and then you get this overnight of heavy downpour and everything is just saturated again. Then March. So March last year, 103mr. And again reiterating that last March was very wet and cold, but this year's March to date, which on the day of recording, is only halfway through the month, and we're looking at 75mR. So if it continues to the end of the month and right up to Easter, we're looking at March being a record breaker in terms of, you know, in terms of the level of rainfall that is falling. So that's why things are moving a little bit slower at this stage of the year and I saw so many people, you know, posting their videos of planting potatoes on St Patrick's Day, as is tradition in a lot of parts, and that is, you know, belt away if that's the tradition and if that's what works for your area.
Speaker 1:
As I said before, if you know your area and you know that the 70 in the March works for planting your potatoes outside, then by all means it makes total, total sense. For me here it makes. That would make no sense. There's an old saying around here that how do you beat the May frost referring to planting potatoes how do you beat the May frost? You plant in June and that would seem again to people to be extremely late and too late. But you know in certain parts that is what you need to do. You go later and I do see that you know certain people have. You know, people talk about the middle of March for their Aireles, the middle of March for their Aireles, the middle of April for their second Aireles and the middle of May for their main crops. And you know that's kind of a steady enough and traditional rule of thumb. That wouldn't be too far wrong in most parts of the country. So don't think that you're too late. Don't think that because you see everybody else, you know shoot, non and sown and doing whatever they're doing, don't feel that it's too late for you to start or it's too late to.
Speaker 1:
You know, revive that garden for the coming year? It's absolutely not. There is so much time and there will be. Without a doubt. There will be good, solid, spring-like weather and you will know that feeling because we've had it actually today. We had it a little bit on Saturday, a little bit on Friday, but not for full days. It's that feeling where you can feel the heat in the sun, you can hear the birds, you're chirping, there's life coming into things. There feels like a vibrancy, like a buzz, that spring feeling, and when you start to get that consistently after a few days, then it's a good time to get started. That might sound to certain people a little bit airy-fairy but I promise you that is as practical your feel as to how you know as to whether it's spring or not. It's definitely a way, more practical way, of getting to know when to start, when to sow. And looking at people on Instagram or on somewhere else and comparing to them, that feeling is when is the time to go? So you're absolutely not too late.
Speaker 1:
The other question I was asked and just answered that quickly before I start talking about some other things, and this week's episode is, you know, it's a few different topics. The other question I was asked was, as a complete beginner, the top five vegetables to grow, and that's a tricky one, but there is some extremely easy vegetables to grow. I would always say make sure you're grown what you actually eat, because, for example, probably the easiest vegetable for anybody to grow that you cannot fail with is radish, but actually a lot of people don't like radish, so it's the easiest vegetable to grow by far and it definitely would be one of the top five vegetables, easy vegetables for someone to grow. But if you don't like it, what's the point? But to give you a few that are really easy to grow and are liked by most people, generally speaking, most people will like these.
Speaker 1:
Spring onion is one Really easy to grow. It can be grown from plug plants that you can buy in garden centers or sown direct into a polytunnel or, later in the month, directly into the open ground outside, and it really is one that you can't go wrong with. Again, the seeds will grow, you will be able to harvest, they'll last for a long time. So, as a beginner, what you don't want is to sow too many vegetables that are just going to mature very quickly and then run to seed or run over or get too big or get to a point where they're not edible, because you want to have success and you want to be able to get success from these. So spring onions is a really good one.
Speaker 1:
Lettuce, then, is another one. Again, it's quite easy to grow, very hard to fail from it. But what I would say is, if you're a complete beginner, I would be looking to sow something like a cut and come lettuce. So that is, as the name suggests, a lettuce that you can cut. It tends to be mixed, so you'll end up with different mixed lettuces within the same seed mix. So you sow them into your drill. You'll get red leaf, green leaf, you'll get cost lettuce in it, you'll get some quinoa in it and you get a mix of different types of lettuce leaves and rather than cutting ahead of lettuce that you cut and then that's it. There's no more going to grow there in that space. You basically pull the leaves as required and it will keep rejuvenating Now, not over a whole season, but certainly you'll get a bit of time out of it, and that's a great one to grow as a beginner.
Speaker 1:
This one is a brilliant one to grow as a beginner, but you kind of do need a greenhouse of some sort as a tomato, and the reason I say it again, it's really easy, but it's also one that's a bit more exciting. Like, a lot of people eat tomatoes not everybody, but I would say the majority eat tomatoes somehow Pretty easy, not hard to mind, not hard to be successful with, and not it's one that you can get quite a heavy crop of, and it's one that you can, with a small bit of care, you can harvest over a very long period of time. So again, a really, really good vegetable to grow for a beginner. Outside of that, spinach is another good one. The only thing is that it does tend to run to seed quite quickly, so it's one that you would need to repeat. So so every three to four weeks so that, and that will easily give you crops Outside of that. Then, very easy to grow onions. So you can buy your sets at the moment, just plant them into the ground. So sets are, they're basically an immature onion or a tiny onion. You plant them into the ground, they grow over the next sort of three to four months and in June or July you'll harvest a fully grown onion from that that can be dried and stored, and so there are just some. There is lots more, but definitely as a beginner, you are not too late and they are kind of the easiest ones to get some with. Next week's episode will be a full seed sowing guide for the month of April and, as I said, it'll be quite an extension of March's guide. So it'll be a lot longer, a lot more on it, but yeah, that's, that's. That'll be next week's episode. Next thing I wanted to talk about in this week's episode was and is the.
Speaker 1:
There's a lot of a lot of talk about here in Ireland. We've had the, the acres scheme, where there's a lot of hedging and native trees to be planted, and I suppose there's. At the start of this scheme there was a specification for for native trees to be planted and things like hot horn fell under that, and hot horn is the big focus of a lot of conversation at the moment. So, basically, what happened? This scheme was launched. It's an agricultural scheme aimed at farmers. Agricultural scheme was launched. A lot of farmers signed up to it, getting supplementary payments to support biodiversity projects on their land. The big part of that was the planting of trees, the planting of hedgerows and so on. The number of people that signed up and the number of people that opted for the planting of trees and hedging.
Speaker 1:
When the maths was done on that, there was some 3 million or so. The numbers might not be exact, but in the region of 3 million native trees were required for the planting season of October 23 through to March 24. The problem with that was there was a specification for them to be native. There was a requirement for 3 million native trees and, as always, the maths hadn't been done. The nurseries in Ireland hadn't been forewarned that there was going to be this requirement or this potential requirement, so they didn't have the stock coming on stream and there was a shortfall of quite a lot. If you're to believe some people, up to 2 million native trees. I'm not sure that figure is totally right because I'm sure there was batches brought forward and so on, but either ways there was a definite shortfall, and so the requirement initially to only plant Irish sourced, irish provenance, irish grown hedging and trees to fulfil this planting season had to be changed because in order to fill out this planting agreed planting for this period. So they allowed native species that were grown in other countries to be planted under this scheme, and that has caused quite a stir, and rightly so, particularly around the hotharn. So the hotharn was one of the major, one of the major tree species that was to be planted in the scheme.
Speaker 1:
As many of you know, it's probably the major hedge across the whole country of Ireland and it's certainly in this area. It's native hotharn, it's everywhere. It's really important for biodiversity, it's really important for pollinators, it's massively important as a carbon store. It's mature. Here a lot of the hedges are mature, so it's a hugely important part of the Irish countryside.
Speaker 1:
And there is problems in certain parts of Europe with a disease called fireblight and it affects certain plants, like you will see it and you would have previously seen it on things like pyrocanthus, you know, on ornamental plants like pyrocanthus, but it has become a problem in certain parts of Europe on hotharn. And so the concern became that when this change in the wording of it that you could bring in native species but that they were grown in other countries, there's the danger that fireblight and that type of disease can come in as well and can then start to, you know, embed itself and become more common here. Now, it's not that it has never happened before there has been breakouts of the disease, but up until now it has been very small amounts and certainly hasn't had a chance to sort of affect the greater hedged rose and so on. But with this huge influx of non-native grown hot-horned, there is that danger and I suppose people only have to look you don't have to look back very far the ongoing ash dieback problem, which again came from imported plants, and now we can see and we can still see all the time the effect that that's having. Whether that goes on to be detrimental in the long term remains to be seen, but up until now it has done a lot of damage, has taken out a lot of mature trees, has taken out a lot of young plantings and, as I say, it remains to be seen whether it will continue to push further and to basically become a killer of the ash tree here in Ireland. Let's hope not, but those type things do happen.
Speaker 1:
Again. To go back, another, while you're looking at the Dutch Elam disease and the effect that had and there's others as well there's Zoyele on olive trees in certain parts of Italy and so on, and it's detrimental. So sometimes when we interfere with these things, we can inadvertently well, I say inadvertently but to be quite honest, there should be a lot of smart people looking at this and these type of things shouldn't be allowed to happen. To go back to the genesis of it, if somebody is going to dream up a scheme or you have to where there's going to be three million trees required, well then you need to kind of think ahead and say, right, we're going to need three million trees. The reality is, these can't be tree tomorrow or next year, so let's set this target of 2025 or 2026, that's logical. And then that means that you don't have to go importing it. It means that you push that volume onto Irish nurseries and you say, right, can you do this? And it's guaranteed that they will. But you can't just flip a switch and expect that to happen.
Speaker 1:
And this is where problems happen on a wider scale and hopefully this doesn't turn into be a huge problem for Hawthorne and the Hawthorne tree in Ireland. To potentially push it out further, the Hawthorne is part of a very, very big family of plants that has quite a few ornamentals in it. I mentioned already to things like pyrocanthus, chthony, asteris, and they have been known and are known to get fire blight. But on the other side of it there's quite a lot in that family apples, pears, plum trees, cherry trees are all in the same family as Hawthorne. So the potential there for a disease to take hold and to cause a lot of problems is there, and that's why a lot of people you'll see a lot of people in the gardening circles sharing to sign petitions, which I think is on Hedge Rose Ireland or hedgeroseie on their website to sign the petition to stop that.
Speaker 1:
At this stage, a lot of that tree million that was due to be planted during this planting window are planted and a lot of them are not native. So I hope that it's not too late for this, but it's definitely something that we should be raising awareness of and if you are looking to be planting for this style of planting, you really need to consider the origin and to be aware of it, and it is a very, very important issue. So just watch out for that and keep our fingers crossed collectively that this doesn't become a wider issue as time goes on. Hopefully, any of these type things. They're hugely beneficial. Obviously, we're talking about planting a lot of trees and that can only be beneficial, but hopefully they are working well for you, looking into the future, people who are going to plan something like this. While the intention of it is good, somewhere along the line there has to be a small bit of logic as well, and the logic here says that if you're going to do that, you have to plan for it. It's just something to be aware of and something to think about.
Speaker 1:
The next thing I want to chat about is just a couple of events coming up. The first one is this Sunday. It's the RHSI Bellfield. The plant fairs are back there and we mentioned this a number of weeks ago and Paul Smith was on the show and yeah, it's happening this Sunday 11th to 4th in RHSI Bellfield and that's sure to be, you know if Angela Duke was one of the first people who started the plant fairs or was involved in the sort of early days of plant fairs, and to revive that in, you know, her farmer garden and her farmer house is certainly something nice and I hope it's well supported, so that Sunday in RHSI Bellfield a lot of the Irish specialist nursery producers will be there and they have a whole series of plant fairs that are sort of kicking off. I know it was one last week as well, but they're kicking off and there'll be lots of them between now and sort of September time and you know if you're looking for certain plants or rare plants or special plants, yeah, a lot of these guys the specialist nursery producers group are very, very good. There's different, you know. There's within that there's Mike from Shady Plants you know who's been on the podcast before Jerry and Kamal and Potting Shad and different different nurseries around the country and a lot of them kind of specialize in their own little niches and you'll find lots of really interesting plants there.
Speaker 1:
The next sort of event I want to talk about is one I'm involved in myself the Leesh Garden Festival. It's on Sunday, the 9th of June, and there's the main headline speaker is Frances Toppill from BBC Gardener's World. She's the author of five books never been on the podcast but that's probably one for the future and she's the headline speaker at it. Carol Wright from Carrer Bridge Gardens and County Claire is also a speaker at it and I'm also on the on the bill for speaking that day. So I'll be talking about, you know, creating a vegetable garden from scratch and soil and health and so on. And yeah, that's the Leesh Garden Festival coming up on Sunday, the 9th of June. It's also a lot of the plant nurseries to be there as well. So there's a lot of retailers there as well and, yeah, it's a nice day out. It's actually a nice day out for families as well. There's lots of kids events at it and stuff like that. So a couple of events I'll try in every. There'd be lots of gardening events kicking off now and I'll try and mention them as we go through the weeks and, yeah, there are two main ones.
Speaker 1:
Definitely, as I mentioned at the start, still loads of time for anybody that is considering doing the online course. So, to reiterate again, it's ten modules, almost five hours of videos more being added all the time. Monthly sewing guides soon to be added, actually plant spacing guide. That's requested by somebody who's going through the course. But the feedback from the course is that it's really good, really practical. Lays everything out from start to finish. So if you start it with a bare patch today to create a vegetable garden this season and 97 euros, but you have that for lifetime access, so it's not 97 euros and then it's finished in three weeks time, as long as that course remains available, that will be. You have accessed anything there. You've accessed any new contact that goes up. So future modules, you know anything like that that goes up there, you'll have access to that straight away. It's also really good to drop back in, so if you've gone through it and then you want to refresh on something, it's very easy to go back into it. So a lifetime access for 97 euro and, yeah, that's still available, and absolutely it is not too late to start Chat some more in the coming weeks about the wildflower meadow course with Sandra Caffola.
Speaker 1:
That's a really good one. So, yeah, but we'll chat more about that. I'll probably talk to Sandra in the next couple of weeks on the podcast as well, as we launch that ahead of the wildflower meadow season. So, yeah, that's been this week's episode. The next week's episode, as I said, is all about what to sow in April, and then we have some really good guest interviews in the pipeline, couple recorded this week as well. So, yeah, lots, lots in the pipeline over the next few weeks. But that's been this week's episode. Thanks for listening and until the next time, happy gardening you.