Expanding horizon

While my current garden in Mullingar is way bigger than what I had in Dublin, and there's still lots of room for slides, a willow house, and a wild corner, I struggled with producing enough veg to feed us, and always had too many seedlings to put in the existing space.

This year, that's all changed. I have an allotment on Joe's farm - and I now have the opposite (and excellent) problem - how to fill it! The morning of Paddy's day was our first extended stint out there - luckily Granny was on hand to feed us, and the weather was dry and mild.

We started digging one of the beds - we will sow a green manure there in advance of planting Squash, and the rest we'll cover with a sheet mulch of cardboard, mushroom compost and straw.

The undergardener was on digging duty - he reckons he'll be like the Bull McCabe when we're done - and the boys were picking rocks, spreading Mushroom compost, and breaking up lumps of clay. And adding nitrogen to the beautiful compost bin which resides at the bottom of the allotment. Photos to follow, and no doubt several posts on the compost bin.

In the meantime, it's time to rest up for a weekend of allotmenteering....

Nitrogen!

 
We know that Broad Beans (and other legumes) fix nitrogen in the soil, so they are good things to plant not just for food, but for green manure. When these bean finished producing, we pulled them up, and you can clearly see the nodules of nitrogen in the roots. So we scraped them off before putting the roots in the compost bin. Go beans!