Winters end, Springing into action

Well, just got home and turned over one of the beds, some nice surprise parsnips.
A bit skinny, but a fair few of them so that was nice. It really goes to show with a bit of planning you really can have food from the veg patch all year round.

The Russian kales, while small, have survived 8 weeks of neglect and are coming along. Nice little winter cabbage in the garden that was used up in champ yesterday.
The dwarf curley blue kale is a virtual perennial, still producing abundant and good quality leaves.
Sea kale did not make it through the winter, so need to start that again.
Fruit trees coming into bud - just came back to Connemara via Cork, down there a few fruit trees were already in bloom!

Cordoon is coming on very well, and that was the one perennial I was worried about!

Now Spring is here. Saw a couple of wild bee's yesterday :-)
Just preparing beds, a little later than usual but better late than never.
Manure was dug in last December in most beds.
First job, as with the last 2 years is to use the superb Irish made product, SuperNemo's, and apply that.
It is a broad spectrum, pest specific and super effective way of dealing with garden parasites.
I use Nemaslug as well for slugs, but when it comes to things like caterpillars, thrip, wireworm and leatherjackets Supernemo saves a lot of money and time in comparison with the nemasys programs that require pest specific doses, and Supernemo are an Irish developed company.
In actual fact, Supernemo this year wereshortlisted for the Irish Times innovation awards - I think they should have won the damn thing.

Leek nursary looking good, transplanting small leeks tomorrow.
Ready to put potato's in the ground, latest I have ever planted them.
Bed for turnips ready, this year again concentrating on Tipperary Turnips from Irish Seed Savers as the main crop.
Cabbage seedlings ready to go in as soon as the ground is turned.

Put in a new herb bank with potted plants from Dangan Garden Centre and will be cleaning that bank up using ground cover to supress weeds. Main thing is to get the herbs themselves established, apart from the bay tree they are all ground hugging types, so the idea is to get them to spread out and take over the area.

Nothing fancy this year as yet, making paper pots for some seeds to go in the ground later in the year, e.g. squash etc.
Folks, if you use this blog for recipes, best advice I can give you is grow a few bits and pieces for the year, even an ornamental kale, it is really rewarding.