Muintir na Tire School Garden Competition

This Sunday  May 28th 3pm  Free talk by Margaret Griffin  at Griffins Garden Centre  In association with Cork County Council and National Composting Awareness , Learn all about Composting and Turning Waste Into Garden Gold. Top tips to Composting and Recycling water for your garden.  All welcomed including Gardeners, Businesses,  tidy towns and schools All attending will automatically enter a draw to win one of the compost bins and water butts. Sponsored By Cork County Council Congratulations to Cork Senior Hurling Team A plant that is proud of its Cork Colours : Salvia Hot Lips We all would  love a plant that flowers nearly all year, lovely citrus fragrance and so very easy to grow. Then we have the perfect plant for you. Salvia Hotlips. This Plant displays the Cork County Colours with pride. Beautiful red and white blooms.  This variety flowers from June right through to November! It's a very easy Salvia to grow and if we get a 'normal&#

Closing date for applications is 5.00pm on Friday 30 th  June 2017 No applications will be accepted after this date Overview of Scheme Cork County Council Community Facilities   scheme offers Community and Voluntary groups access to capital funding in order to kick-start, advance or complete their projects. The scheme seeks to address some of the difficulties local community groups face in terms of accessing small-scale levels of funding to match their own fundraising efforts. The 2017 scheme is funded by the Department of Housing, Planning, Community and local Government with support from the Local Community Development Committee (LCDC) and the Municipal Districts of Cork County Council. The scheme will offer grants up to a  maximum of €1,000 per project. Eligible Projects Examples of what area you can apply for funding include: Community Centre Equipment Office Equipment / Meeting Furniture Sports / Recreation Facilities Relevant Tools, Machinery and

The Secret to Success: Ensure the soil is warm. Warm up your soil by covering it with black plastic a few weeks prior to planting. Those extra degrees will translate into earlier tomatoes. If you are planting in a pot or growbag, put a sheet of aeroboard/polystyrene underneath. This is a much warmer environment for the root system by creating a barrier between cold soil and roots (and also a great way to re-use aeroboard). An exception to the rule, tomatoes can be buried deeper than they come in the pot – all the way up to the first few leaves. Tomatoes are able to develop roots all along their stems. If you can't dig a deeper hole, simply dig a shallow tunnel and lay the plant sideways. It will straighten up and grow towards the light! Pinch and side shoot tomatoes regularly. Remove suckers that develop in the crotch joint of two branches (picture) Mulch your tomatoes after the soil has had a chance to warm up.  As tomatoes love heat. Mulching conserves moisture and pr

Muintir na Tire Launch Cork School Garden Competition at Griffins Garden Centre. Pictured at the Launch of the Muintir na Tire Cork School garden competition. Included are Margaret Griffin Miriam Dillon and 'Queen Bee' Jennifer Cotter of Griffins Garden Centre, Bee keepers Ben Philpott and Noel Riordan. Cork County Council officials Louis Duffy, Dr.Mary Stack and Conor Nelligan. Deputy County Mayor Kevin Conway, Donal O'Leary Macroom and District Environmental Group, Pupils and teachers of Scoil Chroí Iosa Blarney, Banteer NS and Aghabullogue NS. Sean Holland Denis Kelly and Seamus Forde Muintir na Tire. The Muintir na tire Cork School garden competition was officially opened by Deputy County Mayor Kevin Conway last monday in Griffins Garden Centre Dripsey and many primary schools across the County have already entered their school garden in the competition. Muintir na Tire, Cork County Council and the team at Griffins created a Real buzz at the official Launch of

Weekly Column - March 4th 2017 Purple Sprouting Broccoli Time If the fact that we’ve put February behind us wasn’t reason enough to be cheerful, along comes March and purple sprouting broccoli time.  I love this vegetable, not least because it provides some wonderful greens for the kitchen at a time when we’re just about tiring of the root crops like carrots and parsnips and other veg like beetroot and celeriac have disappeared altogether.  Purple sprouting broccoli (let’s get on first name terms and call it PSB) is an amazing vegetable to eat but it’s also somewhat of a veg-growing oddity.  It bucks the ‘sow in spring, harvest in autumn’ convention and instead spends almost a full year in the ground, surviving all but the toughest of winters and becoming ‘sow in summer, harvest in spring’.  This makes it supremely useful for the home-grower because it means it’s providing food in the difficult hungry gap months of March and April.  This early arrival brings it in ahead of pre

  Growing Potatoes & Harvesting Potatoes are the backbone of any vegetable garden. You get them in relatively early and apart from some earthing up and keeping an eye out for blight there is very little to do. There are so many different potato varieties, usually described as early, second early and maincrop potatoes. These names indicate when they crop and also give you an idea of the space you'll need, how closely and when they can be planted. First Early : First early potatoes are perfect if you want to grow small, new potatoes and should be planted from the end of February to late May. They'll be ready to harvest in about 10 weeks from the planting date. It's a good idea to 'chit' these varieties before planting - this produces long shoots from which the plants will grow. First early potatoes are ideal for growing in potato patio planters or containers. If you are short on Space and would love to Grow Potatoes, The PotatoPot is ideal

This post has nothing to do with the School garden but I thought some of the schools on our mailing list might be interested in it.  The Minister for Arts, Heritage, Regional, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, Heather Humphreys TD, has launched a new online genealogy toolkit for schools, aimed at encouraging students to trace their roots and explore their family tree. The '2016 Family History' website has been created by the National Archives as a legacy project under the Ireland 2016 Centenary Programme. The website provides tips on how to find your ancestors, and brings together a range of online resources. Through informative videos and step-by-step guides, case studies and targeted tasks, students can learn how to explore the vast array of Irish historical records available online, including the census, civil records, military archives and church registers. Speaking today Minister Humphreys said:  "There is such a vast array of online historical records available, the c

National Tree Week - March 5th to 12th 2017 National Tree Week runs from March 5th-12th 2017. Across the Country, a number of events are planned such as forest walks, tree-planting workshops, wood-turning displays, talks, tree-climbing and competitions. Individuals, schools and community groups are invited to create their own events and a number of events have already been scheduled in County Cork including three events by Ted Cook (Ted Cook also gave a number of tree related talks during Heritage Week 2016 and these are available to view by clicking  here ). With the kind assistance of the Tree Council of Ireland, Cork County Council's Heritage Unit has a number of saplings to distribute for Tree Week 2017. These include oak, rowan (mountain ash), birch and alder. For further information please contact  martinmillerick@corkcoco.ie  or phone 0214285914.

Horticultural therapy is an emerging field of clinical practice based on proven benefits to the physical, mental and emotional well-being that accrues from gardening as a healing or therapeutic process. ‘Nature interaction’, ‘outdoors activity’ and the ‘nurture reward’ that gardening brings have all been vehicles utilized to engage people with special needs, the elderly and infirm, children at risk, as well people with mental health problems. Evolving to work as a social cohesion and socialization tool with youth offenders, adult prisoners, and people in drug and alcohol rehabilitation, horticultural therapy has lately moved into a positive intervention mechanism in the form of community gardens in disadvantaged or troubled communities.  The psychological impact of gardening is that it is considered a serene occupation, an oasis of calm, a grounding experience. The combination of the fresh air and the physicality of the tasks helps oxygenate the bloodstream and energize the physical

Kids love sowing seeds (or indeed anything that involves getting their hands dirty).  Bigger seeds like those from peas, beans, squashes, pumpkins and courgettes are easier for younger children to handle.  Give kids some autonomy in the veg patch– give them a dedicated raised bed or part of a bed for them to experiment with.  Let them grow what they want to grow. Encourage them to grow fruit and vegetables that are fast growing so that they see a quick return – radishes are a good example.  Runner beans and sunflowers will get tall quickly.  Get them to measure themselves against the plants each week! Encourage them to sample crops out in the veg patch – they will love grazing on sweet carrots, tomatoes, strawberries and peas, and it will help develop their palette. The top GIY activities for kids are sowing seeds, digging and watering.  Basically, the messier the job, the more they will love it.  

Giy and Growing With Children   When children grow some of their own food they develop “Food Empathy”: a deeper connection with food, which is proven to lead to a healthier life. I absolutely love this time of the year, not least because spring is finally here and we can now start to sow some seeds, but also because this is the time of the year when we kick off our national school’s growing campaign.  For the last 6 years we’ve been working with our friends at innocent to get children growing as a way to re-establish their connection with food. This year’s Sow & Grow campaign is the biggest we’ve ever done with over 250,000 children in total taking part in Ireland and the UK.  In Ireland alone, 45,000 children will take part in 1,500 schools over the coming months.  They will sow seeds in special Sow & Grow cups in an in-classroom exercise with their teacher.  Because the sowing is done in cups (that can be taken home afterwards), any school can take part regardless of wh