Muintir na Tire School Garden Competition

Courgette And Summer Squash Why Grow It? They are easy to grow and incredibly prolific, growing feakishly fast in the summer.  Two or three plants will be more than enough  Your only problem in fact will be working out what to do with all those courgettes. Courgette bread anyone?  Sowing Sow seeds indoors in pots at a depth of 2cm from April.  They will need temperatures of 20 degrees celsius to germinate so leave the pots on a sunny windowsill.  Harden off well and transplant in June.  Don’t be fooled by their size when you are first planting the seedlings out.  Courgettes grow to large, hungry and thirsty plants so leave 50-75cm between plants. Dig plenty of well rotted compost in to the soil before transplanting.  Growing Never let the soil dry out – use a mulch around the plants to preserve moisture.  They will need lots of water particularly when the courgettes are starting to swell.  If you have added plenty of...

10 Simple Steps to Creating a Bee Friendly Garden A bee friendly garden is a family friendly garden.  How so you may say?  Well it is estimated that 78% of flowering plants rely on bees and other insects to reproduce. Worldwide, of the 100 crop species that provide 90% of the world’s food, over 70 are pollinated by bees. A world without bees will therefore be an impoverished and hungry world.  Not a great future for children. Plants for a Bee Friendly Garden Particularly in cities gardens, play an important part of the green framework.  Bees need to eat two things from your garden: pollen and nectar.  By filling your garden with native plants such as honeysuckle, wild roses, lavender, foxgloves, hollyhocks, clematis and hydrangeas you can create a lovely diet for bees. Lots of herbs attract bees.  If you visit any herb garden you will see and hear it positively buzzing.  Borage is a great herb for feeding honey bees. P...

Carrots Why Grow It? Perhaps not quite for the beginner, carrots are difficult enough to grow and require a deep, light, stone free, fertile soil to do well. But if you get the soil right, you will be rewarded with a crunchy, sweet and flavoursome crop which will store well.  Two or three well-timed sowings of carrots should see you self-sufficient all year round in this classic stockpot vegetable (which is full of vitamin A).  The GIYer can also try out lots of different varieties of carrots (generally speaking such variety is not on offer in supermarkets).  We generally associate carrots with the colour orange, when in fact you can grow carrots of other colours too - before the 1700s most carrots were purple or white in colour (the orange carrot was developed relatively recently to honour the Royal House of Orange in Holland). Sowing Carrots are best sown direct in the soil as they do not transplant well.  Choose an open, sunny space in your veggie pa...

1.What can be a better way to reuse these handy little containers than to make a mini greenhouse in which you can start seeds and propagate cuttings. This no work micro gree nhouse project is quick, handy and best of all—it’s practically free. 2. This mini greenhouse is economical and simple to make and the best way to recycle plastic bottles. These micro greenhouses can be made with one or two soda bottles with the labels removed. 3. This is a very easy way to start some seedlings.  Just find two plastic cups, one of which must be clear to allow light through.  If you are re-purposing the cups make sure they are clean.  Fill the bottom cup with a seed starting mix and water.  Put your seeds in the cup and cover the seeds with an appropriate depth of soil then add a little bit more water.  Don’t add to much water – we don’t want the seeds to rot.  Cover with a clear cup and tape the sides.             ...

Tomatoes Why Grow It? Few vegetables have suffered at the hands of the commercial food chain as much as the tomato.  The simple fact of the matter is that most of the tomatoes that we buy year-in, year-out in our supermarkets taste of absolutely nothing at all.  It is not until you grow your own that you realise this!  Commercial growers pick varieties which have thick skins so that they last longer and are less prone to wastage in storage and distribution.  The home-grown tomato on the other hand is a delectable treat, a meal in itself, best eaten fresh in the warmth of the greenhouse for maximum effect.  Sure tomatoes do require a certain level of TLC – pinching out sideshoots, watering, feeding etc.  But it’s worth the effort! Sowing There are basically two types of tomato plants.  Vine (or cordon) tomato plants are an orderly affair and have a tall central stem which produces two types of side stems (1) trusses or fruit bearing branch...