Muintir na Tire School Garden Competition

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 b...

  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 ...