Traditionally, the first grass mowing only happens after St Patrick's Day on March 17 and it is also an ideal time to start sowing most vegetables, flowers and fruits, and even your shamrocks.
This is because half-hardy or tender seedlings will need a good six to eight weeks before they are ready to be hardened off and planted outside in May after the last frosts have passed, or for those slightly hardier plants which can be direct sown, to give them a chance to slowly germinate, acclimatise and take root so they are well established and used to their surroundings before the soil warms up and they take off in earnest.
With the spring equinox now having arrived and the 12 hours of daylight marker having passed, it's a good time to get going, and with a few days off this past week and some lovely spring sunshine I've been sowing a few dozen different flowers, herbs and vegetables indoors and outdoors.
This week I’ve been sowing some fresh rainbow carrot, fennel, runner, french and broad beans and winter squash seeds. I've also got four seed potato varieties I'm starting in grow bags. #seeds
#carrots
#gardening
#potatoes
#gardeningwithbrendan
This is because half-hardy or tender seedlings will need a good six to eight weeks before they are ready to be hardened off and planted outside in May after the last frosts have passed, or for those slightly hardier plants which can be direct sown, to give them a chance to slowly germinate, acclimatise and take root so they are well established and used to their surroundings before the soil warms up and they take off in earnest.
With the spring equinox now having arrived and the 12 hours of daylight marker having passed, it's a good time to get going, and with a few days off this past week and some lovely spring sunshine I've been sowing a few dozen different flowers, herbs and vegetables indoors and outdoors.
This week I’ve been sowing some fresh rainbow carrot, fennel, runner, french and broad beans and winter squash seeds. I've also got four seed potato varieties I'm starting in grow bags. #seeds
#carrots
#gardening
#potatoes
#gardeningwithbrendan
Category
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NewsTranscript
00:00Hello, so what I'm doing today is going to clear out this small raised bed in front of
00:21me here and fill a few deep pots as well for sowing some potatoes, carrots and a few other
00:27things as well.
00:29So first up I have some radishes I'll bring you down close in a minute that have overwintered
00:35in here and I'm going to reposition them over in the main bed just to get the small white
00:42flowers off them because they look quite well, they grow quite tall as well.
00:49Today I will show you now what we're going to plant and in my hand here is some of the
00:53seaweed fertilizer that I fermented over the winter, it's from seaweed collected from
01:03the beach.
01:04I'm just putting about half the jug on the thing of water and I'll leave that to one
01:10side for now and I'll bring you in close and show you what we're going to do here.
01:21So I'll just explain first what we've got here, so we have some compost, multi-purpose
01:28compost, a bag of topsoil and some seaweed fertilizer and vermiculite which is I think
01:37a volcanic kind of substance that lets light through the soil and keeps it fluffy and is
01:46also just good for everything from seed germination, they retain in moisture.
01:52And then here what I'm going to do, this is a grow bag that I'm going to try and grow
01:59the potatoes on, I got it last year and it worked fine, very cheap, about 50p and I've
02:05got one of these deep trays, I'm going to sow a few things on there, a lot of these
02:12seeds were my father's seeds and he passed away 11 years ago now so I don't know if they'll
02:20come up but I have some of my own as well.
02:26So I'll just take you through what we're doing today, so we have some rooster potatoes here,
02:31these are seed potatoes from Ireland and you can see there some of them have eyes on them
02:36this is main crop rooster, so plant February to May after once the rustic frost has passed
02:45but I want to keep these in a sheltered spot anyway so they'll be fine by the house
02:49and 12 to 16 weeks for harvesting.
02:54So we'll see how they turn out and I'm going to grow them in my grow bag, as I said
03:00here I have four different types of
03:06beans that we're going to be growing, so we have French beans here,
03:10this variety is Dwarf Dorado, another French bean climbing Isabel,
03:16Runner bean, Scarlet Emperor, I'll show you another one there, yeah broad bean,
03:21the Dwarf broad bean and I've put this trellis here, you can see it,
03:27the relative got me that and it's great, so they'll climb up that, I have a few on there
03:33so I'll just move them and then the other things, most of these are actually my fallish seeds
03:40from about 15 years ago, so I'm going to plant them separately in different containers,
03:46see how they come on, if any of them do germinate, these are old carrots too so I'm going to be
03:52planting these and along with the new carrot seeds I got in Leitrim in the organic centre
03:58last autumn and this is a mixture of four carrots which is four different colours of carrots
04:03it's obviously as many people will know or some people may not know and is that the
04:11carrots were not always just orange and this legend has it that it was for William of Orange
04:18and so that they were, orange was the preferred one that sort of dominated, so on here we have
04:27purple, yellow and white as well as orange carrots, then lastly I've got a few leaves that I want to
04:32put in there and the reason I'm planting them beside the carrots is that they confuse, the smell
04:39of them tends to confuse carrot fly which is an uncanny knack of fighting carrots anywhere so
04:46we'll see how we get on with that. So I've got some of the compost down here from one of the
04:52bags of compost, as you can see I'm nowhere near having filled this bag and I'm just going to add
04:59some of the topsoil and all the compost now, topsoil is great you can get in the garden centre
05:06anywhere because it has a lot of sand on it or you could just buy sand, you can get sand in
05:12many garden centres now, you can buy bags of it, you can buy
05:18a ton of it actually in the garden centre I was on yesterday, it's very cheap
05:23but what that does is it creates great drainage so your vegetables don't become waterlogged or
05:29your plants or whatever you're using it for. Now into that mix and you can see I've gone this deep
05:37and I'll tell you why in a minute, you may already know, I'm going to just add some vermiculite into
05:42here, not much, I've never used vermiculite before but I just saw it yesterday in the
05:50garden centre and thought you know what we'll have a go with that and then I'm also going to
05:59add on a wee bit of this seaweed fertilizer too, this is just dry fertilizer, it's so
06:15windy today everything's blowing all over so I'm just going to mix all that in there
06:29so there should be a lot of food in there for the plants to develop
06:37and then all I'm going to do at this stage, I'll just leave that lip down there so you can see,
06:42is take some of the potatoes, I'm not going to plant all of these, I'm planning to do a potato patch or
06:52maybe a mix patch with some vegetables and some perennial flowers and just find the eyes
07:00with the little roots, now there's ones on both sides of that but there's two on there so I'm just
07:04going to set them in like that, leaving the tops up and as the plants shoot up, which they should do
07:14then, see there they are, now I've never really grown, I've never grown seed potatoes before, I
07:23tried to grow like ones from a supermarket last year and it worked but hardly they're not the healthiest
07:29so just put the eyes up and I'll do, this is quite a small bag and I think these get massive, I'll do
07:38six in here, maybe too many, six or seven because I have loads of seed potatoes, my sister grew
07:47lots of potatoes last year so I've been getting some tips off her and another one
07:55time at the back and then
08:00one more and I'm just laying them down sideways if I can, now this one's
08:08shoot is actually going that way, so there
08:15they all are on there, now that's them, I'm just leaving them there, as the plants come up then I'll
08:20just keep adding heaps of soil and compost as the plants shoot up and that's how you build them up
08:28then and then you'll get more tubers out of that way in theory, so hopefully it'll work, so that's them done
08:39so I've got the same mixture in this big container here, it's a good deep one,
08:47allow the roots to get out, so on here I'm going to try some of these older seeds
08:52and I've got lots of vegetables growing at the minute
09:00so we'll try some of the old beetroot and these were out of date in 2012 so they're very old
09:09I'll just show you what beetroot seeds look like, they're like a very unique shape
09:24so I'm just going to heavily over show these, so we'll just pull some soil out of the road and
09:32just you can always follow up, if any of them actually grew, you can fund them out later
09:43now there's some I wouldn't waste them like but I'll just move them
09:48and I'm only really growing, here's more beetroot, I'm only really growing stuff that I would actually eat
09:55I think that's important when you're growing stuff, although I do like experimenting too
10:01there's a few more here so we'll put them there and then of course I'll label
10:10what went where as well
10:12in here
10:16so nothing really, pat them down, I'll give them a good water then, that's too little
10:25now we have some old spring onions here so these are white lesbian and we'll get them under there
10:31as well
10:40and just pull up, put it back from this end
11:01you
11:31can
12:01you
12:31so now we're going to set about clearing this bed so first things first
12:49I'm going to chop down the old sprouts that weren't used just keep what I'm
12:57doing is I'm keeping the roots in the soil to help feed it and also I'll keep
13:06these sprouts as well and I'll put them at the bottom of the next bed that I grow
13:13just to have some organic matter in there so I'll just keep all those and
13:27now we're going to pull out some of the radishes or all the radishes so what I've
13:38done is I've removed all the radishes that are here and you can see they're
13:44putting all their energy and they grow in the plants now so you could eat these
13:48leaves as well in a salad or something but I'm going to replant them to get
13:52flowers I don't know if they do produce like long stems with small white flowers
13:57that wave in the wind and they look really nice against everything else so
14:00so what I've done now is I've moved the four beans that were growing in there
14:05back although I can't remember if it'll like me what type they were so and then
14:10I've just got the fertilizer re-compost topsoil on top here and I'm just gonna
14:19mix that in with the stuff that was already there before we get the carrots
14:29on the ground and the other things as well
14:35it is quite dry so I don't need a good soaking and just have to keep an eye on
14:43it then make sure it doesn't dry out it's been very mild and very dry for a
14:49long time now but I think we're due some rain now over the next starting
14:56from today but we wouldn't think it look at the blue skies there so so
15:07today's March the 21st and for a lot of Irish gardeners St. Patrick's Day the
15:1717th of March marks the start of the growing season in earnest so and that's
15:25usually the first time you can cut your grass after that as well so
15:29what March really is the time for planting most things now we'll just take
15:38our beans and start at the back and work our way forward with the carrots and the leeks
15:43so what I'm gonna do first is get some labels just to make sure I'm not mixing
15:49these up so we have our labels here and then on the back I've just put today's
15:58date and the variety so the ones that are on here I just check their broad
16:11beans so Dorado and Isabelle I would have planted these about maybe a month or two ago
16:20so runner beans first
16:42you can see how big they are, some people would soak these overnight just put this in the shell but I'm
16:48gonna give them a good watering so just plop them down under the soil not too
16:55deep but maybe the depth of the seed see not everyone might germinate because
17:08they are older seeds so some at the back some at the front of them so not too
17:16many I've got loads on here in a corner just tap them over that was the runner
17:33beans now we've got the French beans these are much smaller probably a much
17:39smaller plant see there these are Dorado white beans these are here we'll
17:50not put these as deep so I've just dug a wee trench here now for the leeks since the
17:55four beans are done and as I said before these are old old seeds they are
18:08out of date in 2012 see that I'm just hoping they don't germinate
18:18or at least some of them will germinate so leek seeds aren't that large either so I won't plant them too deep
18:32leek seeds and just go along here along this trench and heavily over soak because
18:40like I say they might go if any of these come up but of course nothing to try anyway
18:54now we're on the carrots and these are the old carrots first I think carrots are quite small
19:12yeah they are indeed that's the carrot seeds there and just dig a trench in front of a big bump of topsoil
19:30you can see the sand content in this topsoil
19:37and just sprinkle all these on
19:50yeah I'm not in too precious about spacing because they are so old that I don't think it will matter much
20:00right, throw those on
20:04and then finally the new seeds the new mixture of carrots
20:12so these are out of those ones
20:14a lot of them fell out of the packet so what I'll do is just bury them on
20:18along here
20:22there's a stray bean
20:29just throw him over there
20:31so again a wee trench along the front here
20:38I'll just bury it
20:43and space these out a wee bit better
20:52just move them along as you go
21:08cover them up
21:12press them down
21:14there we go
21:18make sure that all the seeds have contact with the soil
21:23now these will need a good good watering
21:28because the soil that was on there was pretty dry
21:32and that's that
21:36that's everything done just as well because the wind is really picking up