Benefits of lockdown
I haven’t been out of our property for three weeks but it has been absolutely fine. I’m extraordinarily lucky to have a big garden and a list of jobs as long as my arm. My heart breaks for people in crushed confinement. Now, more than ever, it feels important to use and appreciate every square inch of space we have and if we have room to grow our own vegetables it feels almost criminal not to.
The vegetable garden is still packed with produce for us to pick. We have leeks, kale, spinach, chard, coriander & salads and it won’t be long before the broad beans are ready. The freezers are still full of produce from last summer and the hens are giving us an average of three eggs a day so we have almost no need to visit supermarkets more than once every two or three weeks.
The greenhouse is full of vegetable and flower plants waiting to be planted out once I’m confident that the threat of frost has more or less passed. So apart from regular hoeing and sowing seeds the big job I’ve been meaning to do is to install a drip irrigation system. I bought the pipe and joints last September but I thought I’d wait until spring to install it. Well here we are, in lockdown thanks to Covid-19 and with time on our hands.
I’m thrilled to say that I got it done today, the first day of summer time. I’d ordered 100m of drip tube last September and, looking at it online today, I see that it has gone up in price from €32.76 to €49.99 for the same item. Why? I also bought a pressure regulator so the joints didn’t all blow apart. I already had some 16mm pipe and jubilee clips to keep the fixings in place. I also had a Rainbird timer. These are the very best. Having tried lots of different timers I have found these to be the only ones that last and don’t leak.
The 100m of drip hose wound up and down my vegetable beds six times, so I have good coverage. I was afraid that the pressure would drop off dramatically by the end of the run, but that isn’t the case. It’s as strong at the end as at the start of the run. I couldn’t be happier. Now I can set the watering to happen late in the evening and again in the early hours through the summer and save myself two hours of watering per night as was the case last year.
In other news, the pond is suddenly full of tadpoles. I had seen two toads making free and easy with the pond a couple of weeks ago and this is the result. I hope lots of these tadpoles go on to live happy lives in the garden living on mosquitoes and snails.
Last week we had an unexpected downfall of snow. It’s the only snow we’ve had all winter and, fortunately, disappeared nine hours later leaving relatively little damage in its wake.
The hens are all laying now, although little Bonnie laid her first tiny egg today.
It’s wonderful to see the colours changing in the garden. Tulips and irises are popping up everywhere. I love planting them in their hundreds in autumn, forgetting where I’ve put them, and then seeing swathes and pots of them at this time of year as a great surprise.
The citruses in pots look the best they ever have despite or thanks to not being wrapped this winter. They are covered in flowers and fruit.
And finally, I was interested to find a Western three toed skink in the garden yesterday. Unfortunately it had died but seemed very young so I hope its siblings and parents are still around. I’d never seen a skink before so it was intriguing to be able to handle one.
