Harvesting New Potatoes in Tyres

I have been harvesting some of my potatoes grown in tyres (tires if you are in the USA).

The amount of spuds you see in the photo came from inside just ONE tyre !!! The top tyre. 

I have placed my trowel beside them to give you some idea of size and scale, and it's not a small trowel.;)

I had some with my beef stew tonight and they were heaven <3

A Recycled Somerset Garden - August 2015

Post author: My daughter Sophie from Somerset, England

"It all started it from a garden of brambles, that is it was full of rampant blackberry bushes and other long term weeds.  

We started clearing it just as I became pregnant with our first child. Home veg was the value we wanted our baby to experience and grow up with, healthy and pure. So it was a real labour of love (excuse the pun).

The first year we lived here, we only just finished the vegetable patch area as we were concentrating on renovating the house itself. Everyone told me it was too late at the end of August to plant veg, but I did it anyway and loads came up !

Our vegetable patch and the recycled greenhouse

This year, 2015, with the new baby on board the garden has become totally green !  

When I began to wean her, her first foods were from our own garden. She started with pureed carrots, and then parsnips, and so on.  

We got other people involved in the garden with the sunflower competition. Once they are finished, we will keep the seeds from the flower heads, to be dried and re used for flowers next year, or for bird seed during the winter and for cooking in the kitchen. Sunflower seeds can be a great snack on their own or in a nice homemade bread. Yummy !

When we initially cleared the old garden we saved some of the plants that were already there when we bought the house. There was a Day Lily for instance, which was beautiful when it came out this summer.

Never waste plants, they cost a lot to replace. We have a grape vine which we recycled from another house. We cut it right back when we got it first. It is now flourishing and is starting to work well in hiding a block wall at the back of the garden.  

In my next Wild Cottage guest post, I will tell you all about the recipes we use for our garden produce, how we preserve things for the winter and the yummy things we cook with it all.

Meanwhile, here are some more photos of this summer's garden (August 2015)."

The beginnings of our herb bed

The bay tree

Mint in a pot to keep it contained !

Runner beans grown up bamboo sticks

Our own chillies from the greenhouse

Red and white onions almost ready to lift

Some of our white onions

Rhubarb patch !

Elephant garlic - this is just one clove !

Normal and elephant garlic

My husband's precious fig tree

Lovely lettuce

Runner beans harvested for freezing and dinner

Sage bush with lots of new growth

How to Rescue Battery Chickens in Ireland

Do you keep chickens for eggs ?  Or maybe you would like to, but you haven't yet taken the plunge ?  Whichever you are, this article is for you !

One thing in this world that I particularly hate is factory farming of any kind.  Here in Ireland both chickens and pigs are kept in battery farming conditions, indoors and often without proper light.  They have almost zero space and can't even move around.  And the saddest thing is that many people who live here don't even realise what goes on to produce the majority of chicken, ham, bacon and pork that they eat.

Littlehill Animal Rescue and Sanctuary annually rescue approximately 7,000 to 8,000 battery hens which are about to be slaughtered.  They then distribute them across Ireland to willing new owners like you and I.  Their next rescue is due to take place in about 3 months time, so you have plenty of time to prepare, or even build/buy that new coop for them to live in !

This is how battery farmed chickens live until they are 18 months old, 6 to 8 in a cage

The chickens are kept indoors, 6 to 8 in a cage, jammed in with no room to move.  They can't even stretch their wings out, ever.  At 18 months old they are slaughtered, because their 'optimum' laying period is over.  However, they will in fact lay eggs for many years to come after that, so in rescuing them you also give yourself free range happy eggs to eat.

I will be taking at least 6, hopefully more.  Can you take a few maybe ?

A Littlehill rescue hen at time of rescue

The same hen as above a while later after rescue !

They fork out a massive amount of money to organise the rescue of these little, bare bodied, hens, and so charge €5 for each hen anyone takes.  This purely covers their expenses.

You can collect as many hens as you want from various drop off points across Ireland, which are notified ahead of time on the Littlehill web site.

When the hens are rescued, they have very few feathers, are weak and not used to wind, rain or cold temperatures.  So they need a safe and snug coop and run, with indoor daytime space if they need it.

Littlehill Animal Rescue web site Click here

Littlehill Animal Rescue also have a Facebook page HERE

NB:  All photos are courtesy of Littlehill Animal Rescue & Sanctuary - many thanks

My First Radishes of 2010

Well here they are at last - Today I pulled my first radishes of 2010, in fact my first summer salad veg of the season !

These were grown in well manured soil in the polytunnel, in between new rows of Cambridge strawberries (I'm after an early delicious crop).

The donkeys love the radish tops, so they are yet another part of the recycling process - they eat the radish tops, they create manure, it rots and dries, and then I use it a year or 2 later on the garden and raised beds...

Below is today's organic lunch (or was as I have eaten it all about 2 hours ago). I'm afraid only the radishes were from my garden.

New Blackcurrant Patch

I take great pleasure in making something from nothing, and being on a very tight budget and physically less able than I'd like, I had to think creatively when I wanted to make a new blackcurrant patch.


I cleared the land of the tall grass, stones and weeds with a battery strimmer (no laughing - it works, and I can't pull start the petrol one any more). I then aquired a load of used car tyres from a local tyre place (for free) and placed them about 4 feet apart in a grid. This means that the bushes will be about 5 or 6 feet apart.


I then weeded as best as I could inside each tyre, added a layer of well rotted donkey manure, then added soil from an old heap created when land was cleared for my polytunnel.


I planted the blackcurrants (pot grown from pruning trimmings from a friend's bushes) one into each tyre, sprinkled some organic chicken manure pellets around them and then watered them well.


You may wonder why I didn't plant them straight into the ground.


I'm no longer as physically able as I would like and have to make everything super easy to maintain. All I have to do is strim all around the tyres now, and weed the soil inside the tyres now and then when seedlings appear.


As a PS - If anyone would like free used tyres (car or tractor etc) my local tyre fitter is very willing to let anyone have what they want for free. The tyre recycling company actually charge him £1,500 to take away an artic's worth of used tyres ! And they then go and make a profit on them when recycled !


I'm happy to give his address/location to anyone interested.


Here is a quick snap of the new blackcurrant patch. As you can see I still have my work cut out with a load more clearing etc ! But it's way cheaper than a gym membership...