Garden Farming

Growing your own food sounds idyllic but perhaps too much work for most. But I can assure you there is nothing more satisfying and delicious than harvesting food from the garden, preparing it and eating it, all within your lunch break. 

For me, growing potatoes has been the easiest and most successful of my plant projects this year. The work load was a bit heavier back in March, we built a raised bed, rotovated the ground, did a bit of reading on best practises for veg growing, bought our seed spuds and planted them.

We did that all that ground work within two full days and once the potatoes were planted, we sat back and watched them grow for the rest of the summer. We just made sure, they were watered, mostly weed free and fed manure. 

The crop was so big that I began harvesting some baby potatoes in early June and continually throughout the summer but this week the final lot have come to fruition and what a crop. We have used our potatoes in roasts, veg bakes, salads, mashed spuds, made chips and crisps and the excess spuds I chopped, bagged and froze them to use at a later date. 

2020 has been a weird year, nothing surer and many of us have had to rethink our lives from top to bottom. How we work, how we communicate, how we travel, how we shop, even how we breathe, it has all changed. Although there have been many negatives that surfaced this year, I believe there has been many positives too. Most importantly people have begun to rethink the food chain and their own personal food security. We import nearly 80% of our fruit and veg which seems crazy as we live in such a lush, fertile land. 

Prior to events in Irish history in 1845 our country was so lush and our food supply so plentiful that it supported our then population of 8.2 million people! But our country was plundered of all its goodness and a famine ensued which devastated our food chain and therefore our people.

Hopefully we can learn from our past and take our food concerns into our own hands, a food revolution quietly begins at home with you. I reckon I made a saving of almost 30% on my weekly food bill throughout the summer by growing my own food, something I hope to expand on next year. The food is tastier, organic, free from all chemicals and is readily available in my garden, plus the kids really enjoy the whole process, I’ve never such excited faces as when we dig up potatoes!

You may think its too late in the growing season to get started but its not. You can still plant winter seed potatoes for the Christmas dinner! Even if you live in the city and the only outdoor space you have is a balcony, you can grow your spuds in a big plastic bin with compost and some feed. If you feed and nuture them, they will feed and nurture you. 

Growing your own food is not only deeply satisfying but it gives us an innate confidence knowing that we can feed ourselves no matter what. That is food security you can’t buy. We need more garden farmers and balcony farmers, will you join the food revolution?

Thank you for reading. May you live wild and free.

Love,

Hilary x

Here are some wonderful people, doing some wonderful work in growing, harvesting and supplying fresh organic food, training and educating young farmers and saving our seeds for future generations.

Cuskinny House and Food Market - Cork

Neighbourhood Food Market - all over Ireland

Moyhill Farm - Lahinch

Seed Savers - Clare

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