Ireland: Joy Larkcom’s garden
October 01, 2009
When we last visited Joy Larkcom’s garden in County Cork, she and husband Don were just starting to work on turning the horse pasture behind their little farmhouse into a productive garden. The transformation is amazing.
The stout windbreak was the first thing to go in, they were just starting to plant their fruit… Now the windbreak is mature and doing a vital job in protecting the garden from strong salty winds, the raspberries and other fruits are cropping heavily and apple alley, with a large range of different apple varieties - including a ‘Blenheim Orange’ with fruits the size of footballs – is thriving. The seaweed mulch certainly helps.
Raised beds are producing melons and sweet corn and beans and salad leaves, the pears on the wall look scrumptious – everywhere you look there’s something edible either finishing cropping, coming up to its best, or working its way up to cropping later. It’s that continuity of cropping which marks out the best vegetable gardens, and it’s not just Joy who can manage this. Check out Joy’s Grow Your Own Vegetables for detailed advice, it’s her best seller both on amazon.com and amazon.co.uk.
There are little patches of cut-and-come again salads in a number of little spaces while in the greenhouse the tomatoes are juicy, and Joy and Don finally came to an uneasy agreement about which of the heirloom aubergines (egg plant) Don could have for the kitchen and which Joy could keep for seed! The one Don was allowed went into his lovely pollock dish – pollock he’d caught himself.
From the golden raspberries on the morning muesli to tomatoes in every shape and colour for the lunchtime salad to the beans and chard for supper – why go to the supermarket to buy food when you can grow it yourself? You don’t need the space that Joy and Don have, you can produce food all the year round in a very small space. The fact that so many people, many new to gardening, are doing exactly that is one of the achievements of Joy’s many years championing organic vegetable growing.
The stout windbreak was the first thing to go in, they were just starting to plant their fruit… Now the windbreak is mature and doing a vital job in protecting the garden from strong salty winds, the raspberries and other fruits are cropping heavily and apple alley, with a large range of different apple varieties - including a ‘Blenheim Orange’ with fruits the size of footballs – is thriving. The seaweed mulch certainly helps.
Raised beds are producing melons and sweet corn and beans and salad leaves, the pears on the wall look scrumptious – everywhere you look there’s something edible either finishing cropping, coming up to its best, or working its way up to cropping later. It’s that continuity of cropping which marks out the best vegetable gardens, and it’s not just Joy who can manage this. Check out Joy’s Grow Your Own Vegetables for detailed advice, it’s her best seller both on amazon.com and amazon.co.uk.
There are little patches of cut-and-come again salads in a number of little spaces while in the greenhouse the tomatoes are juicy, and Joy and Don finally came to an uneasy agreement about which of the heirloom aubergines (egg plant) Don could have for the kitchen and which Joy could keep for seed! The one Don was allowed went into his lovely pollock dish – pollock he’d caught himself.
From the golden raspberries on the morning muesli to tomatoes in every shape and colour for the lunchtime salad to the beans and chard for supper – why go to the supermarket to buy food when you can grow it yourself? You don’t need the space that Joy and Don have, you can produce food all the year round in a very small space. The fact that so many people, many new to gardening, are doing exactly that is one of the achievements of Joy’s many years championing organic vegetable growing.