What's this blog all about?

Spring daffodils

The idea of this blog is to record and share what I grow in the garden and what I cook in the kitchen. I'm passionate about growing, cooking and eating food. For me, all three go hand in hand. There is nothing quite like growing your own vegetables and fruit, picking them yourself, cooking them within minutes and then sitting down to enjoy their freshness and goodness.

In some ways the blog will be a diary as I will be talking about sowing and planting before I get to cooking and eating. As I have been growing this garden for over 20 years I'm going to jump right in with what is in season at them moment and also talk about what I'm currently sowing or planting or harvesting.

I'll cover techniques and tips for both gardening and cooking - eating you will have to figure out for yourself. I'll use photos and video where appropriate to illustrate what I am writing about. Recipes will be included in case you want to try them out yourself.

I have wide and varied tastes in food. I really like spicy food so Indian, Thai and Asian in general feature highly. I'm also strongly influenced by Italian food which makes such good use of fresh ingredients. I don't grow all our food - we don't currently keep any livestock so we buy in meat. Also rice and many pulses don't do too well in Ireland so we buy these. Likewise wheat doesn't do too well so flour is bought in.

In the garden I will write about the philosophy and methodology I garden by. I became an organic gardener since the mid 1970's and have been growing according to these principles since. This is my fourth garden and the biggest of the lot.

The whole plot is about 2 hectares with a large house, outhouses and a yard. On that we grow most of our own vegetables, some fruit, quite a bit of our firewood, lots of shrubs, flowers and herbs. We also have allowed about 20% of the plot to remain untouched as a wildlife reserve.

I would like this blog to be interactive so please comment - send your suggestions, ask questions.......

Happy reading, growing and eating