After two years of planning, a major inaugural fundraiser and lots of training, we erected our commercial wheelchair accessible Polytunnel in the summer of 2017. We have now completed our first very challenging year of growing. We were very glad we put in the strongest tunnel we could get as within three months we had storm Ophelia and since then we have had the “Beast from the East” the driest summer in decades and many more storms.
We planted a great variety of food producing plants with great success, tomatoes, corn, cucumbers, climbing beans, aubergines, strawberries, salads and much more. We also planted many trays of flowering plants and sold out in May during our very first Garden Produce sale.
We grow everything organically. We planted a beautiful wild flower garden which will be reseeded next spring with seeds saved from it this autumn. We are currently filling in our newly constructed outdoor raised beds and we are using all natural fertilisers and no chemical sprays.
Our Organic Garden club meet every Thursday at 1.30pm for forty minutes of fun, planting seeds and bulbs, moving soil and watering and of course the best bit harvesting all the wonderful fresh produce. We recently had a visit from a professional Beekeeper Tom O’Sullivan who gave the Garden Club a very interesting talk on the art of beekeeping and the overall importance of bees in helping maintain biodiversity and providing us with not only honey but wax and even the food we eat. There is always something exciting happening in the Polytunnel on Thursdays.
After the midterm break we will be planting hundreds of young tree saplings we grew ourselves from seeds last autumn as well as some trees donated by Coillte to begin the first stage of our Biodiversity Woodland Project. We are going to be very busy with autumn clearing and replanting of the tunnel and raised beds, and for Christmas we will be making fresh wreaths.
Watch this space!!
