Using Seaweed in the Garden

Posted July 11, 2016

Filed under compost, Eco-Living, Ecology, Food, Garden, Gardening, Growing Food, Nature, Uncategorized

After so much rain during the past few weeks, it was a relief to have a relatively dry day! You may remember that last week I visited the Atlantic shoreline to harvest some seaweed to use on the garden. The strands to the south of Sligo town have piles of loose seaweed here and there along the beaches.

Always only ever take the loose stuff…don’t pull seaweed from stones as these form habitats and are essential to the ecology of the seashore!

In the end I managed about three big bags of seaweed and headed home with my foraged booty!

The first thing I do is to spread it on the gravel around the cottage and allow the rain to wash out excess salt.

After about a week, I start to spread the seaweed around established plants in the garden and tunnel.

The seaweed acts as a wonderful feed and a weed-suppressing mulch!

One of the best things about growing food in the garden is the opportunity to use local and near resources that are free to be foraged or collected…seaweed is an organic fertiliser! Seaweed is washed in by the tide, so is easy to forage!

Only ever take what you need!

It can be used straight away too by the way!

It’s packed with Potassium and Nitrogen, bot wonderful for the garden!

In the next blog, over at Bealtaine Cottage Good Life, I will explain how to make Liquid Seaweed Manure…along with lots more pics of the vegetable beds mulched with seaweed and how this feeds the plants!

https://bealtainecottage.com/bealtaine-cottage-good-life/

Permaculture Food Forest in Ireland

Posted March 29, 2016

Filed under Abundance, agriculture, Bealtaine Cottage, biodiversity, Birds, compost, Ecology, Eden, Edible Gardens, food forest, Lifestyle, Nature, Organic Garden, Permaculture, Uncategorized

The leaves are just beginning to bud and appear.

Bees are busy at work here in the gardens of Bealtaine Cottage…without them this would be a place of hunger.

But, it’s not…instead it boasts food for all and more to come.

This is what a food forest looks like as the sap rises and life returns.

These are the gardens of the goddess, Mother Earth in all her splendour and abundance!

And here is today’s video…

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Your Power, Your Choice!

Posted August 22, 2014

Filed under Bealtaine Cottage, compost, Country Living, Culture, Earth, Eco-Living, Ecology, Gaia, Lifestyle, Permaculture

Solar panels!

Many permaculture garden visitors ask me why I have no solar panels?

My stock answer is that I cannot afford them…but that hides all the other reasons why solar panel are not high on my wish-list of add-ons to Bealtaine Cottage!

I see the issue in much more simple terms…frugality!

Over the past ten years of developing Bealtaine Cottage, I have successively scaled back on my use of electricity.

From getting rid of many of my original electrical appliances and refusing to replace those that have given up along the way, I have the equivalent of a roof load of solar panels!

We are a wasteful society that is easily swayed towards consumerism, failing to take responsibility for our waste, when there is NO AWAY…just Mother Earth!

Studies in America, for example, have shown that 20% of all electricity produced is wasted. (Dr Helen Caldicott)

This is interesting as Nuclear power represents 20% of all the electricity produced!

The correlation between what we waste and our environmental concerns can be very revealing!

According to statistics produced by the WWF “Power plants typically only turn about 30% of the energy input into usable electricity.
We are losing up to 75 % of the energy in the fuel at the start of the process. Energy companies could do much better – combining power and heat production can lift efficiency to over 70%.”( http://wwf.panda.org/about_our_earth/aboutcc/cause/wasting_energy_eff/ )

In a detailed study in 2001, the International Energy Agency (IEA) found that from 3% (Switzerland) to a scarcely credible 13% (Australia) of residential electricity used in OECD countries was standby.

“I was amazed when I first learned the dimensions of standby power,” said Robert Priddle, IEA executive director. “In my own home, appliances that I thought were ‘off’ were actually consuming considerable power.”

You have immense power…the power to choose!

Your power to consume is there as a choice.

It is MY DESIRE to have a wind turbine and solar panels, but it is MY CHOICE to live lightly with Mother Earth.

Understand power…but more importantly, understand YOUR power!

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Bealtaine Cottage Good Life is a mere 12 euros per year and allows me a small income, to keep doing what I love doing most…writing about Mother Earth and photographing her.

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From the Fringe…

Posted July 14, 2014

Filed under Abundance, Bealtaine Cottage, biodiversity, compost, Culture, Current Affairs, Eco-Living, Ecology, Edible Gardens, Food, Gardens, Growing Food, Inspiration, Ireland, Life, Permaculture, Self-Sufficiency

The start of the week in this sacred place, where edges meet and overlap…a cooling, calming morning.

Yesterday was a day of visits and creating bouquets to take with me.

The gardens are flourishing and birthing beauty all around me, so there was much to gather and choose from.

This is the tenth year using the roll of cellophane bought for me by my eldest daughter all those years ago as a leaving London present!

Small investments can and do go on giving!

Walking the gardens this morning, after the rain, with the earth scents rising all around me, it was a delight to see the apples well on their way to a grand harvest.

I continue to drink the apple juice saved as frozen juice from the harvest last year.

The “poor” land here has given me more food than I can cope with…a continuing surplus builds year on year.

In this tenth year, it is no longer a surprise that the main stream media has steered clear of permaculture, for the truth of biodiversity undermines the huge Agri-business pushed by governments and those in power.

Permaculture has been pushed out to the fringes of society by ignoring the outcomes of such an approach.

This is why I write and photograph and film and keep putting it out there.

I don’t mind being ignored, but Mother Earth WILL have her voice heard and those tuning in are rising in numbers to a point where the mainstream media will have to take notice or end up being overtaken.

The compost heaps continue to rise toward the sky, dropping back down to earth as they bio-degrade.
Newly planted beds promise a rich return all Autumn and well into the Winter.
Natural Spring water flows in abundance from an aquifer that is unabused by demanding “flush it away,” toilet cisterns.

There is no away and besides which, water is sacred!

Why use clean water to flush our human waste into the rivers and oceans…no way, there is no away!
Taking care of people means taking care of the Earth…how simple is that philosophy to put into practice?

Not if you are a corporation or a politician on the make and take, for there is no money in caring, just an abundant, real economy!

Our abiding relationship is with Mother Earth.

It is the only physical relationship which surpasses all others in this life.

If we imagine our world as a tapestry, then where are you on the stitching?

Where do you want to be on the weave?

Here’s a thought: one of the biggest and most powerful supermarket chains in the UK and Ireland spent a small fortune on creating this advertising slogan, “Every Little Helps!”

Own it!

Post Midsummer Polytunnel Gardening at Bealtaine Cottage

Posted July 6, 2014

Filed under Abundance, compost, Country Living, Eco-Living, Edible Gardens, Food, Growing Food, Herbs, Permaculture, Self-Sufficiency, Smallholding, Summer

Second-phase food production is under way as from this week.

Midsummer has passed and many harvests are home or under-way.

This week has seen me clear the tunnel, spread lots of compost afresh on the beds and begin planting for the next phase of crops.

As I cleared the tunnel and collected masses of seeds and seed-heads, I was thinking about the crops I would plant.

Number one on my list is Kale; one of the great foods, especially in juicing.

Regular intake of Kale juice keeps health at a peak.

Soil is the most important aspect of good food.

The food takes up the essential minerals and goodness in the soil and turns these into health-giving good food.

This was a good time to prune the Peach Tree and remove about half of the Nectarines and feed the tree.

I left some of the herbs in place and moved the rest into pots and outside beds.

“The soil is the great connector of lives, the source and destination of all. It is the healer and restorer and resurrector, by which disease passes into health, age into youth, death into life. Without proper care for it we can have no community, because without proper care for it we can have no life.”
― Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture

“The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human beings.”
― Masanobu Fukuoka, The One-Straw Revolution

“Organic is something we can all partake of and benefit from. When we demand organic, we are demanding poison-free food. We are demanding clean air. We are demanding pure, fresh water. We are demanding soil that is free to do its job and seeds that are free of toxins. We are demanding that our children be protected from harm. We all need to bite the bullet and do what needs to be done—buy organic whenever we can, insist on organic, fight for organic and work to make it the norm. We must make organic the conventional choice and not the exception available only to the rich and educated.”
― Maria Rodale, Organic Manifesto: How Organic Farming Can Heal Our Planet, Feed the World, and Keep Us Safe

All the Poppy heads are now harvested, providing a massive amount of Poppy Seed…great in cooking and baking!

“Someday we shall look back on this dark era of agriculture and shake our heads. How could we have ever believed that it was a good idea to grow our food with poisons?”
― Jane Goodall, Harvest for Hope: A Guide to Mindful Eating

“All the human and animal manure which the world wastes, if returned to the land, instead of being thrown into the sea, would suffice to nourish the world.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

Easiest Ever Compost Toilet

Posted July 1, 2014

Filed under compost, Cottage, Country Living, Eco-Living, Garden, Inspiration, Ireland, Nature, Permaculture, Smallholding, Trees

The post you’ve all been waiting for…the Bealtaine Cottage Compost Toilet.

Easy to install and simple to use.

No running outside on cold mornings to tramp across wet grass to use the toilet!

This is located in the bathroom…not quite a bathroom though as I took out the bath and installed a shower instead!

There’s still a little bit of tweaking to be done to finish the project off to a high standard, like decorating the wall where the cistern used to be and making a wooden surround with a small door, but as you can see, it is simple and attractive.

This is the material used for covering one’s toilet.

It is grown here at Bealtaine Cottage, shredded in the shredder and smells nice and pine fragranced, as it is cut from evergreen trees in the gardens.

This material is also anti-bacterial.

There is absolutely no bad odour!

So what happens next?

The bucket is taken to a corner of the garden, tucked in behind a Willow fedge, and then emptied into a large bin. The bins have holes in the bottom so all liquid is drained out slowly.

This system uses five such bins on a rotation basis.

After about a year, the contents have turned into sweet-smelling compost that I use around trees in the lower gardens.

This compost is not used in the productive gardens as I have adequate vegetative compost on site in the vegetable and fruit gardens.

Besides…the trees thrive on the waste produced here at Bealtaine and in return, I have plenty of wood for my stove…cycle complete!

…and the Arum Lilies seem to like it!

In the course of life here at Bealtaine Cottage, there is really no need for a septic tank…flush it away?

There is no away!

If you liked reading this, why not Like, Comment or share with others on Twitter, FaceBook or email to a friend! Blessings XXX

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Little Pots of Magic…She Stirs…

Posted May 10, 2014

Filed under Bealtaine Cottage, biodiversity, Climate, compost, Ecology, Garden, Inspiration, Ireland, Organic Garden, Permaculture, Roscommon, Seeds, Sustainable Living, Trees, Woodland

The decision, once made, gathers energy and slowly, slowly begins to move…like a baby discovering it can crawl!

And so it begins…the first small movements of the Forest of Bealtaine, barely perceptible, but felt and experienced.

The Forest of Bealtaine is emerging through seed…seeds collected, saved and sown into pots of Bealtaine compost, that will travel with them, to their final destination, here, somewhere, in Mother Ireland.

Where in Mother Ireland I do not know, but, somewhere on this land bereft of the comfort of cover and canopy, open to the growing harshness of rain, that once fell soft like dew…for the changing weather patterns and climate are taking their toll!

And so She grows!

Today the rain falls heavy and my visitors from Dublin have gone.

The heavy rain assures me we need forest…for we are the rocky outcrop of a failing empire

There is no mistake in that word…for it is She with a capital letter, She with a need to grow and nurture.

The land we have collectively failed…our governments collecting carbon taxes whilst fracking the bowels of Mother Earth!

The failing Empire of the EU paying Irish farmers to rip out trees, so land can be mapped out for Google Earth Maps!

And all so politicians and bureaucrats can peer and measure and post out cheques…

But what use is money to a people living on a land being ravaged by Climate Chaos?

But here at Bealtaine, the Goddess, the Mother, our Earth is nurtured for in her womb is cradled Eden, waiting to be birthed.

And Bealtaine is one of many birthing places, for the Mother is us and we are her…there is no separation.

And in these little pots of hope, She grows, and slowly, barely noticeable to visitors, the magic begins to manifest.

She stirs, awakens and is…

A New Way of Living

Posted May 8, 2014

Filed under Abundance, biodiversity, compost, Country Living, Edible Gardens, Food, Frugal Living, Garden, Growing Food, Inspiration, Life, Permaculture, Seeds, Self-Sufficiency, Summer, Sustainable Living, Uncategorized, Vegan, Vegetarian

Food production can be a problem for many people who have little or no access to land.

There are many who live in conditions where even a balcony is a precious space.

I have spoken before about the ways in which access to growing space can be achieved, through allotments, community gardens and the like, but here is something which may prove to be an inspiration, a new way of looking at food, both growing it and eating!

As an aspiring Vegan, (sometimes I miss the mark!) and dedicated grower and lover of all life, I have recently been converted to “Micro Greens.”

The concept is extraordinarily simple!

Seeds such as lettuce, peas, beets, etc., are sown and grown for about two weeks or less, before being harvested and added to dishes.

These Micro-Greens, it is said, contain up to 40% more nutrients than older, traditionally grown and harvested vegetables.

I can believe it!

Yesterday evening, I had a dish of cooked brown rice, mixed with Micro Greens, seasoned and drenched with the juice of half a fresh lime and this morning I feel a surge of energy!

Micro Greens can be grown on a window ledge, balcony, hanging basket…anywhere they can get a decent dose of light!

Growing Organic is easy to manage in small areas too!

Little or no problem with slugs and availability all the year around!

For me, the days of packaged salad of any kind are over and the tiresome task of cooking greens are almost over…adding raw makes more sense in every aspect of preparing and eating food!

All you need is a tray, or pot of compost, seeds and water!

So, there you have it…a new way of living…simple, easy and kind to Mother Earth!

And the fun part? Now you can enjoy seeing some of your vegetables run to seed, like this Mizuna in the Potager Bed!

Here are just some of the seeds you can grow Micro Salads from…

Arugula

Broccoli

Brussels sprouts

Cabbage

Cauliflower

Kale

Mustard greens

Radish

Red cabbage

Turnips

Watercress

Basil

Chervil

Chives

Coriander

Fennel

Lemon Balm

Mizuna

Rocket

Sage

Chard

and many more…

(Both the Light Catcher and the Bird Box were gifts, made by Nick O’Neill…aren’t they lovely?)

Happy growing!

Blessings from Bealtaine Cottage XXX

EU Pimping Monoculture Failure!

Posted March 12, 2014

Filed under Bealtaine Cottage, biodiversity, compost, Cottage, Culture, Current Affairs, E.U., Eco-Living, Food, Garden, Growing Food, Home Made Wine, Inspiration, Life, Lifestyle, Nature, Permaculture, Seeds, Self-Sufficiency, Smallholding, Sustainable Living, Trees, Wildlife

Mist prevails as the earth slowly heats, releasing some of the water absorbed during the wettest winter on record here in Ireland.

The air is still and birdsong echoes through the foggy dew…

The first of the seeds are now sown in a big fish box in the tunnel, made from thick, white polystyrene, once marked out for the dump but rescued and up-cycled here at Bealtaine Cottage…perfect for seeds and young plants!

There’s a digger at work on the hill of Ballyfermoyle, I hear it’s machinations echoing through the misty morning.

Young trees and bushes are being torn up and tossed aside, in an effort for land to be measured by the EU on Google Maps.

Less tree cover shows more grass and it is grassland that the EU are paying farmers here in Ireland to grow.

More grass, more meat, more export, more globalization…you know the story!

And so, the Earth is losing more habitat in a land that cannot feed it’s own people…Ireland is heavily reliant on imported food!

Another famine lurks around the corner, as monoculture food systems are the order of the day, financed and controlled by the EU bureaucrats, blinkered up to the eyeballs with bullshit!

In this land of plenty there is little food grown around this area.

EU sponsored, subsidized and pimped Monoculture prevails!

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Bealtaine Cottage has built up a Permaculture Seed Bank.

If you want to see a list of available seeds, this link will take you there…

https://bealtainecottage.com/seeds-from-bealtaine-cottage/

Seeds from Bealtaine Cottage in Ireland are posted all over the world…the donation remains the same no matter where you live, even Outer Mongolia!

Bealtaine Cottage is also on YouTube…with over 110 videos about Permaculture, planting, growing and living.

There are over 600 blogs in the archives on this site.

As an Ark for Nature, trees and wildlife, the smallholding of Bealtaine Cottage receives no grant aid from the EU, as only farm animals, monoculture and set-aside are grant-aided!

Your donation helps remedy that…

Bealtaine Cottage Calendar 2020 NOW REDUCED!

This calendar celebrates the magic of Bealtaine and the evolution to a Sanctuary for Life. The Hare was viewed by the ancient Celts as being the link between this world and the Otherworld-a supernatural world which is directly linked to nature. The Hare is known for being able to run between our world and the 'Otherworld'. Shapeshifters are widely known in Ireland to take on the form of the Hare. This is told in the famous story of the Celtic warrior Oisín. The Hare guards both the entrance to and exit from, the Fairy Wood at Bealtaine. The Calendar, which features over 50 photographs and all the Celtic festivals, includes Postage and packing WORLDWIDE and can be posted on your behalf as a gift, from Bealtaine Cottage, Ireland. (Pre-orders now accepted) WAS: 16.50€ INCL P&P NOW: 13.50€ INCL P&P

€13.50