Warm Winter – We Got Lucky!

Today is the 1st March, the first day of spring – meteorologically speaking – and I have to say that the sun is shining. Here on the south coast of Ireland, it’s a very pleasant 13 degrees centigrade. Spring indeed!

That said, it’s been incredibly mild all winter here. I’ve now had to cut the lawn twice in the past fortnight – that’s twice since mid-February. I can barely remember more than two nights of frost, of any significance. Compare this to last winter when we had two long spells of sub-zero weather, heavy snowfall, and a generally much colder period between November and February.

Irish Snow!

Judging by research released this week by the Georgia Institute of Technology, last winter was typical of what we can expect here in Europe, as global warming continues unabated. Indeed, the vast majority of Europe did actually freeze hard, and receive large snowfalls throughout late January and most of February this winter. The cold arctic air that caused this spell, (fortuitously?) had reached it limit somewhere to the east of us, out over the Irish Sea. This meant that we here in Ireland were pretty much the only county in Europe not to be frozen solid, for a chunk of this last winter.

In other words, we may have had it mild this winter, but a growing body of research now points to this being more the exception than the norm, paradoxically, as the Earth warms up. Talking of which, the rate of warming is looking like it is set to increase more rapidly than ever. The latest CO2 concentration in our atmosphere, as released by NOAA in January, is at 393ppm (parts per million) and rising fast. We long ago sailed past 350ppm [the likely ‘safe’ limit to maintain our pleasant ‘Holocene’ climate] and there’s no sign of mankind being able to slow its rate of CO2 release.

Something else to note – global oil production is currently running very near its current maximum capacity*, and yet global demand is higher still (see this article from Bloomberg from yesterday, 29th February). This mismatch between supply and demand is one of the main reasons why fuel prices are moving in a constant upward direction. If issues with regard to Iran worsen, as they might well do during the course of this year, then the gap between global oil supply and demand could further widen considerably.

* – There are still huge untapped oil reserves, globally, but it will take many years to bring much of this on stream (perhaps it should be left where is is!!).

The big question in my mind is this…will persistent, medium to long term increases in fuel prices, drive a more rapid shift towards renewables? A small county such as Ireland, highly dependent upon oil, looks to me to be highly vulnerable to the global oil shortage that we currently look like hitting sooner rather than later, so Ireland would be well advised to be making moves to get off oil as rapidly as it can.

So, some ‘off the wall’ predictions from me:

• Petrol and diesel prices to both hit €2.00 per litre here in Ireland, by the end of 2012 (pretty likely).
• Irish Government forced reduce duty on fuel to compensate for rapid increase in fuel prices (possible).
• Fuel rationing to be introduced across Europe by 2013 (depends on the situation in Iran, Nigeria and others).

Regardless of any global oil crisis, I personally don’t now believe that there’s any way that we will avoid catastrophic, civilisation-changing effects from human-caused global warming (AGW) – many of which will occur in my lifetime. Even a massive global shift to renewable energy sources within the next five to ten years, won’t now be enough to reverse current warming influences and associated positive feedbacks. 350ppm looks to be just a distant target in our rear-view mirror.

All that said, I’m ever the optimist, so I’m off to plant this year’s tomato plant seeds!

Monster Parsnip for Curried parsnip Soup

While emptying my parsnip bed, I came across this monster (‘Gladiator F1′), weighing in at just under 1.5Kg:

Monster parsnip

Needless to say, we had to find something to use it for, and this curried parsnip soup recipe turned out to be delicious:

 

• 50g butter or olive oil
• 1 medium onion
• 1 garlic clove, chopped or crushed
• 375g parsnip, peeled & chopped
• 1 tablespoon flour
• 1 teaspoon curry powder (or 2 if you like it hot!)
• 1,2 litres of chicken or vegetable stock
• 150ml of full fat milk (ok, light milk if you must!)

Heat the butter/oil, add the onion, garlic & parsnip, season with salt & pepper, mix well and cook gently for 10 minutes or so until soft. Add in the curry powder, flour and stock (I blend the flour in with the stock using a small hand blender – no lumpy bits!). Mix well, and simmer for 30 mins or so – basically until the parsnip is cooked. Finally, blend to taste (do you like your soup smooth or chunky?).

This will keep well in the fridge for a few days, or you can freeze it. Yummy on a cold winters day

 

First Dafs of 2012

Whilst the UK is finally getting a dose of ‘proper’ winter with heavy snow and sub-zero temperatures, here in the south coast of Ireland we have barely had a single frost all winter. My first daffodils have been out for over a week – since 29th January, in fact.

First Daffodils of 2012

I’m not starting to plant my first seeds of 2012 with peppers and tomatoes going in this weekend. I’ll be emptying the last of my raised beds over the next week or two, too (beetroot, parsnips, and carrots are all still in the ground from 2011). Preparation for spring planing needs to be done sooner rather than later.

Experimenting with cuttings

Edit – I wrote this post back in October, originally, but due to laziness, have only posted now. Happy Christmas all!

I’ve a bit of an experiment going on this autumn/winter. I’ve been taken cuttings of quite a number of different plants, to see what I can propagate and, indeed, what I can’t. The list at the moment looks like this:

• Holly – snips taken from female plants (i.e. ones with berries) in a local wood.
• Fuchsia.
• Blackcurrant.
• Redcurrant.
• Gooseberry.
• Rosemary.

Various cuttings

Probably the most ambitious is the holly, which can be very slow to root, so I believe. However, I want some female plants, to go with my established male, so that I have some chance of seeing holly berries in the garden at some point in the future. If anyone reading this has had success with holly propagation, would you consider leaving a comment?

I’m using specialist cutting compost from my local garden centre (probably unnecessarily) but no rooting compound at all. All cuttings placed around the edges of 3 inch pots, 3 or 4 cuttings to each pot.

So far, so good – nothing seems to be obviously dead, as yet. I can even see the roots appearing from the bottom of the pots, especially with the fuchsia. I’ll report success or failure in a further post, next spring.

Sweet Chilli Sauce

About four weeks ago, I finally got around to harvesting and using the 4 or so Kg of chillies from my Cayenne Pepper bush, grown in my greenhouse over the summer. Whilst I froze some for use in cooking, I’ve converted the majority into a delicious sweet chilli sauce. I’ve been after a quick and easy recipe for sweet chilli sauce for a long while, and the one below definitely fits the bill.  The garlic and sweet peppers were shop bought, on this occasion, mind you. That said, the end result is still delicious.

Makes 3 to 4 jars.

• 350g of fresh chillies (roughly chopped, seeds included).
• 350g of sweet peppers (roughly chopped, remove seeds).
• 5 cloves of garlic (roughly chopped).
• 800ml of white wine vinegar.
• 1kg of caster sugar.

Take the chillies, garlic and sweet peppers, together with half of the white wine vinegar, and put it in a blender. Blend for several minutes until well chopped and mixed. Pour this blended mixture into a pan a bring to a simmer. Gradually add the sugar and remaining white wine vinegar, stirring in, until al the sugar has dissolved. Simmer for approx 40 minutes or until the mixture begins to thicken.

Sweet Chilli Sauce

Pour into sterilised glass bottles or jars for storage.

Best eaten with Thai chicken or fish cakes

The Winter Solstice and New Trees For 2012

Things have been quiet enough at ‘Rowan Hill’. Autumn has now definitely given way to winter as we approach the solstice, in two days time. Christmas is not a festival I see much point in celebrating, but it is still a time for families to get together, so it gets my respect from that perspective – even if the overwhelming themes of the modern Christmas involves overindulgence, excess and commercialisation.

For me the winter solstice, some four days before Christmas, is perhaps my favourite day of the year; a day when the beginning of the end can be seen to the long winter nights, leading to the new year and a new growing season. I think there’s definitely a large streak of pagan in me, truth be told.

Speaking of the new growing season, I’ve spent the last couple of weekends planting new bare-rooted apple and plum trees. One of the apples is direct a replacement for a plum tree killed by bacterial canker, and the other four are additions for spots in the garden that I now consider a little under populated. The full list of my new arrivals (from Future Forests in West Cork) is as follows:

1. Hereford Redstreak (cider apple) on M106, 1yr old.
2. Sweet Pethyre (cider apple) on M106, 1yr old.
3. Victoria (plum) on St Julien A, 1yr old.
4. Purple Pershore (plum) on St Julien A, 1yr old.
5. Coe’s Golden Drop (plum) on St Julien A, 1yr old.

These have all been planted with more care than my original batch of trees, three years ago; this time, plenty of well rotted manure under each (although not directly touching the roots), plus a good helping of blood, fish and bone meal as at top dressing. As such, I’m hoping they’ll get away to a rapid start during 2012. As an aside, you might note, I’ve chosen most of the trees from the part of England where I grew up – Hereford & Worcester. I hope they like south west Ireland!

Elsewhere in the garden, an exceptionally mild October and November has caused many of the bulbs to be four to six weeks ahead of where they should be – daffodils are several inches above ground and I even have snowdrops flowering now (in mid-December). Some of my apple trees also still have leaves on, and one of my roses insists on continued flowering. Clearly we could really do with a prolonged cold-snap to bring some sense of winter, but it doesn’t look like that’s likely until at least the New Year. Warm and wet conditions are forecast to prevail, short term at least.

Spicy Pumpkin Soup

Yesterday was Halloween, and an excuse to pick one of my ‘’Hundredweight’ pumpkins.

'Hundredweight' Pumpkin

This was rapidly converted to a Jack-o-lantern plus a large amount of delicious spicy pumpkin soup. The recipe for the soup is shown below:

• 1 oz butter.
• 1 tbsp of olive oil.
• 1 medium onion – finely chopped.
• 2 red chillies, deseeded and chopped.
• 2 inches of ginger root – grated.
• 2lbs of pumpkin flesh – roughly chopped.
• 500 mls of chicken stock.
• Salt & pepper.
• 1 can coconut milk.

Pumpkin flesh

Method:

1. Heat the oil and butter in a large pan until sizzling.
2. Add in the ginger, onion and chilli to the pan and soften for 5 minutes, stirring regularly.
3. Next add the pumpkin flesh, stir, and cook on a medium heat for 10 minutes (with lid on).
4. Next add the stock, slat and pepper, stir in, and simmer for 45 minutes (with lid on).
5. Now let the pot cool for 5 minutes, before adding the coconut milt and blending\liquidising to taste.
6. Finally, cook for 5 more minutes before serving.

The Jack-o-lantern turned out well too!

Trick or Treat?