Conor’s Bandon Blog

I was thrilled to get an email from Tara O’Donoghue to tell me that Bandon allotments are up and running.

The allotment garden is located in Cloughmacsimon – a short distance off the bypass, right behind Coláiste Na Toirbhirte.

Plots are available in 2 sizes 5x7m for €80pa or 5x10m for €100pa. There are plenty of plots available so call 023 8852922 or 087 9567452 or email bandontransition@gmail.com for more information.

Bandon Community Allotments Open Day Sunday 16th May 1.30 pm

Plenty of family entertainment on the day with music, face painting, fun games and competitions like Wellie Throwing, Wheelbarrow Races, Tug O War, Make your own Scarecrow, prizes and more.

All the details over on www.bandoncommunityallotments.com.

They are also at Transition Bandon on Facebook.

Well done to everyone involved in this!

It’s been said by many others too but Twitter is seriously denting my blogging. Why write an entire post when most of the time 140 chars will do?

But what will be remembered and found in years to come? Watching Chris Moyles on “Who Do You Think You Are?” really drove home the importance of historical records. My mother ran into a brick wall with her genealogy research a few years ago once she got into the 19th Century.

It’d be nice if in 100 years there is still something resembling the internet and all of this “stuff” that we are all generating on Blogs, Twitter, Facebook etc etc can be found and read by our descendants so they can realise what a bunch of weirdos and wackos they share their genes with.

And on a completely different subject, here are some pics of the veg plot. Total effort expended in weeding and planting this year? Approx 8 hours.

The Bloom Gardening Event is back and it looks fantastic. On in the Phoenix Park from 28th May to 1st June, it seems to have something for everyone.

Presented by Bord Bia, there are show gardens, craft centre, artisan food market and a family fun and learning zone.

If you are on Facebook, follow em here. On Twitter, they hang out here.

I wish I was in Dublin to check it all out.

This is just a superb idea, well done to everyone involved! Why not enter?

The inaugural Grow Bake Cook Awards Ceremony honours and celebrates the skills of amateur cooks, growers, bakers and preservers – in fact anyone with a talent for creating good food!

Supporting local communities throughout Cork city and county, these awards aim to give our hidden food heroes the opportunity, tools and encouragement to sell their wares through farmer’s markets,country markets, local supermarkets and food fairs.

Award winning and shortlisted produce will be displayed at Cork City’s Midsummer Festival Feasta market on Sunday June 28th , with the Award Ceremony taking place that evening at a city venue tbc.

For further information and entrance criteria contact Dianne Curtin 086067 6249 or Elke O’Mahony 087 3168855or email to grow.bake.cook@gmail.com.Deadline for submission is 23rd June 2009

We’ve just had the third annual waste of time known as Earth Hour where millions of people worldwide pretend to do something useful about global warming and turn off lights for an hour. For 99.999999% of those people, that’ll be it for another 365 days. End result for the Earth, big fat zero. Perhaps if we take all the energy expended by the media covering this story, we may even have a net negative?

Imagine if, instead, those millions of people went outside, dug up a square metre or two of their perfect lawns and planted some vegetable seeds? Or if they lived in an apartment in Ireland, they contacted Irish Allotments about organising patches in their locality?

Then instead of some silly hour-long nonsense they could:

• Reduce CO2 throught the action of the plants
• Reduce petrol consumption through less shopping
• Reduce fuel miles by not buying foreign vegetables
• Save money
• Get their kids outside
• Take part in Seed Saver schemes
• Eat healthier
• Get fit

We could call it Gardener’s World

Of course taking care of this veg patch takes a wee bit longer than one hour a year and isn’t news-worthy so maybe we should just turn off the lights and keep playing mushroom instead.

We’re just playing around with a few ideas on a site called Jaiku this morning (they were bought by Google a few months back). The idea is that you can have discussion channels on particular topics like technology, politics, Bandon GAA, whatever. What makes it (and other great sites like Twitter) so powerful is that you can interact with it entirely through SMS on your phone.

So this morning I created two non-techie ones that I thought might appeal to my more foodie readers. The first is #recipes and the second is #gardening. In both cases the idea was that they could be used for requesting advice (in addition to general chitchat).

The #recipes one was suggested by Michael Kiely and he thought it would be great if you were out shopping and spotted an ingredient and wanted suggestions for mini-recipes so you’d know what else to buy whilst you were there. A quick SMS, a bit more shopping and you might get some suggestions back by SMS.

I thought of the #gardening one and it could also be used in a similar way to #recipes when in a Garden Centre and wondering e.g. is X worth buying, it Y over-priced etc.

Of course you can use both channels on the web too (and obviously type a lot more than 140 characters!).

There are two flies in the ointment. The first is that it’ll need more people on these channels to make them work and the second is that joining Jaiku is officially closed at the minute. Both can be solved in one fell swoop by heading over to Jaiku Invites, setup by Ciarán Rooney and requesting an invite to join.

Give it a go. It’s just a bit of fun and I’ve already had two suggestions on how to cook the fennel bulbs I bought on a whim in Lidl during the week. Any problems using it, just pop a comment here.

From the garden.

Yummmm.

Here it is:

Thrilled that it actually tasted ok, sadly not very juicy and a bit tart but given the summer we’re having, not a bad effort.

Next year we hope to get it up to two.

My “stick it in the ground and it’ll grow” school of gardening thought has failed miserably this year. The only things that have grown are non-essential herbs, apples, strawberries, sorrel and radishes. And I don’t even particularly like the latter two. Actually, I nearly forgot the one rhubarb plant which provided seven metric tonnes of sticks. Lots of yummy tarts for me (as the bishop….).

So I got thick the other day and ripped up almost everything. All the bleedin mint and oregano, all the sorrel, the stupid radishes, the weeds, the 3 rocket plants (from two packets!). I’ve laid them flat on the bed to rot down but it made me think, surely that is a net zero as far as nutrients are concerned?

So gardening gurus, top tips please. I think I should dump a ton of home made compost in, maybe chicken manure or bonemeal, cover the lot over with newspaper and try again next March. Thoughts?