Labour-saving machines you can really dig

Let us give thanks for the miracles of modern machinery and, in particular, the wonders of the engine-driven rotovator

THAT FAMOUS quote about all gardeners needing a cast-iron back, with a hinge in it, expresses, quite succinctly, the physical downside of a really hard day’s labour in the vegetable patch.

And so, while there are some gardeners who love digging, there are also those (very possibly the majority) who do not. Let us, then, give thanks for the miracles of modern machinery, and in particular, the wonders of the engine-driven rotovator.

At the OPW’s walled organic garden in the Phoenix Park, the gardeners regularly use a semi-commercial machine, the Valpadana Blitz 70, to rotovate/break up and till the 2.5-acre plot.

“It’s brilliant,” says gardener Brian Quinn. “We rotovate each area twice in the spring, then again in the autumn, digging in any annual weed seedlings or green manure (they pull out perennial weeds first, to stop the roots from re-shooting). It’s a great way of breaking up compacted soil and digging in farmyard manure. But you do have to learn how to use the machine properly.”

So, any tips?

“Well, whatever else you do, don’t just walk along and tickle the ground with it, like some people I know,” says Brian with a grin. “Keep it at a slow speed (it comes with different gears) and push the machine down so that it’s making proper contact with the soil. And don’t rotovate when the ground’s too wet – you’ll just end up with muck balls and you won’t get a good tilth.”

OPW’s rotovator came from AL Machinery on Turvey Avenue in Donabate. “We stock a wide range of machines, and supply everyone from the professional landscaper to the keen private gardener,” says AL’s Bernard McGowan. “The Valpadana that the OPW gardeners have is one that’s often used by professional landscapers, where the machine is going to get a lot of regular, heavy usage.

“It’ll dig up previously fallow ground and comes with the option of a wide range of fittings (ploughs, ridger, potato lifter, etc, all of which cost extra). A new machine, plus VAT, retails for just over €4,000, but we also sell second-hand models for about half that.

“The next size down is the Texas, which comes with a 68cm tiller fitting but, like the Valpadana, there are plenty of other additional fittings to choose from. And then we do what’s often known as a merry tiller, an Agria 1000, which is a small, fairly simple machine that’s great for turning over the soil but wouldn’t be that suitable for very heavy work. New, it retails at about €1,000.”

If you’re an allotment holder, it might be worthwhile pooling your resources with a group of other allotmenteers (while collectively saving your backs) to buy one of the above, second-hand.

Alternatively, all urban farmers will be pleased to hear that AL Machinery also rent out a selection of different rotovators – depending on the particular machine, prices start at €65 plus VAT a day up to €300 plus VAT a week. While AL do deliver locally for free, the machines will fit in most typical trailers (www.almachinery.ie, Tel: 01 8404024/ 8404025).

One of the areas that the OPW gardeners rotovated early this spring is the brassica beds, giving the soil plenty of time to settle (brassicas don’t like a loose, freshly-dug soil). The brassica family is confusingly huge (even to experienced urban farmers), and includes kales, cauliflowers, cabbages, Brussels sprouts, sprouting broccoli, turnips, swedes and calabrese.

And that’s just the “western brassicas” as they’re sometimes known. Oriental types include pak choi, mizuna and mibuna greens, komatsuna, Chinese cabbages/ broccoli and oriental mustards.

In the walled garden in the Phoenix Park, the gardeners are concentrating on the “western” types, which were sown in modules in the nearby glasshouses back in late March and early April, and are now being planted out. Depending on the variety, however, you can continue to sow/plant brassicas right through to late autumn.

“Brassicas are very greedy feeders, but they don’t like freshly manured ground, so if you’ve spread manure, give it plenty of time to break down in the soil,” warns gardener Meeda Downey.

In the Phoenix Park, the OPW gardeners have made sure to give the young plants optimum growing conditions – this means a fertile, moist but well-drained soil in a sunny spot, with the addition of handfuls of the organic fertiliser, Osmo before planting.

“We’re growing a few different types of cabbage, including the Savoy-type Rigoletto, the early-summer Greyhound and the autumn-cropping Stonehead. But the best is probably Hispi, which can be sown at any time of the year and is very quick to mature. Then we have Brussels sprouts, calabrese and a late summer variety of cauliflower called Clapton, which is supposed to be resistant to clubroot,” says Meeda.

And here is the definite downside to some brassicas: despite their apparent robustness, they can sometimes be martyrs to a variety of pests and diseases, from the soil-borne clubroot (generally in damp, acid soils) to cabbage rootfly and caterpillar attack (hence the Cabbage White butterfly). But most are preventable or treatable with a little forward planning. Start off by practising crop rotation (where possible), so that diseases don’t get a chance to build in the soil.

Liming the ground will raise the pH while coarse grit will improve drainage, making clubroot disease far less likely.

To prevent cabbage root fly, the OPW gardeners use protective collars in the form of small, circular discs of material (about 15cm in diameter), with a slit from the centre to the edge, which are placed on the ground around the base of each plant. You can easily make these yourself out of a weed-suppressant membrane/ carpet underlay.

Netting young plants generally protects against attack from birds and butterflies but, just in case, the OPW gardeners will be on the lookout for the Cabbage White’s eggs and caterpillars from mid-summer onwards.

And yes, that means yet more squashing, slicing and chopping in half – but then, as you’ve probably already discovered for yourself, being an urban farmer is definitely not a job for the squeamish.

With large, slowish-growing plants like most brassicas, you need to leave plenty of room for them to develop (up to 90cm between Brussels sprouts, which take about six months to mature, for example). This can seem like a frustrating waste of space, particularly in smaller veg plots where every square metre counts. Canny gardeners get around this problem by temporarily filling the space with fast-cropping vegetables, such as lettuces, endives, chicory, pak choi and radishes.

You could also use colourful or contrasting varieties for decorative effect, such as alternating bands (or circles, triangles, even spirals) of herbs and green lettuce around red cabbage, for example, or introducing edible flowers like nasturtiums and pot marigolds as young plants. This method is equally suitable for other slow-maturing crops, such as leeks, parsnips, celeriac, salsify, scorzonera, onions and sweet corn – just don’t overdo it by planting too densely or closely.

Cut-and-come-again seedlings (CCA), as popularised by vegetable expert Joy Larkcom, are another clever way to use available space before slower-maturing plants have fully developed. In this case, the plants are sown in-situ, then harvested after two to three weeks when very young (5cm-10cm high), by cutting back to just above the lowest pair of true leaves (this is important, as left without any leaves, the young seedlings will die). This gives you lots of deliciously tender, crisp young leaves (often with particularly high concentrations of nutrients/vitamins) to use in salads, while leaving the young plants in the ground to regenerate.

Done properly, you should be able to get at least a couple of crops this way, often more. Left a little longer (15cm), most young leaves are perfect for stir-fries.

Brown Envelope Seeds in Skibbereen, Co Cork, (www.brownenvelopeseeds.com, Tel 028 38184) sell a variety of organic seed mixes for CCA, including a summer mix of lettuce, komatsuna, purslane and orache, which can be sown now. There’s also an autumn mix (spinach, land cress, lettuce and mibuna) which can be sown from June, and a winter mix (winter purslane, land cress, lamb’s lettuce and mustard greens) which can be sown in August and September.

All of the above are also ideally suited to containers/window boxes, which means that even the most space-challenged urban farmer can enjoy their own home-grown produce throughout the year.

Next week, Urban Farmer in Property will cover planting/growing celeriac and celery, and using ornamental hedges in the vegetable garden

Fionnuala Fallon is a garden designer and writer