Donal Hickey: Is there a spud-planting deadline?
From March With Main Advises Crop The Sown Spuds May Mid Early March, In To To Sow Teagasc
It’s time to get gardening, hoping that the ground has dried after all the rain. And what better occasion than this bank-holiday-weekend. Since the covid epidemic, we’re told, more people have taken up, or resumed, gardening, with physical and mental health benefits.
St Patrick’s Day has traditionally been seen as the middle day of spring, with hopes of better weather and improved growing conditions afterwards.
Also, our national saint reputedly promised that every day would be fine from his feast day onwards. You'd wonder was he a politician as well as being a holy man!
Irish experts agree generally with research which finds that well over 80% of people think having access to gardens and other green spaces improves their overall wellbeing.
Cork Nature Network is urging people to grow wild plants and flowers and to provide habitat for wildlife. Hedgehogs, and a wide range of birds, can be found in many domestic gardens.
During the covid lockdowns, there was a spike in the number of people helping hedgehogs in their gardens by leaving small gaps in fences and providing dog food, which they love, according to the network’s Eve Moore.
She says anyone can have a thriving wildlife garden, whether they have a small patch in a big city, or acres of land.
“Wildlife gardening has many benefits for both biodiversity and human health. The combination of connecting with nature, getting exercise, and the sense of wellbeing we receive from helping the environment is the perfect antidote to the stresses of modern living,’’ Ms Moore adds.
It’s thought humans have an innate need to connect with nature — a phenomenon known as biophilia — which can be met through wildlife gardening.
Patience is sometimes needed. An ancient Chinese philosopher, Lao Tsu, put it well: “Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished."
The Limerick Mental Health Association says that activities like planting, pulling weeds and mowing grass improve heart health and fitness. “30 minutes of gardening will burn about 125 calories," it adds, encouragingly.
And can there be anything more pleasing than, say, the sight of emerging potato stalks peeping upwards as they gently push their way through the earth?
Teagasc advises to sow early spuds in March, with the main crop sown from mid-March to May. In my native heath, people had a St Patrick’s Day deadline for setting ‘earlies’, though some eager growers were weeks ahead of that date.
Leading folklorist Kevin Danaher agreed St Patrick’s Day onwards was a time for planting the main potato crop and “those who delayed this work long after March 17 were regarded by their neighbours as slovenly and lazy".