Evelyn charms millions of BBC Gardeners’ World viewers with her top tips
BBC Gardeners’ World presenter Monty Don couldn’t manage it without making a stink – until a North Cork woman showed him and millions of his fans exactly how it’s done.
Talk about green fingers! Rathcoole woman Evelyn O’Sullivan impressed the millions of BBC Gardeners’ World viewers no end in a special slot on Friday filmed in her beloved garden as she showed exactly how to master the delicate art of making liquid plant food from comfrey.
It’s a herb dear to Evelyn’s heart, which she has been growing at home for many years, for its beneficial properties for bees and other pollinators and, of course, for the wealth of nutrients it brings to the other plants in the garden when broken down.
Best of all, it’s an entirely organic process keeping Evelyn’s garden chemical free.
But it’s in the breaking down of it where many a gardener can come a cropper – even the BBC’s Monty Don!
Enter Eveyln: “Monty Don had been complaining about the overpowering smell of the comfrey whenever he went at it, but the way I’ve been doing if for years isn’t nearly as smelly,” the Clonbanin native told The Corkman.
“So I sent off a video of myself making the feed, only for their own knowledge never thinking they would pick up on it the way they did!”
Within days the BBC were back onto her with directions for a fresh take of the comfrey-making process in her garden.
Evelyn certainly didn’t disappoint, charming several million viewers of the long-running programme in an extremely polished piece that went out on Friday evening in a slot that sees viewers’ self-made videos of their green-fingered exploits.
“I got an email Monday week last saying it would be shown on Friday night...I got a land as I didn’t think they would be interested, not to mention showing it.
“So far I’ve only had one convert to my comfrey feed and that’s my sister Nuala, she didn’t have a choice in it,” Evelyn laughed, explaining the process as a fairly straight-forward one: “Firstly, the comfrey plant is very good for bees and pollinators, and secondly its roots go way down so it brings up maybe more trace elements of minerals than other plants might. I simply chop it up into little pieces, put it into a special bin up to about three quarters of the way before putting the lid of a drum on top of the chopped comfrey and weighting it down with a bucket containing a concrete block, quickening the process.”
The BBC showed Evelyn then mounting the bin on a couple of blocks to allow the comfrey liquid drain out into a container under the bin. Just like that – a couple of weeks on and the container is bursting with some of the best plant food going.
Evelyn’s way meanwhile eliminates odours as it does not require water in any part of the process.
All of it allows her to garden organically, something she has been doing long before it became as popular as it is today.
“Long go I had a great interest in growing stuff without chemicals...I credit my mother, Eily Murphy, with that. We had a small farm growing up in Clonbanin, and we always had a vegetable plot in it. I used to do the weeding with her and I liked it, but she never used any chemicals. When I was a teenager, it was very common to use liquid to kill off the whitefly off the cabbage, and it was becoming popular to spray with round-up and all of that around places, and I can remember my mother saying when we would come by some place that was sprayed ‘Isn’t green a nicer colour than that foxy?’
“She knew something. Deep down, it never sat right with her to be pouring chemicals on land you would be using, and it was a belief I’ve kept to ever since.”