On Jul 30, 3:18 pm, "Cerumen" wrote:
wrote in message

...I have been granted the use of a very large plot near the ocean, here
in the south-west of Ireland. I have been told that the salty breeze
coming in off the Atlantic will make it difficult to grow many crops
successfully, that potato blight would be difficult to prevent, etc.
There are a few apple trees on the land, but they are in terrible
condition, no-one has taken care of them for years.
What sort of crops would be likely to thrive in this area? The soil
appears to be excellent, dark and crumbly.

Well I used to row pretty much anything I wanted in the extreme south west
but it took time to get shelter belts of hedges established to act as a
windbreak, I took a short cut and put a polytunnel up and moved in tons of
seaweed from a nearby beach to supplement the manure from a lare flock of
hens and ducks and to be fair it was hard work but I rarely failed to row
what I wanted. The lack of frosts that close to the sea are a bonus as well.

--
Chris, West Cork, Ireland.
Festina lente

That all sounds very industrious; after that you should be able to
grow anything.
Shelter indeed sounds like the main initial problem. Plants get
battered sideways by the winds.
Once you have shelter sorted, it gets easier. You need to get some
shrubs/walls/hedges/trees in place and/or get a tunnel as Chris
suggested; just make sure it is well attached to the ground. If you
are trying hedges, some things can be used as temporary initial
hedging as the real shelter gets established. Some plants thrive by
the sea (e.g. sea buckthorn) and look at what does well in the nearby
hedges. There are various hebes and escallonias used in coastal hotel
gardens that survive near hurricanes and many native shrubs will do
fine if given shelter long enough to get them established.
As for blight; not sure if it is any worse near the sea.

Des near the ocean in suburban Dublin but where we have refined gentle
city winds not like dem oul west cork tyfeckinphoons