Oak House Permaculture

Going Perennial in the Vegetable Garden

2012-01-08T15:22:00.000-08:00

I'm looking ahead to a number of years with two small children at home. This means gardening is going to need to get seriously low maintenance. I'm really going to need to get to grips with perennial vegetables! Here's my hit list of plants that I'm going to try growing to replace a lot of the annuals I usually grow.

Familar Vegetables

Shallots/potato onions (potato onions are similar to shallots but, depending on variety, can grow to up to 4 inches across in ideal conditions). They like rich, well drained and constantly moist soil. Other onion family plants worth trying include welsh onions for spring onion sized perennials - simply replant a few for a replenished harvest. And perennial sweet leeks for an oniony leaf crop.

Asparagus Likes a rich, well drained soil with pH close to 7. Likes a good water supply, even after you've finished harvesting the shoots.

Runner beans

Climbing runner beans are actually perennial plants, although we tend not to encourage them to grow like this here in the UK at least. There have been reports of them growing for up to 20 years in this country! A particularly hardy variety is the 'White Dutch' bean, available from the seed savers exchange. Grow them in a warm spot in the garden and give them a heavy mulch over winter.

Tree collards (perennial cabbage). These don't form heads, but have harvestable leaves, said to look much like savoy cabbage leaves. You harvest the ends of its shoots when the plant is 30cm tall and then after it has formed side shoots, again, harvest the ends of the shoots. After a few years, when it gets a bit leggy, cut it back to about 30cm tall. It's worth propagating more plants from cuttings as well at this time, as not all plants will survive their coppicing.

Perennial broccoli ('nine star perennial'). Grows white heads a bit like cauliflower that are edible raw or cooked. Only produces for around 3 years though.

Perennial lettuce (Lactuca perennis). Tastes better before flowering - i.e. in early spring. Can be used as a cut and come again, which will help hold off flowering. Likes a light, sandy loam.

Reichardia picroides (another type of perennial lettuce). Can have mild leaves year round. Likes a little shade in summer and full sun the rest of the year, so might be worth working out some kind of companion planting situation that would provide shade at the right time. Use as a cut and come again, cutting all leaves off at once. Apparently this plant is slug repellant.

Less Familiar Vegetables

Lovage Basically, this is a large, perennial celery plant. Eat young spring stems and leaves, which have a milder flavour than those later in the year. Or blanch stems in spring to make them taste milder. Can also eat roots and use seeds as flavouring. Grows in full sun or part shade, in normal garden soil.

Sorrel

Edible leaves nearly all year round. A good variety to go for is 'profusion' as this doesn't flower, so you get good leaves for a longer season than most and so it doesn't become weed-like and spread all over the garden. They make good companion plants as they have deep roots that bring nutrients up from deep in the soil.

Burnet This is a hardy native plant in the UK that used to be cultivated as a salad crop back in Victorian times. Its tender young leaves are said to taste like cucumber. It will grow in any soil type. Propagation is by seed or by division in february.

Sea kale Blanch spring shoots for an asparagus-like crop. The flower buds are also edible, used much like broccoli. Then the leaves of more mature plants can be eaten after the flowers have finished in late autumn. The roots are also edible. Plants grow to about 3 feet (90cm) high and wide. It prefers full sun for shoot production. It likes a rich, fertile soil. It can be propagated by division or with root cuttings. Don't harvest until the 3rd year.

Yams Suggested species for temperate climates include chinese yam and jinenjo. You eat the root, which comes either as a clump of roots - replant one for next year, or it comes as a large single root, in which case you cut the top third off and replant it.

Daylilies Edible varieties have edible buds and flowers. Very productive. This sounds like a great one to try out as they thrive on neglect! It's happy with wet or dry soil and with either full sun or partial shade. It's also fine in a poor soil.

Wetland Gardens - Forest Gardening's Watery Sister

2011-12-29T04:30:00.000-08:00

So forest gardens are basically gardens that copy the stable-state natural template of a woodland or forest habitat - copying nature being a classic permaculture technique. But the forest isn't the only stable-state habitat in nature. What about a wetland system? A wetland will happily remain a wetland for hundreds of years, just like a forest. So as I'm all excited about creating a productive forest garden and as I am also very keen to store and use all the abundant rainfall we get here to make watering the garden easier and to create wildlife ponds, why don't I take the logical next step and create a productive wetland garden?

Just like in a forest garden, I would create all the niches of a wetland system - a pond, with boggy areas around it or whatever and all the different layers of plants and animals you get throughout that kind of system. But all these layers or niches would be filled with things that are useful to me.

So I would include edible plants that grow in the water, such as water cress. Around the edge of the pond, I'd grow edible plants and shrubs that can tolerate both wet and dry conditions, such as silverweed. I'd keep ducks on the pond, so I'd get a supply of eggs and/or a lovely slug eating service (I'm planning to put this pond system right next to my veggie garden, so that would be really helpful). I could even keep edible fish (?) in the pond. I might be able to encourage frogs up there for their slug eating expertise, although I'd have to be careful to give them plenty of places to hide from the ducks as I'm sure I've heard that ducks will eat frogs. The added bonus of having this pond next to the veggie garden is that I can direct any watery overspill into the ground of my vegetable garden, meaning I'll cut down the need for manual watering or a complicated irrigation system. Nice!

So at this point, these are just off the top of my head thoughts. Needs lots of investigation and of course I've a year's maternity leave coming up with (fingers crossed) plenty of baby nap times in which to do that. I'm sure someone must be doing this already. If you are or if you know of any examples of this, I'd love to hear from you!

Creating a Water Retention Landscape

2011-12-20T06:42:00.000-08:00

Sepp Holzer and Bernd Muller have just released a new film, on the subject of water retention landscapes.

For any of you who don't know about Sepp's permaculture style, this guy is fantastic at working with nature to produce abundant systems in inhospitable places. I've previously blogged about how he creates micro climates. Using water, however, is at the heart of everything he does - as he puts it, 'water is life'. If you want to create rich, diverse natural systems, you must do what you can to hold on to your water. This film shows you how he does it.

Just to recap a few points made in the film:

His lakes are designed with maximum wildlife benefits in mind - they have winding banks, shallow and deep zones, a diversity of plants and they are aligned to the prevailing wind direction so that the wind is constantly moving the water, allowing it to keep aerated and purified.

The creation of lakes (and I guess ponds if you've got a smaller patch like we do) bring lots of benefits. The film highlights how wildlife and plant life thrive after these water systems are introduced. It also talks about how the groundwater system is affected. Much of the winter rains are now retained on site. The improved groundwater situation means that you've got a more constant soil water supply throughout the year rather than the extreme dry of summer and wet of winter. On the site the film is set at, a new spring emerged from below the main lake - in an area previously at risk of desertification. Fantastic!

Lotions and Potions Trial Batch

2011-11-29T04:22:00.000-08:00

Well I've been away from the blog for what feels like ages! But I've been busy beavering away, putting together recipes for my first trial batch of lotions and potions. It's been lots of fun mixing and concocting creams and serums for my merry band of testers and now I've got the whole range made up, I thought I'd take a quick break from it all to show you what I've done.

I've been focusing mainly on products for dry skin (all the ones in the photo above), using rose and alchemilla as my main herbs, combined with a range of rich natural oils and butters to give dry skin a real treat.

But - I couldn't resist it - I've also made a couple of anti-aging products to smooth out those wrinkles and fine lines.

Again, alchemilla is one of my main herbs here, with it's elastin promoting qualities. But I've also been researching other natural age busters and have found lots of plant based alternatives to the ingredients used in commercial creams and serums. These are some of my most fancy products!

I've also got face creams for oily skin and combination skin. But the cream I like the most is my Starflower Face Cream for tired skin.

I made this with work hard play hard types in mind. It's packed full of nutrients and health inducing ingredients that compensate for the impacts of busy, city lifestyles - pollution, smoking and drinking. There are so many fantastic natural ingredients out there, I just couldn't not make a super healthy cream to boost up tired skin. I can't wait to see how my testers get on with this one!

Yarrow for Body, Face and Garden

2011-08-14T02:53:00.000-07:00

I've been harvesting and drying out yarrow flowers this week to use in some of my moisturising creams and thought I'd write up some notes on this wonderful, native plant and on how to prepare it for use. It's great for treating problem skin, is a useful plant for helping your garden to thrive and it makes a very nutritious addition to your diet.

In the garden, yarrow is a stimulant that helps neighbouring plants grow more strongly. Its white flowers are loved by bees, but at the same time, help to repel ants and flies, so it keeps your garden's insect mix more biased towards the friendly ones. It can also give you a lovely lush, green lawn right through the driest of weather if grown in amongst your grass due to its stimulant properties and excellent drought tolerance, giving it green leaves under all conditions.

Once mown or cut down, it is a great plant to add to the compost heap or to make into a liquid plant feed. In particular, it contains useful amounts of calcium, potassium and phosphorus. Potassium for flower and fruit growth and phosphorus for root growth. Calcium is important as it improves the ability of plants to access other nutrients in the soil. On top of this, yarrow also contains copper, nitrogen, iron and sulphur. Very nutritious!

So with all these nutrients, yarrow is also a good one to add into your diet, albeit in small amounts as it's rather bitter. You can add small pieces of the leaves to salads or mix them in with a salad dressing. You could try adding it to an omlette, quiche or as a herbal seasoning in sandwiches perhaps.

Another great property for the accident prone cook or gardener is that it stops bleeding. If you cut yourself, just grab a little yarrow leaf, moisten it and rub it hard between your fingers to release its juices and then press it onto the cut for a few minutes. You should find that the bleeding stops quite dramatically. I feel as though I should have a little disclaimer here saying 'don't try this at home' or some other covering-my- back type statement just in case you happen to pick a leaf covered in agricultural chemicals and they get into your system when you rub it on and then the compensation companies hassle you to pin the blame on me... But I'm sure of course that you'd be sensible with it and would wash it first or will just read this and think 'oh that's interesting' and never try it. It's a pretty nifty trick though, nice to see it working!

But, of course, my main interest right now, and the reason I'm growing so much of it, is for its beneficial effects when applied to the skin. The flowers contain a volatile oil, which has been found to have anti-inflammatory properties in test tube studies. It is also astringent and antiseptic, all of which make it ideal for oily, spot prone skin and for reducing large pores. Its anti-inflammatory properties also make it great for treating eczema type rashes with itchiness and sores.

To prep it up for use (or to dry any herbs for later use) this is what you do:

First wash and rinse the flowers to remove bits of chaff and any little bugs that might be hanging on in there.

Then, after they're air dried, spread them out on a baking tray and place in a pre-warmed oven at around 80 degrees C with the door jammed slightly ajar to let all the moisture escape.

Leave them there until they crumble in your fingers. This means they're ready. It took me about two and a half hours. I'm looking forward to getting that solar drier made up so I don't feel so guilty about all the electricity I'm using for this!

Then seal them up in a nice, air-tight container until you're ready to use them. Make sure to date it so you don't have a jar sitting around for years and years without realising.

Roses are Red, My Skin is Soft

2011-08-11T01:30:00.000-07:00

I've just made my first batch of moisturising cream and thought I'd share some pics with you. I've been making a Rose Cream for dry skin.

The first thing was to measure out all of my oily ingredients - this includes shea butter, along with lovely nourishing and softening plant oils - sweet almond and olive. Also added here are emulsifying agents to bind these oily ingredients with the watery ones coming up next (a bit like the egg in home-made mayonnaise).

Then I made up my herbal infusions - Rose for its softening qualities and its ability to help your skin cells retain moisture and Alchemilla for its soothing and healing properties for dry skin. I mixed these with other water soluble ingredients - including quarternised honey for its amazing moisture-binding abilities and other, practical ingredients (water-based emulsifier, preservative).

Both mixtures need heating up before you add the oily ingredients into the watery ones.

Then you stir it and stir it...

...until it turns into a cream!

Final touches were some vitamin E oil - a powerful antioxidant - to slow down any inadvertent skin aging that might be going on. And the wonderful borage oil, which contains very high doses of the rare fatty acid Gamma Limolenic Acid - a fantastic, health inducing nutrient. It works at a cellular level, helping prevent skin from drying out and helping improve the abilities of the cells to absorb oxygen and withstand disease. These are very nutrient rich and quite heat sensitive oils, so you add them towards the end when the mix is just hand-warm.

And finally, a touch of Rose de Mai essential oil went in for that extra rosey goodness and beautiful scent. This is added last of all, when the cream is pretty much at room temperature, so none of it evaporates off and so it isn't damaged at all by the heat.

And I have to say, I'm dead chuffed with the result. Smells gorgeous, soaks in beautifully and having dry skin myself, I am very happy to be my own first guinea pig!

Cover Crop Legumes

2011-08-06T01:30:00.000-07:00

When you're making a forest garden (or any productive garden for that matter), the success of the system is heavily dependent on how well you maintain soil fertility.

You've got to make up for the fact that you're going to be continually harvesting food (= soil-derived nutrients) from the land. In our case, working on a pretty impoverished piece of land, we're making this a very high priority. So I'm busy getting to know my legumes.

I've written about these a few times before, focusing mainly on white clover. Legumes are great for the soil as they team up with friendly bacteria to fix nitrogen from the atmosphere into the soil. Used as a chop and drop mulch, they're really good at building up organic matter and fertility for your soil.

My next trial will be of five species of legume commonly used as green manures for organic vegetable growing. These are all short-lived plants (mostly one season only), so can easily be replaced when I'm ready for it, by the cosmetic herbs or perennial vegetables that I've ultimately got planned to make up my forest garden understorey.

Over the next year, I'll be trying out crimson clover, agricultural lupins, trefoil, field beans and winter tares. I'll be testing them out in a couple of spots that I've had under a cardboard mulch this year.

Crimson clover is one that that grows through the summer - it can be sown from April until September and then you cut it back in autumn. It's vigorous and fast growing, so I've been sowing this one out this week and am hoping for some growth before I cut it back in the autumn.

The lupins are another one to sow in spring and cut back in autumn. They're deep rooting, so good for breaking and aerating the soil. We'll need a lot of that for any compacted soil we find under that concrete. I imagine these will be quite tall, so I'll need to be careful not to sow them too close to any of the fruit trees, fruit bushes and cosmetic herbs that I've got growing through my cardboard mulch.

Winter tares will last through the cold of the winter, but can be sown from as early as March, right up until September, making them look like they can be used either for summer and/or winter. These are basically a vetch and we've already got lots of that growing locally and on site, so it should do well.

Trefoil will also last through the winter, and will make fairly short plants, so they are going to be good options for sowing in amongst my existing plants and trees. This one gets sown anytime between March and August. Like the tares, we've already got birds foot and lesser trefoil growing on site, so it clearly likes our climate and soil type.

Lastly, field beans. These also grow through the winter (sow from September) and, like the lupins, are deep rooting so should join them in helping to break up any compacted soil. Again, like the lupins, I think these are going to be tall plants, so I'll need to be careful about where I put them.

Growing green manures is fairly new to me - I've tried it a couple of times, but both times when I was too busy to cut it down at the right time, so it grew too big and was then a pain to deal with. I'm hoping it works better for me this time around. Has anyone else had any experience with this? How did it work for you?

Yard Plans

2011-08-02T02:49:00.000-07:00

I say this hesitantly, but here are our final plans for what the yard is going to look like. Inevitably they'll change somewhat, but it'll be something like this:

You might want to click on it so you can read the key in the full size version. I've expanded the main sections below though so you can see a bit more of the detail.

So basically, the house and main courtyard (top left) are drawn in the plan as they are now. There are a few little tweaks planned here, but these are pretty much as they'll remain.

What I've been referring to as 'the yard' is... if you look for the roughly 'r' shaped dark boundary line through and over the vegetable garden (below), everything to the right of the vertical part of this 'r' shape and also everything south (=down) of the house is 'the yard'. The strip to the left of the dark line and bordering the right side of the house is our current back garden, but even this is simply a couple of feet (60cm ish) of top soil laid over the top of concrete. So most of the area to the right and south of the house is covered in concrete. We've a little strip along our east (right hand) boundary, in front of the hedge, that has actual soil on it and then broader strips of soil/rubble all along the southern and south-eastern boundaries.

The vegetable beds (orange) that we currently have are just those in the strip to the left of the vegetable garden, nearest the house, + 3 additional beds in the yard. As you can see from the image above, we'll be creating many more when the concrete comes up and these will be planted with a mix of annual and perennial veg. The ground level for these beds will drop down a couple of steps from the level of the lawn garden (the dark boundary edge is the perimeter of this terracing effect), which will leave us with some lovely south and east facing banks to absorb warmth from the sun and help to create a nice little micro climate for our vegetables.

The main forest garden is the patch immediately south from the vegetable garden. The green spots here in the plan will be fruit trees and bushes, with a few shade loving perennial veg scattered around. The trees will help to shelter the vegetable patch from the wind, which currently rushes up the site from the hills to our south.

I've created a bit of a horseshoe shaped southern edge to this dense area of forest garden to maximise the boundary length. This boundary will be a really good zone for growing plants that prefer a good dose of sunlight, so I'm keen to keep it as long as possible. The area in front of the forest garden (south) is going to make a lovely sheltered spot for having picnics and I've been careful to arrange trees to the south of this spot so they don't block the wonderful view.

The next section - south from the main forest garden, but north of the terraces on our southern edge - is going to be more forest garden, but this time made up of loosely planted fruit trees. The understorey here will by my cosmetic herbs. These will be nice and easily accessible from my office and workshop (yet to be built), from which I'll make my lotions and potions and will manage the business.

On the southern edge of the office/workshop, we're going to build a lean-to greenhouse. In here we'll grow lemon trees, melons, sweet peppers and tomatoes. It'll have a fantastic view of our surrounding hills and our local nature reserve and will make a wonderful venue from which to run courses in making natural beauty products.

Right at the bottom of our site, we're going to create two terraces, which will contain ponds and coppice hazel and will be bordered by a native hedge. The hedge will act as the first line of defense against the wind and then the hazel and scattered trees behind them will help break it up some more before it reaches the denser forest garden behind this. Hopefully by the time it reaches our lawn right at the top of the site, it will be no more than the gentlest little breeze.

We're going to set up a little camp on these terraces, in the same spot as our existing camp fire area and again, I've been careful to arrange trees so that they don't block the lovely view from this point (the exact spot is marked with a little V in a circle to the right of the image above). Sitting with the stepped terrace behind you, this spot will become a really secluded and private area. These terraces will make a great place for volunteers to pitch up tents if we were to have weekend workdays in future.

Becoming a Permaculture Learning Centre

2011-07-30T05:08:00.000-07:00

Earlier this year, I put in an application to the Permaculture Association UK to become a LAND Learning Centre - an official permaculture visitor site - and I've just had some good news back through the post.

LAND Learning Centres are a network of permaculture sites across the UK. The scheme is run by the Permaculture Association, which has funding to support the set up of this network over the course of a few years. Basically the sites act as places where people interested in permaculture can go to find out how this design system works in practice and to meet and talk to people who use it.

The Permaculture Association holds information about all of the LAND Learning Centres on their website so anyone interested can take a look to find out what's going on around the UK and to find nice places to potentially go visit. And then the Permaculture Association also has funding to pay expenses for groups who want to go on a visit - this covers things like food and travel expenses. Visits might involve getting a guided tour of the site and all it's fancy features, or might also include being able to attend an on-site permaculture related course or event.

In the case of our little project, it would be totally brilliant to host or run courses - before being made redundant, that was one of my main areas of work and it's something I really enjoy doing. And with my natural lotions and potions business just starting to get off the ground, it would also be brilliant to include courses related to that - set in amongst all the wonderful wildflowers and herbs that people would be using to make into their own beauty products. I sense some lovely dovetailing potential going on here!

Other benefits of being part of this scheme are that the Permaculture Association's funding helps pay the site owners for the the time they put in while hosting these events. They also offer support in getting your site ready for visitors to come visit.

This support is what we've just been offered and I'm so pleased because it was starting to feel a bit overwhelming trying to make this project happen almost all by myself! So we're going to be assigned a permaculture tutor who will help us polish up our designs and work out an action plan for making it all happen. They're also going to help us set up work days and find ways of luring in willing volunteers, which is completely brilliant and will really start moving things forward. And then once all that is done, we'll have something really worth showing off and can start hosting visits!

So it's fingers crossed we keep on schedule with the barn conversion so we can get that concrete up this autumn and then can get started with the tree planting - that'll be volunteer day number 1! We're cutting it rather fine now though so I need all your fingers crossed too, wood to be touched, wishing wells to be visited... And a bit of a gap in our ever-busy schedule so we can boot the builders in the arse and get this conversion built!

Herbs and Creams

2011-07-28T04:40:00.000-07:00

My quiet blog lately has been the result of me having just taken lots of lovely courses learning about how to make beauty products from natural ingredients.

Having thought long and hard about how to make a living from my gardening exploits, I've decided to take the plunge and have spent the last few months setting up my business plan, doing market research and starting to design my very own range of natural beauty products. Ingredients will of course include a range of cosmetic herbs grown as the understory to our eagerly anticipated forest garden.

Looking around the garden over the last few weeks, I've realised that july is likely to be the beginning of my yearly harvest of cosmetic herbs. This week I've been out collecting lavender and alchemilla (lady's mantle). I'll tell you a bit about what they're good for while it's still fresh in my mind.

Lavender is renowned as having numerous uses for the skin and body as well as around the home. It is antiseptic, antibacterial, antifungal, anti-inflammatory, anticonvulsive and antidepressant. For cosmetic use, it is said to be an excellent beauty product, especially good for dry and normal skin. It's healing properties also make it good for treating acne and eczema. Lavender is very safe to use, so you can easily take advantage of these properties by adding a few drops of the essential oil to any beauty products you already have. Or you can grow lavender and make products from scratch!

And of course, it's also a great plant to have in the garden and attracts loads of insects - while out gathering mine I came across this lovely grasshopper:

And the bees were thronging around so much they couldn't even resist sipping at lavender nectar from the cut flowers in my basket!

Alchemilla is another great herb. Beautiful in the garden with it's lovely frothy, zesty coloured flowers and soft grey-green leaves.

Traditionally it is said to be wonderful for maintaining youthfulness. One of the ways it does this is by acting to protect newly formed elastin fibres in the skin, keeping it smooth and supple. It also soothes, cleanses and heals dry and sensitive skin. So as you might have guessed, I'll be using this lovely herb in creams for dry and mature skin.

The next stage is for me to dry my herbs out so they'll keep over the next year. Then I'll make them up into herbal infusions (basically a herbal tea) and into macerated oils (herbs soaked in natural oils for around 6 weeks before straining and using). These will then be mixed with other lovely, nourishing ingredients like shea butter and honey extracts and will become face creams, body butters and facial cleansers. Can't wait to get the first batches made up!

Concrete

2011-07-05T10:51:00.001-07:00

I thought it was about time I showed you exactly what all this concrete is like that I keep going on about. Most of my posts cunningly avoid shots of it and focus instead on the lovely flourishing corners. But although I can't wait for it to be gone, it's such an integral part of the life of our project, I think it deserves a post all to itself.

It's been really interesting to see how the concrete has evolved over time - classic text book ecological succession is going on here as it gradually changes from blank concrete to the early stages of a woodland habitat.

First we get algae - stuff that looks like seaweed, but is obviously not as we're a long way from the sea.

Then once the algae has been around for a bit, moss and small plants start growing, using the broken down algae as a bit of a soil base. We get grasses and small wildflower plants like clover and plantain building up.

Then after these have become well established, bigger plants - nettles, dead nettles, chamomile, yarrow and a range of other wildflowers come in.

Brambles clamber over the top along with other small shrubs such as elderflower.

And finally we get pioneer trees - silver birch and ash mainly. Our most impressive silver birch is the one below, which is growing out of the side of our barn, fed by a gutter that runs between the two roofs. I'm amazed at how large it's got. It seems a shame that we're going to have to get it removed when we do these barns up! The tree roots into the wall about 5 foot (1.5 metres) above ground, and the ground is is nothing but concrete.

Clover for Chop and Drop Soil Creation

2011-06-28T01:37:00.000-07:00

I’ve been growing white clover as ground cover for a couple of years now in an attempt to cover up some of my horrible gravel.

I’m now experimenting with a technique called ‘chop and drop’ which is starting to build a new soil layer on top of the gravel. I’ve recently been guest blogging over on Suburban Hobby Farmer on just this topic, so you can find out a bit more about it there. However I thought I’d fill in a little extra detail here about what exactly I’m doing and why I’m doing it.

Any of you regular readers will know my lack of actual soil here is a regular moaning topic. In our courtyard garden (a major part of my ‘permaculture zone 1’) we have no contact with the earth at all, the entire garden here being planted over the top of a concrete base. Much of this has been covered with a layer of sand, plastic and then gravel by the previous owners. It’s terrible to keep weed free and I’m sure the previous owners did this by applying liberal amounts of weedkiller, something I’m never going to do.

So in true permaculture style, I’m trying to deal with what I’ve got in a simple way, rather than ripping the whole thing out and starting from scratch. In this instance, this means simply sowing in a decent ground cover to stop weeds taking over and to give me a bit of green rather than all that boring gravel. As I’m now discovering, my choice of ground cover – clover – is also ideal for helping me to create soil.

I use a technique called ‘chop and drop’ that I heard about from watching Geoff Lawton’s films. You basically grow a vigorous plant, preferably a nitrogen fixing one (such as clover or other legumes) or one that is really good at accumulating other plant nutrients (such as comfrey for potassium along with nitrogen, phosphorous and a range of micro nutrients) and then you just chop it down a few times a year, dropping it back right where it’s grown. The plant matter breaks down, adding a nice thick humus layer to your soil (or gravel as in my case).

The technique is based on the processes that go on in a woodland, where yearly leaf fall adds a nice thick humus layer to the soil. Except this is much quicker as you’re chopping it back numerous times each year. My clover is growing so quickly, it gets cut back once every week or two and I’ve been doing this now for about 3 months. Digging down through all the clover stems, I’m already getting something building up down there. Not a thick soil yet of course, but it’s definitely working! Being as I’ve used clover, which is a nitrogen fixer, this new humus should be really nitrogen rich – great for helping the growth of leaves and stems.

So looking elsewhere on our project, this will definitely be a good technique for us to use when it comes to digging up the concrete on our yard.

We don’t know what we’ll find under there soil-wise, but this area will be the main part of our forest garden and so will need a really good soil in order to grow all our fruit trees, perennial vegetables and cosmetic herbs. Any poor soil would definitely benefit from the chop and drop treatment and any soil where a regular harvest is being taken would also benefit from all the nutrients this technique can provide.

Comfrey Tea

2011-06-18T03:41:00.000-07:00

One of the best known uses for comfrey is comfrey tea.

If nothing else, it's worth growing it solely for making into this garden elixir. Comfrey is a deep rooting plant and so draws up loads of trace minerals from deep in the soil where other plants can't reach them. Because of this, it can be made into the mineral rich soil improver that is comfrey tea.

Actually, as a little aside, this is one of the reasons that organic food is so much better than chemically farmed food. All these trace minerals are vital to good health in both plants and people. Conventional fertiliser only contains the bare essentials - nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium (NPK) and so this is pretty much all that gets accumulated in the tissues of most of the food sold in supermarkets. So using mineral supplements on your soil, such as comfrey tea, makes sure you're getting more of those important trace minerals from the food you eat.

Apart from all of these trace minerals, comfrey is especially good at accumulating potassium. This is a nutrient needed in particular by fruiting crops, so comfrey tea is often used on tomatoes, strawberries and beans. It also accumulates nitrogen and phosphorous and weight for weight contains more of these nutrients than farmyard manure.

To make the tea, simply harvest and chop down some comfrey leaves and almost fill a bucket with them.

Cover with water and add a well fitting lid. This last step is very important as it will smell pretty bad by the time it's done!

The best way to do this to avoid contact with the smell is to use a bucket with a tap and then put the comfrey in an old sack to soak it without blocking the tap up. I sadly don't have that kind of equipment here, so have to endure the smell!

You leave it for around 3 weeks and then draw it off for use. Make sure to dilute it - at least 50:50 with water or up to around 1 part comfrey tea to 15 parts water. This can be used either directly to the soil around your plants or as a foliar spray. But stop spraying at least a month before harvest.

Interestingly for me and my mildew problems, the spray is also said to be good for powdery mildew. Might have to give that a go on my gooseberries!

Mange Tout

2011-06-09T00:00:00.000-07:00

Just had to post up some photos of these little beauties.

These are the first mange tout plants I've grown since experimenting some years ago with plants grown on my window sills - back in the days when my outdoor space was little larger than a broom cupboard. They work so much better in the ground!

I've grown them next to some chamomile plants, to help attract beneficial insects such has hover flies, which will help sort out any aphid attacks.

Our soil isn't brilliant, as I've said before, so I've been feeding them with wormery leachate - the liquid out of the bottom of our wormery. I water this down - a couple of cupfuls to a large watering can of water.

We're growing a variety called 'Golden Sweet'. They have pink flowers when first opened..

As they age, they turn blue..

The pods are a lovely golden yellow colour instead of the usual green.

The first few are ready to eat now. Looking forward to my first taste!

Wormery Leachate

2011-06-06T10:39:00.000-07:00

Since getting our wormery a couple of years ago, the best thing we've had from it has actually been the liquid fertiliser - or 'wormery leachate' - that gets produced from all that waste vegetable processing.

The great thing about it is that every day there's a new load built up that comes splashing out of the tap at the bottom. And, of course, it's great for the garden.

For a better quality leachate, you want to try and avoid setting up anaerobic conditions in the bin, so try not to pack down the contents of your bin too much. If you do pack out any areas too densely, you'll soon know because it'll start smelling pretty rank! So keep it all fairly loose in there as much as you can.

Once you've got your liquid, you have to make sure to water it down - I use around a cup to two cups worth to every watering can of water. I've heard about people using a lot more - a ratio of up to 1 part leachate to 1 part water. I wouldn't go any stronger than that!

I use it on my veggies to give them a good nutrient boost. The liquid contains nutrients and beneficial bacteria. Both of these things will help increase your plant's health.

I also use it on the compost heap as a bacterial innoculant - it helps in getting the whole composting process going. In this instance I use it either neat or watered down (depending on whether the heap needs water too or not).

Has anyone else got any other uses for wormery leachate? Has anyone tried its cousin - worm tea? This is meant to be amazing stuff and is made by soaking worm compost in water.

Introducing our New Rainwater Tanks

2011-05-27T04:17:00.000-07:00

Until recently, we had just over 1000 litres (260 US gallons) of rainwater storage space, which just about manages to do the job for all our existing yearly watering needs. But with the drought we had this spring - 2 months of no rain during our normal rainy season - we had very nearly run out by April. So we've bought in some lovely new water butts.

They're pretty hard-core as you can see! These are recycled liquid food containers, or 'intermediate bulk containers' (I.B.C.s), each holding 1100 litres. Being discarded objects from the food industry, lucky people can pick them up free of charge. Less lucky people like us can get them for between £25 and £40 each. An absolute bargain compared to shop-bought water butts!

I'm quite determined to provide all our garden water needs from rainwater. It's so much better for the plants, it's also way cheaper and of course, fresh water is becoming more and more of a precious resource these days. So it's good to look after it. We've gone a bit overboard and now have a massive extra 4400 litres (1144 US gallons) of rainwater storage capacity! Here are photos of the other two - both are now plumbed in to some of our roof space:

Living in a barn as we do, we're lucky to have lots of roof space here, so we've got the potential to use it to collect loads of rainwater.

We can use some of it on the garden and some of it for the building work on our other barns. I'm also interested in investigating whether we could use any of it in the house - either for washing or even - after filtering it - for drinking.

But one thing's for sure - we should certainly never run out of water for the garden again!

Geoff Lawton on Food Forests

2011-05-23T08:27:00.000-07:00

Geoff Lawton has a great way of explaining permaculture principles. I've just found this great little film on youtube and had to share it. Got me thinking up new ideas already for how I manage the growth of my forest garden.

Getting to Grips with Permaculture Zone 1

2011-05-19T08:11:00.000-07:00

One of the key factors to think about when planning a permaculture garden is the way you zone up your space to make it easier to use. You set it up so that you've got a number of zones radiating out from your home, with the elements that make up each zone arranged according to how often you use them. I've been working on our 'zone 1' this week, looking at what we've got where and how the different elements work together. I've found this way of thinking really useful in helping me come up with ideas to make our space work better for us.

So firstly, just to give you a quick overview, in permaculture design, zone 1 is the space closest to home and so contains all the things you use most frequently - vegetable garden, herbs, outdoor eating space and so on. At the other end of the extreme, zone 5 is the outermost zone and is the wilderness zone - space set aside for nature and which you access very rarely. Inbetween are zone 2 (orchard, forest garden - lower maintenance perennials) zone 3 (not always included - farm scale systems - grazing animals, arable fields) and zone 4 (farmed forest for e.g. timber, coppice products and mushrooms).

Here at Oak House, our most productive and developed area so far is our zone 1. Before I tell you about the zone 1 analysis I've been doing, I'll give you a virtual tour!

Firstly, this area contains our flower garden, including edible flowers, such as borage - our young plants are just starting to bulk up now and will give us lovely, blue, tasty flowers to pretty up our salads later in the year. This photo is from last summer:

Borage is also great for bee forage, and so are a lot of our other flowers, such as the lupins in the photo below. In the background against the house in this shot, you can see our grapevines.

and we have other soft fruit in this zone too - black currants, raspberries, strawberries...

And yet to fruit - kiwis:

Zone 1 also contains our vegetable beds, the greenhouse, small composters, rainwater storage and our herbs. We've let some wild edibles self seed in this area too. Below is some hedge garlic ('jack by the hedge').

We've also been happy to welcome in some self seeded rosebay willowherb, who's dead winter stems are great for kindling on the fire, especially when they grow so close to the front door! You can see one of the old stems below with the broken end sticking through all the fresh growth that's come up this year.

But although all these things I've mentioned are certainly zone 1 elements in that they're used frequently, this area could be better designed to make it more user friendly. This is where my little zone 1 analysis has come in handy. I've basically listed out all my zone 1 elements plus their inputs and outputs and have looked to see how easily these input/output needs are being met and where improvements can be made.

For example, we have an outdoor eating area at the front of the house, which is used mainly in summer when we have lots of lovely salads growing in the veggie patch.

But the veggie patch is out on the other side of the house. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to reach over and pick fresh lettuce to stick in your sandwich? Or if you decide you've not got enough tomatoes, to be able to stretch your arm out to pick yourself a few more, still warm from the bush?

In permaculture speak - good permaculture design is all about making sure each element (table) has it's inputs (food) met by the system (our land) and that the work needed for that to happen is minimised (grow salad by table) meaning you have an abundant, almost self maintaining system (in this instance - easy grab food for lunch).

So I've set to work! I've placed my tomato pots against a wall on the edge of the patio, rather than in their usual spot out at the other end of the house.

And then... As you can see in that photo of our table, the patio it's in is surrounded by a big brick planter filled with flowers. What a wasted opportunity I'm now saying to myself! So in a couple of small areas, I've cleared back some of the surface gravel.

How I hate that gravel! So nice to have the excuse to get some of it out (another relic of previous owners).

Then I've cut out the plastic liner and have added some good organic compost. I've transplanted some self seeded Red Orache (mountain spinach). This tastes like spinach and grows quite ornamentally into tall spires, so it won't look out of place amongst all its neighbouring flowers. I've also sown lots of cut and come again lettuce.

Super fresh summer salads, here we come!

And finally, a few other thoughts I've had from thinking in terms of the inputs and outputs relating to our zone 1 elements are:

That I could be growing comfrey near to this patio area as we have lots of fruiting crops here at the front of the house - be good to have easily accessible nutritious mulch material for them.

I'm also considering getting another composter to go in this area as the closest one is out at the back of the house next to the veggie patches.

And I'm thinking about getting more rainwater storage for both sides of the house. After the drought this spring, I've decided that you can never have enough water storage!

Well I've found it very useful to do this element analysis. Has anyone else tried doing anything like this? Have you got any good set ups worked out that save you some work?

Chamomile as a Companion Plant

2011-05-18T11:21:00.000-07:00

Since I originally sowed my first chamomile seed here at Oak House about 3 or 4 years ago, I've had an ever increasing supply of self-seeded plants popping up all over the place. This is great, because they're don't just make lovely tea, they also make good companion plants to all kinds of things.

I grow them in amongst my vegetables. They attract hover flies, which eat aphids, so they're good with anything that gets aphids (greenfly, blackfly, whitefly..). For me, that includes brassicas, tomatoes, beans, roses and lupins.

Some people say chamomile is a good general companion plant with pretty much anything and that it improves their flavour and health.

One particular health benefit quoted about chamomile as far back as Ancient Egyptian times is that it can be used as an anti-fungal treatment. As such, I'm hoping it will do something to cure my gooseberries of their mildew.

As a first step, I've transplanted some of my many young chamomile plants over into the ground around two of my gooseberries. You can see the tiny plant in the photo below tucked into a gap in my comfrey mulch.

I'm not sure whether this will be enough, or whether a chamomile mulch or chamomile tea would be needed for it to take effect. So I'll run a little experiment - I've left two gooseberry bushes with no chamomile at all, I'll leave one of the bushes with just the chamomile plants growing around it and I'll treat the last one with chamomile plants, mulch and tea. And I'll let you know how it goes!

Does anyone else have any experience with this? Do you know of any other uses for chamomile around the garden?

Second Year in Review

2011-05-17T06:52:00.000-07:00

As each year passes, we're learning more and more and are developing better and better ideas about how we want the yard to end up and how we intend to manage it and make it thrive. I found doing a yearly review last year really helpful, so I'm going to make a habit of it.

This year I'm feeling as though there's finally something to see for all the work we've been putting in, although it's still quite a modest little something compared to the amazing garden I carry around in my head! Nevertheless, I'm starting to get a sense that each time spring comes along, there's a little more to see and a little more to feel proud of and excited about.

Useful Plants

This year we've got a better selection of useful plants going on out there. We have plenty of foraging plants, most by accident and a few that I've grown myself (sorrel, for example).

We should also be seeing a great selection of companion plants self seeding themselves around the vegetable patches. These include chamomile, marigolds and nasturtiums.

The chamomile I grow with brassicas to deter white fly and marigold I grow with beans to deter blackfly. These two appear to work very well for me. The nasturtiums are supposedly to distract cabbage white butterflies from my brassicas, but they didn't work very well at this. However they did a great job at providing a dense ground cover and keeping the weeds down and they're very tasty, so I'll definitely be transplanting any seedlings that come up to go with my brassicas again.

Vegetable Growing

Last year I continued my no-dig methods in an attempt to build up soil quality. I have been starting from a very low level of soil life. Some of the beds were treated with chemicals by the previous owners and some of the beds are made from imported inert top soil. Not ideal any of it! Last year we had a much better year for the size of our crops. I'm really hoping this has been helped by my not digging the soil around, killing off soil micro-organisms as I go and depleting the soil quality as a result.

One issue I've had with the no-dig method is weeds. I used to just dig them all out in the spring and then re-dig if I needed to later in the year and dig again in the autumn. Now I hand pull them all gently and last year spent a LOT of time on weeding. In an effort to cut this time down, I have used three main tactics:

1. I've installed permanent paths, using heavy duty black sheeting laid over the top with wood chips and/or pavers.

2. I've used companion plants to act as a weed suppressant - nasturtiums around my brassicas.

3. I mulched my parsnip and celeriac bed with straw, Emilia Hazelip style. This worked wonders! Only a handful of weeds broke though all year! But the parsnips and celeriac did look a little slug eaten, which I don't mind too much, but it's not ideal. Not sure what to do about that. But I'll definitely be using this technique again this year and on as many beds as it makes sense for.

I also experimented with a few new vegetables. I grew a good selection of winter vegetables, including winter radishes, radicchio and mustard greens. Unfortunately, I found all of these a bit disappointing. Last autumn was very busy, so I was late getting the winter radishes and mustard greens into the ground and so had a pretty rubbish crop of both. The radicchio wasn't really to my liking. Bit bitter. Grew really well though under fleece through the winter and added to my winter salads.

Lastly, I've planted out my fertility patch and it is now thriving and is giving its first harvests this year. Comfrey has worked wonders for my tomatoes in the past but now I've got so much of it, I'm hoping to use it in lots of different ways. I'd like to experiment more with using it as a mulch around my plants. I'd like to make some comfrey tea, which is said to be very good for fruiting plants and I'll be adding it to my compost bins as it is meant to be very good as a compost activator.

Land Reclamation

We had a lot of success last year in reclaiming areas of the yard that are thick with nasty weeds like nettles and brambles. We used two techniques back last spring - laying down black sheeting and laying down cardboard, covered with soil, covered with straw. The black sheet patch worked fantastically at clearing weeds and is now a medicinal herb garden/soft fruit garden. The cardboard patch is now our fertility patch and has lots of comfrey plants on it. Some nettles have survived, but at a very manageable level. We are doing a lot more land reclamation this year on the vast nettle patches around the edges of the yard.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the barn conversion will happen as planned over this summer and autumn, meaning that we no longer need any hard-standing and so can get the concrete up over this winter. Frustration levels are rising at still having most of our site buried under concrete.

Forest Garden

At last, I feel as though I can say I've started planting out our forest garden. I should emphasize that I've only started doing this in very small areas compared to the size it will eventually be (hence the frustration at all that concrete). But we have our first fruit trees, fruit bushes and herbs planted out on the yard.

I'm also growing some perennial vegetables from seed, which will join them later in the year. I hope to write up a number of posts about how this is going over the next year.

Barn Conversion

The plans are being finalised and we've tweaked our original ideas somewhat into an even better plan.

Just to recap - we have two semi derelict brick barns, standing back to back, so forming a roughly square shaped floor plan with the south face (to left of photo below) looking out over our lovely view.

We're definitely going ahead with a grass roof, but the floor plan is now to be L shaped instead of roughly square. This is to be achieved by knocking out one corner of the barn block (to the right in the photo) and then extending out from one of the resulting legs if you see what I mean. The new open space on the inside of the L will be walled off on the two open sides to form a walled courtyard in which we can grow meditarranean herbs - it'll be the most sheltered spot on our site and should really benefit from having a south facing wall and lots of brickwork all around. The south facing wall is actually the wall to our bedroom (pitched roof wall in right of photo), so the ultimate plan is to put patio doors into our bedroom and to make this a private, outdoor bedroom extension. Just imagine the lovely smell drifting through from all those herbs.. Bliss!

The barns themselves are still to be turned into workshop space, bike shed space, office space and a lovely big greenhouse. Because we're using a grass roof, we'll have a really low pitch roof, which means we can raise the wall height without raising the roof height and so will have higher walls without upsetting the neighbours. This means the greenhouse can be really high. This is very good news! I'm thinking pigmy bananas (do they exist?), avocado trees.. what else? Lots of exciting potential.. must get down to some research on that..

But [sigh] progress is being really slow. I'm not holding my breath on this one happening on schedule (i.e. this autumn for barn, greenhouse the following year or so). Keep your fingers crossed for me!

Cooking Outdoors

2011-05-12T05:32:00.000-07:00

We've been having a bit of fun since we cut down those nettles and have used the extra space to create a little camp out on the yard.

We dragged out an old railway sleeper from under the nettles last year and have now put it to good use as a bench. In front of that we've erected a nice little tripod from which we can hang our cooking pot or a kettle for some tea.

We've coppiced some old shrubs out on the yard a couple of years ago and this is making great firewood. We've also been growing the wild plant Rosebay Willowherb, which is great for kindling if you let its stems stand and dry out once the flowers and leaves have died back.

We had our first meal there a few nights ago and it was delicious! It's definitely about as far as you can get from haute cuisine, but there's something extra tasty about food you've cooked outside. Yum!

Chamomile Tea

2011-05-11T09:12:00.000-07:00

I just picked my first chamomile flowers of the year, which I'll be drying in order to use as a herbal tea.

It's best to pick them first thing in the morning, just after the flowers have opened. I tend to pick all that are open over the course of a few days to make sure I'm getting lovely fresh flowers - they taste better if you do it this way. For the amount I drink - no more than one cup a day on average - a few of these three day picking sessions are enough to see me through the winter until they start flowering again.

I was interested to see that the plants growing out in windier parts of our site are flowering sooner than those in more sheltered spots - the photos below show you the contrast. Or perhaps it's that the early flowering plants get the morning sun a little sooner than those that aren't flowering yet.

To process the flowers, first I put them in a colander and dip it in a bowl of cold water to let any chaff or insects float off. I give it a couple of rinses like this. I then let them air dry a little by laying them out on some paper, while I collect up more flowers over the course of a few days.

Once I've got a good sized batch, I dry them more thoroughly so they'll store without going mouldy. I do this by putting them on a baking tray at the bottom of the oven right after I've switched it off from cooking something else. I leave the door open a crack to let all that moisture escape. Otherwise, I'd heat the oven to 200 degrees C (392 degrees F) and would then turn it off and put the chamomile in. You leave them in until they crumble when you press them - this can take 4 hours or more.

And then I store it in an airtight jar to use throughout the following year. So long as you've thoroughly dried the flowers (so they crumble rather than squash), they keep really well. I'm still using mine from 10 months ago, but as you can see from the photo above, they've nearly all gone now, so I'm really pleased to be harvesting more!

May Jobs in the Garden

2011-05-06T04:24:00.000-07:00

This month is going to be mainly about weed control. The sowing and planting calendar is relatively quiet, a lot of it having already happened, so I'll be getting on top of the weeds and have to admit that I've done precious little weeding so far this year (save for our massive nettle massacre and heavy duty mulching to control our wilderness areas).

Other than that, I will be sowing more lettuces, basil and some sweetcorn.

I'm also experimenting with melons this year, having taken note about how melons are grown in proper melon houses that we saw on a visit to the Lost Gardens of Heligan last year. We're trying a supposedly hardy variety called the Minnesota Midget - a small fruiting, but very tasty melon. I'll keep you updated on how this one goes.

I will also be planting out my celeriac (above), more tomatoes and my chilli peppers.

I only do chilli peppers once every few years and then dry them and they last for ages. This year we're trying a variety called 'Nigel's Outdoor Chillis' (above). We'll be growing some in the greenhouse and will be trying some outside. Be interesting to see how well they do.

Nettle Massacre at Oak House

2011-05-05T03:35:00.000-07:00

Oh yes, their time has finally come! Cardboard mulch can only go so far in keeping these nettles down, so it's time to bring on the big boys' toys!

First weapon of choice - the Dashel Basher. It might look like a very badly designed golf club, but this cunning disguise hides a swift and effective nettle destroyer.

Its one handed action means those nettles come down almost nonchalantly, with a deadly cool flick of your wrist. And once you've given it a go, you'll quickly find that it's totally addictive! Being by far the best slasher I've ever used on nettles, you just can't stop yourself trying it out on another patch and another and another. It's light weight, fast and surprisingly blunt, so there's not too much risk of causing yourself an injury as you skip gleefully around flattening nettle patches left, right and centre. Within half an hour, we'd cut down enough nettles to almost fill our new compost bin.

And then the next new toy arrived in the post. Oh my goodness, this one ramps it up to a whole new level beyond our wildest nettle-destroying dreams. I kid you not, when this one was finished we had lawn - I'm going to say it again I'm so deliriously chuffed - L A W N !

Ok, so next time it rains I'm sure the nettles will be back, but then we just run over it with our lovely little.. big, hefty, heavy weight, off road tyres, beast of a new lawn mower and it'll be back to lawn again.

So the plan is to keep it up - keep cutting back the nettles with our new toys and then gradually gradually, with no leaves to sustain them, the nettle roots will give up the fight and we'll have lovely cleared patches of ground ready to plant out with more bits of forest garden.

Compost Bins - Maye Bruce Style

2011-05-04T02:52:00.000-07:00

Well it's been a lovely lot of long weekends - three four-day weekends on the trot! So while blogging has been quiet, lots has been going on. Lots to tell you all about, so keep checking back over the next couple of weeks and I'll try and get it all up.

So first up and rather excitingly, we've built a lovely new compost bin out on the yard. I blogged some time ago about Maye Bruce's quick return compost method and when it came to making my bin, it was her I turned to for the design.

Her pioneering compost method is legendary, so when I discovered a box of books containing a first edition of her 1946 book 'Common Sense Compost Making' in a local auction, I snapped it up! Many other fabulous books were to be found later in that £10 box of books (and the six other boxes that unexpectedly came with it!), but that's another story..

So Maye Bruce's compost bin design and method is as follows:

1. Build your four sides, leaving the bottom open to the soil.

She recommends using wood as preference, but brick with small gaps for aeration, turf walls with grass downward, straw bales or even open sides (making sure they are straight up and firm) are also suggested. You just need to bear in min that you're trying to keep the heap warm. We've used some old pallets with the gaps filled in with bits of wood we'd saved for a rainy day.

She recommends you size it up so that it can be filled in two months - 'the quicker the better'. If your bin turns out to be too big for this, she suggests subdividing it with pieces of board. She recommends the following sizes as a guide:

Small garden - 18 inches x 18 inches x 2ft high (45cm x 45cm x 60cm high)

Medium garden - 3ft x 4ft x 3ft high (90cm x 120cm x 90 cm high)

Large garden - 6ft x 6ft x 3ft high (180cm x 180cm x 90cm high)

Quite short then!

2. Prepare your foundation, aiming for good drainage under the heap.

You need light, well drained ground under the bin so all the moisture can drain away instead of saturating the compost, cutting off that all important air supply. We have heavy, clay soil here so we put a layer of gravel in the bottom of our bin to improve drainage. Miss Bruce recommends 6 inches depth of gravel (15cm).

3. Add a few handfuls of charcoal - optional extra stage, to 'absorb unpleasant gases'.

Miss Bruce advises that you can make your own charcoal by building a small bonfire with e.g. old pea sticks and when it's red hot pour water over it to turn it to charcoal.

4. Build your heap

Miss Bruce recommends adding all weeds, even the nasty perennial ones and seeding ones. I'm a bit reluctant to give that a go, I have to say, having had some disasterous weed-inducing compost in the past. But she says to add the nasty weeds to the middle of the heap so the heat 'destroys their power of germination'.

She advises building up in layers four inches thick (about 10cm), alternating layers of green stuff with brown stuff. She also says to add a scattering of soil and a dusting of lime (or wood ash would do) every foot.

Make sure to keep the heap flat and level on the top. You can pat it down with a spade or even tread lightly on it to level it off, as demonstrated by the lovely gentleman below:

Lay some sacking directly on top (I use cardboard, some use carpet), to keep the heat and moisture in. Cover the bin with a water proof roof to keep the rain out.

5. Finish your heap

When your heap is full and firm, Miss Bruce recommends covering it with about 4 inches of soil (10cm) and then letting it settle for a few days before treating it with her special activator. This method makes compost in 4-6 weeks in spring, 6-8 weeks in summer and 8-12 weeks in autumn. Very nice!

I've blogged on her activator before and will be again this year now I've finally got a lovely big bin to try it out on.

I'd love to hear what you all think about this method or any other tips you might have for successful compost bin design and composting. My compost making here at Oak House has been rather haphazard. But - slapped wrist - I've not been following Maye Bruce's method since that first experiment, so I'm hoping things will improve now I've got back to it!

Winning with Beans

2011-04-27T03:52:00.000-07:00

I've had real difficulty in the past in germinating my beans. Last year though I came across a new technique to try recommended by the lovely Terry Walton on his 'Tales from Terry's Allotment' podcast. It worked a treat, so I'm using it again this year.

It's very simple - just gather up your beans into a plastic bag, along with some moist compost. Seal up the bag and store it in a warm dark place. I've put mine on top of my gas boiler in the airing cupboard.

The beans germinate really well like this and once they're sprouting, just stick them in a pot. This way you're guaranteed that every pot is a winner!

The Comfrey and Strawberry Experiment

2011-04-24T02:58:00.000-07:00

Following on from a previous seemingly successful experiment with my tomatoes, I have set up a new experiment in my strawberry bed, using comfrey as a nutritious mulch.

The comfrey plants I put in last year are now romping away and looking ready for their first hair cut. Perfect contenders to help me out in improving my strawberry soil and to help give me that bumper fruit crop I'm hankering after.

A quick once over with the slasher and I've cut down a good amount of leaf while still leaving enough on the plant to help it keep its strength up - first cut and all that, don't want to shock it too much.

Then to help them break down into the soil I gave them a good clipping with the shears. The smell through all this cutting was wonderful - the scent of lovely fresh leafy goodness. Specifically, it's the lovely, fresh potassium goodness that I'm after, which is of course the nutrient fruiting crops need lots of and is the nutrient comfrey is particularly good at accumulating in its leaves.

To see how well it works when used as a mulch, I've covered half the strawberry bed with comfrey (right side in photo above) and have left the other half without (left side in photo above). Seems a bit of a shame, I know, not to go for the whole thing and get potentially twice as many big strawberries, but I just have to keep reassuring myself its for the greater good. If it works, this test bed will let me know and then there will be many joyous years ahead in big strawberry heaven.

Just for good measure, I covered the whole lot up with straw so it keeps the moisture in and the weeds out. And now I sit back and wait.

April Jobs in the Garden

2011-04-21T03:27:00.000-07:00

There's a lot going on in the garden this year, so I need to be extra organised to make sure I get it all done!

Here's my garden plan for April:

Vegetable Garden

This month I'll be sowing french beans in the greenhouse - a variety called 'Cherokee Trail of Tears', which has a bit of a back story I'd better let you in on. It was saved by the Cherokee people in North America when they were driven from their lands by the government back in 1838. Their forced march was known as the Trail of Tears and this prolific bean has since been passed on through the generations. I get my seeds from the wonderful Real Seed Company's heritage seed collection.

Also in the greenhouse, I'll be sowing basil and cilantro along with my cucumber and achocha plants. Achocha, if you've not heard of it, is a climbing cucurbit (i.e. related to cucumbers) with small, softly spiked fruits that taste and are prepared just like green peppers - raw in salads or slice and stir fry. But they're much easier to grow in the UK climate. I did a small test run last year of a variety called 'Fat Baby' and they were rather tasty!

Outside I will be sowing kale, purple sprouting and my second batch of lettuce. I will be planting out my first batch of lettuce along with my tomatoes.

I'm rather excited about the tomatoes this year as I've found a very unusual one with tiny pear shaped tomatoes that come on MASSIVE trusses. And from the pictures up on the Real Seed Catalogue pages, I mean MASSIVE!! It's called a cluster pear tomato and I'm hoping to be impressed. I'm also planting beefsteak and just regular medium sized salad tomatoes.

Forest Garden

I'll be planting out my red currants, some raspberries and a witch hazel. Under the red currants/ raspberries I'm going to plant some sweet violet to be used for the edible leaves and flowers.

Under the witch hazel, I'm going to plant out the strawberry plants I potted up from runners last autumn.

Fruitful Spring

2011-04-09T10:16:00.000-07:00

Spring has definitely sprung in the yard. Such a lovely time of year and especially exciting this year as I've been planting more fruit out over winter and giving existing fruit trees a bit of a prune back to help them keep their strength up.

The old damson trees (above) along our boundary are looking great after a good prune over winter. These are making such a beautiful backdrop right now to our first little area of forest garden.

The raspberry canes are also starting to produce little flower buds now. Those in the photo above are our summer raspberries, but we've also got hold of some autumn fruiting plants too. So long as I get round to planting these out, the two different types should give us a good spread of raspberries this year.

Some new fruit bushes that went out on the yard this winter include four lovely gooseberries, of which one is pictured flowering above. Such sweet little flowers when you look up close! We've also planted out three black currants (black currant cordial, mmm) and I have a number of red currants in pots that I'm hoping to get in the ground too.

It's been a good year for potting on strawberry runners. It's so worth the effort of doing this each year to increase your yield - home-grown strawberries picked and eaten while still warm from growing out in the sun really can't be beaten! I've got a few plants in the greenhouse for an early crop of the beauties and the rest are to form a delicious ground cover to go under some of my trees and bushes on the yard.

And finally, our new fruit trees are looking great. Mostly. One of the pear trees is flowering magnificently (photo above). The other is putting out some lovely leaves but doesn't seem quite up to flowers yet bless it - and this is despite being in a more sheltered spot! Perhaps it's got too used to the cozy lazy feel if its corner and is going through the molly coddled teenager phase where it can't quite muster up the energy get on with the serious business of working for its living! The plum, RIP, is looking very sad and I've not had it in me yet to dig it up. Cows. Ba****ds. The apple is looking very happy to be out of its little pot at last and is leafing up merrily.

Hooray for spring! I look forward to a lovely, fruitful year!

Spring Greens from the Foraging Garden

2011-04-06T06:55:00.001-07:00

Spring is one of my favourite times of year, but when it comes to food from the garden, it can be one of those times when you're just waiting around with nothing much to harvest. This year I've been taking inspiration from Richard Mabey and his classic book 'Food For Free'. I've been looking towards the wild plants I have around the garden in order to start experimenting with them to help me fill the spring hungry gap.

Hedge garlic (also known as garlic mustard and jack by the hedge, pictured above) is an annual that self seeds readily. The leaves taste of garlic and it's very tasty in soups and casseroles or you can cut it finely and add it to salads for a garlicky kick. My favourite meal with this plant was a rabbit casserole cooked in a hunters oven all afternoon. Bit time consuming to prepare, but utterly gorgeous!

The common dandelion is related to the lettuce plant, but although I've known this for ages, this year is the first time I've actually been brave enough to try it - I can't help but remember the awful bitter taste of the flower stem sap on my fingers from when I was a kid and used to pick them on the way to school. The earliest, youngest leaves are best and will add a bitter edge to your salads - think of it a bit like a rocket - good to mix in with milder tasting leaves or vegetables.

Common sorrel (above) is a lovely perennial wild green with a lemon zesty flavour. This one is a long-term favourite for me when cooking out and about on walks or when I'm camping. You can usually find some along your way and it's good in so many different dishes. Try it in omlettes, flans and cut finely into green salads, potato salads, cous cous meals or anywhere else you fancy a lemony flavour. Can make a good home grown substitute for lemon juice in lots of meals.

Be careful though when identifying sorrel. It basically looks just like a dock plant but with arrow shaped leaves - note the little kick backs at the base of the leaves. Do not pick 'Lords and Ladies' (Arum maculatum) by mistake! These are poisonous and will give you a burning sensation on the tongue. Their leaves are smoother than sorrel and darker, but are also arrow shaped and are of a similar size, so it can be confusing. If in doubt it would be best to wait and see what the plant does later in the year - Lords and Ladies are a short lily and follow up their white flowers with spikes of red berries; sorrel flowers just like a dock plant - tall spires with decreasing leaf size running up the stem and little sprays of tiny red flowers and seeds.

A great salad base crop at this time of year (April) is hawthorn. The young fresh green leaves have a lovely mild taste and so long as you've got the patience to pick enough, are really tasty in green salads or sandwiches.

Likewise chickweed (above) is a pretty mild tasting plant, so makes a good mixer to go in your green salads.

And finally - I've never eaten it, but how could I leave it out (I've got so much of it!) - the nettle is said to be great in soups or cooked like spinach. Need I mention that you shouldn't eat it raw? Although it was a favourite endurance game among the kids in my village to see who could bear to eat one fresh off the plant. The trick was to roll a leaf up quickly into a ball and somehow the crushing that went on got rid of the stings. I won't be trying that particular method any time soon!

Hideouts for our Insect Helpers

2011-04-04T04:16:00.000-07:00

We've had loads of ladybirds in the garden already this spring and I'm hoping it's at least partly due to my having left standing all our dead hollow-stemmed plants to act as potential hibernation sites. I've left up things like fennel, dill and other umbells and apart from being great for hibernating insects, they also look pretty attractive through the winter months.

I figured any extra help I can give would certainly be worth it, especially as I aspire to create a garden that is buzzing with life, full of beneficial insects and so is well able to keep any pest outbreaks in balance. So I've also created a little bug hotel.

This is made out of cleared umbel and allium stems, which I've cut down to size - in this instance about the length of a brick (as that is making up the sides of their little shelter). I then bunched them up and tied them securely with string to prevent them moving around as the bugs climb in.

I placed my bundles between bricks and then I've given them a roof to keep them dry. I've used some old roof tiles we had lying around, but anything water proof would do - some wood, slate or even icecream tub lids if nothing else is to hand.

I've positioned it according to advice from the RSPB - west facing and around a metre above the ground (north facing would also be fine). This is an ideal orientation for ladybirds and I want as many of those as I can get so they'll eat all my nasty aphids.

Solitary bees will hibernate in similar constructions and of course they're great to have around for any fruiting crops you might have as they're fantastic pollinators. But they're definitely sun lovers and so prefer a bug hotel with a different orientation - facing south east to south west and in full sun. They also don't like a through draft, so make sure one end of the hollow stems are set against some kind of backing surface. It's best to get these up for when the bees first emerge in early March, so unfortunately I'm a bit late now. A project for next spring!

Reclaiming lost ground

2011-03-30T03:35:00.000-07:00

Last year's mulching experiments around the wild edges of our yard were a big success, so I've been reclaiming quite a bit more nettle and bramble covered ground this year using the same techniques. Some areas I'm planting into and other space is going to rest it out under cover until next year.

The most exciting area is a patch I call 'Damson Corner' on account of its numerous damson trees. I've laid on lots of cardboard with inert top soil laid on top of that. Through these layers, I've planted two goosberry bushes, three black currants, plus lots of wildflower plants - my first range of cosmetic/medicinal herb plants. There were already a number of damson trees, an elderflower, a pear and a plum tree here, so this is now making up my first little area of forest garden.

So for my technique - the bushes all got planted straight into the ground and then were carefully covered with cardboard and soil, making sure to overlap the cardboard by at least 20cm each time to prevent weeds breaking through the joins. Then the wildflower plants were planted on top of the cardboard:

First I marked out the divisions between areas of different plants using a little scattered compost.

Then I gathered together my equipment - knife, bag of compost, plug plants.

Then I laid out my plug plants so that I had them relatively equally dispersed and at the correct spacings.

Then for each plant, I cleared back the soil, cut a little slit in the cardboard underneath..

..then heaped on the compost so that I could plant the plant on top of the cardboard and covering the little slit so that the roots could get through to the soil below.

et voila!

Once the plants are up to size, I'll mulch around them with straw to make sure I don't get any weeds taking over.

This project follows on from some very successful experiments last year, when we used two different mulching methods and both to areas of ground completely covered in nettles and brambles. Firstly, for a patch that we had no intention of planting out straight away, we laid on black fabric mulching sheets - the kind you buy on large rolls from the garden centre. We just laid these on top of the young spring weeds, weighed them down using big stones and left it from spring last year through until early spring this year. The results can be seen below - lovely clear soil! Amazing considering what was there last year.

The second patch got covered with cardboard, soil and straw using the same methods I've outlined above. This year, the cardboard has broken right down into the soil and most of the straw has too.

Very few nettles have broken through and for those that have, we've now applied another thick layer of straw to try and hold them back. The comfrey plants are coming through good and strong and should be ready for their first harvest later this year.

Orange Firelighters

2011-03-30T03:11:00.001-07:00

I've always hated having to throw out orange peel, but it's no good for the wormery as it's too acidic, so I've needed to find some other way of recycling it. Turns out it's great as a firelighter. And the process of making it ready as a firelighter is lovely too. All you have to do is place it on top of your stove and then light the fire..

This is the best bit - the smell as it dries out is fantastic! Once it's dry, put it in a handy container and keep until the next time you light a fire.

Then just lay it out with your usual bits of kindling, scrunched up newspaper or whatever you use - but you'll need less paper than usual and certainly no commercial firelighters. It burns very well and just a few pieces will give you some lovely bright flames for a while which will help ignite your wood.

Valuing the Marginal

2011-02-23T08:33:00.000-08:00

I've just been reading up on my permaculture principles and one of them is striking a chord with me right now. Actually, I've always liked this one, but I think it applies very nicely to my situation right now. It's principle 11 - Use Edges and Value the Marginal.

On David Holmgren's website, this is described by saying:

Well I'm at the interface between employment and.. something else. My redundancy letter just came through and after a few weeks worth of redundancy-is-on-the-cards meetings (and a year trying to work out how to leave work and what to do next), I'm looking forward with nervous and excited anticipation. There are lots of things potentially bubbling up, and this time in my life - this moment in the margins, so to speak - feels ripe with opportunity.

If only I could keep this positive attitude through the whole of this process!

Getting in touch with our Elders

2011-02-04T03:39:00.000-08:00

Do you ever find yourself feeling amazed by the wonder of a particular plant? Or is it just that I'm a bit of a plant geek?

I've been reading up on the medicinal uses of various different native plants, with a view to planting them out in the forest garden to be used for skin care products. I heard that elderflowers can be used in cleansing lotions for dry skin. We have quite a few elder trees already, so I looked it up to see if others agree about this use for it and to find out more about other uses.

Wow, elder can be used for just about everything! And every part seems useful in some way. I'll give you a bit of a breakdown, so you get the idea. All of the following is quoted from Tess Darwin's 'Scots Herbal':

Flowers:

Wounds, burns, chilblains and other skin problems, scarlet fever, measles and other diseases that cause rashes and spots, pleurisy, constipation, colds, sore throat, flu, inflamed eyes, pain, headache and piles.

Berries:

Rheumatism, syphilis, consipation, colic, diarrhoea, epilepsy and piles

Wine:

catarrh, flu, asthma, coughs, colds, fever and sciatica

Bark and root:

dropsy, epilepsy, asthma and croup

Leaves:

Bruises, sprains, chilblains, wounds, dropsy, inflamed eyes, blocked nose and nervous headache.

The leaves can also be used as an insect repellant for yourself or for your plants. All parts can be used as plant dyes - the berries make blue and violet dyes, the leaves make yellow and green and the bark grey.

The stems can easily be hollowed out by pushing out the pith and the wood is fairly hard and close grained, so you can use it for... traditionally it's been used for pipes, musical instruments, blowing air into a fire and as a children's pop gun.

I've been trying to make a whistle:

It kind of blows me away that a plant can have so many uses. And such a common plant too - it grows like a weed around here. I'm frequently having to uproot new saplings that have sprouted up in completely unsuitable spots. So it makes me wonder... How have plants ended up being so good for us? Is it co-evolution? Was elder always a part of our world? It certainly seems to have been very well known for these uses since some of the earliest herbals were written down at least. And how is it that we've lost this knowledge? Such a shame!

Of course it's obvious why we've lost this knowledge. Medicine is bought in now. We don't tend to trust our own judgement of our health needs. We either put up with being ill or go to a doctor for him/her to prescribe medicine. Well I rather like the idea of making up my own remedies from the plants I have to hand. Starting with our elders. Actually, come to think of it, I've already started!

What are your favourite home remedies? And how about your favourite medicinal plants?

The Garden Emerging

2011-01-23T08:58:00.000-08:00

I've been quite quiet on the old blog front this year, after having planned to really get stuck in to it and post up more regularly on what we're up to.

It's been a year for formulating plans and ideas for what the yard is to end up being and how we're going to make it productive. I guess, reading through my notes on forest gardening, I've been working through the 'garden purpose' section quite heavily and wondering how best to use the yard to make a bit of money back. How can I get productive and yet still create a beautiful, natural, wildlife abundant system? When I get to pondering and perusing plans, I don't tend to want to share them until I'm pretty sure I'm on the way to something that could work. So... hesitantly, this is what I've come up with:

I'm going to grow herbs. These will be planted amongst fruit trees and bushes, along with the occasional medicinal shrubbery and wildlife luring plantings. So I'm thinking herbal teas, hand made face and body creams, scrubs, soaps and all things pamper related, balms, bees and fresh fruit smoothies for the workers! Maybe even a wood fired sauna and hot tub, with earth oven pizzas to finish off a hard day's work, all tucked in amongst lush herbal plantings and a beautiful view.

But all that fancy sauna and pizza stuff is a little down the line just yet, sadly! First there's a lot of planting to do and lots of experimenting with cream recipes, solar dryers to build... Ooh, this is going to be lots of fun!

So I've selected a starter list of herbs that I will use in my creams and am sourcing vegetable oils to try and get them from as close to home as possible and preferably lovely organic ones. Ultimately bees will be needed for beeswax, but I shall buy the wax in for now. I'm setting up nursery beds for relatively small areas of herbs to be grown and I'll use these for my first batches of creams, lotions and potions and will see how they do.

I'm still slightly unsure about the whole thing, but kind of excited at the same time as I just love mixing creams and making recipes and pamper goodies. But having never run my own business, it's a bit daunting! I also know I have a tendency to bite off more than I can chew... but sometimes you just have to go with things. So I am. Wish me luck!

Planning the Forest Garden

2011-01-22T08:12:00.000-08:00

One of the main things I want to experiment with in our yard is the creation of a forest garden - for me, the ultimate permaculture garden. I've been spending the winter reading up on this and what follows are my notes on how to go about planning a forest garden.

Firstly, what is a forest garden? A forest garden is a productive garden formed around the principles of a woodland habitat. It includes edible or otherwise useful trees, shrubs, herbs, ground cover and climbing plants - all the layers found in a mature woodland. By mimicking nature at the end point of succession in this way, a very stable environment is created. This means that compared to growing food or products conventionally, a forest garden is very low maintenance and is also potentially very beautiful and great for wildlife. That's my kind of garden!

When it comes to planning out a forest garden, it’s important to work out a number of details before getting started. The following is what I'm working through at the moment.

Baseline conditions

Plants going in to this kind of garden need to match the site conditions well to keep it low maintenance. Look at elements such as climate and microclimate, soil type and water availability (actual and potential for extra).

Garden purpose

Is it to provide food or other produce for a single household or to be shared with friends or sold at market? Is it to be a mainly productive or mainly attractive garden? Is there a key crop that the rest of the garden must support or is the garden to be producing small amounts of a wide range of crops?

Choosing plants

Before you get planting, it’s worth selecting at least a few key species to start the garden off, including plants from each storey (tree, shrub, herb, ground cover and optionally climbing and root crops). To help in this task, I'm using a fantastic database of useful plants called Plants for the Future, which is available online. And of course, keep in mind the baseline conditions when choosing plants so that they'll thrive with minimal work from you.

Building in resilience

Plan out how the newly created ecosystem will keep pests in check and maintain water levels and soil fertility.

All my experiments with various organic techniques for keeping pests at bay will feed into this - for example keeping a diverse range of species and growing plants to attract beneficial insects or scare off pests.
If water is scarce, ponds or ditches can be designed in to maximise rainwater capture; keeping high levels of organic materials in the soil can help keep moisture where it is needed (i.e. from leaf fall or add home grown organic mulch).
Areas of fertility crops, such as alfalfa and comfrey can be planted out and later harvested as a nutritious mulch to be placed on the soil around cropping plants. Below is a photo of one of my young comfrey plants in my newly planted fertility patch, back last summer. This coming summer, I should be able to start cutting these plants back to use on the vegetable garden.

Spatial planning

When it finally comes to putting pen to paper and drawing up a garden plan, the following factors should be considered:

Access to crops.
The possible need to create sunny spots as well as shady spots.
The baseline conditions on site (water, soil and microclimates).
Use of companion planting to make the most of beneficial plant relationships.

Winter Vegetables

2010-10-04T07:11:00.000-07:00

This year I'm making a bit more of an effort than usual in growing vegetables for the winter. I've got my usual leeks and parsnips in and have even got some purple sprouting, kale and celeriac (see photo below) in the garden. But I've also been trying out some other slightly more unusual winter vegetables.

First up I'm trying out lots of different types of winter lettuce and salad greens. Outside I've got two types of chicory growing (radicchio and sugar loaf - see photo below), which I'll give a little protection to before the first frosts come, but which hopefully will give me some interesting salad additions. I'm also about to sow out some lamb's lettuce (corn salad) and winter butterhead lettuce ('winter marvel'). This will also need protecting, so I'll be getting the fleece out.

In the greenhouse, I'm growing more winter salad greens, plus coriander. I've got three varieties of oriental greens - komatsuna, mizuna and santoh (pak choi). All of these came from the wonderful Real Seed Catalogue, who also give lots of advice on other things you can grow over winter. I grew mizuna and a couple of other lettuce varieties in the greenhouse last year and they provided me with leaves right through until march/april, so I'm hoping for similar from these.

I'm also growing a winter cooking radish ('weiner runder kohlschwarzer' - see photo below), which is said to grow tennis ball sized roots which can be cooked much like other root vegetables in soups, stews and stirfrys. The roots will keep in the ground throughout winter and when cooked, they have a lovely mild flavour.

Lastly, I'm going to be trying a mustard green called 'Osaka Purple'. I never seem to have any luck getting spring cabbage to germinate, so this is my last minute stand in! It grows a large head of leaves, which will eventually heart up and can be harvested throughout winter. From pictures, it looks quite dramatic - big purple leaves. And you cook it and eat it just like you would cabbage, although it has a more interesting sounding flavour (being a mustard green) - a bit spicy. Sounds nice!

So those are my plans for keeping us in veg this winter. There must be loads more out there too. I'd be really interested to find out about other types of vegetables that can be grown through the winter, so do post up a comment if you have any thoughts on the matter!

Elderberry Cordial - Winter Health Tonic

2010-10-03T03:03:00.000-07:00

There are still some elderberries up on the trees, so I thought I'd post up my elderberry cordial recipe. I try and make this every year as it's very very tasty and is also great for fighting off winter bugs, being a powerful antiviral and great too at soothing coughs and sore throats.

So first thing is to pick your elderberries. I crammed my basket full and in the end, this amount of berries made about 2 and 2/3 large bottles full of cordial.

Next separate off the berries into a large saucepan - using a fork works really well for doing this.

Add enough cold water to just cover your elderberries, bring to the boil and simmer for about 25 minutes - by this time, the juice should be flowing. You can press the berries against the sides of the pan to help squeeze juice out.

Pour the contents through a jelly bag (a muslin cloth would do just as well) and squeeze to get out any juice left over in the berries. I left mine dripping overnight to let gravity do a lot of the work here and then gave it a good wring out in the morning.

Measure how much juice you've got and add 100g white sugar for every 100ml juice. The sugar is the preserving agent, so you can use less if you like a tart drink and don't need it to keep for long. Or add more if you like it really sweet. As I've done it, it should keep for a few months.

Add 5 cloves per 100ml juice to a small muslin pouch and suspend it into the juice/sugar mix in your saucepan. You can just tip them straight in to the juice if you've not got any muslin, but using the muslin makes it a lot easier to get the cloves out at the end.

Simmer until the sugar has melted (around 10 minutes).

Boil your bottle tops while doing this to sterilise them - just add to a little saucepan of boiling water and boil for about 15 minutes.

Pour your cordial into clean bottles and add 5 cloves per bottle to help preserve it. Ideally you should fill the bottles to an inch or less below the bottom of a screw lid or 1.5 inches below a cork.

Sterilise it all - stand the bottles in a tall saucepan with a false bottom (i.e. add a circle of cardboard or a folded tea towell into the bottom so they're not touching the bottom) and fill with water so it goes up over the level of the syrup. Add lids, but don't screw or seal tightly yet. Boil for 20 minutes and then seal the lids down.

Done!

As you can see, I've not filled my bottles properly - I don't have a very tall saucepan, so couldn't get the water deep enough while sterilising to cover the syrup level if I'd have filled them properly. But I'm drinking it all that quickly, I don't think this will be a problem!

And it's gorgeous stuff! To me, it tastes like non-alcoholic mulled wine. Fabulous! For best health giving properties, I've seen it recommended to drink a glass of elderberry cordial every day or so.

July in the Vegetable Garden

2010-07-11T10:39:00.000-07:00

It's a busy time in the garden. Through June and

July, everything has been growing abundantly and with wonderful weather, we've all been spending as much time as we can outside. Good time to get the camera out, I thought, to record what I've been up to this year in the vegetable garden.

We've got two main areas for growing veg at the moment - the

back garden patch and the yard patch. The back garden patch is looking great this year with lots of companion planting going on. We've got calabrese and purple sprouting interplanted with chamomile (deters whitefly), nasturtiums (attracts cabbage whites away from brassicas allegedly -no luck so far- and is also great in salads) and mountain spinach (also called red orache - just there cos it looks pretty and tastes great in salad).

A further two beds are planted out with runner beans growing up wigwams and underplanted with various

lettuces and salad greens and also alternate rows of dwarf french beans and marigolds (marigolds to deter blackfly).

We're also in the process of reclaiming a bit more lawn to make another two beds for winter kale, achocha and winter lettuces and so that we can get a semi-decent crop rotation system working. It will still be only a three year rotation, so not ideal, but once the concrete is up, there'll be space to add another couple of beds for potatoes so we can get a nice four year rotation going. Plus more beds for perennial veg to go in!

Out in the yard, the beds are looking great with their new wooden edging and bark paths.

David made up the bed edging by cutting up some of the old timber from our now dismantled steel barns. I'm loving the idea of never having to weed the paths again!

Vegetable-wise, we've got early and late onions out here plus carrots, celeriac, parsnips, garlic and the leeks are just going out now.

A Place for Wisdom

2010-07-04T12:54:00.000-07:00

Bit of a different post to usual this one, but as I mentioned in a previous post, I've recently bought a copy of Resurgence Magazine and it's got me thinking...

So Bhutan is measuring success in terms of Gross National Happiness. An article written by Bhutan's prime minister explains how his country is measuring success in terms of Gross National Happiness. What a fantastic idea! I've heard about this before and of course my first thought was always - we should be doing that everywhere! Forget measuring it in terms of money, GDP - that's almost equatable to a measure of how environmentally destructive a country is (in terms of resource depletion at least). Gross National Happiness.

But what does that mean? How do you get it. That's what this Resurgence article's about - trying to work that out and a few things really struck a chord with me. Real happiness and what that is kind of gets you thinking along philosophical lines - real happiness is about more than quick fix chocolate and new clothes, it's something deeper than that. It means spending time with those you love, making sacrifices for the greater good, doing favours for people simply to spread the joy around...

Perhaps it means different things to different people, but one thing's for sure, it requires a certain degree of wisdom to find it.

Wisdom hey? That got me thinking too. We've kind of stopped valuing wisdom haven't we. We value cleverness, the ability to retain facts - the names of all the players in a football team, the latest statistics to do with climate change, dates to do with peak oil, artists' great works etc etc. That impresses us. But what about wisdom? This is important in Bhutan and their approach is thick with it. Thinking about the greater good and doing whatever it takes to fix things that are broken right at their core. Doing things properly. Fantastic!

All of this stuff has hit home so much I think because of another article I read which pointed out that the green movement has kind of lost track a bit - we're edging towards simply pushing for technological fixes to climate change that enable us to keep business as usual. I admit that I've kind of been sucked in to that too working in my job as a climate change advisor - thinking that the main thing is to appease the vast majority of people here, find them enough clean renewable energy so they can keep living the same way as ever. I didn't used to think like that and this permaculture project we've got going here is my attempt to break out of business as usual and demonstrate how it can be done.

Deep down, I know that these consumer societies are deeply wrong, that they breed unhappiness, that they destroy our planet and that we have to change. I kind of also feel like we need almost a spiritual revolution - to reconnect with a sense of wisdom I guess - cos right now it's like we're living in a fog of cleverness. We learn about being clever at school. When we start work, those who are the cleverest go far. If you can find a way to make more money, increase your market, improve your product, increase GDP, then you're a success. Wisdom doesn't really make money does it!

But without wisdom, how can we really improve this Gross National Happiness?

Making a Fertility Patch

2010-07-04T11:18:00.000-07:00

Ok, so it sounds vaguely pagan ritual site-ish, but rather than that, our fertility patch is actually all about growing plants especially to cut them down as a nutritious mulch or to turn into liquid fertiliser to enrich our soil and boost our plants.

We've reclaimed a little of the wilderness that borders our concrete yard by slashing back the nettles and covering with a thick, biodegradable mulch made up of a layer of cardboard (taking care to give each sheet at least a 20cm overlap with the next), covered with a 5cm layer of soil, covered with a top layer of straw.

On top of this, I've planted comfrey plants. I've chosen the Bocking 14 strain as it doesn't spread around the garden and become a pest. The best way to propagate comfrey is said to be by taking root cuttings. I could have done this myself as I've got a small patch of Bocking 14 already, which has been working wonders on my tomatoes. But I have never taken root cuttings and do want to make sure these plants work, so I've bought some root cuttings this time around and they've worked really well. Next time, perhaps I'll be a bit more adventurous!

To plant them out, I just cleared back the straw and soil and punched little holes in the cardboard - large enough for the roots to be able to find their way through, but small enough that weeds will struggle to push up through from below.

Then I piled in a good couple of handfuls of soil and planted the cutting in that. They're now doing well - apart from a couple that got munched by the rabbits. I'll leave them be for this year and then by next year I should have some good healthy plants that I can start cutting for mulch.

Creating a livelihood

2010-05-29T01:30:00.000-07:00

I'm currently trying to work out how to make money from our little permaculture project. I'm on maternity leave, enjoying a bit more of the outdoors (as you can see in the photo below), and it's giving me a lovely opportunity to see life beyond the office!

Not that I dislike my job especially - I work in environmental education for a climate change charity. Interesting and important work, but now that I'm out of it, I'm seeing that it has distracted me from some of the things that really interest me and from areas of work that I'd hoped to be involved in.

Something I've wanted to do for a long time is to be my own boss. I love the idea of working from home and of gradually finding my own way of working, my own style and rhythm. I've been tinkering with all sorts of ideas for quite some time now, but have never taken the plunge. I've recently decided that enough is enough and I should at least try one of these things as a part time thing to see how it goes and then perhaps I could build up from there. So I'm hatching plots for a little plant nursery selling 'useful' plants - perennial veg, companion plants for organic growers, fruit bushes, plant dyes, medicinal plants etc etc. Fingers crossed!

And then... with all good ideas in life I tend to find there are little coincidences that crop up that encourage me to keep going. So the other day, I was reading Resurgence Magazine and came across this chap who'd been talking to a bunch of university students in Bhutan and one of them asked what he'd recommend them to do to go on to lead happy lives. And he said 'when you leave university don't get a job'. Sounds a bit odd to say the least! He went on to explain that they should create livelihoods instead of jobs; i.e. that they should find their niche in the world and find a way to use their skills to provide something useful for those around them. Nice!

So this has got me thinking. Seems quite a simple concept - get a livelihood instead of a job. But actually, the more I think of it, the better and better that advice seems to me. It strikes me - and bear with me on this one - that a lot of the world's problems could be solved if we encouraged our young people to seek livelihoods instead of jobs.

Economic growth is, as far as I'm concerned, the root of all evil. Living on a finite planet, the idea that we can keep growing exponentially is ludicrous. But how does that growth happen? Essentially it's because organisations keep developing more and more stuff for us to buy. Each year, they have to invent new things to keep their employees in work and so to keep this whole economic system ticking over. What happens when those organisations grow? They give more people jobs to come up with more new stuff. And the ongoing search for new stuff is what brings us nasties like nano technology, synthetic biology, GM food, nuclear waste, resource collapse and the great pacific garbage patch. It's the jobs that are doing it! So if less people looked for jobs and more people looked for livelihoods, it turns out we'd be a lot better off.

Livelihoods are different to jobs. The word itself suggests that you're making enough money to support yourself and that's that. You don't need to work your nuts off creating big profits for your boss and to pay for a head office, admin team etc etc. Just enough for yourself. If the market drops for the product of service you're offering, you can change what you do. You're the boss! And best of all, you're free! You can work what hours you like, work in your pyjamas if you like, have a frugal month and work less if you like or work your nuts off and have a party if you like.

So yes - back to my little plan - definitely a good idea to give it a go I reckon. Hooray for livelihoods! And I'll be keeping a look out for any other ways I can make a little cash from a little patch of land.

Any ideas?

First year in review

2010-05-02T02:15:00.000-07:00

So the first year of the Oak House Permaculture Project has come to an end and we're looking ahead to the year to come, wondering how much has been achieved and what we can learn from last year's experiments.

Disappointingly, the yard itself looks quite a lot like it did last year - a lot of concrete and a lot of nettles and brambles. On the upside, we've managed to cultivate some vegetable beds through a large gap in the concrete (as shown in photo, left), we've got most of the steel barns down, we've planted three fruit trees, coppiced the hazel and planted some willow cuttings, so a few foundations are being laid for the permaculture garden that will eventually emerge.

Garden layout

As far as garden layout is concerned, a clearer idea of where we're going with the garden is emerging. I'll post an article up about it once I've got this all drawn up on paper, but for now, I'll just say that there will be:

A semi traditional lawn garden, bordered by a variety of wild and useful plants
A large vegetable garden, with attention to detail when it comes to making this attractive - companion planting veg with beneficial flowers and interplanting the lot with a few perennial plants - both edible and otherwise beneficial plants (e.g. lavender, asparagus, rhubarb and honeysuckle)
A forest garden, including currant and gooseberry bushes, strawberries, apple and pear trees and a variety of perennial vegetables and experimental fruit crops
A fertility patch - a large area growing comfrey and alfalfa to be used as a nutritional mulch for cropping plants and veg beds.
Areas for chickens to forage and for the potential to put pigs in at some point in the future.
A large greenhouse for growing the usual tomatoes, sweet peppers and winter lettuce, but also lemons and other experimental fruit - maybe melons, pineapple and kiwis.
A workshop mainly for woodwork. Along with the greenhouse, this is to be built from a conversion of the old brick barns, using timber reclaimed from the demolished steel barns.

Experimental techniques

As far as techniques go for maintaining the garden, through various experiments, a gardening style is also emerging.

I'm liking the no dig method. Haven't quite got mulching completely sorted yet - apart from early in the year (see photo, left)- so far I've been using mainly black sheeting. I'd rather be using biodegradable organic materials - harvested from my fertility patch ideally, so it would be great to get this patch going this year. Having said that though, I've noticed that my current method of spreading a layer of compost on the soil and covering that with black sheeting has given me some good improvements to the texture of the soil, so I'll keep this up.

I'm also liking the technique of interplanting crops with beneficial flowers. I've been growing marigold with tomatoes and beans - haven't had any problem with aphids on these crops. It's hard to say whether this is due to the marigolds or not, but they look so pretty, I'll certainly be giving them the benefit of the doubt!

Chamomile has been working really well at deterring whitefly from my brassicas (see photo, left). This year I'm going to try nasturtiums too to see if they have much of an affect on the amount of cabbage white butterflies that lay eggs on my broccoli. And I'm mixing my carrot seed with nigella and field scabious to hopefully deter the carrot fly (as well as intercropping with onion).

Composting - after a good start using the quick return compost method, my efforts kind of trailed off. I managed to harvest some compost through the year, but it was full of weed seeds - it hadn't got hot enough to kill them off. This year I'm being more careful to keep anything with seeds out of the compost bins and am using the pre-prepared quick return compost activator instead of home-made, which is available from Garden Organic.

'Do-nothing gardening' (Fukuoka style) - or basically growing crops like tomatoes and cucumbers out in wild areas and leaving them to trail on the ground for bumper crops... this didn't work! My crops quickly got inundated with weeds and the fruits, trailing on the ground, quickly rotted away (see photo, left). I won't be trying this again over the next year at least.

Plans for the year ahead

All being well, this year we'd like to get the barns converted and then we're clear to get the concrete up. Can't wait! I'd like to have my fertility patch up and running and would like to start clearing brambles and nettles from the outer edges of the yard and planting these areas up with plants that can double up as chicken fodder. It would be really great if we can also get our first few chicken in this year. Fingers crossed!

Perennial vegetables

2010-04-30T04:25:00.001-07:00

I've been spending some time investigating perennial vegetables over the winter and definitely want to incorporate some of these into my forest garden plans for the yard as ground cover under and between the trees and bushes. I've bought seeds or bulbs for three species to give them a go over this next year - salsify, quamash and sorrel.

Actually, I got the sorrel going last year, but as yet haven't eaten any of my own stuff! I've tried it previously on camping trips and it's a really great veg - lemon zesty flavour, so good for adding flavour to just about anything (I'm a big lemon fan)! Good with fish, so I'd like to add it to my usual fishcake recipe. Probably great in mashed potato, in salads, with pasta... I shall be trying this out some more and if I find any really good recipes, I'll post them up here.

Quamash (Camassia quamash) is apparantly a Native American delicacy - it grows from an edible bulb with leaves and a blue flowering spike making it look a bit like bluebells (Hyacinthoides non-scripta), except that the flowers are like little blue stars instead of little blue bells (see image at the start of this article). Ideal for a forest garden, it grows well both in sun and shade and looks gorgeous. The plant will spread readily by seed or you can dig and divide in autumn. I've started off with about 9 plants, that I'm hoping will be a starter crop for germinating many more.

Autumn is the time to harvest them too. By the sound of things, you cook with them as you would most root veg (boil, steam or roast) and they're said to taste like sweet potato. In retrospect though, this one might just be for special occasions or desperate times - it seems that you have to cook them for about a day! Might be experimenting with the microwave on this one to see if it can help speed this up! And this, sadly, will have to wait until next year at least when I have more plants.

So my last perennial vegetable to try is salsify. Another blue flowered root crop, this grows long edible roots about an inch (2cm) thick. The leaves are grass-like and are also edible cooked or raw, as are the flowers and flower buds. The root is prepared and cooked in the same way as potato or parsnip, except that you'll need to drop the freshly peeled roots into water with a little lemon juice to prevent discolouring. Cultivation is the same as for carrots, with all the same precautions to prevent forking.

Barn conversion plans

2010-04-25T03:31:00.000-07:00

The steel barns are almost down now - took a little longer than planned, but at last we can start working out the detail of what we're going to do with the semi-derelict brick barns that we're keeping. You can see the steel barns in the photo here from last spring and in the photo at the top, the lovely view that they were hiding has now been revealed.

One of these back to back brick barns is south facing, so we'll be turning this into a large indoor growing area for planting lemon trees and to take over from our little greenhouse in growing other indoor fruit and veg. We're considering sourcing reclaimed windows to contribute towards glazing the front of this and are investigating options for glazing the roof while keeping heat inside. We're intending to set up some kind of irrigation system inside and I'd really like this to be automated and gravity fed from a rainwater collection system rigged up to collect water from the roof. To get some more ideas for this building, I'm hoping to get lots of trips to stately gardens in this summer!

The second barn (shown here from the back) is going to be converted into a large workshop and storage for bikes and garden equipment. We've managed to salvage lots of structural timber from the demolished steel framed barns, so will be using this to build a framework to support a new roof for this barn. We're currently thinking about installing a turf roof. Nice to experiment with new techniques! We also want to make the most of the heat that will be generated in the attached glazed barn, so are looking at installing vents to allow heat to move from one to the other, keeping both warm.

Experimenting with ornamental veg growing

2010-04-17T02:28:00.000-07:00

I've been reading a great book by Joy Larkcom called creative vegetable gardening and have got all inspired to try some of her techniques for creating beautiful vegetable gardens - in France, known as the potager garden. With stacks of concrete still down and still ugly in our yard, anything I can do to make the place more attractive seems like a very good idea!

The effect is something like a cottage garden, with drifts of flowering herbs and lovely effects created with different coloured vegetable foliage - zesty greens (e.g. fennel), rich purples (eg. purple sprouting, mountain spinach) and soft blue greens (e.g. lavendar, leeks). She fills her beds by interplanting and underplanting to the max, creating a lush, abundant look. Everything must, of course, be planted for use value too - so flowering plants chosen carefully for pest repelling or bee attracting effect as well as for their look (nasturtiums and marigolds to deter pests and flowering parsley, fennel or lavender to attract beneficial insects).

So my first experiments are in the carrot bed and involve sowing carrot seed in amongst other flowering plant seeds to confuse the carrot root fly (which has been a real pest in my garden). The idea is that you plant carrot seed in with other flowers that have feathery foliage, so they don't block the sun. You sow in the same way that you'd sow cut and come again lettuce - so either wide or narrow drills or even just a broad scattering.

I've tried all of these sowing methods in my beds to see how they each work and have also sowed straight rows of just carrot to use as a bit of a control to compare against. I've chosen two blue flowered plants (scabious and nigella) and have also planted out some fennel (I love zesty green against a blue). Should look good, so fingers crossed it works!

Biochar soil treatment

2010-02-08T10:10:00.000-08:00

I've just found out about this ancient method of improving soil fertility by adding charcoal. It's being hailed as the 'new black gold' as not only does it do a great job of holding on to moisture and soil nutrients, giving bigger yields, but it also locks away greenhouse gases. The films that follow explain how this works and how to make it.

Greening the Desert

2010-02-08T09:09:00.000-08:00

Great couple of films from Geoff Lawton about reclaiming the desert. I'm looking at potentially some pretty major land reclamation on our yard once we get the concrete up, so this film about reclaiming the desert has really caught my attention.

Farm for the Future

2010-02-08T08:47:00.000-08:00

This has got to be one of the most inspirational films I've seen for a long time. Originally shown on the BBC in 2009, it investigates how farming could adapt to cope with no longer being able to depend on fossil fuels.

The film opens with a good breakdown of exactly how farming is dependent on fossil fuels and then shows footage of a great range of permaculture, forest gardening and organic farming alternatives. Good stuff!

Plants to help maintain soil nutrient balance

2009-10-09T04:30:00.000-07:00

Something I've always been really fascinated by is how plants just seem to have endless applications and uses. So when it comes to maintaining a good soil nutrient balance for growing my crops, how much help can I get from companion planting or from growing plants specifically to use as a nutritious mulch or to turn into liquid fertiliser?

Comfrey is an obvious one to use, and seems to work well as a tomato mulch as it's high in potassium (good for fruiting plants) but having done some more investigating, here are my top 3 alternatives:

1. Nettles
Ok, so part of my reason for including these is simply that I have absolutely loads of them and it'd be good to put them to some good use rather than just swear at them for stinging me!

But apart from that, they're also quite handy. They're a good source of nitrogen, so great for leaves and stems and for young plants needing to grow quickly. They also contain magnesium (needed for photosynthesis), sulphur (for photosynthesis, root and seed production) and iron (a trace element also used in photosynthesis).

It's best to crop nettle before it flowers and it's usually recommended that you make it into a liquid fertiliser. I wonder if you can use it as a mulch too...

2. Bracken
This is the only plant I can find that is said to be high in phosphorous (so good for root growth). It's also a good source of potassium and it either lowers or maintains your soil pH, so should be generally good for improving nutrient availability if you've got quite an alkaline soil (which I do).

Bracken can be used as a mulch (this is said to be particularly good around trees to promote tree root growth). I can also be made into a compost - best made with green summer bracken. This is good for ericaceous plants (blueberries and heather, for example) as, of course, it helps maintain a slightly acid soil. It'll also help prevent potato scab as this is caused by a bacteria that likes limey soil.

3. Clover
Famously nitrogen fixing, I definitely intend to grow clover as a ground cover plant. It can also be cut and dug into the soil or used in the compost as a good source of nitrogen and trace elements.

Ground cover investigations - clover

2009-10-04T07:17:00.000-07:00

On the eternal search for an easy life, my latest investigations are on ground cover solutions for various different areas of our plot. I'm looking for things that need no (or very little) maintenance and that look good, are useful in some way and will stop the ever increasing onslaught of weeds from taking over!

One option is Dutch Clover ('white clover' - Trifolium repens). This is nitrogen fixing, can make a thick mat, is edible and grows quickly. The short film below shows someone's experience using this like a lawn in the US:

Dutch clover will attract beneficial insects and is said to be useful in lots of different situations.

As ground cover, it can be used as a grass alternative for lawns and pathways and although it grows pretty low to the ground, it will cope with light mowing if you want it to be even lower.

It makes a good fodder crop and is edible for people too. As we're intending to get chickens at some point, this is likely to come in handy in reducing the need for bought feed.

Nitrogen fixing ability - I'm guessing this should be particularly useful anywhere where we're growing leafy veg or salad crops as leaves are what nitrogen is good for encouraging. Not too sure how it will get on with fruiting or flowering crops - am I going to get stunted flowers and tiny fruits cos all the energy is going into growing leaves? I think further investigations are needed here.

Desperately seeking the view - barn demolition begins

2009-09-18T10:43:00.000-07:00

We've got a great view of one of my favourite Shropshire hills from our yard...

Only trouble is it's mostly hidden behind this half broken down old barn. It's ugly, rusty and very noisy when the wind blows all those half hanging off bits around. I think the neighbours will also be cheering the day it comes down as it'll give us all a much more peaceful winter windy season!

And of course we'll get this:

Pontesford Hill, backed by Earl's Hill nature reserve is a fantastic place to go walking and this view will make the yard really special.

So David's been climbing up and down his scaffolding tower
taking the thing to pieces. It's a three piece barn - a lean to (pictured right with David's newly created gap in the roof) that joins an arch topped barn, that joins a pitch roof barn. We're hoping to get the lot down this autumn, which will leave the lovely brick barns behind it all free for doing up into our Lemonary...

with a fantastic view of course!

See what happened next here

Comfrey Mulch For Fruiting Crops

2009-09-18T10:21:00.000-07:00

Are my lovely big tomatoes due to the renowned beneficial effects of comfrey? Or is it just some random fluke?

I guess I won't know til I repeat this one again, but it seems that adding ripped up comfrey leaves as a mulch to the top of my tomato planters has transformed my fruit from tiny pitiful things to lovely big juicy wonders.

In both the pictures above you can see before and after tomatoes - the red and yellow ones grew before adding comfrey and they were so small, I was getting a bit worried. Tomato fruits need lots of potassium to grow well and comfrey has lots of this in it, so I chopped down some comfrey leaves and just laid the pieces onto the top of my soil as a mulch and waited. They broke down gradually and the tomatoes that came afterwards (the green ones above) are all much bigger and healthier looking. Seems like it works!

Solar powered tomatoes

2009-09-18T09:40:00.000-07:00

We've installed a small solar panel on the water butt just outside the greenhouse and it's now taking care of all our tomato watering, along with our sweet peppers and a large basil plant. All we're having to do is sit back and enjoy the harvest!

And of course it's classic permaculture stuff, using Holmgren's principles 'catch and store energy' and 'use and value renewable resources and services'.

The solar panel fits on top of a long tube that goes down into the water butt - you can just see the top of the tube in the photo here.

Behind the solar panel is a small control box and battery pack. You basically just turn a dial to tell the thing how long you want the solar panel to charge up the batteries for. Every 6 hours the battery fires up and runs the pump until it runs out of power.

The pump pushes water out along narrow tubes and the kit comes with a number of T junctions and drippers, so it was a simple job to set up. You can just see the pipes coming up the side of the planters in the left photo above.

So our kit is running 5 large planters (the ones in the photo above) + 3 large plant pots. Not bad for such a little panel and battery pack! It could be doing more - the pots are getting too much water really, but there are no individual controls for each dripper with this kit.

There are loads of kits available over the internet. Having seen how well the system works, I'm tempted next time to have a go at making my own or to experiment with a gravity fed system somewhere. My veggie patches would love this!

Autumn Harvest

2009-09-18T04:54:00.000-07:00

Autumn - my favourite time of year! So much lovely food to eat everywhere.
Here's some of the highlights in the garden and greenhouse right now...

Crystal lemon cucumbers (above left) are a very tasty climbing variety.

(above right) Peppers at last! Last year's terrible weather meant nothing even tried fruiting until it was way too late, so it's great to be getting a crop this year.

We've got loads of different types of tomatoes on the go. Above left are beefsteaks 'super marmande' very nice and with not too many seeds inside, so great for cooking.

We've also been growing tumbling toms (above right) have had a great crop from golden sunrise (yellow toms in greenhouse) and are just starting to crop our outdoor bush plum tomatoes - saucy. Sadly not very many germinated, so I won't be bottling any as I'd hoped...

Free fruit is everywhere on the trees and hedgerows at the moment. Our first newly planted tree is about to be cropped of its plums (above left).

We're also collecting rosehips to turn into jelly - great with lamb apparently. And sloes for sloe gin to drink in the new year.

We've also found a new way of using elder berries - lightly cook with a bit of sugar and blend with late summer strawberries, yoghurt and milk for a fantastic smoothie!

More no-dig tips - Emilia Hazelip

2009-06-08T13:52:00.000-07:00

I've been investigating no dig methods and came across Emilia Hazelip and her wonderful raised beds.

Creating a nature garden

2009-05-25T13:25:00.000-07:00

Our latest little project has been to start creating a little nature garden. We've got quite few wild corners here, but there's one in particular that's a really pretty little spot and that certainly won't be getting cultivated in the traditional sense. However when it comes to experimenting with Fukuoka's japanese version of permaculture - 'do nothing gardening', this is the perfect place to have a go.

This patch used to be used by overwintering cows and so the soil is really rich - it should hopefully be pretty good for growing veg. There's a little pool that you can see in the foreground of the image above - this gets really boggy and makes this patch rather inaccessible.

In the long-term, we're planning to put a pond in here, but for now, we thought it'd be fun to build in a stream. This wasn't so much planned out, but we were doing a bit of fencing and got a bit carried away. Reminded me a bit of making sandcastles and moats on the beach!

So the stream-way we've built now channels some of that boggy patch away and has made a nice feature to plant stuff along. We did this a couple of weeks ago and have since started planting out a few things - some chamomile, spearmint and sorrel (all fairly wild looking edible plants) and I'm hoping to get some tomatoes in there too - following Fukuoka's recommendations to just let them fall over and grow wild for better yields from each plant. I'll post a blog about this one once I get it going.

Fukuoka and the no dig experiment numer one

2009-05-02T12:50:00.000-07:00

I'm reading about the no-dig method and the more I come across it, the more I'm getting slowly convinced that maybe there's something in it.

The latest version I've come across is in Masanobu Fukuoka's book 'One Straw Revolution'. On his farm in Japan, Fukuoka has produced yields as high as or higher than those produced using chemicals, even though he hasn't ploughed the land for over twenty years.

His farming techniques have been developed though working closely with nature rather than battling against it. He follows a strong intuition that 'do nothing' farming is the best way to allow farmland to flourish and to avoid making the kind of mistakes that come from putting to use an inevitably incomplete understanding of how nature works. So he doesn't plough and just scatters the seed on top as would happen in nature. What's more - and I'm really liking the sound of this - he doesn't do any weeding. He sows white clover around his crops and/or mulches them with straw to keep the weeds down and by never disturbing the soil, weed seeds don't get such a chance to germinate. Using these methods, weeds just don't become a problem.

His approach to pushing his farming technique forward has been to ask what he can get away with not doing (rather than the usual technique of asking what extra things can be done to make things better). So applying this to our vegetable growing here at Oak House - something I would like not to do is to have to dig up turf from the patch of lawn I want to expand my vegetable bed into. So I've applied the no-dig mulching method:

I've covered the grass in cardboard and have watered it

then I've covered this with manure

and lastly I've covered this with grass cuttings. I'll be planting beans through the cardboard later in the year and the whole thing will eventually rot down into the soil, taking the buried lawn with it.

Sepp Holzer and micro-climate management

2009-05-02T11:43:00.000-07:00

I've been watching films about Sepp Holzer and his amazing permaculture farm up in the Austrian mountains (see image above for taster). In particular, I've been fascinated by his micro-climate management - he's growing lemon trees on mountainsides that are 3 feet deep in snow over winter! I've been using some of his techniques to try and help my own rather sick looking lemon tree recover.

Basically, he uses three main techniques to create warm zones up in the mountains using a classic permaculture principle - catching and storing energy. Firstly, he uses large stones strewn around his cropping areas (as shown above) to absorb the heat of the sun during the day and to re-emit it at night time, taking the edge off the usual temperature drop. Another thing he's done is to build large ponds that act like the stones in absorbing and re-emitting the sun's heat, but have the added bonus of also reflecting heat and light back up towards plants growing near them.

The last technique is an adaptation of the Victorian hot bed system in which manure is buried under beds and as it rots down it heats up, creating a warmer bed for growing really early crops in the spring. Sepp Holzer's version - also known as hugelkultur - replaces manure with organic materials you'd normally stick in the composter and heavy duty bits of wood - whole branches and such like. These are buried in long ridges about 1m to 1.5m high, with steep sides, covered with cardboard or turfs and an organic mulch or soil on top. The beds get warm as they start breaking down, but the trick he uses is to arrange his rows of ridges at right angles to the prevailing wind direction so that the warmth they produce is blown back towards his fruit trees, which are grown in the ditches between the rows of warm ridges. Very clever! I might just have to try building some of these as our yard project progresses.

So back to my lemon tree - it's been looking rather ill and actually most of the leaves have dropped off. By a process of elimination, I've worked out that it's more than likely because it's been getting too cold at night time being out in the greenhouse. Hugelkultur is a little OTT for my little greenhouse and for such a little tree, so I'm trying out his other techniques - I've arranged rocks and a bowl of water around it to keep it warm and reflect more light on to it. The leaf drop seems to have stopped and it's now flowering away merrily. I'll be keeping an eye on it and will certainly try using this technique through the winter to see if I can improve on night time conditions in there for other plants too.

Composting - the quick return experiment begins

2009-04-25T10:10:00.000-07:00

Quick return composting - compost in as little as 4-6 weeks, with no turning needed. I've just had excellent results in 6 weeks using this method (as shown in the photo below) and am now keen to keep composting this way in order to save us a small fortune from buying in the manufactured stuff!

Bit of history then - it's a technique devised by May Bruce back in the '40s, which I came across recently in a magazine article (organic gardening, feb issue). Sounded too good to be true and then I discovered her original book in a local auction house, bought it and have been trying it out, following her beautifully detailed instructions!

So it's very easy to do and all relies on a herbal activator that speeds up the breaking down process, creating a really hot heap that even kills rampant weeds and seed heads. The activator is made of a very weak solution of plant juices (1 part to 10,000 parts of water) extracted from common weeds or of a powder made from the dried weeds. Or you can buy it from garden organic: http://www.organiccatalogue.com/catalog/

The main wild plants used are nettle and yarrow (the latter is pictured left and right as it looks in Spring - click for bigger image), plus a little honey. She explains how just using these three things will work, but that the full formula also includes dandelion, valerian, chamomile and oak bark - all the same herbs as used in Biodynamic activators. Her experiments using different concentrations showed the really weak dose to be much more effective and fast acting than stronger doses.

So what I did was to find some of those key plants - yarrow and nettle, plus a little dandelion - and as a very quick and easy experiment, I just crushed them in my fingers to release the juices and put them in a jug of water with a tiny bit of honey. I left this on the side for about an hour tops to let some of the juices seep out. Then following Miss Bruce's instructions, I spiked holes in my compost heap using a crow bar and tipped the liquid down them. I filled in the holes with dry soil, covered the heap over with cardboard to keep the heat in, then topped off with a rain-proof cover and left it to do its thing.

And six weeks later when I opened it, under the top layer of dry stuff was the nicest home-made compost I've ever seen! Dark, crumbly, soft... everything they always say compost should be, but never seems to end up being all those months later.

I will be trying this again!

photos and a few plans

2009-04-21T12:56:00.000-07:00

So here's the house, with a bit of a view of the yard. You can see the fence line running in front of the house there - this is what used to be the edge of our plot, but now of course, everything you can see in this photo is part of the new plot. Rather a messy little patch! And soooo much concrete!

And here's the view going the other way. Under the black sheeting is our first bit of veg patch in what will ultimately become the vegetable garden area. For now it's just a conveniently wide crack in the concrete that we've dug over and added a load of manure to. It will be the brassica and potato bed.

You can also see David standing in the background next to our first new tree - the Greengage. Really great to have got the tree planting started. Eventually to the left of the black sheeting in this photo, there'll be a wee green lane connecting from the road behind the photographer to the field behind David. We'll line it with an avenue of fruit trees, so this Greengage is to be the first of many. This area will also become the summer chicken run - there'll be a gateway going from the lane onto the veg patch so we can let them in to eat our slugs for us!

The permaculture project begins

2009-04-21T11:48:00.000-07:00

Well the yard is now officially ours, so the fun begins here!

Basically we live in an old barn conversion and have just bought the concrete yard that backs on to it. We're going to strip up all the concrete and lay down a fabulous and very productive garden, using what we already know about permaculture, gardening and building and learning loads more skills in the process. We're thinking chickens, polytunnel, lemonery, edible forest garden, veggie beds, ponds and lots lots more.

We've got a couple of brick barns on the plot and a huge and rather cranky steel framed dutch barn, which I can't wait to get down - fabulous view behind it! We've got stacks of manure as these barns were previously used to overwinter cows, so lots to start improving the soil with! We've also discovered a lovely little hazel grove hidden amongst the brambles and we've got what looks like black thorn trees and a couple of elders.

There are many plans for what to do with all of this. Most exciting for me as someone who loves gardening, growing and making things, is the thought that we've got the space to be experimental and to grow not just food, but also useful resources like willow for turning into fencing, trellis or baskets and fuel wood for burning on the (as yet to be purchased) wood burning stove.

Lots to look forward to!

Nancy