Permaculture garden in Yorkshire

Planting starting

2011-06-15T02:31:00.000-07:00

I have been a bit late with everything this year, but lots of lessons have been learnt and I now are starting the cropping schedule on a continual basis, rather than on a yearly basis. This is because a lot of plants (perennials) are to be planted in Autumn and I want to try to get all round cropping if possible.

So this week I have planted some potatoes, french beans, climbing beans for about 20 supports, peas, and some carrots. I have transplanted nasturtiums and sunflowers from home.

The beds with the thick grass turf skimmed off with the hoe and upside down

There are still some grass and other natives coming through,but nothing like the grass sward.

One of the many potato "sports" popping up

Artichokes with potato in front - grass mulch.

There also appears to be a lot of potatoes "sports" coming up all over the beds, so showing that we did not get them all last year. But this is great as a sort of perennial way of growing and I will leave some this picking as well.

Artichokes coming up to act as a wind screen.

The other plants that are doing well are the root artichokes.

Newspaper mulch, weeds and digging no dig beds

2011-06-02T00:02:00.000-07:00

After the winter and spring, all of the annual beds are full of weeds, particularly the pasture grass. This is not really as bad as most people think. I get a lot of "you need to spray herbicide", "bring in the cultivators to dig it all up" etc.

This is because any plant not wanted in the garden is considered a weed. But look at what has happened. I have left the ground bare, so the natural thing to do is to grow on that soil. so any dormant seeds come through.

This is good! I am late at putting down mulch, and no early mustard cover crops, so the "weeds" come through!
And they actually do a great job two ways - to keep the soil moist and covered, and to convert nitrogen and carbon in the air, to weeds, which I can cut for mulch, or dig in.

Newspaper down under soil to hold it down

One problem is the grass weed grows back out the side

NEWSPAPER MULCH - I was late in getting mulch (straw) so tried an experiment with newspaper, putting dirt on top from the pond dig. It worked, but actually is a lot of work, and if the breeze is up even slightly, then it is difficult to hold the papers down. Then the grass grows to the side. All in all, while it certainly works, and would be great in a small garden, I have decided on using the hoe to cut the top layer of grass and roots and turn upside down.

Digging off the top layer of soil and grass and inverting to kill weeds

The grass becomes soil organic matter

This digging should cut take the organic matter (weeds) and put it back into the soil and at the same time cut away the weeds. I think I have a source of straw mulch, so that, and vegetables and flowers should keep the weeds down.

WEEDS - all the different native and introduced weeds can be useful for covering soil, bringing up nutrients, flowers for insects, generally keeping the diversity, so I welcome them, but you just need to do the odd plucking or dumping mulch on top to keep them down in places.

Spring at last!

2011-04-24T04:28:00.000-07:00

Spring is fully here and we have had a month of good weather to get things started.
Unfortunately I have been a bit short of time, having started carpentry business, but am now planting seeds in the garden ready for planting later on.
So far Have planted the followoing in pots;

Nasturtium, Tom Thumb mixed - Johnsons - 35 seeds, two packets.
Sunflower, Autumn beauty - Johnsons - 60 seeds, two packets.
Parsley, Giant of Italy - Mr fothergills - 750 seeds
Leek, Autmn Mammoth 2 - Snowstar - Mr Fothergills - 150 seeds
Broad bean - Bunyards Exhibition - Mr Fothergills - 50 seeds
Dwarf bean - (Flageolet) Flagrano - Mr Fothergills - 100 seeds
Coriander"Cilantro" for leaf - Johnsons - 150 seeds
Parsley, Moss Curled 2 - Johnsons - 1000 seeds
Basil, Sweet Genovese - Johnsons - 500 seeds
Rosemary - Johnsons - 75 seeds
Tomato, Marmande - Johnsons - 75 seeds
Tomato, Gardener's delight - Johnsons - 50 seeds

Radish, Jutrzenko - 500 seeds - Johnsons
Bugs, bees and butterflies - wildlife mix - Mr Fothergills

Azada - What a machine!

2011-02-03T02:41:00.000-08:00

Well, it is of course, not a machine, but what a fantastic implement for digging in a no dig garden!

Digging new paths with the Azada

I have been using the Azada for about a month now clearing all the paths and digging new ones through the old pastures.

I often wondered why all the digging tools in the UK had short handles. I used to have a fantastic "post hole spade" in Australia. Long handled, light spade end. You could dig post holes, buildings footings, paths etc all day long without bending over much.

I looked in UK for one, but nothing to be seen. I heard on a recent radio gardening show that most of the implements in UK had mining origins. So they had short handles. Not for me, so I looked through the Internet and found what I had been looking for. The AZADA!

Used extensively in Asia and Africa they are brilliant. Light, strong, well balanced. You can dig all day.

The main jobs for the Azada at this time of year is getting all the paths cleared and flat for work later. You don't want bumps in your path when you are moving trays of seedlings or picking.

Azada. The handle is just slipped in.

I also had to dig a lot more paths around the block through existing pasture with strong roots and long grass. The Azada has the sharpness to dig through the roots as well as the strength to lever them up. You can then just through the clumps to either side by pulling up and back a bit. You get a rhythm going and it is easy. I have cleared about 200m of path in 4 hours and dug about 50m of new path in about the same time. I just do about an hour each day and it soon gets done.

Nice angle of the blade

A good feature is the angle of the blade which allows you to put the Azada handle up a bit and then shear flat the path, something which is hard work with the shovel.

You can get Azadas in the UK at Get Digging - http://www.get-digging.co.uk/using.htm

I am almost through getting the paths ready for spring. Now I have a small and large pond to dig and the Azada will come in handy there. I next need along handled spade, and while Get Digging sell them, I think I will have a go at putting a long handle on my light spade.

Snow where to go

2010-12-11T03:21:00.000-08:00

Mmmm,. so much for shaving the beds. A very early cold snap and snow for a week.

So not much doing on the land.

Have to go sledging and snow boarding instead, what a bummer!

Preparing beds for winter

2010-11-13T03:08:00.000-08:00

Getting colder and time to prepare the beds for winter!

I am left with a very thick grass top in most beds and this has to be taken away (shaved off) before the grass goes dormant for winter. By taking away the top layer I will be leaving most of the roots in the ground to rot and the top can be put back on as a mulch layer after drying for a while.

I have also managed to get some autumn leaves for mulch and has experimented her with putting it on.

Some Globe artichoke still growing well into autumn.

I will put it in a pile to rot a bit and put it on after the grass "shave".

Halloween pumpkins

2010-11-04T03:00:00.000-07:00

The pumpkins made it to Halloween, and one was quite a good size.
Trouble was that the the plants that survived were not the right variety, and the Halloween ones did not make it.

I guess in selecting for a good orange pumpkin they had to sacrifice resilience.

Anyway, here they are after decorating.

Spuds!

2010-09-06T02:42:00.000-07:00

We harvested a few of the potatoes that we plants in spring.

It was a late planting, but we did get a number of potatoes and with the limited planting we did last spring, it was good to get some potatoes.

For next year I am starting to dig mounds and furrows where I am going to plant the potatoes in the furrows and slowly cover with mulch and plant other companion plants on the mounds.

This way we can have a double crop.

I will also trial some different potatoes as the ones we harvested were not that good.

The positive from this was the large size of the potatoes in the beds that I had given most attention, and also the horse manure.

It does appear that the nitrogen from the manure had helped the soil organisms to decay the old grass thatch that I had left as well as roots of the stubble of the mustard crop.

When digging down for the spuds, the soil was fantastic condition with plenty of good healthy earth worms.

Large pumpkin leaves

2010-09-02T03:05:00.000-07:00

These are good sized pumpkin leaves. The bed has had a good layer of stable manure and the soil is fantastic. So no problems with growing.

And as usual, no irrigation for this. Just relying on soil moisture kept in there with mulch.

Plums

2010-08-22T03:13:00.000-07:00

With absolutely no input on my part except from a 10 minute prune in autumn, a few of the plum trees put on a big crop.

One in particular seemed to go a bit biennial and had a huge crop on. The tree was obviously suffering so I did strip of a number of fruit to give the remainder a chance. They did taste good, although a bit pest attacked. I will probably strip this tree a lot next year to get as much off as I can as the tree needs a break to build its reserves. There are a number of other trees here that appear to be plum ,but no one knows really, but despite flowering, the did not put on any fruit. Perhaps they need a pollinator tree if they are apple.

Runner beans

2010-08-22T03:04:00.000-07:00

As this first season was all about getting used to the land and experimenting, I did not get a great yield, but I did try a variety of crops to see how they went.

The main point about this land is that there is no water.

Ziltch, nada, none. So it is challenging. This means the strategy has been to built the soil organic matter as quick as possible and mulch it so that we can keep as much water in the soil as possible.

I did put up a few frames for runner beans and got reasonable results. The beans flowered and fruited heavily,but the actual pods were not so long and crisp as with water. Perhaps next season with the higher organic matter from this seasons efforts, we can get some descent crops.

Anyway, the children liked them and here is Archie getting into some.

Clearing the rows

2010-07-23T11:39:00.000-07:00

The rows are growing a good crop of mustard and weeds! So we clear it here and add the soil to the top of the bed, further giving a mulch.

Above is after I have gone along and cut the overlying weeds to get to the path.

Next above is the digging down below the weed line.

Then digging the soil and mustard / weeds back on the beds as a good mulch.

Soil building

2010-07-22T11:26:00.000-07:00

The season is moving on and this first year really has been about building the organic matter in the soil. Here is a picture of the soil showing moist, rich mulch composed of residual mustard stalks, weeds and stable manure. The soil is building wonderfully.

If you also dig down you can find a good amount of moisture there. Much of the heavy rains we have been getting has run off adjacent fields and hot been held like in the rows.

Bee Hives

2010-07-11T02:56:00.000-07:00

As the field is in the open, I thought it would be a good idea to put some beehives down on the land.

After a bit of research which indicated that bee keeping was complicated and expensive, I came across a whole world of Top Bar Bee hives.

These hives do not have wax in the frame and rely on the bees to build their own wax comb. As a result of the methods, the hives are relatively inexpensive to build and require little maintenance, with some keepers only opening them once or twice a year!

They are used extensively in African bee projects where some very simple hives are made, but still produce honey.

As with most Permaculture ideas, the honey yield from each hive is less than conventional hives, but the overall efficiency of production is way past that of conventional hives.

The other point that appears again and again is that these hives are less prone to die back, the phenomena that is hitting commercial hives the world over. This is put down to the almost zero need for sprays because the bees are not stressed. They do not need to adapt their cell sizes to the commercial wax sizes set, so can build differing sizes according to whether it is a drone, worker or queen hive.

As you can see, the hive is easy to build and there are plenty of plans on the Internet.

I was a bit late to get them going this year, but I plan to make a few hives and set some swarm traps on the trees in spring time. The amount of bees that were in the land in spring time, particularly after the mustard was impressive, so there is a good chance we can trap a wild swarm, rather than purchase on (over £100 for a commercial swarm!).

My good mate Ian in Australia, whose father had bees for many years laughed when I said mustard was attracting the bees, "have you ever tasted mustard honey!". Seems it is not so good. I wonder if some nearby bee keeper was wondering why his honey tasted like a salad dressing!

Of course, to have bees on the land for pollination is very important, so it has multiple affects. We do need to ensure that there is water nearby, so must push on with digging and making the pond/s for spring / summer filling.

Clover, cabbage and pumpkins

2010-07-08T05:10:00.000-07:00

I have been chopping down the mustard, some of it very long, and have come across a lot of the clover that was planted earlier this year. It took a while to get going, but now is strong growing. I am putting the horse manure and straw down on a bout 3 in 4 beds and in the others I will leave it to become the legume part of a rotation. It will also be good to experiment with mix of vegetables seeds as seed balls next spring.

I also have found a few of the sees that I put down coming up, in this case cabbage. It does give hope that the seed ball method into the mustard will work next spring for some areas. This method is more like the Millison idea of food plants that we incorporate into paths and random remnant areas in cities and country towns etc.

Here are the pumpkins in the rocks. Certainly going better than the ones I have in pots from that time. Although others in the main beds with manure are having about the same growth rate.

Cutting back mustard

2010-07-06T10:07:00.000-07:00

Much of the mustard has flowered and is setting seed and getting thick, so I have been cutting it back on the beds that I am unable to get the manure mulch to at this stage. The mustard I cut last week has laid down a thick straw like mulch and is working a treat. It is of course not just mustard, but a combination of thistle, grasses and others.

The common comment for others is to give it some glyphosphate! I think that they do not understand that I am building the soil, but all will be revealed next season.

I also thinned the plums a bit as they are too numerous. Some of the french beans are coming through and runner beans taking well - just need some stakes now! I have also found a few cabbage while chopping the mulch, must be from the seed we threw down. Only a few, but it does show promise, so I will look to leave every 4th bed to do a more random planting with clay seed balls and mustard seed.

The rest I will plant to seedlings from cold frames.

Horse Manure

2010-06-25T05:02:00.000-07:00

Doing a Permaculture garden is a continually changing effort as you change what is available to you and gain knowledge about design. This time I have been able to get hold of a large supply of horse manure and straw and thought it would be great to mulch the soil, keep down the weeds and add fertility.

So I have been getting ten bags at a time and putting it on. This I think will be the only real time we need it for many years if we continue with green manure crops and can get hold of straw mulch in autumn.

There is a lot of beds (200m) and it will take a lot of manure to cover them all, but if I work up the slope and continue doine a run or two per week, we should have all the annual beds done by autumn.

Natural green house for cucurbits

2010-06-24T04:46:00.000-07:00

In order to get some heat to ground vine crops I have put rocks from teh pond dig around a hole that I put horse manure in and covered with soil. The rocks heat up during the day and hold the heat through the night. They also heat up quick in the morning and radiate this out to the plant as well as keeping the soil temp up a bit.

And there there is the issue of parmagnetism from the rocks, but that is another unknown as yet issue by me!

The seedlinga above were put in 2 days ago and have started to grow quickly. i have also a nasturtium to bring in bees to help pollinate this pumpkin.

Plums

2010-06-21T11:24:00.000-07:00

There are a number of plums on the two plum trees. I was not sure what type of trees we had on the land,but we now know for sure that two are plums. There is a load of plums on and I will check it they need to be thinned to get good sized fruit. I have no idea of the variety and the land owner is not sure either.

The other trees appear to have a different leave type and I am guessing apple, but nothing came of it this year, possibly as we had a late frost when the blossoms were on.

Potatoes

2010-06-21T05:30:00.000-07:00

Well, the surprising success is the potatoes. Planted more as an afterthought, they are incredibly resilient, and love this farm soil. I will certainly be putting them as a main crop next spring, even if only for the effective way they help prepare the soil, and just because they work! And that gives hope for all other veges.

Here is a spud plant I found amongst the mustard after I had chopped the mustard and put the horse manure down. There is about 25 of the potatoes coming along nicely.

I am going to prepare a lot of hollows for potatoes all over the land where I will plant and then put down straw as they grow. This way I can get a easy to pic crop and good mulch afterwards as well as good mounds for pumpkins and melons on either side.

Gate to the land

2010-06-14T22:33:00.000-07:00

I got a bit sick of jumping the fence and when starting to add manures it was time to put a gate to the land. It has made life lot easier.

Pictures of regular allotments in Ripon

2010-06-09T04:07:00.000-07:00

Here are some pictures of allotments in Ripon. I have posted so we can reference back next year to see how far our seedlings have advances in relation to "normal" growers.

Bees in the garden!

2010-06-04T10:56:00.000-07:00

I am hoping to put a top bar hive or two in the garden, and with hives costing over £100 I want to attract bees rather than buy them in. My bee spotting efforts have been nil for the past months, and this makes sense with limited water close by sheep "mown" pasture to 3 sides. But obviously the natural overgrown patch here and there have brought the bees down this way and the patchs of mustard I left are flowering and have attracted a number of bees to the land.

The border to the south side I have left to flower and the mustard and weeds/wildflowers are brining in the bees. Just what we need to pollinate vegetables.

There is a bee in there somewhere!

Back to basics - seedlings! Also annual versus perrenial systems.

2010-06-02T12:22:00.000-07:00

After the dismal performance of the seed balls, I have started seedlings over the past week so that we can get something growing this season. While the soil is being improved greatly, and I did not really expect to get too much of a crop in the first season, I would like to try all sorts of plants as well as the smattering of plants that are coming up from seeds and seed balls we planted in the field.

My initial idea was to combine annual vegetables and weeds and perennials all together, it does appear that you really need to have the perennial areas as more natural areas separated from the annual areas.

The annual vegetables find it hard to compete against the strong grass and weeds.

The separation of annual from perennial makes sense and is backed up by great work from Dr Elaine Ingham who advocates the building of soil biology for best growing of crops. Her work shows that perennial systems are fungally dominated in the soil and annuals bacterially dominated. So separate these areas and increase the woods on the soil surface to increase fungus, and in the annual growing area increase manures, nitrogen to build the bacteria that the annuals prefer.
For more on this see http://www.soilfoodweb.com. It is good that they now have a lab in UK that can test the soil biology. To date all labs did was test the elements and not the biology.

So I am now working on making the annual areas as weed free as possible. To do that I will try to get some crops in the coming months, but then plant out a late summer green manure crop.
I have found a source of horse manure and straw and while I was keen to stay away from manures, it seems like a great way to get the soil going! Got to be practical here.

I am starting to put the horse manure into a pile for composting on site. I will apply most onto the beds after most of the crops have finished. I might also try to mix the green manure seeds into 3 or 4 buckets of compost to make it easier to spread and hide the seeds a bit from birds.

This should give us weed free beds for next seasons planting.

Here is the seedling I am groins - a selection of tomatoes, globe artichoke, melon, pumpkin and nasturtium.

Clover, ladybeatle, onions and broadbeans emerging

2010-06-01T10:57:00.000-07:00

After a good soaking of rain following a dry spring, plants are starting to emerge amongst the cut mustard and weeds.

The small leaves of the clover are starting to appear under the mustard and other weeds.

Here is a bunch of clover coming up in the one area. The clover is slow growing, but does fix nitrogen from the air in the soil, so will help to increase N in the soil.

Ladybird. I have spotted a few amongst the nature areas of mustard and weeds I have left. This one moved across to the planting area.

Some of the onion sets are coming up.

Here is the mustard roots. they go down about 100 mm, which means they are penetrating into the sod that is covered with the earth, so helping to decompose it.

One of the broad bean plants coming through.

Cutting mustard and leaving insect habitats

2010-05-18T04:33:00.000-07:00

Now it seems to be the right time to cut the mustard green manure crop. The picture shows the cut mustard and a row I have left as a insect reserve. The weeds are very thick and it might be that after a thick summer green manure crop I will put down some straw. But I am keen to use only green manures grown on site to see if we can do that in order to cut time and cost.

The next picture shows the uncut row. The stinging nettle is in the foreground. Interesting that I have seen a few ladybird beatles on the stining nettles and these are good for aphid control.

Here is a view back to one of the uncut areas around the plum trees. I have left all areas around the trees as perrenial area and will leave to wildflowers and experiment with some berry fruits planted in the cooler weather.

Looking back down to teh pond area with Archie in the middle path.

Lots of flowers in the nature areas.

Grow your own fertiliser and save

2010-05-17T04:11:00.000-07:00

At the start of this project, I had envisioned deep thick mulch from horse or cow stables or composted muck form the farms to be the main cover and food for the plants. And many organic systems advocate this.
But as I saw the quick remarkable results of the mustard green manure. And as the practical considerations of actually getting the manure and straw to the field dawned on me, I started to realise that I may be able to further reduce my work by growing my own mulch and fertiliser.

I also have started to realise that I must put true Permaculture design in here and not try to grow things that are going to be hard to grow. I don't have irrigation here. I am relying on natural rainfall, and to grow any fruit and vegetable that I would grow on irrigated land is more work. And as you know, I don't like to work more than I have to!

So back to the internet to check out the right type of green manure to grow.
And I came across lots of good information , but more importantly the term "stockfree" vegan growing.

Ok, I am not vegan, but here is a group of UK farmer who are growing vege without animal manures. Great! Perfect for this particular site and system.
You can find more information http://www.veganorganic.net
and www.stockfreeorganic.net/
There is also a good book - "Growing Green" and a number of articles and audio which I am going through now.
It certainly makes sense, after all, what do the cows eat? Why not miss them out completely and cut out loads of hard work. This will help fertilise and also provide the valuable mulch I need for the autumn.

Seedballs have their place

2010-05-15T03:25:00.000-07:00

Seedballs seem to be a great solutions for low cost production. But I think that they do need a lot more research until they are ready to incorporate into a full system.
At the moment is is rather daunting throwing all these expensive seeds wrapped in compost onto the ground and hoping that they germinate! It would be much more reassuring to put down seedlings, at least you could see your plants amongst the green manure and flower plants.

So what is needed to look into? I think the main one is how long the seed balls will sit at the surface waiting for rain, and how they could be attacked by pests. If the "soft" seed balls that I am making do not last long to hinder pest attack before they reach emergent seedling and "root in ground" stage, then there is a good change all I am doing is putting nice snack of seeds down for the birds. If the balls dissolve too quick, then the larger seeds will be in plain view, being washed nicely for the birds and squirrels to seed.

But despite these doubts I am still going to avidly research and trial them because of the great possibilities for low maintenance food production, particularly on sites like this one, which is dependent on natural rainfall.

I put some corn down as planted corn, not seedlings. I have left a few seeds to trail as seedlings and seed balls.

Mixed seed and sand down

2010-05-13T03:33:00.000-07:00

I tried another method today. That is mixing dry sand with a wide mix of seeds and throwing it all over.

It is certainly a great leap of faith to get these 10 or so mixed packet of small vegetable seeds, mix them with sand the throw them all over the mustard crop and hope that some of the seeds make it to the ground below.
I know they will, especially with the rain, but I would be happier with lots of big seeds like beans and corn that I could throw around.

Well, time will tell. I also decided that lit is time to cut down the mustard, and used a sharp kitchen knife to cut it all down to lay down as mulch. I noticed several of the onion sets have grown, so this is good. The timing was right in that I wanted to use the mustard as a protective crop until some of the earlier seeds (and onions) had started to emerge.

I have left the area around the apple trees and a couple of the beds in order to see what happens, and also provide some mulch crop.

Dwarf beans seedballs and potatoes

2010-05-10T01:08:00.000-07:00

This morning my son Archie (4) and I made seedballs with the Dwarf beans (Tendergreen and Ferrari) . There was about 200 seed balls in all, a bit short of the packet count.
The mix I made this time a bit finer by putting the seedling mix into a kitchen food processing machine to cut it up fine. Then add some flour and plenty of cut up dried chili peppers and some Raw sugar and hot water solution to bind it together.

It is a leap of faith with the seed balls, as I have never seen any of them after I have put them down, and wonder if any of the animals or insects are getting them. If they are being taken, it is not a large animal as there is no disturbance of the mustard seedling mulch, so I hope they they are being absorbed into the soil and that I am not looking hard enough.
It is a bit of concern as you throw the relatively costly seeds down and cross your fingers!

I planted all the seed balls and some (100 or so) parsnip ones I had made.
I also planted about 4o potatoes (variety Kestrel) to give them a try.

I think it is now time to cut the mustard, and I while I was planting the potatoes I had a look at the soil where the mustard is. It certainly has done the trick, being thick with roots and a nice organic mat. Where the mustard did not grow so well (where I had not done finished the second path dig before seeding) the ground is not as decomposed, so I think that the mustard has a role to play in helping decomposition of buried pasture when first establishing a garden on new farming land.

I am now happy with the use of the mustard and think that it could be a good part of the no-dig process mainly using it as a cover to protect the seed balls and seeds that are thrown down. Once most of the seeding is done, chop the mustard to open up the ground to the heat. The chopped mustard as a mulch should also protect the emerging seedlings.

I still have not seed any of the mixed clover, but then there are a lot of seedlings coming up of all sorts of weeds, so I am not that sure what I am looking for! They should come through later as it warms up. They are more easily recognisable when larger.

Planting tomatoes, beans and others

2010-05-04T11:16:00.000-07:00

We planted out the tomato, sunlower/pea and flower seedballs.
As you can see in the pictures - the mustard is putting on a good cover, so I am hoping that the seedballs will establish themselved and be able to break out of the cover.

OK for the broad bean and sunflower I am guessing, but with the smaller seedlinged flowers, it is a bit of a gamble that they will make it through the cover.

I could perhaps cut it in a week before the seedlings come through, allowing them clear run.

Here is Angus and Archie playing around where I am digging the pond.

I might leave a Island in the middle, but will see how it goes as the digging progresses.

Also note the flower blossoms on the apple tree.

Seed balls for Sunflower companion with pea

2010-05-04T02:30:00.000-07:00

The ground is starting to warm up and the mustard is up around 100mm (6 inches) and all looking good. Now is time to start planting much of the crops, so I have made up some companion Sunflower with Pea balls. Also some tomato and flower balls.

Sunflower and pea.
The general idea here is to have sunflowers throughout the planting area rather than planted as a group. Then I am going to use the tall,strong growing sunflower as a pole for the pea to grow up.
As long as we get sufficient other taller plantings (perhaps staked beans etc) then their wind should be cut down and should not blow them over.

To start I mixed fine planting compost with dried chopped chili dried chili powder to try to prevent birds eating it. I then made up a sugar solution and mixed it in. I then added flour to get it to stick together to form balls.

Then I laid it out flat and rolled it a bit to get a 5mm (1/4 inch) layer and then used a pizza roller to mark out 25mm squares. Bit too domestic I think!

Next I placed a Sunflower seed and a pea seed on each.

Then I picked each square up with a spatula.

Then pushed them into a ball in the palm of my hand. Bit like ravioli making.
Then put them in a tray and left them in warm area to dry a bit to hold their shape.

Tomatos. I obtained some open pollinated interesting varieties of tomato from Real Seeds and have put all the 5 packets (1/ - 5/) into seed balls, one seed each ball. This will also be randomly planted and step back!

Also I put a mix of Dahlia and Pansy seed and made small seed balls to throw around. Being smaller, they were not that easy to form into round balls and are sort of a small pinch that just holds together. They seem to be drying to a solid ballish shape that will tolerate being thrown around.

I will place out the tomatoes and sunflower/beans about 1 every m2 (we have 200m2 of planting area in about 1m wide beds, so it is easy to calculate how often the seeds should be thrown out.
100 sunflowers/pea balls, so 1 every row meter.
About 100 tomato, so same "throwing" rate.
About 150 seeds. Because the planting rate is not so critical, I will let the children throw these out - definite way to get random planting!

Digging is going well, and almost all the paths are done. Just now to concentrate on the ponds.

Planting broad bean

2010-04-30T02:24:00.000-07:00

Time (or perhaps a little late!) to put in some broad bean. The earlier attempt failed,but this was too early. And I don't think that the larger seeds are canidates for seed balls like we used as they are vigorous anyway and should come up through with a little sun on the ground. We shall see how the season goes to evaluate the success or otherwise of seed balls and which crops they are best for.

2010-04-26T14:21:00.000-07:00

Well, back again after a month away to Australia and extended stay in Singapore courtesy of an unpronounceable Icelandic volcano.

I left the plot in March with just some emerging grass and the weather still very cold and put down the green manure crop not sure what to expect on return.

It has been interesting to see what the result is. Yesterday I did another hour down on the land digging and observing and saw that the mustard has come through well and extremely thick in parts. The over seeding has worked with a layer of mustard plants just starting at around 1 - 2 cm high. It is crowding out the grass and in just the 24 hour period since yesterday has grown half a cm, so in a week or so, now that the weather is really starting into spring, we should seed 10 - 15cm growth.

I could not see the mixed clover coming up and with the proliferation of all types of plants coming up I was not really sure what I was looking for, but on close observation of the ground, I saw lots of 2mm double cotyledon plants that look to be the clover just starting to come up. As I guess it is the warm weather getting them going, I would not bother to put them in next year until later as with the mustard seeds.

The beds really are thick with weeds and plants and if I was farming conventionally I would be tearing my hair out trying to figure out how to keep the weeds down. But with the lazy old no dig permaculture method I feel that we can make use of the weeds to help us in a number of ways; - hide scattered seeds from birds, grow down through the old pasture to get up nutrients and also form organic matter "tunnels" when decayed, reduce drying of the top soil layer, provide habitat for insect predators, keep any rabbits, sheep, birds etc from the emerging seedlings and all this fitting nicely with my lazy no dig way of thinking.

What have I learnt?
- I would not bother to plant the mustard and clover until about early - mid April as the grown is not warm enough when we planted at the middle of March.

- The first season on new ground is mainly about getting some green manure crops in to suppress the grass coming through. The pasture grass has no real use in the garden, so the aim is to cover it with soil or compost so it does not grow again, and decays in the soil to add to the soil organic matter.
I think at this stage of my learning establishing a new garden in pasture would be done best starting in mid summer by digging the paths throwing the path soil up onto the pasture and with a summer green manure crop (both grass and legumes) thickly sown into this soil. This should kill of most of the grass and give a thick cover to build the soil. Once the green manure was killed in autumn I would put down a straw mulch to slowly rot into winter and give relatively grass free beds ready for spring planting of mixed vegetable, herb and green manure seeds.

Repeating the late summer green manure and autumn mulch seems like a good system.

- It is hard to "plan" a permaculture garden. You can lay out general ideas, but you have to observe and adapt to what you find. More a case of having a lot of techniques and then putting the ones you need into practice when you need them.

- Straight lines of plants are un-natural. Because random is general in nature straight lines don't fit into a natural system and causes problems.

- More seeds are needed as the survival rate is less than in conventional seed/seedling/plant vegetable system.

- Supress the grass with the soil from the paths. The picture above is one of the beds that only got the shallow dig of the path and the grass is coming through strong. The picture below is one of the other beds that got the full path depth and had much more of the grass suppressed and has sprouted the green manure much better.

2010-03-17T18:05:00.000-07:00

Today I bought some mixed clover seed from a local merchant. 1Kg of seed, which turned out to be about enough to fill a ice cream container. Fine seed and apparently the guy at the shop said it would be enough for a acre.
I mixed the mustard seed with it and spread by hand while continuing to mix it as the light clover seeds keep being shy and heading down to the bottom of the container. The newly dug soil from the paths that I have put back up on the beds is a great seed bed, and at the end of seeding I used a plastic garden rake to mix in the top soil a bit.

The idea is for the cover crop to come up over the next 2 weeks and we can then plant into it. It should help any seed ball plantings by hiding the balls, as well as helping to hide emerging plants such as broadbeans from birds and other pests.

Broad beans seed balls eaten

2010-03-10T03:45:00.000-08:00

Well, it seems that the broad beans in the seed balls were too attractive to animals. I did not spend much time on the land after we put the seed balls down so did not see them go, but they appear to have been eaten as they are nowhere to be seen.

Luckily they were last years seed, so not too much of a loss. And the local vege growing expert - Tim - says that the broad beans planting is too early and will be better later in March when the soil warms up a bit.
This is also a good lesson in the use of seed balls. It does appear that planting on the surface can be a bit of a fight between pests and the seeds. Soto increase the odds of the seeds surviving I am going to put down a spring green manure crop. This will also compete with the grass fighting its way through the soil I have put on top from the paths. (The grass is getting an early start and already some of the grass is 2cm long).

I have bought some white mustard (sinapsis alba) from the local merchant and will get a early legume to seed with this to give a good growth.
I am going away for a month from mid-March to Mid April - bad timing,but if I seed the green manure then I should be coming back to a good cover for the vegetable and flower seeds balls to seed into.

I have been digging the paths deeper to get soil to cover the beds to stop the grass growth and give a good soil for the cover crop to plant into.

I also planted some rubharb crowns from the land owners friend. Very lare roots but with healthy looking tops. I planted close to both future ponds as they look like they might like the more humid air.

Vegetable production seed balls

2010-02-20T02:05:00.000-08:00

Ok, the books say to best germinate seeds have a fine seedbed in a greenhouse or cloche and sow the seeds in the soil 2 - 3 times the width of the seed deep.

Ok, so that is how it works in nature right?

Well... No.

I don't see too many finely tilthed seedbeds in nature.

It appears that this is the natural cycle;

Plants flower in spring and seed comes end of summer and is distributed by wind, animals, in-built dispersal or water.

The seed ends up on the top of the soil/mulch.

During autumn much leaf debris comes down and forms a mulch over them. Many are eaten.

The survivors are stored over winter very close to the surface under a shallow bed of decomposing mulch in a rich composting plant and micro-organism mix.

Spring comes and the mulch warms up and with rains, the seed absorbs water, splits and germinates at the correct temperature and moisture.
The radicle (or seed root) then goes down into a nice composting mulch to the soil below. The radicle starts to absorb nutrients and then the plumule (or shoot) emerges heading up through the thin layer of mulch to the sunshine above.

Growth continues if the plant is not eaten or a cold snap kills the shoot.

Now this makes more sense to me and fits into a system we are designing for minimum work.

FEATURES REQUIRED IN OUR PLANTING SYSTEM

I am looking for a number of features for our seed planing system;

- Easy to do. I don't really want have to dig into the soil, make long furrows or anything like that. I would rather just throw seeds onto the top of the soil while walking around listening to my Walkman.

- I don't want to have to wait for the perfect moment to sow the seeds (not too wet and muddy, not too dry etc). I want to put them on the ground when I can and they then germinate when conditions are right for them.

- I want them to get the quickest start they can when the warmth is there.

- I want to be able to sow a mix of seeds together to have a instant companion planting "guild".

- I want to be able to easily put the seeds out randomly to go with the random planting system I am doing.

- I want to be able to sow into a rough non-dig ground that has mulch, compost and soil on top.

- I don't want my seeds eaten by insects or animals as they are expensive.

- I don't want to have green houses, seed mixes, planting pots and grow seedlings etc if I can help it.

- I want to prepare any seed in a nice warm house!

Now a vegetable plot is NOT a natural system. But carrying out practices that are close to natural systems will ensure minimal work as natural systems do not do too much extra work.

So the seed balls seem to be the best system to get these seeds out with minimum cost, time and effort.

FEATURES OF SEED BALLS

Features are;

- Uses commonly available household ingredients. In the case of large seeds we use sugar solution to stick a compost around the seed. Smaller seeds may need a dried clay mix, but we will be trying to avoid that if we can as I want it to be with commonly available ingredients.

- You can prepare them indoors. It is good fun for your children to do, like modeling clay, and this inspires them to get out to the garden to sow the seeds and observe them.

- You can add "extras" to the compost around the seed. Using Vermicompost we will have a rich mix of bacteria and fungi to inoculate the area surrounding the seed. We could also add rhizobium to legume seeds to help with nitrogen fixation.

- With careful seed selection we do not have to grow seedlings etc. I have always wondered if, for example, a greenhouse grown tomato seedling will actually be that much more advanced than a outdoor sown one. My thinking is that with correct variety selection the field sown own with its more established root system will get close the fruiting as the green house and transplanted one. It is certainly a great saving on money and time.
I am hoping that the use of seedballs, which are sitting on the surface just waiting for the correct warmth and moisture will give them a quick start and fruit close to transplanted ones.

- Easy to sow. this fits in perfectly with the random planting. My idea is that harvesting is merely a matter of taking a basket along the rows and picking whatever is ready, be it onion, tomato etc.

- We can disuade the pests to eat our seeds by having the compost surrounding the seeds mixed with Chilli powder. This should give a lesson to animals that they are not that palatable. We can try other additives if chilli does not work so well.

- We can mix in various seeds in the one seed that need similar planting time and can form a guild. For example corn with bean, carrot with radish etc.

Seed balls are just one of the techniques we are going to test to reduce our time and costs of production, but we think a very important one.

Double digging the paths

2010-02-20T02:03:00.000-08:00

Spring time is coming!
the Lambs are out in the field next door and grass starting to grow a little and buds on tress swelling.

I need to move on a bit with making sure the beds are ready for planting.

I am not sure if I have done the right thing by not digging the grass turf up and turning it over. This would have ensured a lot of grass did not re-grow. But a LOT or work!

I am leaving the turf on the beds and now double digging the paths down another 100mm or so. This will give better drainage and also when I put bark chip down on the paths, the paths will be at the correct height.
The good thing about this is that the soil going back on the beds from the double digging is smothering the emerging grass.

This will work for a while, but I know it is essential I get on and get some mulch on top to further smother when the grass starts coming out of the soil.

Perhaps I should have turned over the turf! Well we shall see as the season moves on.

Making seed balls

2010-02-17T04:01:00.000-08:00

Our first seed ball making experiment is with broad bean as this is the first crop to go in this season. We are a bit early and found that out as the night after we put the balls down the termperature plummeted to negative 6Celcius and we had about 3cm snow.
So, a good test for the balls!

We did use last years seed, so this is not so good, but will repeat with some fresh seed next week.

Anyway we made the seeed balls as follows.

- Make up a sugar solution that is sticky (sugar and hot water). I used white sugar, but will use raw sugar or mollases next time to give extra nutrients to the bacteria in the seeding mix.

I used plain seeding mix, so it would not be so full of beneficial bacteria, so a good vermicompost would be ideas. Also I did not use rhizobuium in the mix as I could not find any, but just recently stummbled across some at the local hardware so will use that in the next braod bean and pea seeds.

OK, no simply mix up the seedling mix with a few large spoons of chilli powder. You will have to guess the mix, but think what the mix would taste like and you will get the idea of what rabbits will come across if they try to eat them!

Initially I put the mix down in a pan with the idea of putting another layer over the top and then putting the seeds in rows and another layer on top and cutting into squares and picking up an drolling to balls, but it turned out easier just to wrap some mix around the seed. I also mixed in some marigold seed.

I then put the seeds in trays and sat on top of the oil boiler to dry for a bit and then thought it might be a bit too hot so put them on the bench to dry.

After 2 days they were still moist, but ok to put out I thought. Perhaps if you want them to be really resilient you could fully dry and they would then sit on the soil surface waiting for the first rains.

I think that the method for smaller seeds will be more like how I started this and that is to lay out a layer of mix and sprinkle seeds on top, put another layer on and then cut into squares and make balls from that.

I think we might also try to coat the seeds with the liquid mix and then roll in plastic bag with compost, but at this stage we have not tried that and will wait until the April planting to try that.

Digging paths and pond in snow

2010-01-10T04:46:00.001-08:00

To the left is the start of a pond that I have put in to help increase the natural predators in the area. Apparently it helps Mayflies who eat pest eggs. Also if we can make it a haven for frogs and toads, they help with any snails and slugs.
there appears to be a lot to the design of a wildlife pond, so more research is needed.

A Robin has joined me to help dig! the chance of a spare worm is the main attraction.

Here you see the paths after digging. I am using a spade to cut both sides of the path through the turf, then using a mattock to dig up the soil and then the spade again to put the soil out to both sides onto the beds. Contrary to conventional practice, I don't want a smooth seeding bed, but a rough turfy bed as this gives more habitats for the seedballs.

Here is a more open view of the beds being dug. I have a central path running down the middle that I have dug wider for access to both sides.
I have made it a bit curvy as a straight path is pretty boring.

This is a shot towards the sun. It is about 12 mid day and this is about as high as it gets this time of year. But it does give me a good idea where the main sunshine is coming from and I can then design the plot to catch the sun with higher border plants and the pond and dam to reflect sunshine.

First dig and Snow

2009-12-18T03:33:00.001-08:00

Just a few days after starting to dig the paths we have had our first snow of the season. Looks fantastic out, and I took the chance to take some pictures.

This one is looking down to the land showing how low it is.

The land is behind the trees in the middle.

This next picture shows the land from the bottom.

You can see the few scraggly fruit apple and pear trees. The land is just the bottom portion of the owners land that runs up the hill to the back of her house in the village.

You can see how the fence has been added across.

And, the view from the top. The sun comes in from the right, so the trees along the left border make a natural wind break and also will help to keep the sun in the area along with our planted windbreaks.

I have started the digging of the paths at the top and will work down the land.

The paths and ponds will be the only digging I will do. The beds will all be no dig with mulch layers on top for week control.

2009-11-12T02:00:00.000-08:00

I broadcast the seeds that came into the soil. I spread the seeds very thinly all over the ground.

Please note - This is a post I have entered historically in Feb 2010 form my records, and I can say definitely that none of the cover crop came up. so it appears to be important to get the seeds in much earlier so that they are full on growing into autumn.

It is also important to get a cheaper source of seeds, so saving green manure does appear to be essential and if we can save it to provide for other future gardens we could save a lot of expense.

Winter green manure

2009-11-10T01:26:00.000-08:00

Ordered 2 lots of cover crop for winter. It is getting a bit late as most winter crops seem to go in during October to get a start, so I did not spend much. Just bought 250grams of the field pea and 250Grams of other.
http://www.greenmanure.co.uk/

Forage Pea Green Manure Seeds (250g ) 1 £3.90 £3.90
http://www.greenmanure.co.uk/foragepea.htm
Normally 250g will cover 29m2.
We have 600m2 so we would have needed to order 20 times or about 5kg or seed (cost us £200 or so from this supplier!)

Forage Rye Green Manure Seeds (250g ) 1 £3.90 £3.90
http://www.greenmanure.co.uk/rye.htm
Same coverage as above, so would be good to save the seed.

The Permaculture Vege Garden project begins

2009-10-15T03:47:00.000-07:00

At last land has been found to start a small Permaculture production garden. A local villager has kindly let me trial Permaculture gardens in a block of her land that had been previously reserved for a orchard.

Well an orchard of about 10 youngish Pear and Apple trees that have not fruited so well apparently. The orchard is small at 30 metres by 20, but still plenty of land for vegetables.

The site is at the very bottom of a slope. So no problems with water really, but could be a frost trap. It has not been gardened for many years if at all, and recent years it has been fenced of with the occasional sheep wandering through, so relatively un-compacted from tractors and livestock.

The basic idea for the garden is a Permaculture style vegetable and fruit production. We want as little work as possible and want to design the system to be self regulating for pest and diseases.

I google mapped the site to see the sun direction and together with general observation came up with the general site plan.

This is that we border the 3 sides away from the sun to create a sun trap effect and also to slow any frost from the hill above. Plant Jerusalem Artichoke, Globe Artichoke, Sunflower and other taller plants around the edge and taller crops such as corn and runner bean inside this border. this should give a good trap at the back to create a warm micro-climate. And beds of lower vegetables in front. I think a pond will be very beneficial for harbouring predators and also for using the reflected light to help warm up blueberry and other fruits.

So, here goes! The first thing we have to do after measuring up and putting down the plan is to star digging the paths.