The Intelligent Garden

I first started gardening as a research student working on how plants grow. Then we bought a small holding in Shropshire for a while before we discovered computers and marketing. 20 years later we started selling plants on-line.

Expansion meant we needed premises - so we acquired a nursery with 2 acres of glasshouse and started growing organic vegetables again. By September 2008 we had our soil association certification and had started selling biological controls online.

Talking to people on farmer's markets I sense a real hunger for people to garden and produce their own food. And a real interest in local and pesticide free produce.

So we created the Intelligent Garden ito help you get the most from your garden by offering the knowledge, products and advice you need to work effectively with nature to release the intelligence in your garden.

Company Registration 5003969
Vat Registration: 826 8892 74
Reg Office The Glasshouses, Fletching Common, BN84JJ

Welcome to the Intelligent Garden

The Glasshouses Garden

In The Intelligent Garden, Science works with Nature to create a space that gladdens the heart and lifts the soul.

If you want better vegetables, a natural environment or to learn to work with nature in a practical way - you’ve come home to the right place. You’ll discover how plants grow, what they need and how to make your garden into that vibrant outdoor space you want.

You can enjoy some of our favourite gardens via pictures and videos with the odd recipe to delight the inner man. So join us on this exciting adventure. You can contact us on 0845 094 0407 or 01825 724282 - Dr Alan Rae – Fletching Glasshouses – 2011

Cosmic Beetroot - a great recipe

Cosmic Beetroot

This is a great recipe for beetroot. It goes really well with Curries – we used to used to serve it with Keema Korma.
Simply boil the beetroot in the usual way then let it cool. It’s probably best to use about 500g of medium sized beets.
Instead of just putting vinegar on it in the usual way you serve it with an oil and vinegar dressing – which contains the secret ingredient – cardamom. I generally take 2 or 3 pods and crush them in a pestle and mortar. Pick out the husks and add to the vinaigrette ( 1 part good vinegar and 3 parts olive oil)
Pour over the beetroot and serve.

Cosmic Beetroot – with Cardamom

The cardamom makes it taste wonderful.

Visit to TableHurst farm

Yesterday I visited Tablehurst farm near here as part of a group organised by the Food academics group at the local universities. This is a community supported agriculture scheme run by a co-op of around 600 local people.

The organiser is active on the management team but in his day job is prof of land economy at the University of Brighton.

The relevance to this thread is that they got some money to do a research project into the motivation Ot the group. They chose to do this by involving one of the activists in creating an oral history.

Certain key themes emerged such as the community as therapy and the primacy of community.

However it was clear that the key underpinning thought was to secure and maintain a source of safe uncontaminated food.

I thoght that was very interesting in light of the findings we discussed earlier in the light of the baby food.

Maybe that’s what’s largely going on and why local/unsprayed is perceived as more important than organic. While we all know that industrially produced meat could theoretically be called local, it is unlikely at least in the UK, to be offered to the consumer as such as it will in practice enter the official supply chain

So when the consumer says that local is more important it’s because they will know who produced it and what there position to chemicals is.

Wanted! Research into slugs, thistles, TB and much more | OGA – Organic Growers Alliance

See on Scoop.it – Communication in Business

AlanRae‘s insight:

Interesting set of research projects in UK via Soil Association

See on www.organicgrowersalliance.co.uk

Three powerful reasons to grow organic.

I’m currently working on two pro bono projects at the moment. One is to help Martin Dewhurst source items for his Saharawi refugee camp gardens project New Dawn Rovers. The other is creating an educational panel on soil structure for the undercroft at the Linklater Pavilion in Lewes.

Both of these have involved me in a lot of background research – into Permaculture, into how effective organic techniques can be and how the hegemony of the World Trade Organisation makes it difficult to progress towards a sustainable future.

So recently I’ve come across a few killer stats that should make us all sit up and take notice.

They both stem from the fact that what we have come to think of as “conventional” agriculture only works in an era of cheap (or at least reasonably priced fuel) it depends on diesel to move the tractors around and chemically produced nitrate to grow the crops. This also has the effect of beating up the soil structure making it more prone to erosion. This deterioration of the soil structure is already concerning conventional growers – some I know from interviews on the Growing Jobs project have retained organic techniques of soil husbandry after a flirtation with organic growing for the supermarkets. We’ve also heard the UK Government’s chief scientist on the Today programme talking about soil structure – a sure sign that there must be a problem otherwise why would he be there?

But the two killer stats are these.

1) The CO2e footprint of conventionally produced crops is 40% higher than organic. Mainly due to the saving of energy to produce chemical nitrates. Figures from the long running Rodale Institute farm trials.

2) The more organic matter in the soil the better it retains moisture. Each 1% of organic matter in the soil will retain 168,000 litres per hectare. That’s of course hard to visualise. What it means is 4 cubic meters for a standard 10 pole allotment or 14 kilos per square meter. So 5% organic matter in the soil will hold 70 kilos of water per square meter. Substantially more than the body weight of a model like Kate Moss.

The third key fact is the ability of organic agriculture to sequester carbon back into the soil. About 500 kilos per hectare per year. This is not just through the application of compost but also due to the re absorbtion of roots from clover leys etc. IN fact organic practices currently produce soil carbon levels 28% higher than conventional methods in Northern Europe and 20% higher for all countries studied.

The ability to rebuild soil is critical given that the normal level of soil formation is 0.2 tonnes per hectare where the loss of soil by erosion is 2-10 tonnes per hectare per year (40 in North America)

Yields are also considerably higher than conventional in drought condidtions due to the moisture retention.

Our challenge to make agriculture sustainable is to get the right balance between organic and science to feed populations with less transport and fossil fuel inputs such as fertilisers.

There’s a lot of work ahead of us to mainstream organic husbandry – although to some extent the oil price is nudging us in that direction – at least in the UK.

That’s enough for now – we’ll look at some gardening next

While we're snow bound we can still be planning

ONe thing you should be gearing up for is to make your seedlings get away to a good start. In our propagation area we’re fortunate to have underbench hot water heating and an air heater that keeps the temperature at around 6-7 degrees – enough to keep our citrus plants in good heart. [...]

The great nematode famine.

Despite at least three or four nights when the temperature here has gone down to -5C before Christmas, the little blighters are still flourishing like the green bay tree and homing in on the Pak Choy and Tatsoi with knives and forks in hand. We are going to be under siege for months to come. [...]

Ever wanted to learn to smoke?

One of our fellow stall holders there is a nice man called David Stechler who runs the Lewes Smokehouse and he’ll shortly be running a DIY course in smoking food on 17th November at another neighbour of ours the famous High Weald Dairy. Here are the details. If you’re interested contact David as explained below. If you go let me know how you get on. [...]

Preserving Equipment

Well it seems to be that time of year again when we have an excess of fruits that we need to preserve. Here at the glasshouses we tend to make things like Tomato chutney, chilli Jelly and Marmalade. In order to help you we offer a small range of equipment from Franchi, the Italian seed people. [...]

Intelligent Gardening - French Style at the Miromesnil Potager garden

his year we went to visit the Potager Garden at Miromesnil. It has a a classic structure – 4 squares of vegetables surrounded by borders of mixed flowers. It was started in 1948 by the Comtesse de Vogue. Her son added fruit trees to the garden and decided to cut the grass on the south side of the park in a chequered design similar to that used in the 18th century. [...]

Autumn Vegetables - where did the summer go?

If you are under glass or have a polytunnel you still have time to plant things up to overwinter. You will get a catch crop by the beginning of November that you can continue harvesting through out the winter. As long as they have some green left they will regenerate when the light turns in the middle of February and will keep you in fresh greens through the hungry gap into May when the new seasons plantings start to work. [...]

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