Isobel has been sewing wild flower seeds to make a meadow area round the new fruit trees that aren’t getting the potato treatment this year. I’m looking to transplant a bit of comfrey for mulching into the other part of the woodland garden and am going to broadcast a bit of landcress which is a great self seeder and a good standby for winter salad. [...]
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One of the principles of permaculture is stacking – three dimensional planting. So this means that are going to use fruit trees as the basis of our design., In between the trees, we plan to plant fruit bushes in between the fruit trees – ultimately they want to be sited at the drip line of the fruit tree canopy and below that we will plant a range of perennial vegetable and mulch crops – chard, comfrey, sweet potatoes etc. [...] So I’ve decided to go in a snake about 4 -5 meters wide which will start from the fence at the bottom of the lower pool, come up to the Mulberry and sweep round through the plum to go back to the boundary just up from the slope to the exising birch and then go up the boundary and round, inside the fallen willow to the shed. I’ll put a half standard Blenheim Orange tree there so that there will be three large trees in that area with lower bush trees between there and the other birch to allow evening Sun in to reach the house. [...] 
We’ve decided build a forest garden area between our house and the open field. Putting in the rainwater reservoirs f involved removing a row of Apple Trees. So the plan is to replace these and try and build a stacked tract of ground that has fruit trees embedded in fruit bushes with a ground cover of comfrey, sweet potatoes, legumes and some leaf vegetables. [...] Part of the trick with growing things commercially is that you always need to have something to sell. So for us we expect to have a good crop of peppers and aubergines and squash over the next couple of months with about half a dozen beds of sweet potatoes coming through. However our main focus is on providing a succession of chard and spinach that will take us through to Christmas. [...] 
In some ways these reservoirs are just like big garden ponds. We’ll be stocking them with Rudd shortly after a bit more fiddling with the overflows And just like garden ponds, one of the things that needs management is removing excess nutrients from the water to prevent algae developing. We’ve already had a couple of minor blooms. Mainly because we had more topsoil in the bottom of the reservoir than subsoil. Hornwort Fundamentally you need to have plants or other organisms that compete with the algae for the nitrates. For emergency reduction we use a product called blue [...] So here’s a selection of 5 vegetables you might have a crack at. Perpetual Spinach, radish, rocket, mixed salad and the carrots. Plants are very susceptible to daylength rather than temperature but we have about 8 weeks before they slow to a crawl. Under protected cropping they really only stop between mid december and when the light turns in mid february but still – if you’re feeling bold this selection should give you the best shot. [...] 
Things to grow at this time of year One of the advantages of having some protection – either as a polytunnel or glasshouses is that you can grab a late season crop of short growing season crops. At this time of year you can get away with quick growing crops like little gem lettuce, pak choi, radishes and spinach. You could also get good results with a cut and come again salad mix. Here are a few Spinach plants we prepared earlier. You need to be quick because we’ll soon run out of Daylight but there’s just under 60 days usable daylight left until next year. So get sowing!. The other thing you should be thinking about is propagating cuttings from plants over the winter. We’ll do a bit more on that soon. [...] Now that we’ve completed the reservoir, the next mountain for the family business to climb is the RHS Hampton Court flower show. My darling daughter who has taken on the role of Marketing Director for the company as a whole has decided that we should go and play with the big kids so here we are about to embark on a 7 day show. It’s a long time since I’ve done one of those but fortunately I don’t have to run this one – just go there and man the stand. Today is a day off for me – the [...] 
Needless to say having been as dry as a bone up to the time of the launch on 3rd June it then proceeded to rain quite satisfactorily. Too satisfactorily some might say with the result that I spent a fair amount of time the week before last bobbing about on a windsurfer sawing strategic bits off the outlet pipes. I don’t look my best in neoprene. [...] |
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