A quick overview of why plants can benefit from a cold snap. It’s kind of like a board game where the aim is to accumulate degree days. So one degree day is one day spent below a given temperature which varies from plant to plant. 1 day at 6 degrees below is worth 3 days at 2 degrees below. When the critical number is reached then the plants will move onto the next phase in the cycle. This tends to be a feature of long day plants. [...]
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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. [...] The most interesting presentation of the lot was one on the 3 stages of GM from Professor Sir David Baulcombe. I’ve tended to be a GM sceptic as it has appeared that the amount of spraying hasn’t gone down on the round-up ready strand, yields haven’t gone up, farmers have become more dependent and the companies that produce these products have created a monoculture with the IP owned by them which is bad for food security on both counts. However the Professor’s extremely interesting talk identified 3 stages of GM and provided light instead of the usual heat [...] Best of all he tells you in explicit detail how to turn a lawn into potatoes by spreading cardboard round the dripline of a handy tree and covering it in compost. Put the potatoes in, follow up with beans over the winter and bodge in some rasp canes the following autumn and your on your way to your very own forest garden. [...] I can honestly report that on this year’s lot there’s been a pitch invasion of docks and at the back where the swimming pool came out 18 months ago it’s stiff with clover. Both of these happy events have been organised by nature with no input from me at all. So while I’ve been on holiday I’ve been avidly reading David Bell’s book the permaculture garden and am busily planning a forest garden round the house for a permanent supply of fruit. [...] This whole approach to designing a functioning ecosystem from day one is something that we really should be looking at more given that I’m beginning to suspect that what we think of as conventional farming is uncomfortably dependent on cheap oil. [...] These leafy vegetables really cross over between annual and the perennial approach to gardening beloved by permaculturalists. As long as you keep picking them they remain vegetative – sorrel does that too and its a really useful thing for intelligent gardening. [...] The remaining minerals a plant needs are Sulphur plus a string of trace elements. These are Iron, Manganese, Copper, Zinc, Boron, Chlorine, Molybdenum and Nickel. Deficiency of any of these can lead to disease and a few trace elements are toxic if present in excess. Generally speaking these are not detectable by the kits available to amateur gardeners and in practice even commercial growers send samples away to be tested professionally. [...] Getting at the details of what Magnesium and Calcium actually do are quite tricky because most gardening books tell you what happens if they’re not there and leave it at that. So after a bit of sleuthing this is what we came up with. Calcium binds the cell wall together and Magnesium makes Chlorophyll work. Plus the come free with the deal when you lime with carbonate to fix the soil pH. [...] For those who like doing things for themselves, one way of feeding the plants is to make your own liquid fertiliser. You can do this quite simply by using deep rooted plants like comfrey and nettles. These not only are high in potassium and nitrogen but also concentrate trace minerals from the subsoil. It’s really quite easy. You can buy one or more of those 50/75 litre waterbutts they have in B&Q or Homebase plus a tap for them. Fill it up with freshly cut roughly chopped comfrey and nettles (we sometimes put thistles in ours too) and then fill it up with water. Leave for 3-6 weeks – then dilute and use [...] |
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