Practice — 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

Propagation 101 – now is the time to have a crack at making cuttings

You cut below a bud horizontally. For best results cut with scissors or secateurs first to seal the cut and again with a really sharp knife just before you pot it. This cut is square. At the top end you either include the apical leaves and between 2 and 4 nodes depending on the plant or you make a sloping cut above a bud. You keep the cuttings moist until its time to pot them. Then you seal the bottom with Root!t Gel which contains auxins and then keep them moist and sheltered over the winter. [...]

Graham Bell – The #Permaculture Garden

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. [...]

Land regeneration – permaculture in action?

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. [...]

Fresh Salads and Chard from the Glasshouses

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. [...]

I’ve been looking at #Permaculture in wonder recently.

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. [...]

Using plants to clean the reservoir

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 [...]

A special seed kit for late sowing

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. [...]

Vegetables you can sow at this time of year

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. [...]

Preserving what we produce

I’m currently dealing with an excess of tomatoes so I thought I’d tell you about a couple of products we’ve recently taken on which you can buy via our Amazon store to help me in producing tomato and chilli relish, chutney, salsa and passata. [...]

Permaculture – French Style

While we were in Normandy the other week we went round this amazing Hydrangea nursery about which more later.

Out the back were many beds that had clearly been used for display in the past but were now a bit overgrown. In the middle of this fertility was one bed which had been fenced off and was being used for Geese who were busily engaged in clearing the land back to the point where it could be re used.

N’importe quoi.

Here are the Geese for your amusement and delight.

Permaculture French Style

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Propagation 101 – now is the time to have a crack at making cuttings

Graham Bell – The #Permaculture Garden

Land regeneration – permaculture in action?

Fresh Salads and Chard from the Glasshouses

I’ve been looking at #Permaculture in wonder recently.

Using plants to clean the reservoir

A special seed kit for late sowing

Vegetables you can sow at this time of year

Preserving what we produce

Permaculture – French Style

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