Ornamental Kitchen Garden revisited

If you didn't catch it, I urge you to watch Alys Fowler (should be Flower) and her Edible Garden series on BBC 2. The first of six episodes was on Wednesday, so you can still watch it on i-player. Alys, I think, is a modern day Geoff Hamilton and this series is at first glance is a new twist on Geoff's wonderful Ornamental Kitchen Garden series from 1990 (hmm, showing my age, or perhaps not as I do own a copy of The Geoff Hamilton BBC Collection (40th Anniversary Gardeners World DVD Box Set) which is also brilliant).

Nevertheless whatever interest you have in gardening and growing your own food, from beginner to expert, this series will be inspirational and just lovely to watch of an evening with a bowl of freshly picked beans to munch on.

If having watched the first episode you desperately want to get to work and create your own edible garden, or if you are outside the UK and can't access the BBC site, don't panic, Alys has a book out "The Edible Garden: How to Have Your Garden and Eat It". Timing eh? Brilliant :)

What's even more brilliant is that the BBC are giving away FREE seeds with instructions and stickers (don't you just love stickers). Just visit the www.bbc.co.uk/gardening/digin website, fill out the form and you will be on your way to self-sufficiency!

In Transition film - online now

I've just watched the online screening of the "In Transition" film. It's not the final version, but it looked pretty good to me, a little bit of tweaking and I'm sure it will be a brilliant. It's only online for a few days, so catch it now, or else you'll have to wait for the finished product. It's about an hour long.

I'm familiar with the "Transition" concept, so I'd be really interested to hear what anyone who is new to the subject thinks of the film.

The idea of creating a positive vision of the future I think is powerful and necessary, but for me methodology the transition movement is generally using to get people to think about the future is a bit "new age" - but granted it does work (it tends to revolve around group meditation, which, if you are not used to meditation, either on your own or in a group, is uncomfortable - I just can't imagine that going down well with the majority of the people in my town!). The practical aspects, great. Some fantastic projects highlighted in the film.

By the way the film didn't play in Firefox. It was fine in Internet Explorer.

If you want to comment on the film to Rob, post your comments on the Transition Culture In Transition Film blog post.

If you want to watch the full 350 degrees animation, you can find it at www.350.org/animation.

Duck steps

There was a bit of a duck population explosion a few years ago (from three to 10 or so ducks) at Chris Dixon's. The increase in duck feet meant that the soil on their regular route down to the pool had been eroded and the tree roots steadily exposed. On top of this, the change in weather patterns over the recent years has increased the occurrence of sudden downpours of rain. The huge quantities of water hurtle down the stream (raising the level of the water) and causes further damage to the banks.

All in all, the instability of banks had been playing on Chris’s mind. He had experimented with using bundles of long thin lengths of wood (he called them fascines) and laying the fascines on contour across the slopes so that any leaf litter, twigs etc would get caught behind and create steps/areas where plants could eventually grow. You can see Chris’s work on the left of the picture (the duck house is at the top of the slope). Our job was to add the fascines to the slope on the right (the fascines are already layed in place) and create steps for the ducks to take a different route down to the pool.

Chris had already made up a good supply of fascines and had identified a willow that we could take lengths of wood off to make stakes to keep the fascines in place. The rest was straightforward really, but it took us all of the day to lay and secure the fascines and weave a stairway banister/barrier for the ducks.

The next day we needed more wood and stakes to make the steps down to the pool and generally finish off. It was great to have the right kind of wood just growing on site (we took more from the willow used the day before). I wove the steps while Craig (Transition House) ferried well-rotted compost from another part of the garden to fill in the steps. The infilled steps covered the worst of the exposed roots.

Mac (the dog) hung around with us for the two days. She thought it was great fun to help us move the sticks, although they always end up rather chewed (we resorted in the end to hiding the pieces we needed in the duck house).

Apparently the ducks have taken to the steps like ... ducks to steps. Actually Chris assures me they're doing pretty well. I'm pleased.

Just so that you know, Chris is now back to just three ducks (the others have been rehomed). The small number of ducks is not causing further erosion, so the banks should be able to recover.

Comfrey day

Tuesday, the first day volunteering at Chris Dixon’s. We hadn’t really discussed what I’d be doing, only that it needed to be something that I could get on with on my own. Craig (Transition House) was at CAT attending a thesis module for his masters.

(Oh, the reason I was volunteering is on Craig’s blog)

It was a gorgeous sunny day, a good day for working outside. After a cup of tea, Chris explained that his comfrey needed sorting out and asked if I’d be happy to do that. Of course I was.

Chris’s comfrey bed is next to his polytunnel, in the enclosed formal productive garden (by formal I suppose I mean more allotment style garden as opposed to food forest). The gates to this area are kept shut for most of the time (as far as I could tell), which meant that I couldn't be distracted too much by Mac (the dog) and Scamp (the lamb (that kind of thought she was a dog because she’d had been reared in the house)). It also meant that because Chris’s khaki campbell duck slug patrol unit do such a good job at eating slugs outside of this area, it’s worth scooping up any slugs found within the fencing and giving them to the ducks (I didn’t find any slugs).

Chris makes a liquid feed for his vegetable and fruit garden from the comfrey plants (the feed of course needs to be diluted before it’s applied). The latest crop of comfrey plants were big enough to transfer into the comfrey barrel for fermenting into the liquid feed, but before that could be done, a few things had to be tackled first.

1. Take out the buttercups, wild raspberry and other “weeds” from the comfrey patch.


2. Trim the surrounding hedge


3. Add the “weeds” and hedge cuttings to the causeway (water slowing and filtration system, more about that later)


4. Empty the comfrey barrel of the last batch of liquid feed


5. Take the old comfrey leaves out of the barrel.


6. Add the fermented comfrey leaves to the compost


7. Straighten the barrel (it was sitting a bit on the wonk).


There are two things to know about comfrey, the first is that some people have a slight reaction to handling the plant (where it touches the skin it can bring you out in a rash), the second is that fermenting comfrey leaves smell, I mean really smell.

So on this sunny day, I kept my long-sleeved hoodie on. Which was probably a good idea anyway. And I tried my best to keep my distance from the stinky comfrey.

Thankfully when I got to step 5, Chris was on hand to help empty the barrel. Boy did those leaves smell! Probably Chris reckoned five seasons worth of plants. Blimey! – I stayed up wind as Chris pitched his fork into the barrel and heaved the soggy, stinky mass out and into the wheelbarrow. The top of the barrel was almost at shoulder height; Chris did really well not to get any of the contents on his clothing. I was really glad that he was doing this, if I was doing it, I just know I’d end up smelling of old comfrey for the rest of the day.

Lunch was great, a fried duck egg and probably the best salad I’ve ever eaten all straight from the garden, it was also a good time to chat with Chris and Lynn (I’d also taken Chris up on every tea break he had offered as I wanted to talk about permaculture design with him as much as possible).

After lunch:


8. Cut the comfrey crop and fill the barrel


9. Place cardboard along the poly-tunnel edge for extra weed protection


10. Cover cardboard with straw


11. Plant extra comfrey plants to fill in any gaps


12. Mulch the comfrey crop with horse manure


13. Tidy

Job done.

It was a good piece of work to do as it was completed in the day. Excellent job satisfaction. I know that Chris was pleased with the work, which makes it even better.

At some point during the day, I think it was as we were emptying the smelly leaves from the barrel, I commented to Chris that Craig (Transition House) would be disappointed not to be here. I think Chris thought I was joking, but I was serious, and I was right. Pretty much as soon as we got home, we made our own comfrey bed, see Craig’s blog. Fab.

Thanks Chris for all the excellent tips and for providing us with the plants to divide to make the new bed.

Kettle on, cuppa, teabags, oh

I love visiting the Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT) in Wales, there is always something new to see, and of course there is their shop. I know, I can shop online, but nothing quite beats flicking through new books. So when Craig (Transition House) said he had to go to a thesis workshop at CAT for his MSc, I jumped at the opportunity to join him for the week.

Initially we thought that Craig would need to be at CAT all day everyday (he was going to attend the straw bale building modulebut in the end he was just there for just over a day (he’s postponed the module)), so I arranged to volunteer to work with Chris Dixon at his permaculture holding at Tir Penrhos Isaf. You might recognise his name. Chris has recently featured on BBC2’s Natural World program - A Farm for the Future – more about my experience at Tir Penrhos Isaf in later posts.

We rented a small cottage for the week that had spectacular views across the Dyfi valley and a gorgeous bluebell wood just along the lane. First impressions were good, small glass and metal recycling boxes outside, paper and plastic recycling bins inside. Fantastic. Kettle on, cuppa, teabags, oh… What do I do with this then? I spent the next few minutes walking around while balancing a spent tea bag on a teaspoon, trying to find a compost bin. Bokashi bin in the cupboards? No. It had to go into the landfill bin. I have to say, that was a very odd experience. I can’t remember the last time I’d put compostable waste into bin destined for landfill (I managed to persuade the caretakers at work to give me space for the “team worms” – the wormery behind the bike shed – ages ago). It was surprising just how easily the small green changes at home and work had been incorporated into my life and that not recycling just felt alien and wrong.

I’m not going to even get started on the light bulbs or heating, suffice to say, I'd have thought that even if a small business isn’t particularly environmentally minded, the money saving aspects of energy saving light bulbs and thermostat controls would be a no-brainer.

There, I’m done.

We did have a loverly time (we kept passing the bus to Bangor, but no, we didn't go).

The bargains I picked up at CAT were;

• Do It Yourself 12 Volt Solar Power by Michel Daniek,


• The Human Powered Home by Jamara Dean, (looks like we’re going to be busy)


• The Handmade Basket Book by Rebecca Board,


• The Solar Food Dryer by Eben Fodor (mainly because I expecting a bumper tomato crop and love sun dried tomatoes), and


• The Little Big Vegetarian Book (reduced from £12.99 to £5.99 – bargain!) By the way, it’s national vegetarian week this week.

All interesting reads.

Chilli hot house

Craig has a penchant for chillies so this year I'm growing him several different types (some have rather concerning names like "Ring of fire" and "Fatalii"). Anyway, that combined with my desire to have a bountiful vegetable garden means that I am rapidly running out of window ledges to start my seeds off on.

I have one of those clear-plastic covered shelving units, that's full too. I could get more, but I would have no where to put it without it getting in the way of opening windows, plus they don't really have enough space for cucumbers to grow.

I've been investigating greenhouses. Our back garden is south-ish facing so should be ideal. The thing with greenhouses, well there are two things. The first is that if you get a stand alone one in order to get the most out of it during the winter it needs extra heat. The second, if you attach the green house to your house it's not a conservatory. By which I mean, if at some point you want to sell your house, people expect (or at least in this neighbourhood) attached mainly glass rooms to be sunny sitting places with blinds.

Permaculture principles and logic suggest that the lean-to type would be best. The lean-to will help heat the house during the day, and the house will help heat the greenhouse at night. The fact that if I had a conservatory I'd only fill it up with plants anyway suggests that I may aswell go for the cheaper lean-to greenhouse option.

So a lean-to greenhouse it is.

I've checked the pretty cool (for government) interactive UK planning guidance on the web and it won't need planning permisson - it's not going to be that big. If there is a door into it directly from the house though it will need safety glass. If you're thinking of getting a green house, best you check the planning site for your specific situation.

If I can find a lean-to greenhouse that suits, we'll have a chilli hot house soon. I just hope the chillies don't live up to their names.

Greening the desert

Don't forget permaculture on BBC 2 tomorrow night at 8pm!!!

If you're wondering what all the fuss is about, here is one of my favourite YouTube videos. It shows how working with nature really does work even in the most extreme conditions.



You can find out more about Geoff Lawton and The Permaculture Research Institute of Australia at www.permaculture.org.au (the UK site is www.permaculture.org.uk and the USA site: www.permaculture.org).

Whoohoo! Christmas again!!

My Christmas present from my mum and dad has arrived!!

FANTASTIC

and yes, I can be that excited about seeds, you see these are not just any old seeds, they are seeds for vegetables that are particularly suited for growing on a patio. Which is brilliant because my I intend my vegetable garden to overflowing this year. If I can make use of the patio as well, all the better.

The larders will be full of chutney in no time. I've got pretty much everything from aubergine to zucchini (okay so it says courgette on the packet - but that didn't have the impact I was after), including potatoes (which I've never grown before).

So thank you mum and dad, I can't wait to get sowing.

PS. There's a great programme about permaculture on BBC 2 on the 20th of Feb, watch it if you can.