Own Grown Gardening

As you might know, a few months ago, we moved house. As part of that gargantuan endeavour, we moved our fruit orchard as well. It was a totally mad time of year, at the beginning of summer, to move the young trees. All of them, cherries, apples, medlars, and plums, sulked the entire summer. Some dropped nearly all their leaves, but thankfully all survived. I'm hoping this winter gives them a good chance to establish themselves properly. I'm feeling optimistic. I'm currently feeling so positive, I decided this week to take the orchard to it's next phase. My vision for this little orchard has always been to grow, what I like to call, an Orchard Garden. I think of an Orchard Garden as a lush green grove of fruit trees under planted with a plethora of soft fruits ( currant bushes , gooseberries , honeyberries , etc.) and those bushes still further under planted with a ground cover of strawberries , herbs , and wildflowers . I want to establish an ecosystem focused on food p

    Recently, Plymouth City Council here in the South West of England, installed living roofs on nine of their bus shelters along Royal Parade in the city centre. I think they look great. The Council plans to install 36 across the city . Right now, the bees are just loving them, swarming all over the pot marjoram in full bloom.  These roofs are designed to help such pollinators. They are planted with a plethora of native wildflowers and sedum. It is a shame you can't see many of them from the ground because sedum in particular is such a beautiful genus of drought tolerant succulent plants . They change colour through the season depending on the weather conditions. I'll demonstrate. I bought these plants from a nursery where it was well sheltered in partial shade. This is what they looked like straight after repotting, like green emeralds. In a matter of weeks in a location exposed to full sun and wind they transformed into red rubies, equally as beautiful. Such wonderful adapta

The title of this post sounds like a children's fairytale. Entirely unintended. I guess, in a way though, it is rather fitting because although ragwort ( Senecio jacobaea ) with it's delightful, and prolific, yellow flowers has many benefits, it also possessed what some consider a dark side. We have all the ingredients of a Grimm's fairytale me thinks, hahah! Ragwort, although native to the UK, is classified by the government as an injurious weed . Why, you might ask, is it so vilified? It's because the plant contains toxins, called pyrrolizidine alkaloids , that cause liver damage and even death to grazing animals such as horses and cattle. My neighbour remembers back in the day the government advising the public to destroy any ragwort plants they encountered. Even now, DEFRA publishes a Code of Practice on How to Prevent the Spread of Ragwort . However, many environmental conservation groups, such as Buglife , rail against this advice. This is because ragwort is such

I attended a thought provoking event today. It was a Science Policy Interface group meeting of the VISIONARY project . As you'll see on their website, the goal of this project is to identify ways to make Europe's food provision more sustainable (economically, environmentally, and socially). This particular meeting consisted of stakeholders (producers, customers, and staff) of the Tamar Valley Food Hub . The food hub connects local food producers with local customers living in and around the Tamar Valley, on the border between Devon and Cornwall. One of the questions we explored today was: how can we promote local food systems? We all acknowledged there is no easy answer to this question. Someone suggested maybe there is a lack of consumer motivation to buy local. Let's explore this idea with a thought experiment. Imagine a shelf in your local supermarket stocked with two lots of carrots, both at the same price and of the same quality. One lot is marked as locally grown with

We moved house this month. So busy!  Unusually, the previous owner bequeathed his five chickens to us as part of the purchase. They are such gorgeous gentle girls. Prolific layers too, averaging about three eggs a day. Believe me, our friends and family are suddenly enjoying multitudes of morning fry ups. No one is complaining. However much I like their eggs, I'm actually more excited about their power to compost. Yes, you heard me right. They are, in fact, already working as willing composting colleagues. As you can see, rather than adding our table scraps, weeds, and spent potting soil directly to the compost pile, instead, we now throw it all to the chickens first. The ladies just love it, confirming their satisfaction with soft cooing clucks as they peck and scratch their way through it. Of course, along the way, they mix their precious manure through it too, without us having to lift a finger. The amount of aeration their scratching adds to the mix is not to be sniffed at eith

I'm working a new allotment plot this season and, as I normally do, I planted broad beans. I watched the little seedlings grow, but my glee quickly turned to concern when I noticed a curious problem develop. All the young leaves acquired these little notches along their edges. Below, you can see what I mean, like little peck marks, but they seemed too uniform and neat for pigeon damage... I felt puzzled. So, as I do, I commenced some research and RHS quickly offered the answer: pea and bean weevils ( Sitona lineatus). The leaf damage is caused by adult weevils. They overwinter in field margins and then fly in spring seeking out legumes, preferably beans and peas, on which to feed. Once fed, they lay their eggs in the soil around these same plants. Their larvae then feed on the plant's nitrogen fixing root nodules (housing rhizobia ). To quench your curiosity, you can see clusters of rhizobia filled root nodules growing on the broad bean roots below. My natural next question wa