Own Grown Gardening

In my last post, I spoke about the fine tightrope I walk gardening to grow fruit and vegetables while also promoting wildlife. To monitor my progress on both these fronts, I not only record my harvests but also remain constantly vigilant of the beautiful species visiting, growing in, and using my tiny 100th of an acre plot. So, you can imagine my fixed concentration earlier this week when I glimpsed an unusual bird foraging for invertebrates in the loose soil around my recently transplanted raspberry canes. It looked superficially robin like in form and behaviour, but its colour was all wrong, a solid sooty grey. I watched intently as it flicked up onto the garden wall revealing a flash of rusty red under its tail. What a stunning little one, repeatedly bobbing in the sun's early morning rays. This was certainly a totally unfamiliar species to me. I kept watching with curious excitement, taking in every detail I could make out. Something of serious note was the subtle tendency for

The main purpose of my garden design is to maximise food production while simultaneously maximising its utility for wildlife. This is a fascinating challenge, as these two aims do not exist in perfect harmony. I enjoy the endlessly entertaining balancing act between the two and identifying the delicate necessary compromises along the way. To emphasis this point, that compromise is the key to balance, let's examine the extremes for a few minutes, each in turn. A purely wildlife friendly garden cannot produce food for us. Think about it, if we harvested anything from it, this would deny resident wildlife valuable resources. The garden would not be purely for wildlife. Do you see how this logic works? Now let's flip this thought experiment around. Let's imagine a site designed purely for food production. One could hardly describe it as a garden. Such a place would possess optimal growing conditions for the food crops cultivated: optimal light, water, nutrients, ventilation,

Back in May of 2021, the Co-op supermarket chain here in the UK rolled out compostable carrier bags across all its stores .  As you can see, every bag proudly advertises itself as compostable rather than recyclable plastic. This claim got me thinking, how truely compostable and how truely safe are these bags? For example, are they compostable in household compost piles or only industrial composting units? Are the decomposed remains actually safe for my soil? Safe for my vegetables growing in that soil? Safe for my family eating those vegetables? And safe for the wider environment? So many questions. I began seeking answers by reading the bag itself.   If I'm interpreting the 'OK Compost' little symbol properly, with HOME promenently displayed, it seems to indicate you can indeed compost these bags in your home compost pile. Interesting. We will return to this symbol again below, but for now let's look at another.   I noticed too this MATER-BI symbol with its clever litt

  Today, I would like to introduce you to something rather mysterious and, arguably, rather magical. Terra preta.  Also known as Amazonian dark earth, terra preta is one of the world's most  fertile soils found in sporadic, unpredictable patches within the heart of the Amazonian rainforest. The fact this coveted soil is found in the Amazon is rather surprising, because tropical rainforest soil is notoriously, and counterintuitively, infertility. This is because so much life recycles nutrients so efficiently through the ecosystem that almost all the carbon and nutrients are  locked up in the forest's living and decaying matter. They barely get the chance to reach the soil beneath, which remains thin and infertile. This is why subsistance farmers in the Amazon are often forced to practice slash-and-burn agriculture. This destructive farming technique involves clearing and burning a section of forest, growing crops on the land for about three years after which time the soil'

    I love getting my gardening ideas from all sorts of weird and wonderful places. Take for example this woodcut I stumbled across recently. It comes from a book entitled  Liber de arte distillandi de simplicibus written in German, despite the Latin title, which translates as Book on the art of distillation out of simple ingredients. It was written in the year 1500 by a chap with the rather fancy name of Hieronymus Brunschwig. What really caught my eye in this woodcut, apart from the wonderfully dynamic garden-scape, is the gate. If you look closely, you can see it is actually a living entrance, two trees grafted together into an intricately patterned arch. I just love it! The interesting thing is that this example of living art is from so very early. The modern artist, Richard Reames, who makes remarkably similar living sculpture today, explains that the earliest example of this art-form he could find was from 1516. The technique used is so simple and yet so effective. At a fundam