Own Grown Gardening

It is mid-March here in Devon, England, and my two little honeyberry ( Lonicera caerulea ) bushes are just coming into bloom, the perfect time to give them a mention.    They are known for producing some of the earliest fruit of the season. I harvested my first berries from the young bushes last year, just a tiny handful. Judging from the number of flowers both bushes have this year, I'm looking forward to a much bigger bounty. I own two bushes of different varieties. One of them is the variety 'kamtschatica duet' while the other is an unknown variety. They each have distinctively different leaf shapes and growth habits though. Duet has much rounder leaves and slighly sturdier stems.  When buying them, I searched and searched for two different varieties to maximise cross-pollination between the two. Like so many plants, they produce much better harvests when self-pollination is avoided. I should mention, the handful of purple fruit last year were delicious just straight o...

A couple years ago, I wanted to give away seedlings without breaking the bank giving away their pots too. I searched online for a cheap container solution, and thought I'd struck gold finding biodegradable non-woven grow bags. You can buy loads of these for next-to-nothing on eBay. They claim to be biodegradable, so healthy for the environment. Excellent, or so I thought. Sigh... They are anything but... I decided to do a bit of an experiment with them the same way this guy did on YouTube. I filled them with potting soil, and planted some cherry tomato seeds in them. The seedlings germinated nicely. When their roots began growing through the bottoms of the bags, I thought this is great. I planted them directly into their final 30 litre pots for the greenhouse conveniently leaving them in the grow bags. No need to risk sending the seedlings into shock through transplanting. I assumed the biodegradable bags would simply decompose amongst the roots as the plants grew. This assumption...

I'm thinking, why not carry on the same general theme from my last post and continue discussing wonderous mulch. I've got to be honest, when I'm gardening, the mantra that plays through my head on repeat is, "Protect the Soil! Protect the Soil!" This year, to achieve this, I'm experimenting with a new living mulch, bird's-foot trefoil ( Lotus corniculatus ). I already have little seedlings coming up between my broad beans. They are growing nicely under a glass garden cloche, which is also something I'm trying for the first time this year. I'm very impressed so far. Considering we are only just into March, look how well both the beans and trefoil are doing. It'll be interesting to see how they progress. Why did I choose bird's-foot trefoil? There are several reasons. Like clover, trefoils are nitrogen fixers . By the way, broad beans fix nitrogen too, so this little patch of ground will be lushiously fertile after this crop. Additionally, b...

On the weekend, I planted out some of my pea plants for the season, a couple varieties. 'Meteor' is a dwarf variety I'm trying for the first time this year. The other is an early sugar snap variety called 'Sugar Ann'. I grew it last year. They were crisp and delicious straight off the plant. So good, I'm not sure a single one made it as far as the kitchen door, but I'm digressing before I even start. As I planted out these seedlings, I though it might be nice to give you a bit of a flavour of one way I protect the precious soil around my plants. I use wool. When I say wool, I mean raw sheep's fleece. Now, you might be wondering, how does one obtain raw sheep fleeces without owning livestock? Well, In the UK, and particularly here in Devon, there are sheep dotting the hillsides all over the place. I tend to contact local farmers directly by email. The UK Fleece Directory is a priceless resource. I love the fact this website has a section that breaks do...

I'd never heard the term propaganda gardening until today. This, however, does not mean I've never contemplated the concept. I just didn't have a name for it previously.  In fact, I've already planted one. Back in the autumn, I planted up my front garden as a tiny orchard garden. The popular term for it would be 'forest garden', but I always find that phrase a difficult one. It feels rather misleading. To me, the word 'forest' conjures up images of vast tracts of giant sequoias, or other such climax tree communities.  This is why I prefer 'orchard garden'. Mine, less than 10 square metres, contains plum trees, apples, black currants, red currants, gooseberries, and at this very moment flower seedlings galore of every description. I threw down literally every wildflower seed I collected last year. Ah, we can't forget the punctuations of daffodil and crocus bulbs either, not yet flowering in the crisp February air. My own little propaganda ga...

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,...