Spring is in the Air

The weather is finally starting to get a little bit warmer – it feels like spring has properly begun. The daffodils are coming out now in sunnier parts of the garden and trees are budding. The comfrey which has been looking rather grim over winter following its unceremonious removal from the allotment and transplantation in the orchard/ forest garden has produced fresh shoots.

Comfrey coming up. This small patch, once established, should provide us with plenty of plants to populate the ground beneath our fruit trees.

The daffodils – a few of them are almost there in the garden, though they are out in sunny, sheltered spots in the surrounding area.

Flowers that appear early in spring are particularly vital – they will attract the pollinators that the garden requires to thrive, as well as putting on a pleasant show for us.

If you have dandelions – don’t pull them all up! Many people spend a lot of time getting rid of them but they are useful early pollinators and also have deep roots and draw up nutrients from deep below ground. In fact, they are just one of many plants that most call ‘weeds’ that are actually very beneficial.

Vegetable Beds and Forest Garden Progress

This afternoon was dull but rather warm so we were able to get on with things outside. Most of the vegetable beds are now dug!

Progress on the vegetable beds continues apace.

Meanwhile, I did some clearing in the forest garden. We are going to get it ready so we can build the chicken coop at the weekend. There are some beautiful shrubs in there already but they have become very overgrown.

Thicket Clearance in progress. The gravel path is now revealed.

Bio-Mass. We will burn the thicker sticks in the garden chiminea when we sit outside in summer. The leaves will be composted and twigs will build up the hugelkultur herb and flower garden. No waste.

The area for the chicken coop is now more or less clear, though there is still some more vigorous cutting back to be done in other parts of the orchard/ future forest garden.

Another overgrown section completely obscuring the path.

Clearing back the shrub layer a bit will allow us to use the existing gravel paths once a lot of the grass below the trees is given over to growing and it will also allow us to create the lower layers you would expect to see in a forest garden.

Herb Spiral Mark II

Since the weather has been rather dull and grey here for the last couple of days I have not done a lot more outside. Things inside and in the polytunnel continue to come along and I have been doing some more work on permaculture plans for the garden.

I built this little herb spiral at the allotment I had last year, using rocks I found when preparing the site.

Herb Spiral in late spring.

This is a permaculture idea based on creating as many habitats as possible with different conditions in as small as space as possible, with plenty of productive edges. Plants that like sun go on the south side of the structure, things that like less moisture go high up, while things that like it wetter and colder live on the north side at the bottom.

Valuing edges and the marginal is important. Most of the vegetable beds have now been prepared and I have noticed that there is a section between the beds and the drive that would be perfect for beneficial herbs and flowers. A large number of rocks and stones have also been unearthed and we would like to use them for something nearby. I decided to design a herb spiral mark II to fit along the long, thinnish space which runs from north to south. It will be a spiral like the one above joined to another spiral with a snake-like link, with plenty of levels in sun and shade.

We will build it up a little bit like a small hugelkultur garden and we will fill it with lavender, as well as other herbs and flowers, to attract the pollinators and to make a pleasant and useful display that we can all enjoy.

The Importance of Inspiration, Self-regulation and Feedback

As a writer and, increasingly, as a follower of permaculture I take my inspiration from many different places. Much of it comes from friends and family, who may inspire a certain way of doing something or a change of some sort simply by making some small comment. They may also help things to progress by discussing things in depth. Being willing to think, change, adapt and accept feedback is a big part of living the sort of life we are trying to lead.

Over the weekend, I was inspired by our visit to a local organic farm, Pillars of Hercules, near Falkland, Fife. We popped into their lovely cafe for a drink and had a little look around the farm. We saw their polytunnels, growing fields and free-range chickens. I am inspired by the scale of their project and the organic produce they manage to provide to fans of local food.

There were some things, however, even with this well-established business, that we felt could be better – for example we disliked the plastic wrapping on many of the vegetables in the farm shop.

People who look at our own projects will likewise undoubtedly see flaws in the designs and I am sure many weaknesses in the execution. As long as we always keep an open mind, apply self-regulation and accept feedback, using it to adapt and progress, I am sure we will do just fine.

Accidental Broccoli in the Forest Garden

The compost and bits and pieces that I brought back from the allotment when we moved in here has yielded an unexpected bonus – a broccoli shoot that I chucked in the pile after harvesting has reached for the sun and produced a few mini florets!

I expect to have all sorts of stuff popping up in the lasagna beds in the orchard – weeds and all will help build up the organic matter (and the chickens when we get them). At this stage I am still mostly at the observation and interaction stage with the future forest garden. Every day I am seeing something new. Buds are appearing and in the raised circular bed at the centre, sheltered daffodils are coming into bud and the strawberry runners planted last year had only a few browning leaves to remove. The garlic I planted is shooting up – though some cloves have had to be pushed back into the soil after being uprooted by the pigeons. Plenty of other plants are breaking earth – I look forward to discovering what they all are.

Accidental broccoli may not be an expected yield, but it was heartening to see something edible in the ground layer this early in the process. Perhaps our ‘lucky’ white heather is living up to its name.

Reducing harsh chemicals: the many uses of Bicarbonate of Soda

For some time now I have been using bicarbonate of soda as a major component of my house-cleaning arsenal. As a cleaning agent it is pretty effective, especially when employed along with plain old vinegar. You can leave a mix of bicarb. and vinegar in the loo or on the baked on bits inside your oven and the next day it will be much easier to scrub them clean. Why anyone buys expensive and polluting cleaning brands I have no idea – these simple household ingredients can be just as effective in most cases.

Bicarbonate of soda is also useful, as I have mentioned before, for hair cleaning along with apple cider vinegar. You can also use it as an exfoliant scrub, soak or stain remover.

Of course you can also use a little in a more traditional way – for baking.

Today we came across a new use for this handy powder: dog deodorizer! I already knew that bicarb. was used to stop a fridge, drains, sink etc. getting smelly, and that some people even use it as underarm deodorant, so when one of the dogs rolled in a particularly nasty dead something (we think it was once a porpoise, perhaps?) on the beach, I sprinkled some of the powder on him to see if that would get rid of the persistent stink. It did!

So, thankful that the awful smell is (almost completely) gone, I decided to write this paean to bicarbonate of soda, which is such a useful substance to have in a sustainable and eco-conscious home.

Currently Growing – An Update

A month or so ago I put some tomato cuttings in water and in the last few days they have begun to root properly. I will plant them in soil soon to swell the ranks of tomato plants that already throng the windowsills. The mammoth plants in the porch that have been inside all winter are still in flower.

Also growing in the house we have:

– Mixed cut and come again salad leaves, some almost ready to start harvesting, some just starting out.

– Spring Onions.

– The brassicas that will go outside later next month: calabrese, with a couple of sets of ‘true’ leaves these are romping along; cauliflowers and romanesco, just beginning to grow their first ‘true’ leaves, brussels sprouts and kohlrabi- just sprouting now.

– Leeks, growing very slowly as seems to be their modus operandi, but looking healthy still.

– Peppers, (a few bell and a few chilli) growing nicely on a sunny windowsill next to all the tomatoes I started from seed.

– Rainbow chard – on the verge of sprouting.

– French Beans – shoots just becoming visible.

– Courgettes, a few more peppers and cape gooseberries still in the homemade propagator. One or two courgettes seem to be showing signs of life already, but it is early days. No sign of the cape gooseberries yet.

Plus of course we have peas, broad beans, a few onions and first early potatoes in the polytunnel, waiting to put on a growth spurt as soon as it gets a bit warmer. I have also planted a few carrots, radishes and beetroots directly in there, though I feel it may have been a bit too early so we’ll have to wait and see.

Homemade Apple Cider Vinegar

When we first moved in here in October, there were quite a few cooking apples remaining on the trees in the orchard and we made good use of them. However, there were also many windfalls littering the ground. Keen not to waste them I left just a few for foraging creatures and decided to use the rest to make a big batch of apple cider vinegar.

This vinegar is not for our culinary use. As I say I made it using some windfalls. (It was also left to ferment in an old, though clean, swing bin filled with water, with a tea towel over it!) It will be very useful though, for cleaning and for the dogs etc.. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I use apple cider vinegar to cleanse and condition my hair, along with bicarbonate of soda. (It works very well for me.) The many other uses and health benefits of apple cider vinegar are well documented and seemingly almost endless! I will soon have a year’s supply.

The vinegar has been fermenting in the utility room next to the boiler for the last few months. Today I decided to decant it into smaller containers, removing the large bits of apple. It will continue to ferment for a few more weeks before I finally strain it into its final bottles. In order to retain all the health benefits it is best not to pasteurize it, though some people prefer to do so. If you have the inclination to make more then the ‘mother’ should be kept to kick start future batches.

Apple cider vinegar can easily be made from apple cores and scraps, so can be done by anyone, even if you are not lucky enough to have apple trees in your garden. A great way to make use of what would to some be a waste product.

Stone Walls and Ecological Building Methods

Stone wall with studs yet to be removed.

Yesterday, as well as going to the course on hen keeping, I also did some more work on the outbuilding, gradually revealing more of the old stone walls of the barn. They are solid and with the exception of a few patches of crumbly mortar, seem to be intact. It is good to know we have such solid walls to mold our plans around.

Before work started.

People tend to think of old, nineteenth-century stone-built buildings as damp and drafty. In fact, many of the perceived defects of these old buildings are due to later twentieth-century additions. Plasterboard is not right for the inside of these walls, for example. The solution when it comes to creating healthy and comfortable buildings seems to me to be about rejecting many of the building standards of the last century and combining simpler, age-old techniques with modern ecological method and innovation.

After. (Brick sections fill the stone arches in the external walls that, for some reason, were boxed in in the 1970s and are yet to be revealed again here.)

Stone walls actually have fairly good insulative properties, which can be enhanced with the right methods. They are solid and have great thermal mass, so regulating temperature. Putting insulation layers inside them is counter-productive (though common!) as it basically stops the heat gathered in the stone to radiate into the house.

As we make decisions about how to treat the insides of our stone walls, we will be thinking about working with rather than against the properties of the stone. Although I am no expert, we plan to explore the possibilities of an internal clay/straw daub or render, straight onto the stonework, which helps regulate moisture levels and heat within the building at the same time as increasing the insulative properties of the walls – a sustainable, healthy and effective building method.

Hen Keeping in the ‘Forest Garden’

It is ‘green week’ in our local town, St. Andrews. We went to a skill share and met some hen keepers which has pushed us forwards with our own plans in this area. We knew we wanted to keep some hens for eggs and have now made our first steps towards accomplishing this goal.

We have chosen and ordered a chicken coop for the orchard/ eventual forest garden. The next step is getting some ex-battery hens. We would like to rehome some of these poor, abused creatures. They will almost definitely not give us as many eggs as purchased hybrids would give but they will be just as effective as other hens at enriching our compost and eating insects and being a part of our orchard ecosystem. It will also feel good to give these birds a good quality of life.

At the skill share we also made some contacts with an interest in sustainability and permaculture, forging links for the future. So I feel that today we have made a big step forward in making our sustainable life come together.