" Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”
― Leo Tolstoy Sometimes we hang onto items that really should have been moved on. Physical and of course emotional ones. Those books that no one reads anymore. Those old Levi 501s that do not flatter you. Something you have done in the past that preys on your mind. Move on they say. Declutter. Strike out anew Some people find all that an easy thing to do. Some less so. My Home Garden has been pretty much the same since we moved in over 30 years ago. Some additions and subtractions at the edges but generally the same. So why did the feeling come along to make changes? The biggest factor is a very simple one. Time. Although I am currently very much involved with community projects and a little paid work there are the hours available to an almost work retired person like myself And in the the classic of Big Bang/epiphany moment that began my thoughtful garden project, it was the " me " in " my garden " That having more time means I have an allotment, it means that I am able to see much more of other gardens and it means that I am reading and discussing them more At the heart of my desire to change Home Garden is my small scale intervention to boost the local environment. So much that I grew up with in terms of plants, trees, birds, insects, open spaces and beauty has gone as a result of land management, climate change and remorseless destruction of habitat. Is what I am doing just a spit in the wind? Quite possibly. But I am am attracted to the thoughts that if many do this ( and they are ) it might begin to stack up. The grand plan is that the vast majority of the plantings are to provide habitat, nectar and forage for creatures Home Garden at the moment does look sparse as I have stripped right back to create a new structure and plan across the plot. Many large shrubs have rigorously cut back or removed. It is physically hard work but I have got 80% of it done. Over the winter I have been planting rose bushes/climbers (8) , clematis (4), fruit trees (6) and over 400 daffodils, tulips, iris, hyacinths, criniums, bearded iris and crocosima that provide quick Spring colour and attraction. In February I began to sow 30+ varieties of perennials like honesty, salvias, Michaelmas daisies, verbena, cone flowers, achilleas etc. Large numbers of herbs are just being sown as are some spectacular dot plants like hemp agrimony, Echium pininana and cardoons. Especially exciting is my attempt to have paulownia tomentosa grow from seed to makes very special dot plants These are exciting times at the Home Garden and for its key worker ....
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"When the facts change, I change my mind" John Maynard Keynes
One of the great disappointments over the past ten years or so has been as a result of the polarisation of viewpoints. Being in the centre appears to be a sometimes lonely place surrounded on each side by to views that insist that they are "right". Pour social media onto the sparks and we have tremendous heat, but little light. So, it is with some trepidation and perhaps with my tongue in the corner of my mouth when asked is my allotment dig or no dig, I replied, both My great buddy Frank King, a fellow allotmenteer delighted me with a brilliant surprise sign for plot 106. With two of my leitmotifs cat and butterfly and a barrow filled with produce it has the legend "Life is a garden dig it". A great pun on both the physical work and the feeling that it emotes The no dig gardening movement is not very old. A Japanese farmer Masanobu Fukuoka combined that work with philosophy to create "Natural Gardening" that he promoted in a 1975 book "The One-Straw Revolution". He also called it do nothing farming. It still meant work but of the non mechanical kind that boosted soil fertility. You placed organic composts onto the soil and nature via worms fungi and other soil born creatures produce optimum growing conditions. The cycle continued by cropping and then more composting. Charles Dowding is a smaller holder, writer and gardener who has been using no dig personally and commercially for forty years with great success. He has a brilliant YouTube channel and clearly has both belief and evidence for his success and is a great advocate for the method On taking over 106 I planned to try both dig and no dig areas to see which suited best" That is my medium to long term plan, year 3 onwards. Classically with no dig you place either cardboard or carpet on the ground and place the compost on top once begin to grow. That was impossible on take over due to overgrowth, huge briars, perennial weeds and the like. Frank rotovated about a third of the area and I used that for first year cropping. Over the next year I double dug the whole plot. That was the beginning and the ending of digging the whole plot. From then on it was two areas about the same size, you guessed it, one dig the other not. The no dig was lavished with a rich diet on top of stable manure, bought and home made compost and straw. This year will be the first full cropping for that area. The other half was split into two areas one benefitting from green manuring and it will be for beans and peas and then winter greens and the other single dug incorporating compost and manure that is for maincrop potatoes and the then green manuring September until March. Rotation planning is a challenge under this set up but with some innovation achievable but even with this I am stretching the rules. I am not adopting the traditional three year system. Instead all vegetables excepting potatoes will be grown in blocks or as some call it "square foot gardening" “What I say is that, if a man really likes potatoes, he must be a pretty decent sort of fellow.” A.A. Milne
I like potatoes. Baked, chipped, mashed or roasted. One of the many advantages of having an allotment is having space to grow them. I have done so in the past at home with small row, in pots or in a deep bed but these vegetables do seem to like the wide open spaces that plot 106 allows. Last year down there I grew variety Charlotte as my earlies (they are technically a second early) https://www.gardenfocused.co.uk/vegetable/potatoes/variety-charlotte.php and they were really good. Good with salads and good enough to roast. Will be growing them again this year. For my maincrop potatoes I chose Picasso and I will be growing them again https://www.thompson-morgan.com/p/potato-picasso/tka8402TM as they were lovely bakers and mashed. I began lifting late August and they were of good size then. This year I am also growing some first earlies and a second choice for maincrop. I read a few years ago that variety Rocket https://www.thompson-morgan.com/p/potato-rocket/zww5094TM were the earliest potatoes to lift. I have tried them two years running in a deep bed at my home garden and in containers there. They did extremely well. So they are on plot 106 already, I put in a a couple of cheeky short rows this week! The extra maincrop is Desiree https://www.gardenfocused.co.uk/vegetable/potatoes/variety-desiree.php probably well known to everybody reading this. A beautiful red skinned variety To minimise the risks to those Rocket potatoes, they went in to ground covered for about a month that is nice and dry and ready for planting. The tubers were well chitted and once in had a covering of compost before the soil went back over. I have banked them up to mitigate against any severe frost this month. I think they will be off to a very good start I am very new to allotment growing and this growing season is my second full year so I am learning my trade but already I have a hard and fast rule about potatoes. To get the main crops out, dried off and in store by mid September. These two years have produced biblical amounts of rain in late September and October. Should there be an Indian Summer this year I will be sat on the bench on 106 knowing my spuds are lifted, enjoying the late season heat and probably looking forward to a jacket potato, or two for tea ! |
AuthorI launched this website on 16th August 2020 to bring together my thoughts on gardening,, its importance for health and wellbeing and two projects running concurrently, a renovation of my own garden on the West Sussex coast at Lancing and a nearby allotment. But also to learn from other gardeners about the inspirations for their plots, about their gardening projects and enjoyment of beautiful plants and gardens Archives
February 2024
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