Now is the time for spring greens including nettles, chickweed and other fresh bitter flavoured wild herbs. A recipe for nettle soup is here Urtica dioica, often called common nettle, stinging nettle (although not all plants of this species sting) or nettle leaf, is a herbaceous perennial flowering plant in the family Urticaceae. It is … Continue reading It’s nettle time of year
Category: Permaculture & forest garden
#Permablitz
So what is permablitz? Whatever it is, or was, it was FUN! These are the ethics behind permaculture design: Care of the earth. Care for people. Fair share. They are ethics that reach way beyond growing things. A bunch of us came together early last Sunday (well, 10am) to help extend our low maintenance, productive and nature-friendly forest … Continue reading #Permablitz
Sunshine, soil and pizza success!
Worries about the weather disappeared almost as soon as we came on site - the afternoon was fresh and glorious. A great turn out of people, lured by the promise of learning more about soil and how to manage it meant we got lots done and ate well. Lasagna gardening, method We started by layering … Continue reading Sunshine, soil and pizza success!
Spring snapshot
A lovely warm spring day of gardening - lots to do, everything getting dry quickly after months of wet weather but looking forward to a great years gardening. Bright gardeners Lovely lowly worms Peas and pea sticks Radicchios Plum blossom Pak choi in abundance Spring buds 9 star perennial broccoli underplanted with nepalese raspberry Proud … Continue reading Spring snapshot
Hugel – perma – blitz – mania – we love them, do you?
Join us on sunday 26th October, 10-4pm to blitz our hugel mounds.....we made them in 2012, the first year they were ablaze with wildflowers, year two with poppies and year three they started to look a bit sad but worked well in places. Observations We made them too steep so the soil slid down creating … Continue reading Hugel – perma – blitz – mania – we love them, do you?
Discovering hidden treasures
Wow, just found these pictures of our site in may 2012. What a transformation!
The garden work has finally got goingand the contractors have now completed the fence. Clearance has started, and a team from Groundwork have been pulling up stumps and bramble roots and making way for new garden elements that will soon be built.
The huge piles of logs and debris will form the core of our ‘hugel mounds’ – large growing mounds using waste material that eventually will host a wide range of plants. It’s another way of gardening on a hard surface, but will be a steep learning curve for us all.
Raised beds will be built and by June we should have most of our garden infrastructure in place.
Local volunteers have helped out at weekends, scraping back the soil to reveal beautiful granite setts below, a much bigger area than we first thought.
