Archive for February, 2007
February 28, 2007 at 6:41 pm
· Filed under Gardening, downshifting, environment, france, organic, permaculture, self-sufficiency, smallholding, sustainability
Yesterday I found the first daffs in bloom. As it felt like the first sign of new life, I have picked some, along with a couple of sprigs of forsythia, for my kitchen table. I don’t know if this is early or not as I’ve not kept a phenology diary yet. However, this has made me determined to start, so that I can track the ins and outs of my garden in future years.
To start off the new year and the new market-garden project (and because she knows we are broke due to me giving up gainful employment), my mother-in-law has sent me two pairs of sturdy ‘work jeans’ (nothing like the shapeless sacks I buy from the local supermarket). I am now ready for the growing season and no amount of Norman mud can dampen my spirits!
Tomorrow is the 1st of March. By the door I have a bag full of packets of seeds which can now, officially, be planted. This is the sign, were any needed, that the dreaming is over and the hard work is about to start.
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February 27, 2007 at 8:09 am
· Filed under Gardening, downshifting, environment, france, organic, permaculture, self-sufficiency, smallholding, sustainability
There is, as far as I’m aware, only one drawback to sheet-mulchng – to any type of mulching infact. That is… slugs. You will find that not only has your mulch created a wondeful habitat for a huge range of useful organisms and micro-organisms in your soil, increased the worm population, regulated the soil temperature, built-up soils structure, retained moisture, reduced compaction; it has also turned your garden into a slug farm. Oh god, it’s a gardener’s nightmare!
Fear not, there are two solutions to this small side-affect:
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Set up regular beer traps in the areas you have mulched. A beer trap is simply a container (old cream pot, chipped mug, etc) which is sunk into the ground until its top is perfectly level with the surrounding soil, then filled (not quite to the brim) with beer. Now leave. Slugs who are out on the town looking for your prize veg will be irresistably drawn to the beer, fall in and die a happy death, pain free. Empty your trap regularly onto the compost heap and repeat the process. If kept up, you should not have any increased damage from slugs, infact you will probably have less than before.
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Some people actually enjoy going out to the garden as dusk falls, with a torch and a cup of tea, wandering up the rows of veg picking up the slugs. This is not my preferred method, but I know that lots of people do it so thought I’d better include it. Now, as you pick up these slugs you have two options available to you…
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Option one: throw the slugs into your neighbour’s garden (again, I am not condoning, I am reporting what I know to be common practice. This method is condoned, however, if your neighbour is the sort of person who grows leylandii).
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Option two: offer the slugs to your chickens (or ducks) as a lovely treat. This is what I do with mine. Don’t worry about cruelty to slugs, in a just world my chickens wouldn’t be fenced in and would be eating these slugs anyway.
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February 26, 2007 at 2:29 pm
· Filed under Gardening, downshifting, environment, organic, permaculture, self-sufficiency, smallholding, sustainability
Sheet-mulching is a way of being able to grow plants in almost any situation, straight away and without the need for back-breaking work. It involves the creation of a new layer of soil on top of whatever you already have – which could be anything from a lawn to a concrete carpark. Sheet-mulching is an easy way of adding nutrients and humus to soil, and of controlling soil temperature.
Here’s a simple and quick explanation of how to lay a sheet-mulch. All you need is a friend (not essential, but more fun), a glass of wine/cup of tea and an afternoon…
- Cut any vegetation/grass, but leave it where it falls and don’t take it away.
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Water the area well. You may be worried about this stage because of current concern over water-shortage, but infact a sheet-mulched bed will need watering far less often than a traditional bed and not suffer so much in times of drought.
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Now cover the area with opened out nespapers and cardboard. Cardboard needs to be one layer thick, but newspapers should be laid about eight sheets at a time. Make sure they all overlap each other by at least 15cm.
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Chuck on top of this any organic matter you have to hand, kitchen scraps, weeds, etc
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Then add a layer of grass clippings or hay.
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On top of this add a good layer of compost (10 – 15 cm).
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Finally add a thick layer of straw (15cm again).
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You’re finished!
Clearly this is not going to be terribly hard work, even for a lazy gardener – which is, in my opinion, what we should all aspire to be. Once it’s done, you can go back at any point and plant up – to do this all you need to do is part the straw, make an hole/slit in the cardboard for the roots of your plant to go through, and bed-in your seedling or plant in the lovely compost.
Plants grown in this way do very well and don’t suffer so badly from harsh winters and water shortage.
Part two of sheet-mulching coming soon…
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February 24, 2007 at 11:20 am
· Filed under Gardening, Life, downshifting, environment, organic, permaculture, self-sufficiency, smallholding, sustainability
I’ve been digging holes for my thirty fence posts. So far I’ve been out there for at least four days of hard graft with only Radio 4 to keep me sane. As I start digging each hole, the spade goes in easily and turns over some soft brown loam and for a second I’m fooled into thinking it’s going to be an easy one. But then reality strikes, and I hear the metallic chink of spade on stone: now I have to spend an hour on my knees with the crowbar smashing up and down on prehistoric rock. When finally I make it through the layer of stone, I’m into a layer of clay. This sounds easier, but by now the hole it so deep that the only way to excavate is by hand.
I’m going crazy digging my holes, but I know that the success of the market garden lies in my ability to keep the chickens, and their evil, scratching, seedling-destroying claws off my plots.
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February 23, 2007 at 7:44 pm
· Filed under Gardening, downshifting, environment, family, organic, permaculture, self-sufficiency, smallholding, sustainability
I have four chickens – two young girls, one much older girl who we call ‘big mama’, and a young cockerel. We bought the cockerel last October, and for almost four months I was convinced that he was not only gay, but also incapable of crowing. Then, one joyous day in January, I heard him crowing for the first time. A few days later I saw him ‘jumping’ on one of the girls, and everyone could tell that he was generally strutting his stuff and asserting himself over the others. What joy, my boy has grown up!
The chickens have so far been living in an enclosure which is fenced with old pallets. Why? Because I don’t even have two euros to rub together, and fencing is an impossible dream until a cheque of some kind hits my bank account. So, as a self-sufficient gardener I hit on the only fencing option available for free – pallets. The small snag is that the chickens can easily fly over it and the frequent winter storms we’ve been having have damaged it to such and extent that, one day last week, it completely collapsed. So I have now accepted the reality and the undeniable truth that the reason every farmer in the land uses fencing instead of pallets is because … it works.
The chickens are at large. They are delighting in ripping up every square inch of my carefully laid sheet mulching (explanation coming soon) and could put the whole smallholding idea in jeopardy if they’re not contained soon.
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