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My gardening style has evolved as I get older, into what is fancifully termed as 'permaculture.'
I've always loved gardening and had a small walled garden that i built myself when I was eight years old. I even built the wall.
My Uncles smallholding also gave me an affinity with nature and the realisation that most livestock actually looked after themselves with very little input from humans.
I grew flowers and veggies in my little garden and built hen houses from tin sheeting when i was about 10 years old. The hen houses were constructed of whatever i could find lying around and this gave me free reign in design. Because i had no way of cutting tin sheeting it was burried in the ground to the desired height and fastened to a wooden frame work with rusty nails that I had straightened.
We also had ducks and geese which roamed in a small wooded area. I dug a pond for them and channeled a small stream into it and out of it. No liner was required as there was always water running through it.
There was no mowing of the site as the geese were the lawnmowers.
When I was 20 I was married with a mortgage and a small child. I purposely bought a house with a large garden and although I had a seperate vegetable patch, flowers and shrubs were my passion at the time as I had a well paid job and didn't need to grow fruit and veg and didn't realise the taste difference!
In my thirties I started to get into fruit and vegetable gardening as a hobby and grew stuff traditionally, but seperate from the flowers and shrubs.
In my forties, and before the allotment boom started I had my first allotment. No flowers, and veg grown traditionally with copious ammounts of cow muck worked into the soil.
In my fifties i moved house and took on two derelict allotments. Raised beds were coming back into fashion so this was the method I adopted.I used to enjoy digging and was good and fast at digging beds At about this time I read Geoff Hamiltons Ornamental Kitchen Garden and watched The Victorian Kitchen Garden so tried to emulate both of these.
I am also a fan of Bob Flowerdew who was less anal about how things looked and more at one with nature I felt.
In my late 50's I incorporated a pond and adopted my own method of 'Pocket ' planting within the already formed beds. I was now a lot less formal and started to rebel against straight lines (seldom found in nature.)
I found that the pond brought the frogs, which ate the slugs. The flowers brought the bees which pollinated my plants.
In my sixties I adopted the 'No dig' stance, not because I couldn't dig, but because I just couldn't see the point in it. By then I had read Ruth Stoute's 'no dig' philosophy and our very own and sadly deceased 'Supersprouts' posts on the vine. I was adapting an ornamental bed system into a no dig system which seemed like an anathama.
I then took on a derelict plot and after a lot of clearance have a vision in mind. It is wooded on one side so fits in with the modern definition of Permaculture.
I need to stress that my form of Permaculture has evolved without knowing what it was called. Its just after reading about permaculture today that I realised this is the path I have taken.
The majority of my plot was just flattened the best I could then covered with cardboard. I had a lot of pasterboard to get rid of so spread this on top of the cardboard. Plasterboard is Gypsum and the main weed present was an acid loving ranuculus (creeping buttercup) My theory was that the addition of gypsum would lower the acidity and deter the buttercup. I then dug holes and dropped a spud in each, the hole was then filled in with horse muck and left to get on with it.
I now have a lovely crop of clean potatoes and as I dig them up the soil gets a tickle and any debris like glass/stones/metal is removed. Up to now I haven't come across any creeping buttercup.
The other side of the plot was just covered with cardbaord and mulched with straw. This has alsorts of veggies and flowers growing through the mulch but very few weeds. So much so, that I am contemplating covering the whole plot with straw next year.
Once I cleared the old buildings off the plot the workload on the plot has been minimal. Ideally I would like to grow hard fruit and nut trees but because of my age I may not reap the benefits! A pond is anecessity though and i still need to build a chiclem coop and run.
To me, permaculture is a reduction in work and time but still giving a respectable yeild of fruit and veg.
I have been looking at some of these deep bed methods with trenches and logs and large raised beds on top. Once these are created I imagine they will be very productive but the time and work creating them outweighs the advantages as far as I can see.
So for me growing the right things in the right place through cardboard and straw and sitting in my summerhouse in mid winter feeling toasty from the woodburner, watching the wildlife in the woods, the frost on the branches, no bare earth to be seen,and dozing off in my comfy chair. Thats my kind of permaculture.
PS If you've read this far,apologies for the epic thread!
I've always loved gardening and had a small walled garden that i built myself when I was eight years old. I even built the wall.
My Uncles smallholding also gave me an affinity with nature and the realisation that most livestock actually looked after themselves with very little input from humans.
I grew flowers and veggies in my little garden and built hen houses from tin sheeting when i was about 10 years old. The hen houses were constructed of whatever i could find lying around and this gave me free reign in design. Because i had no way of cutting tin sheeting it was burried in the ground to the desired height and fastened to a wooden frame work with rusty nails that I had straightened.
We also had ducks and geese which roamed in a small wooded area. I dug a pond for them and channeled a small stream into it and out of it. No liner was required as there was always water running through it.
There was no mowing of the site as the geese were the lawnmowers.
When I was 20 I was married with a mortgage and a small child. I purposely bought a house with a large garden and although I had a seperate vegetable patch, flowers and shrubs were my passion at the time as I had a well paid job and didn't need to grow fruit and veg and didn't realise the taste difference!
In my thirties I started to get into fruit and vegetable gardening as a hobby and grew stuff traditionally, but seperate from the flowers and shrubs.
In my forties, and before the allotment boom started I had my first allotment. No flowers, and veg grown traditionally with copious ammounts of cow muck worked into the soil.
In my fifties i moved house and took on two derelict allotments. Raised beds were coming back into fashion so this was the method I adopted.I used to enjoy digging and was good and fast at digging beds At about this time I read Geoff Hamiltons Ornamental Kitchen Garden and watched The Victorian Kitchen Garden so tried to emulate both of these.
I am also a fan of Bob Flowerdew who was less anal about how things looked and more at one with nature I felt.
In my late 50's I incorporated a pond and adopted my own method of 'Pocket ' planting within the already formed beds. I was now a lot less formal and started to rebel against straight lines (seldom found in nature.)
I found that the pond brought the frogs, which ate the slugs. The flowers brought the bees which pollinated my plants.
In my sixties I adopted the 'No dig' stance, not because I couldn't dig, but because I just couldn't see the point in it. By then I had read Ruth Stoute's 'no dig' philosophy and our very own and sadly deceased 'Supersprouts' posts on the vine. I was adapting an ornamental bed system into a no dig system which seemed like an anathama.
I then took on a derelict plot and after a lot of clearance have a vision in mind. It is wooded on one side so fits in with the modern definition of Permaculture.
I need to stress that my form of Permaculture has evolved without knowing what it was called. Its just after reading about permaculture today that I realised this is the path I have taken.
The majority of my plot was just flattened the best I could then covered with cardboard. I had a lot of pasterboard to get rid of so spread this on top of the cardboard. Plasterboard is Gypsum and the main weed present was an acid loving ranuculus (creeping buttercup) My theory was that the addition of gypsum would lower the acidity and deter the buttercup. I then dug holes and dropped a spud in each, the hole was then filled in with horse muck and left to get on with it.
I now have a lovely crop of clean potatoes and as I dig them up the soil gets a tickle and any debris like glass/stones/metal is removed. Up to now I haven't come across any creeping buttercup.
The other side of the plot was just covered with cardbaord and mulched with straw. This has alsorts of veggies and flowers growing through the mulch but very few weeds. So much so, that I am contemplating covering the whole plot with straw next year.
Once I cleared the old buildings off the plot the workload on the plot has been minimal. Ideally I would like to grow hard fruit and nut trees but because of my age I may not reap the benefits! A pond is anecessity though and i still need to build a chiclem coop and run.
To me, permaculture is a reduction in work and time but still giving a respectable yeild of fruit and veg.
I have been looking at some of these deep bed methods with trenches and logs and large raised beds on top. Once these are created I imagine they will be very productive but the time and work creating them outweighs the advantages as far as I can see.
So for me growing the right things in the right place through cardboard and straw and sitting in my summerhouse in mid winter feeling toasty from the woodburner, watching the wildlife in the woods, the frost on the branches, no bare earth to be seen,and dozing off in my comfy chair. Thats my kind of permaculture.
PS If you've read this far,apologies for the epic thread!
My bedroom was at the front of the house and I remember snow up to the window sill, with sheep peering in through the bedroom window!
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