Brithdir Mawr Community
A community of people
living and working together
in a sustainable way
|
Brithdir Mawr CommunityA community of people |
The bottom garden
grows a lot of our annual vegetables, and is a pretty traditional organic garden
based on a four course rotation; beans, followed by brassicas, then roots, then
potatoes. It is managed on a bed system, and we try to dig as little and mulch
as much as possible.
At the moment there is quite a lot of couch grass in the garden, so we do have to do a fair bit of digging, but we are trying to make a big effort to get rid of it (or at least reduce it!) this year. As part of this, we are using lots of recycled silage clamp plastic that we get for free from a nearby farm to keep the beds covered whenever they are empty.
We
make lots of compost, and also use manure from the goats to keep the soil fertility
high. The garden is very sheltered, and on a south facing slope. This combined
with the relatively mild Welsh coastal climate means that providing vegetables
year-round isn't too much of a challenge. We do also have two polytunnels, which
are fantastic both for growing tomatoes, peppers and other heat-lovers in the
summer, and also for making sure that we have a good supply of salad stuff all
winter.
Overall,
the top and bottom gardens combined provide us with pretty much all of our vegetables.
We usually run out of potatoes and carrots though before the end of the winter
and sometimes don't have enough onions.
This coming year we're starting to cultivate part of one of the fields to give us more space for these bulky crops. Eating what is in the garden does mean eating in season. Of course this is easy in August, when the main problem is usually how to use the courgettes and french beans fast enough.
It can be more of a challenge in March, when there may be lots of sprouting broccoli and leeks, but not much else! To get round this problem, we do lots of bottling, chutney making and pickling in the summer so that we have plenty of interesting things to cheer up our winter meals.
Many of the vegetables that we grow are old 'heirloom' varieties. These tend to be better suited to small scale organic growing. Unlike many modern varieties they often crop over a longer season, and haven't been bred to respond to artificial fertilisers and pesticides. They usually taste better too!
The 'bottom garden' gardeners January 2006
