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The top garden contains annual beds, perennial beds and areas of fruit trees and bushes, herbs and edible shrubs. Its aspirations are permacultural, including diversity, no-dig cultivation and creating a cycle in which the garden produces all the nutrients and organic matter that the garden needs. How far are these aspirations met? We really need to set aside a large area of the garden to grow crops for mulch. For that purpose, a large comfrey and nettle patch is being created this winter.
There is a small 'humanure' patch of comfrey and jerusalem artichokes (grown using composted poo from the compost toilets) which will themselves be composted and put on vegetables. There are nitrogen-fixing plants in the perennial beds and the annual vegetable rotation includes both overwintering and under cropped green manures. The perennial beds also include many ground cover plants to reduce the need for mulch. The previous gardener was a vegan and gardened on this principle - so for instance no muck from the goat shed was used and our Khaki Cambell ducks who valiantly deslug the bottom garden did not come in here.
So
far we have continued to run the garden veganically, although as non-vegans
we did allow the ducks in last autumn, when the balance of power in the garden
tilted decidedly in favour of the slugs. Brithdir Mawr could be viewed as one
system - so moving manure from the goat shed to the garden would still be within
the same system. On the other hand, there is great value in attempting to improve
the soil condition of the garden without importing nutrients from elsewhere
and therefore denuding the earth somewhere else (in this case, our goat field).
The garden is home to an incredible diversity of plants - edible, medicinal, dye plants and many of them multi functional. This year, along with traditional annual vegetables, the garden produced some more unusual roots - the Roman vegetable skirret and the South American oca and yacon. We also have perennial cabbage and onions thriving, to name just a few of the hundreds of perennials. Alongside the plants is the diversity of birds and other small creatures who share our food from the garden. Our hopes for this year are to feed the people - more food on the communal table - and to entice more of the community and its friends into the garden - either to work, to graze or to simply enjoy.
The 'top garden' gardeners January 2006
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
