Spring wild greens

I spent the last couple of days photographing some of the wild edible plants around in April and May on the farm and here are some of them.

They are, in the order I post them,
garlic mustard,
bracken fiddleheads (bracken is only edible whilst in the fiddlehead stage, it becomes carcinogenic later),
hawthorn (all parts of the hawthorn plant are edible, leaves, flowers and fruit),
dandelion (edible as a salad green before it flowers, the root can be roasted as a form of coffee substitute), 
herb bennet,
Violet,
Burdock,
Wild Garlic (make sure it smells garlicky you don't want to mix it up with the poisonous lily of the valley)
Nettle (I've mentioned nettles before. They're only really good to eat before the flower in the spring.)
Common purple spotted orchid (edible but best not pick it for food due to it's rarity despite the name),
Good King Henry (this is one of the plants I introduced to the farm. It's thought the Romans first brought it to the UK),
Wood Sorrel (best to eat in small amounts due to oxalic acid),
Gorse (the flowers are edible and make a tonic tea),
Cleavers or Goose Grass (good for a tonic tea),
Horseradish (the root can be used as a condiment and the leaves as a potherb),
Fat Hen,
Angelica

These were all found in profusion in one short walk around the farm. There are many other edible plants around but this is the spring selection of pot herbs. This post was sent from my tablet. I'll tidy it up on the laptop later and add some more detail about the plants including medical properties. The next post
Will be about the poultry.

Restarting the blog.

We're well into spring a year and a half since my last post here and as I now have a tutor from the Permaculture Association I decided it's time to get busy with the blog again.

This blog will now become my main documentation for my diploma in applied permaculture and I hope that it will prove of some use to others as well.

Good progress has been made since my last post and my next few posts will be a catch up on what's been happening.

Time to get gardening :)

Big cats?

TThat's Henry. I named him because I don't intend to eat him. I got the chickens a couple of weeks ago and I'm collecting five Indian Runner ducks next week. Unfortunately two of my Light Sussex pullets got taken by a predator last week in broad daylight with me about a hundred feet away.

Matt and Julia have had attacks on their pigs and there are rumours of a big cat in the area. Above are Matt and Julia with a load of water melons for the pigs that were over ripe and rejected by a supermarket. The chickens love watermelon too.

Nearly Solstice and mixed results

As you can see the cucurbit beds are doing quite nicely. They needed a dressing with bonemeal (£27 for 25kg I was shocked) and wood ash because some off the courgettes looked a bit off color but everything looks pretty good now.

















Here's one of the watermelons

Unfortunately it seems the mulch beds have been a complete failure as compared with the dug beds 

I've started digging all the mulch beds. I can't afford to take years to get these productive. I'm planting marigolds, sage, russian tarragon, japanese catmint, catmint, thyme, coriander, basil and other things like chives and garlic chives throughout the beds. Legumes are coplanted with everything but alliums.

As so many of the things in the mulch beds have failed I've scrapped the documentation I was going to do on the vegetables I'm growing. 

Once I have the problems ironed out I'll keep track of that again.

The herb garden has gone berserk and I think it's a wonderful jungle, that's the milk thistle


I thought I'd say a little bit about the forest garden. I've been planting cider apples, a couple of pears (One of which was killed by the deer. I had to bridge graft one of the apples as it was completely ring barked. I took of a couple of twigs from the tree long enough to cover the gap and got to it with my grafting tape.)

The tree dosn't look too bad.)

There are a couple of Albizia julibrissin , three Honey locusts Gleditsia triacanthos a load of gooseberries and some named cobs. There are also a few cherry plums.

For later addition I'm growing a lot of the other plants for the forest garden in the polytunnel garden. The above is the American ground nut Apios Americana I'll have enough of them this year to risk putting some into the garden. They fix nitrogen as well as being a useful food.

Watering is the main chore at the moment but it looks like it might rain today.

Flea beetles

The picture is of the beginnings of a nettle and comfrey tea. The picture was taken about 3 weeks ago and now it's a brown stinking mess bt it's really good plant food.

I haven't posted for a while because there have been some problems and I wanted to wait ntil I knew what was going on before posting about it.

It mostly boils down to a lack of water. I was hoping that the mulch beds would retain water well and for large plants it does but it's not terribly good for seedlings. Because the plants were water stressed we've had an invasion of flea beetles. Once the garden gets going a bit more and the herbs I've been planting arond the edges of the beds get going things will improve and I decided to dig the beds in the polytunnel garden where I had the strawberries for brassicas and I think that's far enough from the beetles to avoid the problem. There's also a water supply nearby so I can water them more frequently. I planted Jerusalem artichoke Helianthus tuberosus
some Taro Colocasia esculenta This is a tropical plant but if we have a decent summer we may get something. I have a plant in my bender that I've kept going for 3 years. I also planted a few sweet potatoes Ipomoea batatas

In any case, the flea beetles mean all the brassicas have been hammered. Everything else is getting big and growing well but I've decided to dig in the mulch in all the beds for next year. The dug beds have been the most successful.

I need to have a long think about water. Wish I had the money to get a trickle watering system. 

No sign of tutors or tutorials yet so no progress on the diploma front.


I've been feeding all the beds with wood ash and bonemeal. Several thjings were looking a bit deficient but they're looking better now. I've also been using rock dust and mycorrhyzal fungi (They work together although the rock dust people talk about worms on their packaging it's mycorrhyzal fungi that pass the minerals to the plants.


Six Bay trees were planted arond the edges of the main garden Laurus nobilis 


All the strawberries were moved into the fenced garden as the rabbits were killing them all by digging them up. They have a bad habit of digging round the roots ot my perennials and damaging them Fortnately Star killed his first rabbit yesterday so maybe he can help scare them off. I portioned it and fried it up for him.

Compost problems

W

Well I'm back  and it turns out that there's a bit of a problem. Although it looked reasonably good wet, it's a bit coarse and has a bit too much woodchip in it and some things aren't doing very well, specifically the brassicas and the carrots. Things are doing a lot better where the beds were dug and the soil mixed in with the compost. I'll be making some finer stuff over the next few days by collecting nettles before they flower and comfrey and building a compost heap with that. If I get it before the seeds set it should be ok and I'll top dress the beds with it once it's well rotted down. Although I don't like digging as it destroys the existing soil ecosystem I may have to do some digging at some stage but for now I'll see what can be done with top dressing.

I moved what strawberries survived the deer into the new garden and we made some more beds in there. That bed is about 10m long by 2.5m wide and about a foot deep. Another 48 strawberry plants were planted in there. 

I've completely lost track of what's planted in that garden as I've misplaced my notes. Most of it was listed in the seed order I listed earlier in the year. In this garden things are planted in overlapping clumps and swathes in an attempt no create something that looks a little more natural than straight lines. Edible herbs and flowers are also scattered around. The herbs in the hotbeds and some of those from the herb garden will also be planted in when they get a bit larger, I suspect postings will get a bit more regular here when I start my diploma.

I'll be planting butternut squash tomorrow and starting my tea and compost making, weed control and watering is a daily task although Anne got the stuff to extend the drip irrigation system in the polytunnel extended to almost all the rest of the tunnel.

All the large seeded things seem to be doing well.

It's early days, the beds will improve with mulching and that takes time.

Back soon.

Under the weather

I'll be back posting next week. I have a painful abcess so I'm taking time off till it clears up.