Ruth and I live and work at Barmolloch Farm near Lochgilphead on the West coast of Scotland. We've been helping Helen and Stewart Wright look after and develop everything here, especially the gardens. Here's a bit about it all:
There's a large polytunnel which Helen and Stewart already had well established. Apart from the extra warmth for the plants, it's a brilliant thing to have so there's somewhere to work when it's raining... which seems to be most of the time at the moment...
We've had successes and failures this year, excellent crops of onions, garlic and carrots...
...but really feeble tomatoes. It's fair to say that both successes and failures have been largely down to soil preparation, or lack of it, and, generally, things have gone much better when we followed Biodynamic principles. (A page on Biodynamics and Permaculture coming soon).
COMPANION PLANTING
Here's an unusual thing, Ruth read somewhere that tomatoes and asparagus grow well together so we gave it a try, and they do indeed. They are in fact the healthiest looking tomatoes of all and the asparagus is thriving too. I've been pruning the asparagus so the tomatoes are growing through it in a kind of emergent layer.
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| A mini forest garden system of tomatoes and asparagus |
WEEDS AND SLUGS
Half of our gardening time just seems to be spent in keeping on top of the weeds. We've been trying all sorts of mulches and this one really seems to help around veg, just a covering of wood shavings - well worth the effort.
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| Wood shaving mulch - very efficient use of time and materials |
The best slug deterrent seems to be a collar of wool round the plant when it's going into the ground. That and a treatment of nematode solution seems to keep them at bay. There's still slugs around and we get a bit of damage but there's also lots of toads and I guess we wouldn't have the predators without the prey... that's a diverse Permaculture living environment for you.
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| Wool collars help to keep the slugs at bay |
By the way, if you're ever setting up a polytunnel, don't be tempted to set your beds right up to the edge as in the photo above. You'll give yourself a really difficult weed trap to manage. You have to be a human contortionist to get into this corner, especially when the plants are getting bigger. We're finding a mixture of garlic infusion and lots of vinegar helps to keep the weeds down at the back of these beds.
Interesting.
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