Blogspot - Interia Dezain

Loving the cool and wet summer this year. It's certainly a stark contrast to what's going on in West and S.W Europe. We're spending the days between gardens mainly harvesting and mowing in the mornings and working on new designs and writing up the results from last years  APP trials   in the afternoons. I hope to publish those this coming week.  So here's some photos and news of what we've been doing in the gardens this week.   Robinia Coppice  We have a small woodland plot where we have been experimenting with coppicing. The dominant tree species in the woods are  Robinia pseudoacacia - Black Locust   a North American native that naturalized in the area after being introduced here many years ago. Last spring we felled some of the trees in order to start the coppice. The aim is to grow the support stakes for our market garden from the coppice. The regrowth is going well and we'll make the first cuts this autumn. High levels of the alkalo...

The summer is in full swing here and we are fortunate enough to have one of those rare seasons so far when the rains come just at the right time to keep everything fresh and full of vigor. Here's what we've been up to the gardens this last week and a few observations from the forest gardens.  The Perennial Polyculture Trial Garden - Ataraxia  This week we started the preparation for the next wave of planting in Ataraxia. For this section we are trying a different method of bed preparation .(for 5 methods of bed prepartion we tried last year see this blog post) . We establish the tree row bed on contour and mow the bed pathway emptying the trimmings onto the adjacent bed area.  We'll also deposit biomass from other areas of the gardens onto the tree row bed to build up organic matter. We then spot mulch the precise location of where the trees will be planted with straw bales and place 5 L of compost full of young composting worms - Eisenia fetida - and the cocoons of these...

Shifting down gears as we go into summer with plenty of observing, harvesting and eating the harvest this week. The gardens are doing an excellent job of turning light, carbon dioxide and water into food and we're doing a good job of appreciating that :) Market Garden Walking around the gardens on a sunny summer morning following a night of heavy rain you can certainly sense the garden's will to grow.  Symphytum x uplandicum - Comfrey  with vegetables polycultures in the background  The polyculture beds   We're pleased to again be offering a modest selection of vegetables and fruits to Trustika Food co-op. Dylan is handling the orders this year and here he is picking pears for orders.  Trustika is an excellent example of connecting food producers with consumers. The food co-op buying and selling takes place on an ingenious piece of database design using google sheets by  Borislav Dimitrov  who also manages the food co-op. Using their gmail ac...