Just a load of old Poo!

It's been five whole months since we closed our bookshop and just beginning to see daylight after two full-on and busy years.  At last back to the garden! Although this may be a cause of great jubilation to all my followers (er.... two? three?), the sad news is that the theme is less than salubrious..

We have a new addition to the family!   Mojo, our Staffie x German Shepherd has not only given us great joy but an abundance of poo!  This is bit of a permaculture challenge as the disposal of dog faeces is very problematic due to the Toxicara worm. Having investigated dog loos, wormeries and some such have discovered that digestion time doesn't catch up with either Mojo's rate of output (three poos a day) or my ability to keep up with him! Lots of ideas here.

My solution is not ideal but began with Mojo himself!

 

I had been brushing the faeces - 'under the rug' of our large laurel arch. Obviously not an edible arch (keeping poo away from edibles is essential to keep Toxicara away from the food chain), and it presented a convenient and out of the way invisible solution. He began to dig a hole nearby just in front of the six foot fence we had to install (turns out he's both a digger and a jumper!) so I buried the waste in there. I researched septic tank sewage activators and found this recipe:

• 2 sachets of yeast granules
• 2 cups of brown sugar
• 8-10 cups of lukewarm water

I mix the yeast and sugar with the water till smooth then leave it for half an hour to get going then pour over the poo.  I only do it about once a month. There always seems to be space for more doggydo so it does seem to be working since the yeast mixture turns it all to liquid and it dissipates away.

BUT there is an even more pressing issue.  Mojo runs free in the back garden - with an emphasis on runs: runs on flower/veggie beds, runs on the paths, runs into shrubs etc - so my vision of a veggie paradise was in real danger of not materialising.  What to do?

Well, I looked at his habits in the garden and noticed he wasn't particularly interested in going and 'going' on the beds if there was an obstacle.  One bed currently has a low growing rambling rose to one side and another has a small box hedge.  He NEVER enters the bed via these routes. So next year I'm going for a mixture of lavender and box hedging.  The lavender will edge the front of one of the beds as it gets full sun for most of the time and box elsewhere.

This doesn't solve the problem entirely.  The low hedges (I had thought that one of them could be step-over fruit trees but for Mojo's exhaust system  ) will take time to grow and even when it achieves the two/three feet height it still won't  be Mojieproof.  I can't afford him trampling over seedlings etc., under any circumstances.  So I'm going for containers.

I'm thinking that if I hedge off a whole plot - which isn't going to be a huge space - I can use it as a space for pots of veggies. We eat tons of salad crops and our veg growing tends to reflect this: outdoor toms, courgettes, cucumbers, onions and herbs, cut and come again lettuce.  I occurs to me that I could create a really pretty space using the hedging to contain rows of veggie pots.   Toms at the back, cucumbers in front, courgettes in front of those and I can use raised containers for the lettuce.  I've already got an apple and plum tree am training on wires so they'd make a great backdrop.

Well, drawing skills leave a lot to be
desired but I think this'll work.  Will post
the finished work next year!

Saw a fantastic tin bath for sale at a local junkshop. That's be great for the lettuce and possibly some onions. It's gone now but we have a reclamation yard a few miles away - think I'll go for a mooch.

Would look good in my stately home?
Well notsomuch but some freeform box
trimming will be a bit of fun if
 nothing else!

There's another small 11' circly/squarish plot in front of the window which I'm going to edge in box.  Saw a gardening programme with the box trimmed like a caterpillar.  Not going to attempt something so ambitious but would quite like to go for a freeform trim if poss to reduce the formality of the overall design.

I've always gone for a semi-wild look to the place - fits in with the Permaculture ethic but the Mojinator has meant resorting to drastic measures!  Will keep you posted!

Post Thunderstorm Potter

Really cool this morning and a bit of a breeze so decided not to oil the two benches.  Both are in serious need of some tlc and have been much neglected but its a small job that can wait for another day.  Instead decided to clean out the mini greenhouse.  Sowed some hosta seed and Michaelmass Daisies (for autumn colour and late bee food next year).  The garden is looking lovely and I think that keeping the to-do list small makes my largish space that more manageable and enjoyable.

Yup - Barleywood Blue.  Very
Alan Titchmarsh 1990s! 

So I had time for the silliest project!  Have a small birdtable that was looking the worst for wear so got a small test-pot of woodstain from Homebase to see how far it would go.  £1.50 did this! Looks pretty full on in close up by actually draws the eye nicely here:
 

Last job was sorting out the bird feeders.  Attracting as much wildlife as possible to the garden has been a central aim - one of the excuses for having lots of flowers!  I looked askance at the prices of some birdfeeders and was trawling the internet last week when I came across this kit for a £2.99.Basically it converts any plastic pop bottle into a fully functional bird feeder.  It arrived a few days ago, popped two holes in a plastic bottle and inserted the plastic hanger, poured in the seed and screwed it into the feeder-base.  You can see how it works here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bshxyaHX9k4 , and the final result...

TaDah....!

Am proper chuffed with this and will be getting some more. If you can't find a stockist, I got mine off eBay.  If you just search Bottle Top Feeder Kit, you'll find one. Must remember to start collecting as much seed as possible to add to much diminished stock.  Have a finch flocker in the back garden - have to fill it up too regularly!

Next job will be the oiling of the benches.  Using unboiled linseed oil.  Will see if it does the trick!

Tales from the Wormery.

I bought (not made) my wormery from a firm called Wiggly Wigglers.  As the name suggests they specialise in wormeries (mine is their Worm Cafe) can make your own but worried I'd get it wrong.  The cafe was great in that it has a number boxes you can layer it up with + a tray at the bottom for the compost liquid that can be diluted and used for plant food.

.

The Worm Cafe can have a total of four
 layersin nested boxes.

and they stock everything you need to either start up or maintain.  Of course you

Well to cut a long story short it arrived, it worked, it was great and then it filled with rats.

I'd run another compost bin on bare ground about 10 yards away and early last year detected the tell tale signs of an infestation. Kitchen compost disappeared really quickly, lots of droppings and then sight of a tail wagging fiercely at the bottom of a run its owner had made as it scurried from the feastly top on my arrival.  I wasn't too bothered, to be honest.  I just stamped a little harder on the ground as I approached it so I wouldn't actually get to see one, but that's all I did.  It became more problematic in the (late) spring when I wanted to empty the content to use it.  I pondered what to do and how to approach what was obviously going to be a nest, preparing myself for an explosive migration when I knocked the bin over.  Having worked myself up to it for a few weeks, however, the issue went away on the arrival of my daughter from uni who innocently asked if there was anything she could help me with.  Job done.

As it happened the rats had already gorn.  I'd stopped feeding the bin knowing I was going to empty it so they'd left for pastures new.  The pasture they chose was the wormery.  I found this out on an attempt to dispose of some teabags.  I took off Gollum, the stone gargoyle that weighed the top down, and there

The Worm Cafe, featuring
Gollum the Gargoyle

beneath were THREE FAT REALLY REALLY REALLY FAT rats.  Lid down, scream, run - the whole thing.  Couldn't work out how they'd got there.  Gollum was certainly ugly enough to discourage even the most determined rat, but his main feature was his weight!  We thought they must have chewed their way in from underneath.

I usually manage to fill two of these
trugs from one emptying of the
wormery.

Well a few days ago it was time to empty it.  Worm compost is gold. Black gold, Texas Tea (Ok this is lifted straight from the old American sitcom The Beverly Hillbillies.  If you aren't familiar here's the theme tune).  I use it to bed in or mulch plants I can't afford to leave without a bit of TLC.  I lifted Gollum away and with the help of a 300ft pole (spot the hyperbole)  nudged the top off.  Nothing there.  Oh the drama!

So... emptied the compost as usual, drained off the liquid food

Liquid compost on
bottom tray. All free!

 and stored nicely in old plastic milk cartons.  This is really great stuff.  Smells like nothing alive on earth but great for liquid feeding both veg and flowers. Not a sign of any chewed plastic of any kind!  All we can surmise is that the rats nudged the top off a few inches with Gollum still in residence and did the deed under him whilst still on duty.

All is restored now.  I may need to dig up some more worms but other than that sorted for the next cycle.

Liquid feed ready for
action.

So late this year!

I'm sure I'm not the only one to be deterred from getting to grips with the garden - we're all behind!  Hard to do much with frozen soil and soul-curling easterlies.

However, this Sunday glimpsed a break in the cold!  Lovely day so got on with some much needed tidying up.

So much to do but keeping it focused and simple helps to control what would otherwise be an overwhelming amount of space.  This weekend was about secateurs.  Simply walking the garden, cutting out last year's stems, thinning out ramblers and pruning fruit bushes was a pleasant hour's work.  Quick finish with the yardbrush made paths look clearer and the garden immediately fresher.

Managing time is a theme running throughout all these posts.  To be both tasty - and hasty - this garden demands the strict organisation of  time.  The way I do it is to make sure that tasks are planned in advance, focusing on a specific area of the garden. 

Next weekend will see me tackling two casualties of the winter:  some wooden troughs rotted completely through require dismantling, geranium cuttings need to be taken from larger specimens overwintered on the kitchen sill and seeds started.  These latter will all be initially set inside lest we become further plagued by the weirding our global weather is currently undergoing.

...and six months later...

 

One of the key elements to a Permaculture garden is that it can actually save lots of time.  That I've had no time at all to write about the progress of the HastyTastyGarden is evidence enough that this was a much needed strategy.  I have managed to take some shots of the garden as it progressed so rather than bore you with long descriptions of the odd half-hours I've managed to grab during the last six months, I've posted them below with some captions.



Beans surrounded by calendula and nasturtiums were late to 'run' this year! 
Carrots were sown insitu and to be honest didn't take as well as I'd like. 
What I did get have been big, fat and sweet.

 Only planted half doz cabbages.  Snails a terrible problem
here but as you'll see later they developed well.  More
brassicas next year.  We love brussels sprouts.

Disappointed with the resolution of this picture as it doesn't show the
it off to the best effect.  Love the way nasturtiums leave room for growing veg
but then take over at the end of the season so garden still looks OK. Hardly any
weeds, by the way, despite the terrible summer weather. This is
because of the newspaper mulching.  Perennials had no chance.

A view of the front garden.  No veg but plenty for the birds and bees
to get stuck into.

...and even my little cactus, alone on the toilet window shelf found something in the
summer to celebrate!

Dig Not! Use newspaper mulches instead!

The Eyesore...

I have this small patch in the kitchen garden.  It used to have a pear tree in the middle of it.  All the pears were stripped just before they ripened by hoardes of squirrels - one day they were there, the next, gone!  In order to deter the squiggles, I ran up the thorniest rose I could find but alas to no avail.  I decided that the pear tree had to go as it took up such a lot of room for no crop.  This meant I also had to lose the rose, which had by now developed its own trunk and sinewy root system.  Not ever really wanting to tackle the ground it became uneven and unloved and sorting it all out seemed such a long job (given that soil levels varied by as much as a foot in some places) it has long remained a guiltmaking eyesore.

So this year, having decided that the garden had to be both hasty and tasty (with the emphasis on hasty) I decided on drastic measures which came in the form of a newspaper mulch.

The Permaculture Association in conjunction with the likes of Sepp Holzer have pioneered this method as a no-dig alternative to cultivation.  Digging often disturbs the soil structure (I'm so glad), and mulching has so many advantages as you'll see.

First of all I used a huge pile of newspapers for the first layer.  I opened each newspaper out and spread it at 4-sheet thickness, weighted down by a few stones.  Then I emptied the contents of my compost heap over the newspaper.  Now some of this wasn't fully rotted down but any organic matter will generally do, particularly if going for deep trench mulching.  I then covered all this in some bagged farmyard manure.  OK so the latter was bought - unavoidable - but fully organic and, better still, delivered to my door!  Job done.  Imagine!  I could have spent an hour digging, then raking, then composting and instead after half and hour:

Job Done!

• soil structure undisturbed
• newspapers recycled and able to rot down to give the soil extra carbon
• layer of domestic compost down together with a good thousand worms to nourish what was a very neglected patch of soil
• layer of organic farmyard manure to further add nourishment and fibre

This left me time to plan the layout of this new bit of kitchen garden.  Next blog post!

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For more information why not try:

The Permaculture Garden by Graham Bell

There's something in this Permaculture lark...

Part of the garden is terraced and the lower half has been for too long part of Gledhow Woods.  Last year I got some help in clearing some brambles and a blown-down laburnum but it has been so full of debris, I didn't have the wherewithal to get my head round what to do with the space.  The thought of burning the rubbish skittered menacingly across the frontal lobes.

Then I reminded myself of my Permaculture pretensions and realised that actually the laburnum, skeletons of old Christmas trees and sundry cast-offs would make good semi-longterm habitats for wildlife.  So almost on a whim I began packing the undersides of the vastly overgrown privets with said debris and what I thought was going to be a long job was done in less than 15 minutes! 

The spirit with me now, I contacted my apple expert to ask if she had any Bramley seedling whips.  I'd been trolling eBay to see if there were any cheap trees I could bid for but with postage anything decent was gone for over £30 and well out of my budget.  She suggested looking in our local Aldi.  Though they had some obscure climbing roses on offer for £2.50 (but mental note, nevertheless) and some equally unknown apple varieties - outside of Denmark -  (is Aldi Danish?) there were no Bramleys.   A free-food coupon trip to Tesco was fortuitous, however, as they had just the job for seven quid.  Duly planted.

I'm going for a Stella cherry tree next.  Have been researching rootstocks and have been persuaded out of the dwarf varieties - they wouldn't stand a chance against being hastytasty.  Far too much high maintenance.  Some dwarf rootstocks require weeding, for goodness sake!  So have decided to go for the full monty and keep it within manageable limits by judicious pruning.  If anyone knows of anyone with a Stella in Leeds they want rid of - let me know!

All of the above was just over half-an-hour's work and at the end of it began to plan the next job.  I do not know why there was a pile of soil on the path down to the garden shed.  Having realised that I won't be interrupted by the formal demands of waged work, and having come to a proper understanding of how important it is to create in one's mind specific job for the next time I'm out, three days later saw me digging (yes, there was a lot) it out.  What a difference a brushed path can make.  Even if you haven't done much, it does make it look as if someone knows what they're doing!

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Try these books to tempt you into Permaculture:

The Permaculture Garden by Graham Bell
The Permaculture List on the Radishwebstore