blog/random musings of an eco-garden-designer.. 2011
This blog has moved (again)
You might know that this blog keeps moving about, but the simple fact is it has to be in one place, and that's happening at www.marklaurence.com/blog from now on!
Poly(tunnel)culture
22 June 2011
We celebrated the summer solstice last night with a glass of wine in the polytunnel. It gets the sun during the day and in the evening when other seating areas in the garden are in shade, so it's a natural place to sit. Fact is, some of our best moments and discussions happen here; I'd definitely recommend you get one. A conservatory is all very well, but a polytunnel, has a life all of its own... you have to experience it to understand! It's rough and ready, but you sit surrounded by all the produce you are growing; we have cucumbers, a cut-and-come-again bed, just over a metre square (below right), which supplies us (and handfuls to the chickens) with all our salad greens and will do all summer (Mizuma, Mizbuna, Rocket, Mustard Greens and various mixed lettuce - definitely a polyculture!), basil plants, peppers and of course, tomatoes. The latter are an eclectic mix of varieties; we were late sowing so ended up buying some plants of varieties we'd not be choosing normally, but at the same time, loads of self-sown toms appeared from last year's crop, which, being heritage type s(ie not hybrids) will come true from seed.
Whilst sitting there, we get to keep an eye on what needs doing, and plan the next round of work at the week-end, all whilst sipping wine or coffee and discussing nutritional health of body and/or planet (okay, shouldn't be drinking wine or coffee from that point of view, but hey, got to have some pleasures in life!), energy medicine or just something inane. Sometimes, amidst the planning for the future and the concerns of the daily grind, it's good to just sit and realise that sun, a glass of wine and the company of loved ones are just about as good as it can get... we need to live for the moment a lot more than we do.
Our new chickens have settled in and the young ones (Dot and Trumpet, because she sounds like one) are proving cheeky enough to survive the huffing and pecking that the older birds inevitably dish out. And it's lovely to have a regular supply of eggs again, small at the moment, but they'll get bigger. They are a hybrid variety, Black Rhodes, and lovely birds too. Even shop bought organic eggs don't taste as good.
My work in the garden isn't half as productive as I would like, there just isn't enough time and the list of things to do only gets longer. I'm not going to stress about it though; we do what we can, ignore what we can't! A productive garden will only yield high rewards if you put a high amount of effort into it, and really I have yet to see a permaculturalist who is able to have a low-input, high output garden in a temperate climate... so we'll yield what we have sown, but the pleasure is worth more than the weight of the produce...
New Chicks
12th June 2011
We've just got two new new pullets, to supplement the declining egg production from our four older birds. I've also built them a new house and run, as the old one needs some rest and recuperation. This has raised the slightly vexed dilemma of what should we do with the older birds; in a logical world, and for local food sourcing and sustainability, they should be dispatched and put into someone's freezer - but the family is having none of that! Fair enough, especially as we're all vegetarian, but chicken is a really easy source of protein and is a healthy meat, and so easy to raise. I've come to realise that for me, local food sourcing is more important than the principle of being veggie, which does rely quite heavily on a global food chain being available. From a nutrition point of view (my partner is a nutritionist) there are certain vits and oils that are hard to get from any source other than fish or meat, so long as these are kept in balance. The trouble is, with contemporary diets, we think we must have meat with everything. Once or twice per month is probably more than enough, and the reduction in intensive farming, combined with local production, would solve all our carbon emission problems.
New ways of food gardening
May 2011
A strange thing has been happening in our veg areas. As we've been sowing seeds and preparing beds, last year's crops seem to be resurrecting themselves everywhere! Potatoes are emerging, along with a host of French beans and in the polytunnel, tomatoes. Now, this should be of no great surprise, as we use heritage varieties of veg, ie. non-hybrid, which come true from their own seed. What's more, we have parsnips, carrots, spinach and leeks all happily going to seed - the pics show our parsnip seedheads, six foot tall. They are quite a beautiful sight, indeed parsnips as ornamentals made it into a Chelsea Flower Show garden this year!
I hear concerns arising over crop rotation, and indeed, as our raised beds are set out, this would become a problem. What I have in mind, however, is a vegetable polyculture, of plants which would happily self-sow, mixed with perennial vegetables. Seed can be left to fall, or gathered and sown into clearings within the garden space. Because of the mixed nature and annual fluidity of such a garden, build-up of disease would not occur. Many things we grow will self seed, including lettuce and oriental greens (again, providing they're not hybrids). It's an experiment I look forward to trying in greater depth next year...
This blog has split!
March 2011
I have divided my blog into two, my urban-vertical-sustainable-food walls etc. stuff is now to be found over at www.marklaurence.com/blog, whilst my garden-home-production stuff remains here...
A New Year
19th February 2011
Okay, it's not exactly the beginning of the year, but it's closer than the end, if you see what I mean? I always intend to write more than I do, but somehow, life just gets in the way...
Actually, had a pretty good start to the year, with a visit to Chicago (and its third biggest snowstorm ever!) and a lot of work to do setting up global distribution of the BioTecture green wall system, via my US partners. BioTecture in the UK continues to expand and is working on some exciting projects; my input is focused on design and new product development.
Upcoming projects for the year include some three dimensional green wall structures in the heart of Chicago's Millennium Park (see pic at right - we'll have a bit of Frank Gehry for a background) and some internal and external walls at O'Hare International Airport. In the UK, we have a range of exciting projects ongoing, including interior walls to a London hotel and an upmarket interior showroom.
I see green walls as the first step into bringing new focus on the way in which we green up our urban environments; linking buildings with the biological functioning of Nature; building eco-system services into our daily lives. Why, you might ask? Well, if we are to have a sustainable future - no; if we are to have a future - then all our systems have to move from linear to cyclical. We have to emulate the ways of Nature within all we do; politics, energy, food production, manufacturing, consumption - all these things have to be cyclical, have to feed back into each other so that all outputs (waste, pollution) become inputs into another part of the same system. Only by doing such can we learn to live within the planet's means, which ultimately means the daily net solar energy gain the planet receives (sunlight). So green walls are a start - just a start - and there is a long way to go and a lot to do..
2011 is going to be a busy year...
Read the 2010 blog!