Solving a thorny problem

Brambles - ugh!

Like many gardeners, I am regularly at war with brambles. I cannot control the council land that my garden backs onto. Although the council have promised, a couple of times, to remove the brambles, this has yet to happen. I clearly need to hassle them more. In the meantime, I have to do what I can to keep the council's brambles from trying to take over my garden.

This war has inevitably led to some injuries. Actually, quite a few injuries. There has been thorns stuck in my fingers. There has been scratches on my arms. There has been blood. It's not been a pretty sight. And I really need to stop swearing bloody murder every time I'm hurt. There are children living next door.

I've tried different types of so-called pruning gloves over the last couple of years but so far none of them have lived up to their name. So when at the Chelsea Flower Show this year, I specifically looked for some gloves that would stand up to brambles and that would leave my poor hands and arms unscathed and my need for band aids diminished. And the ears of my neighbours children uncovered.

Of all the stands I visited, the Gold Leaf glove stand looked the most promising. They had a glove on offer called a Tough Touch glove. It's made with leather, and has a gauntlet like cuff (you know, like knights used to wear) that goes over the wrist and part way up the arm.

Trying them on they felt good, warm too (fleecy inside). But would they really do the job? Obviously the sales people were used to suspicious gardeners, so they had some rose stems with thorns on hand (as you do) to demonstrate the effectiveness of the gloves. Wearing the glove and then grabbing the thorny stem, they did appear to be very strong and I didn't get any stinging or cuts. What's more the gloves were quite comfortable. Whilst I was still not 100 per cent convinced how they would work in practice, they were the best thing I'd seen so I decided to give them a go. I gave them £24, they gave me an expensive pair of gloves that I hoped would work.

I had a couple of bramble advances into my home garden over the summer that I had to halt, and used the gloves. They appeared to do the job. But I was still thinking, but what about when it's a whole bramble patch? Yes, I'm hard to please.

Fast forward to last weekend. I was talking part in my Allotment Association's working party on Sunday. A large part of it was spent clearing brambles. I suspect this may be a regular occurrence on lotties up and down the country! So, out came the magic gauntlet gloves and I got to work.

You know what? They bloody worked. I was right in the thick of it, grabbing thorny branches, pruning and carrying a stack of the thorny buggers to the fast-growing-pile-of-things-to-burn. All through it, I didn't get one cut or scratch on my hand or wrists. I have to say, I'm quite impressed.

They don't stop branches falling on my head because I cut the wrong angle and then didn't get out of the way quickly enough. They won't stop brambles growing in the first place. But they did do just what they said on the tin. And the neighbours children can play outside without bursts of bad language disturbing their play. Finally, a solution to a thorny problem.

Agroforestry talk - some musings

I attended an excellent talk on Agroforestry by Professor Steve Newman of the Agroforestry Research Trust (and BioDiversity Int.) last night, put on by Oxford Permaculture. Whilst I might live in an urban environment and won't be setting up a forest garden on a piece of land, the talk was still relevant as you can still use elements of the forest garden in a small garden or at your allotment. This might be something as simple as growing strawberries underneath your pear trees, as I currently do. Or it could be creating several layers of crops within a small kitchen garden or on your allotment, as I plan to to do as I develop my kitchen garden and lottie in the future.

Steve also repeated one of best definitions of permaculture that I've come across...

Permaculture is an approach to designing human settlements and agricultural systems that is modelled on relationships found in nature.

I must try and remember that next time someone asks me what permaculture is!

Steve also questioned 'what is food?' and thought maybe we needed a new definition. So much of our food comes from monoculture, and have been brought down to the lowest common denominators: grasses (wheat, rice etc), potatoes and maize.

However, I think the question isn't 'what is food', but 'what food is appropriate to grow in a given environment?' For example, as Steve pointed out, in the UK we should be growing nuts (walnuts, hazel nuts, chestnuts) rather than cereal like wheat (or at least growing more nuts and less cereal). Our environment is highly suitable for nut growing and nuts are high in protein and carbohydrates and are more nutritious than wheat. Nuts can be ground into flour and used for baking. And from a permaculture/agroforestry perspective, nut trees can fit really well in a diversified agricultural system.

One example Steve showed was of nut trees with wheat growing underneath (see - you can have your cake and eat it!). As the leaves on nut trees come out quite late, wheat can be sown in the autumn when the nut tree has lost it's leaves (which go into the soil and add nutrients). The wheat starts growing before winter sets in, stops during winter, then gets growing again in early spring once the temperatures start rising. By the time it gets to summer, the leaves on the nut tree will be out, but by this point the wheat isn't doing much photosynthesising. Therefore the shade of the tree does not impact on the wheat as it now putting its energy not into photosynthesis, but into using the energy stored in the plant to develop the grain.

Getting the initial design and spacial relationships right is very important. The nut trees should be planted carefully so they are not too close together.  With careful design you get two yields from one area of land (and probably more but I'm just limiting this to nuts and wheat for as an example).

As someone who rather loves her potatoes and fresh bread from the farmers market, I don't want to give them up. But Steve's talk did make me think about how what I see as key food items, wheat and potatoes, is quite limited and not necessarily giving me the best nutrients. Wheat is grown in as a monoculture in the UK in a way that is clearly unsustainable. However, if we shift what we think of as key food products, and start using agroforestry techniques to diversify, we have the opportunity to grow more food locally that suits the UK environment, build resilience (because if would be less likely that both crops would fail in a given year), and of course we would get to try lots more new ways of eating yummy food.

Thanks to Steve Newman for such an inspiring talk, and for Phil Pritchard from Oxford Permaculture for organising it. I know it's a cliché, but it really was, food for thought!

Bavarian & Bonn holiday

Ok, it's taken me about 6 weeks, but I've finally got around to sorting through the rest of my over 600 photos from our holiday in Bavaria and Bonn back in September. I briefly posted back in early October, but here is a fuller photo story of our holiday...

View from our cabin in Bayerisch Eisenstein. It was so beautiful and the air was so fresh I almost felt like I was on a high!

Wandering in Bayer's streets.

Bayer is in the Bavarian Forest, right on the boarder with the Czech Republic. In fact, the train station is half in Germany and half in Czech, as I demonstrate here!

Us on the top of Grosser Arber.

A day trip out of the forest to the beautiful Bavarian city of Regensburg. It was a bit grey and cloudy that day, but I can assure you the city is very beautiful.

Julieanne in front of another part of the Roman wall. Notice how they built the 'newer' buildings into the old wall.

The elusive Lynx. It's blurry (it's been cropped), but it was very rainy and being a cat, it did not like being out in the rain much, so it hid deep into the trees. At Falkenstein Naturpark, Bavarian Forest. And yes, there are still some Lynx in the wild in the Bavarian Forest too.

And now the Wild Cat. Though hard to tell in a photo, these cats are much larger than your usual moggie. At Nationalpark Lusen.

Tree-top walk at Nationalpark Lusen.

A riot of colour at the Bundesgartenschau in Koblenz. Was enjoyable to visit, but Chelsea, it's not!

Playing on the chairs at the Bundesgartenschau in Koblenz

The Ehrenbreitstein Fortress, other side of the Rhine in Koblenz. Another part of the Bundesgartenschau also held here.

Colourful Cauli's (Bundesgartenschau).

Cycling in the Ahr valley (part of Rhine region) with our friends from Bonn. This is all of us (well, minus me) in the town of Mayschoss. L-R: Alexander, Kate, Simon, Sam & Kevin.

Fantastic use of permaculture 'edge'. Grape vines, Mayschoss. The tunnel to the left is the bicycle tunnel, and to the right, the train tunnel. I love the Germans, they are so organised.

Julieanne, Kate & Simon. Between Dernau and Ahrweiler in the Ahr Valley.

Sam & Kevin. Who's the cutest?! In Ahrweiler.

New glass chicken from the Regensburg Glas-haus graces the lottie.

It was a really relaxing  holiday in the Bavarian Forest and we had a great time visiting Kate, Simon and the boys in Bonn, and came back refreshed and relaxed. Somehow though, it already seems an ice-age away...

For the extra keen, I've posted more photos from the holiday on my web album.

Container gardening with legs

I saw this when on holiday in Germany, as we were cycling into Dernau, in the Ahr valley (near Rhine) with friends. Gives container gardening legs, don't you think?!

Block the bill - NHS block the bridge

Ok, I realise it has been yonks since I've last blogged. I promise I'll catch up soon and will supply you with pics and stories from our holiday in the Bavarian Forest and visiting friends in Bonn. In the meantime, today I was at the NHS Block the Bill action in London.

There is a lot of hope that the House of Lords will hold up the bill by referring it to a committee, effecting stopping it. Ironic that it might be a bunch of unelected predominately rich white men, that may help save the NHS. However, not counting chooks yet...

Jenny & I on #blockthebridge

More pics here and here.