Mulching experiment: update 1

A month after I first began the mulching experiment, here is the first update.

 Experiment 1: after 1 month

For bed 1 (standard cardboard and compost mulch), you can see that the cardboard is starting to break down a bit. No annual weeds have come up. This may not seem significant, but on my non-mulched beds, like those still with spinach and chard, some annual weeds have sprung up, even though I weeded them at the same time as setting up the mulching experiment. Usually I wouldn't need to weed so late, but we had such a warm autumn. I suspect now that it's finally turning into winter (light dash of snow on the ground this morning), the weeds shouldn't grow any more now until end of Winter/early Spring.

Bed 2: mid-November 2011

Bed 2: mid-December 2011

For bed 2, with the cardboard and non-composted plant material mulch, if you compare to the first photo from November, you can tell, only slightly (!), that the plant material is breaking down just a little. I think adding the extra compost to hold it down has helped, as has finally getting some cold weather. But not a lot of change really.

Let's see how it looks in January!

Mulching experiment

Green manure: Hungarian rye on the left, tares to the right. Will be dug in early Spring.

It's been the mulching time of year, well, more in Autumn, I'm just writing this up late! I decided to try experimenting with a couple of different mulching techniques on a couple of beds at the lottie which didn't have green manure in them, so they would not be bare over winter. The main reasons for mulching are:

1. Killing weeds by denying them light
2. To conserve water - reducing evaporation
3. To protect the soil from erosion or capping
4. To encourage biological activity
5. To add organic matter and nutrients to the soil

(from The Earth Care Manual, p.194)

The first bed I am doing my mulching experiment on had potatoes growing in it this year, and will be planted with courgettes, pumpkins & squashes and corn in 2012. My key aim for the mulching on this bed was to add organic matter and nutrients in preparation for plants that will need lots of food. A secondary aim was to kill weeds (annuals) by denying them light.

Having already tried to clear the bed of perennial weeds like couch grass when it was first dug, and again after I pulled up all the potatoes, I had hoped that I had got it all. Couch grass is very sneaky and the tiniest amount left behind will start a new plant. Clearly I haven't quite mastered the art of getting rid of perennial weeds as I still have couch grass appearing! So I therefore first did my best to dig out any perennial weeds, again.

Experiment 1: standard cardboard & compost mulch

I then covered the bed with cardboard, and then added in a couple inches of compost on top of the cardboard. The cardboard should help kill off any annual weeds. It will breakdown over winter, and the worms will take the compost down into the soil, doing the handy work of adding it's nutrients to the soil.

This is a fairly standard type of mulching, so I'm not doing anything new. I'm going to monitor this bed over winter and see how it breaks down. I will probably add another layer of mulch in early spring, as pumpkins etc are hungry feeders and I want to give them the best possible chance of yielding lots of yummy food.

The experiment part really comes in with comparing this standard way of mulching with another bed I mulched. This bed had broad beans on it this year, and I will be planting brassicas on it in 2012 (in fact there are already some over-winter cabbages in the bed). Again, these need lots of nitrogen nutrients.

For the 2nd bed, I'm using the idea of 'three-layer grow through mulch' (Earth Care Manual, p.195), but adapting it. The 'three-layer' mulch first has cardboard or newspaper placed on the bed. Then manure is added, and then holes made plants, i.e. potatoes, planted though a hole. The 3rd layer is a mulch of grass mowings, straw, generally loose material, which helps contain moisture. This system is really used for when you are immediately added young plants/seed potatoes, not leaving it over winter.

For my experiment* I have added a layer of cardboard (after again doing my best to get rid of the perennial weeds), but instead of adding manure, I have thrown on all the left-over bits of plants. This includes everything from the remains of corn, chard/spinach I had dug up prior to it going to seed, carrot tops, broad bean and pea roots, the remains of the asparagus plants after cutting them down in autumn, etc. I then threw on some compost to help hold it down. The lottie is very exposed to wind and as the plant material is a bit light, I needed something to hold it down so it didn't just blow away.

*This isn't my own bright idea. I know I've read or heard about this, or something similar to it, a few years ago but cannot find where, so I'm unable to give the credit for the idea. I'm just using what I remember and adapting it to what I think might work.

Experiment 2: Showing the cardboard layer, then plant material on top.

I could put all the plant material in the compost and break it down that way as usual, but I wanted to see how it might go if I just add the material straight onto a bed in autumn. My thoughts were that maybe the frosts and snow will help break the plant material and cardboard down a bit, and then when it starts warming up in early Spring, I'm hoping the worms will get to work and start taking some of the material down into the soil.

At the very least, this mulch will help kill annual weeds and stop the soil from being bare and at risk of winds blowing away some of the good top soil over winter. If it doesn't break down enough, I don't loose anything as I can just pull up the plant material and put it in the compost bin, then add some standard compost back onto the cardboard and bed.

In nature, trees loose their leaves and just fall to the ground. It doesn't get raked up and put on a compost pile and then once broken down added back to the soil. It is left to do it's own thing and nature gets to work and over time it breaks down and releases all it's nutrients back into the soil. So I'm trying this because I was curious to see how much the plant material would break down over winter, when just left there as is, kind of mimicking nature a little bit.

The photos above were from mid-November. I'll be taking photos once a month over the next couple of months and report back how it is going.

#Nov30 in Oxford

Updated 5pm: More pictures from the march and rally

Proud to support all workers on strike today. I joined the Unison picket line in Rectory Road, Oxford, for a couple of hours. A couple of pictures from striking Oxford workers.

Plus pic of the #Solidaritea chocolate cakes I made and dropped off at a couple of picket lines.

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!