Self Sufficiency

Self Sufficiency

I'm well aware that this isn't going to happen but during a part of last year our weekly shopping bill reduced from approx. £100 per week down to approx. £20 per week for a couple of months which is a huge saving. 

Not all the savings came from us producing our own food but because we needed to go shopping less we also ended up not buying those "things on a whim" simply because we weren't in a shop.

The price of food, especially the things that aren't necessary, is becoming a huge issue. Obviously we can't make those kind of savings every week all year but if you could then that equates to around £4,000. Before tax it would be £5,000. For someone like me who only works 3 days a week this would represent 4 months of work.

Being a bit more realistic, those kind of savings for half the year would seem a sensible goal.

Spending many, many hours in the garden can seem a bit frivolous at times and hard to justify. Thoughts of, I should be earning money often arise, but by looking at it in a different way it can be seen that I am earning money while tending the garden.

Permaculture is a lot about design, the course I am on is a Permaculture Design Course, not that I knew that when I enrolled, and the formal design bit is something that I'm really not interested in. I just want to grow food, flowers, help wildlife, enjoy nature and enjoy my surroundings but I'm beginning to see a way into the design side for my own needs.

If I look at my time spent in the garden as also having a financial benefit I can see that one area to concentrate on would be to replace some of the time spent sowing annuals and instead sow perennials once and thereby free up time.

One of the permaculture principles is observing rather than doing and I have just realised that this can also save time and effort. Specifically, one of the problems is with the amount of time harvesting takes. A crop becomes ready and all of a sudden you have to drop everything, harvest, clean, process it and store it. This year I have observed 2 things that go together very nicely and which you wouldn't necessarily have thought about. In recent years weather forecasters have been telling us about the effect of the jet stream on our weather. If the jet stream is in one position we get stuck with wet stormy weather and stuck in another position we get fine weather but colder weather (in winter). They can also say that the weather type (wet / fine) will not change for a few weeks. Because of the position of the jet stream now we can see that there will not be intense cold and snow for the next week or 3 and because of the time of year the longer this goes on the less chance of a cold snap. If you can get an indication of the general weather a few weeks in advance you can also make a good guestimation as to whether less hardy crops can be left in the ground. The other thing I observed this year is that if you leave your beetroot in the ground way past the normal cropping time and the weather isn't too cold then they happily sit there with no damage. Normally if we have a lot of beetroot we end up picking them all then wasting a lot as we don't have time (at that particular time) to deal with them properly but this year we haven't wasted any as they have sat in the ground and we pick them as and when we need them. Had there been a cold spell like last year we would have wasted them all either to snow and cold damage or because we picked them and then did nothing. Predicting the general weather (listening to the forecasters) meant there was no rush to pull them all and still isn't. Observing and linking things in nature like this can make a big difference. Also because we left the beetroot in they regenerated and grew new leaves, which is another crop. 

October 2013

Sprouts and Broccoli

The small and large white butterfly devastated Sprouts and Broccoli last year but I decided to wait and observe what happened if I left them. Normally instinct would have said pull them and plant and autumn crop but I'm very pleased I didn't. What we have now is rather unexpected.  

March 2014

You can see how well they recovered. After the devastation last year I had decided that I would need to protect them next time but in the case of the broccoli it would appear that it isn't necessary.

The sprouts produced nice tops which with hindsight should have been eaten but now they have started to flower and the leaves are looking a bit tatty.

March 2014

A close up shows just how well the Broccoli recovered and is now producing a worth while crop.

I think this demonstrates the value of observation rather than acting immediately.  Had I acted immediately and pulled them all up I would have had to deal with the same problem next year and I wouldn't have had a crop to eat now.

The simple act of waiting and observing saved money time and effort and produced food. The sprouts will be left as a decoy / sacrificial crop but I still need to find a way of protecting the sprouts so I can produce some to eat but Broccoli in the late summer can now be safely left for the caterpillars to eat. Even if I fail to protect the sprouts then I know that the chances are I will still have the sprout tops to eat next spring.

I've never grown purple sprouting broccoli before so for all I know stripping all the leaves in late summer may have forced the plant to produce more flowers this spring so the caterpillars may even be beneficial ! 

Sea Buckthorn (Hippophae rhamnoides)

Sea Buckthorn

I have already decided that I would like to try and grow some Sea Buckthorn in the field within the Chicken area, partly because it appears that chickens like to eat the berries but also because it'll give the Field another species for wildlife and I like the look of the plant.

More general reading about Sea Buckthorn suggests that there are various people pushing it as a super fruit which can have health benefits along with making a good drink, when sweetened and perhaps mixed with Apple juice. Another good reason to plant some as one of the purposes of the field is to have it produce our food.

As a volunteer for the Wildlife Trust I often have to help manage Sea Buckthorn by cutting it back as it can become an invasive plant. Having been regularly in contact with it something has become apparent to me which I needed to explain for myself...

Sea Buckthorn grows in groups of Female and Male plants. You don't get too many male plants next to female ones so when you look at an extensive area you see a big patch of female plants with loads of berries and, perhaps the other side of a path, a big area of male plants. Why is this?

After giving it some thought, driven by the permaculture principle of observe and interact, it would seem that the main way Sea Buckthorn propogates is by runners or rhizomes. Therefore a female plant will spring up next to a female plant. I have read that the genes of a plant only change by seed (something I need to read up on) and that cuttings are clones of the parent. I think the rhizomes must therefore create clones. A male plant's rhizomes will therefore produce more male plants. You therefore get groups or areas of each type just expanding.

The fact that there are male and female plants in relatively close proximity would lead you to think that a seed could drop close to, for example, a female plant, but grow as a male and therefore help to break up these big groups of same sex plants but in reality this doesn't appear to happen. While it may sometimes, in general, it doesn't. To me this would suggest that a seedling doesn't like growing in a shaded position, or at least struggles to grow, and is therefore out competed by the parent plant. New colonies need to be created by the berries dropping some distance away from the parent, probably by birds.

Reading about Sea Buckthorn you are told that it requires, or demands, full sunlight. The observations and my thoughts would therefore appear to be correct.

By observing things in nature it allows you to better understand something as opposed to just reading about it which then allows you to interact better with nature to produce and care for your plants better. 

For me, it is obvious that I need to plant female Sea Buckthorn to make sure I get berries and also not to allow it to become shaded. The location to plant therefore requires space for the plants to propagate via the rhizomes which also needs to be away from my boundary otherwise the rhizomes will simply go under the fence and annoy the neighbours. Knowing, because I have seen for myself, how invasive these plants can be also means that I will need access all around the shrub in order to break rhizomes to stop them spreading beyond the area that I wish them to be.

Sea buckthorn can tolerate a wide range of soil types but in the wild in this country, certainly in my area, they are only to be found on the coast on very well drained and sandy soil. Perhaps they prefer the salt in the air from the sea and as I'm reasonably close to the sea I hope that I can ignore the air and just concentrate on the soil. As I have plenty of sand left over from the greenhouse base I'll use this to prepare the soil which will also aid the drainage in the chicken area which was part of the field that suffers from surface flooding.

Hopefully I can provide a good enough soil and location for Sea Buckthorn so that it will grow well enough to provide plenty of berries for the chickens but also for us to include in drinks and anything else we can think of incorporating the berries.

Sea Buckthorn would appear to be an excellent plant to have for various reasons but must also be very hardy to live on the coast. With  harvesting berries and cutting back it must be remembered that this shrub is not only thorny as it's name suggests but in reality it aggressively attacks you, almost with deliberate targeting of exposed skin. My work in managing Sea Buckthorn has meant that I have become perforated  on many occasions and when working with others every conversation during the work starts with the word "Ouch!" so leather gloves for handling it are a must. 

Trees in Autumn

One of the principles of Permaculture is to observe and interact. 

When viewing a simple photo of the start of Autumn I thought about what makes the leaves change colour and this lead to wondering why the same tree species planted together changes leaf colour at different rates. How trees grow is a lot more complex than I am about to portray but for the reason of trying to answer the question of why 3 same trees planted together change colour differently it is sufficient to start the ball rolling.

Marston Vale Forest School 2013

Chlorophyll is responsible for the colour and it is this that enables the tree to take water and Carbon Dioxide from the environment and convert it into sugars needed to grow. As the Chlorophyll diminishes other colour pigments can be seen which give browns, yellows and reds.

I began to think that the amount of Chlorophyll in the leaves may well be directly linked to how healthy the tree is. Those changing colour first may have less Chlorophyll and therefore were perhaps growing slower. If this is the case then perhaps it is an indication of which trees in the garden need more nutrients and minerals or are suffering from competition and need attention or removing.

Some more reading is required. The picture was taken from Marston Vale Forest School