Observing how nature waters the garden and the difference it makes

Observing how nature waters the garden 

Having observed how well all the plants grew last week when we had the first proper amount of rain for a fair while I was wondering why the plants didn't grow as well the week before when I watered them myself.

5 possible reasons came to mind for the difference in growth between the 2 weeks.

1) I didn't water enough

2) Last week's temperatures weren't as good

3) The amount of sunlight was less

4) The rain water was evenly spread over 7 days rather than 1 big watering session as I do 

5) A mixture of water,light and temperature.

Looking at each one in turn and comparing the 2 weeks:-

One veg patch is 3m x 3m in size and over the last 7 days we have had 12mm of rain in the last week so I can calculate the amount of rain that fell on that patch. 

(3m x 3m x (12mm/1000)m) x 1000 = 108 cubic litres or 23.75 Cubic Gallons

I work in gallons so I'll use that.

23.75 Gallons of water fell on that one small veg patch during the week.  That's a lot. A big watering can is 2 gallons and a mid size one is 1 gallon. So between 12 and 24 watering cans of water went onto a 3 x 3 metre bed. For a start there is no way I would have put that much water onto such a small bed as it seems a ridiculous amount of water to use plus I don't have time to or the energy to put at least 12 big watering cans of water onto 9 square metres of veg...but clearly that is the right amount of water to give the plants, at least it is once at this time of year since that is what nature has done and that is when the plants grew well.

Next I need to know how much water I did actually water them to make a comparison, but I did it with a hose pipe and I can't remember how long a sprayed water for. The next step is to time how long it takes to fill a watering can using the hose pipe with the same spray (which is not the same as raw water coming out of a hose pipe because the end lets less water out so that the pressure builds up to spray it further).

Time taken to fill a 1 gallon watering can was 45 seconds using the same hosepipe spray attachment. I just stood and watered the same patch with the hose and timed that to see how long I take to water that bed. 2.5 minutes. 2.5 minutes / 45 seconds = 3.3 gallons of water.

2.5 minutes of standing there watering seems like an age, it also seemed and looked like I was giving the plants a dammed good soaking but you can see in reality when nature waters the garden it uses a huge amount of water compared to you. If I was to water that same bed by the same amount that nature did I would have had to spend 18 minutes watering with the hose pipe!

The next thing to do, which I won't, is to measure the moisture content and see how deep the 24 gallons over a week penetrates compared to 3.3 gallons. In reality my watering is probably only penetrating the top 2 or 3 inches if that of soil where nature probably watered the top 8 to 12 inches.

If you look at the root system of plants there are very few roots in the top 3 inches compared to 6 to 12 inches. My watering is probably doing little more than keeping the plants alive compared to nature's watering which is really feeding the plants and hence the difference in growth.

As for the other points, the temperature was similar and the amount of light was less on the week of rain because of the clouds.

Clearly, observing nature can help grow vegetables and I conclude that at this time of the year, even if it is only one week then what the plants need is the same amount of watering I give them but EVERY DAY for 1 week. I need to spend 18 minutes spread over 7 days on that one patch just watering. Scale that up by a factor of 10 to cover the rest of the veg patches and I need to water 240 gallons of water spread over 1 week taking a minimum of 3 hours!!!

I need to find a better and more efficient watering system if I am to reproduce nature's watering system during dry spells at this time of the year. That is 5 full water butts for just 1 weeks watering. I'm presuming my butts are 50 gallon but they could be half since I haven't measured them.

Harvesting rain water that falls on our roof so that I can use it when needed (dry spell) becomes a priority but to save time I need an irrigation system because I don't have 3 hours a week (even if it is just for a few weeks of the year).

It may seem like a huge amount of effort to calculate and work out what nature does but I think it is necessary to fulfil the "observe" part of permaculture, at least for some of us, others can just learn from my effort, but someone has to look deeply into things to gain a better understanding.

We all observed how well and how fast the plants have grown over the last week but with climate change happening and our weather being more extreme are we ready for dry spells, and the corresponding extreme wet spells? Dry spells hold back and kill plants, wet spells can drown plants so we need to know what works best, drain better during very wet spells or protect the plants from over watering and water the plants to mimic nature's good work during the extreme dry spells. You can't do this without harvesting water and then using it during the dry spells. (Unless you are happy to use processed water from a tap needlessly).

Question is, what's the best watering system that I can put into place? To water the whole veg patch in one week, it is unreasonable to think that I can fill 240 watering cans (5 hrs + just to fill cans plus the walking and pouring time) or spend 3 hours with a hose pipe. Some people use a water sprinkler on the end of the hose pipe but why pay for that amount of water or waste processed water when you can use rain water?

Comparing the past - May

Comparing the past - May

The field is growing very quickly at the moment and I think it is time to start comparing how things are with how they were a year ago. It's easy to forget what the field was like and I have just realised that the 30 ft by 12 ft bed of manure which is about 1 ft thick is where the old chicken shed caravan and duck pond was.

May 6th 2013

The chicken shed caravan with a lean to shed beside is on the left with the duck pond behind it.

Click on images to see larger version

May 11th 2014

There is a weeks difference between the 2 photos but one of the surprising things is how far on the fruit bushes are this year compared with last year. The fruit garden is enclosed by fencing to stop rabbits and on the left of the fruit area are raspberries which are almost non existent in last years photo. So much more foliage! 

The grass is about 1 ft tall now where as this time last year it hadn't really started to grow. Last year the field was flooded over the winter which may have hampered growth but also last year was the first year in many that a horse wasn't eating and trampling the grass so it may have taken a while to get over that shock. In the Autumn of last year the long grass (seen as deeper green) was cut to about 3 to 5 inches (I forget exactly) so it had a head start for this year.

If you enlarge the photos by clicking on them you can also see a big difference in the foliage of the surrounding trees. Most of the Hawthorn blossom was out last year at this time and some of the hedge on the right, and big tree far back left  also seems quite bare. The comparison between the 2 years is really quite stark.

I had noticed and commented on the last comparison of the months, March, that the Hawthorn was about a month ahead this year and it is clear that things haven't caught up yet.

Possible Onion Disaster

Possible Onion Disaster

I had a load of Onion bulbs left over last year so I planted them in the Autumn. They were growing fine until the last few weeks when most have bolted.

I don't think Stuttgart Onions are over wintering types but I took a gamble on a mild winter and got lucky with the weather but the spring was a dry one and when I realised it was a bit dry I started watering them and it seems this watering has triggered the bolting.

None of the Onions have started to bulb, the onion bases are little more than slightly larger then the base of the stem.

My watering was probably classed as irregular because I was only watering (a lot) at weekends and they were drying out during the week. Perhaps I over watered as well.

This has prompted me to think more about a drip watering system for next year. I'm thinking of trying to lay a hose pipe, fed from a water butt, into the ground under the soil with lots of holes in. The pressure of the water should be very low and literally just a drip should come out just to keep the ground a few inches deep moist.

I think we'll pull the onions this weekend, chop up all the small bulbs and freeze them and see if we can turn them into a usable crop.

In every previous year my onions have been perfect but this is the first year that I have done Autumn planting. I have also planted 100 sets of Bedfordshire Champions in April so I'll still have a crop this year but had I known this would happen I would have planted another 100 as well.

Although it is the second week of May perhaps still worth planting another set.

At least by lifting the onions now I can get a load of other plants out out the green house into the Autumn bed earlier than I expecting which will give the other manure beds longer to break down.   

The Last Frost

The Last Frost

Last year the last Air Frost (Zero Deg C) we had was on the first of May and, although technically you can have a ground or grass frost even when the air temperature is above freezing this is uncommon and our field is relatively sheltered. This year our last frost was on the second of May and with the forecast being for rain for the next week ahead I feel it's worth taking the gamble and planting a few things out that are sensitive to frost. It is simply getting too late on in the year now to have much of a frost. The 10th of May is often considered the start of planting traditionally as well.

The green house is totally full with seed trays and I have already been putting pots outside but I started sowing seeds for runner beans and French beans a bit earlier this year in the hope of a warm end to spring, and because of this some plants are getting a bit pot bound and are suffering because the compost dries out too quick.

Even last year I sowed some runner bean seeds in the ground about now and they received a couple of days frost in the end of April / beginning of May and didn't suffer. With the forecast being what it is and the fact that it has been a very mild winter and spring I feel confident that now will be a good time to plant out. The young plants will get plenty of water from the rain and this will also save me hours of watering. 

The rain this week and next is very welcome since the last few weeks I have been watering the garden and greenhouse for about 2 hours at a time. Last year during the summer it was taking me an hour and a half in the summer watering new trees, fruit bushes and the onions and potatoes etc and the experimenting with mulch has shown how much less watering I will have this year, along with the longer hose pipe which means not having to walk up the garden 20 times! Half of the trees are now in their second year here and their third year of life so they will now have a good root system and will require less watering anyway. The new trees are closer to the house which will make it easier as well.

The water butts also make it far quicker to fill a watering can compared to a hose pipe since I can just dip them into the butt and lift out, 5 seconds compared to 30. May not be a lot but waiting for 30 seconds each time starts to feel like a lifetime when you do it over and over again.

One of the next jobs will be to fit guttering to the greenhouse and chicken shed, plus 2 new water butts for these. Once I have these in place a little piping and the chicken water can be automatically replenished and I'm hoping to drip feed the plants in the green house.   

Re Evaluating Mulching

Re Evaluating Mulching

I have got into the habit of mulching all bare soil on my beds but I have noticed my Jerusalem Artichokes, Raspberries and Edible Loopins are not growing.

After digging down into the soil looking for new shoots on the Artichokes and Raspberries I can see that the shoots did grow but were eaten by slugs. In fact, under the mulch there are many many slugs.

I'm afraid that the raspberries and artichokes have put all their energy into producing new shoots, which get eaten, and are now probably going to fail.

I think in future I may have to leave off the much until the shoots are big and strong and then mulch.

20 raspberry canes have failed to produce new shoots which will massively reduce our fruit production.

This weekends job will have to be removing all the mulch and hoping that there is still time for the plants to try and throw up some new shoots. Also adding little cups of beer for the slugs to drink, and fall into will be employed!

Observing the birds

Observing the birds

If you are planning a garden, or thinking of putting up a bird feeder the simple act of spending time observing can tell you where to best place a feeder.

A very simply plan of the house and garden in relation to our boundary hedge (house = red, hedge = green, bird feeder = black and pond = blue, grey = car area) can demonstrate a good place for a feeder.

I observed the birds coming from all directions and then using the hedge as a corridor. They seem to avoid flying over open ground if possible. By placing the bird feeders next to the hedge I have attracted many more birds into the garden. One of the feeders is little more than 4 feet away from the house. I have observed the birds entering the hedge at either end, they seem to wait and check things out and then slowly move along the hedge until they get opposite the feeders.

They use the hedge as a safe haven and from there can simply make a very short flight onto the feeder. The further you move the feeders away from the hedge the less birds use it, so much so that 2 feeders with the same feed in but separated by 2 feet will show a marked difference in how much food has been taken. The one 2 feet further away takes twice as long to get eaten.

It makes sense to use natural bird corridors when choosing where to put your feeders and if you want to bring birds close enough to a window you need to provide the birds with cover right up to the feeder.

Simply placing a feeder in the middle of your garden may attract birds but by observing how birds like to move around using the safety of cover you can attract many more by either providing a corridor for them or by placing the feeder next to the cover.

Since placing the feeders next to the hedge I have also noticed that the birds are nesting close to the feeders, which makes sense.

Also by having the hedge corridor I can see that birds flying from one field to the next seem to choose to divert from their normal path in order to use the hedge and appear at the other end of the hedge to continue their flight to the next field, even when they aren't stopping to get my food.

Placing the pond next to the hedge, or at least close to it, I can also see that in the morning and often later at night birds flying home to roost seem to regularly stop off for a drink at the pond before continuing.

It's one thing to try and make your garden into a wildlife haven but by using the birds natural instincts to hide you can increase the potential birds by a big number coming to the feeder, and also your own enjoyment of them by bringing the hiding places right up to your window. 

I had seen a load of Gold Finches at the far end of the hedge, they seemed to always fly off away from the house until I placed Niger seed on to the bird feeder pole, then it became apparent that they have always travelled up and down the hedge upto the house but I hadn't seen them at the house end because they didn't come out of this part of the hedge. Once the food was there they started appearing from the house end of the hedge to get the seed. When the seed runs out I can see them still hiding in the hedge but they won't come out, replace the seed and within minutes they appear!.

I hadn't seen any Dunnocks at the feeder last year but this year there are and I think what has happened is that the more Great and Blue Tits feed the more seed ends up on the floor as they are very messy feeders, and with the more seed on the floor the more times a Dunnock appears because they like feeding off of the floor. Attracting one type of bird seems to help attract other types.

   

Sustainability as a lifestyle change

Sustainability as a lifestyle change

We have a wood burner which heats our hot water and radiators. We buy in large amounts of wood each year. It's quite easy.

One of the things about a wood burner is that it takes wood, sounds daft to point out the obvious, but wood comes in all different forms and if you want to be more "green" and sustain yourself better it would make sense to accept wood from other sources. There is plenty of waste wood that can be used.

If you can use waste wood and process it manually you can save some money and save some carbon by using wood that hasn't been chopped using a chainsaw or larger machine. A small carbon saving effort.

One of the problems with changing your lifestyle and using less carbon is the effort it can take. As an example I was offered a load of old round fence posts which had rotted at their base and become useless as a fence. The fence was being replaced and the old fence posts were just sitting in a pile and would have ended up being burnt as a bonfire.

Even though I had to use fuel to collect the wood, this would have been the case if I bought the wood as it needed to be transported to me and since I already drive to where the fence posts were I didn't do many extra miles in bringing the wood home.

I have a pile of around 80 fence posts and other assorted fencing material.

In order to chop the posts I could have done it with a chain saw in a few hours but that wouldn't have saved carbon or indeed much money (price of fuel and chain which would have been seriously blunted on the very old hard wood). Instead I have been sawing them by hand - it can take an hour to produce enough logs for a day - that's a lot of hard work, and will require a good 8 to 12 hours I think to cut all the posts into small logs.

If you look at processing waste wood to make use of a free resource, making the world that tiny bit more sustainable and reducing your fossil fuel carbon foot print it can seem an awful lot of work for very little gain (£30 to £50 of buying ready chopped wood) and is why many, if not most, people are put off. 

A lifestyle change

If you change your life style to accommodate a more sustainable, less wasteful, less reliant use of fossil fuels and do more things, such as chopping waste wood manually, it doesn't need to be a lot of effort and a lot of time for such a small saving in carbon and money terms. 

The change of lifestyle that I have made involves working a full week's worth of hours, 30 to 36+ hours, in three days which leaves 4 days left. A 4 day weekend is a lot of time. The odd hour here and there cutting and chopping wood doesn't seem a lot especially when I have time to go at my own speed and pause often to watch nature. It also isn't hard work, one hour hard slog can be replaced by a few minutes here and there during the whole day, interspersed by a bit of gardening, a can of beer, and a general walk around the garden.

Chopping waste wood may have saved up to £50, but it takes £60 or so of earning money once you take out tax and NI so the savings are in fact a bit higher plus the fact that I am working in my own garden, on my own terms, for the equivalent of that money rather than at work on someone else's terms. 

On top of a bit of carbon saving, money saving, you also get exercise, something that we all do too little of. The more manual work you do the easier it gets next time and the easier it gets the more opportunities you look for to save a few pound and a little carbon. 

Saving carbon and being a little more sustainable can look like hard work and time consuming but when combined with a lifestyle change it just becomes another enjoyable part of life.  

I don't think that you can expect people to cut down their carbon foot print and in effect reduce their quality of life without also showing that a change of lifestyle means that you don't have to reduce your quality of life you just need to change your life so as to accommodate a reduction in fossil fuel.