Bumbling bees

Wildlife-friendly gardening is what it’s supposed to be all about. So I felt so guilty when I dug up two ground-nesting bees while lifting some potatoes from a particularly overgrown corner of the garden. Luckily it was a very warm day, and after recovering their senses they buzzed off for a forage amongst the nastertiums and marigolds, before hopefully settling down again. I’m not a bee expert but think they are Bombus lapidarius (Red-tailed bumbe bee) and Bombus terrestris (Buff-tailed bumble bee)

 

 

Still, there was a good harvest of red and purple potatoes from this relatively shady corner of the garden.

Website for the West Braes ScotLAND centre

Most of the visitors to the garden come via the Scotland’s Gardens open day every 2 years – which is great, as it’s bringing over 15o gardeners, most of whom have never heard of Permaculture before. Hopefully a few of them will go back a little the wiser for their visit.

However, having just come back from the Scottish Permaculture gathering, I realise I really should be doing more to promote myself as a ScotLAND centre to permaculturists. It may be a small garden, but it’s got nearly as many permaculture features as larger centres, and is perhaps on a scale more relevent to those people who  are not lucky enough to have a few acres. So I’ve set up a separate site specifically for the West Braes ScotLAND centre, at www.westbraes.wordpress.com/

Looking on the bright side of the foul weather….

It’s been wild, wet and windy here – but that does mean perfect conditions for grabbing seaweed for the garden – a rough, high tide to bring it well up the shore (in reality, onto the street…) and then a nice lot of rain to wash some of the salt and debris off it. And the added benefit of cleaning up the street a wee bit for those that live down by the harbourside!

Glorious Grapes

Well, I’m amazed – I got carried away and bought a grape vine from the local garden centre on a whim, just after I got the new greenhouse 2 years ago – and here it is with loads of fruit! Not to mention giving an exotic feel to the greenhouse – and hopefully a little natural shade for the tomatoes. Sadly I seem to have misplaced the ticket telling me what variety it was – I’m sure I put it in a ‘safe place’!

Radio Scotland comes to visit

One thing leads to another… and as a result of the Pittenweem Gardens open day, BBC Radio Scotland contacted the organiser, looking for people with ‘interesting’ vegetable plots to interview as part of their weekly “Kitchen Garden” show (Thursdays, 1:30pm).

Can’t let an opportunity to promote Permaculture pass by, so with great trepidation I got back in touch with them and volunteered. Hopefully they will be able to condense my rather nervous ramblings into something coherent for their show on Thurs 23rd July. Thankfully the whole episode is not about my garden, it will just be a 5 minute interlude while the main show focuses on the delights of Culross Palace garden.  My biggest challenge was responding to the question “Describe your garden” without risking getting a raid from the drugs squad by mentioning on national radio that it is a sea of “Opium” poppies! Programme available on iplayer at http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b062mtbg

Open Gardens 2015

How quickly two years comes around – it’s Pittenweem Gardens Open day time again, and all around Pittenweem, gardeners are bemoaning the cold spring holding the plants back – does anyone ever have a garden looking like they’d like it to for an open day!

It wasn’t until the night before that I realised (after yet again pleading with my Kale seedlings to grow a bit more….) that the event was also 10 days earlier than in 2013 – on the 21st instead of the end of June in 2013 – and that makes all the difference.

 I was finding it very difficult to resist the urge to ‘tidy up’ the garden to make it look more ‘conventional’ before reminding myself that people are coming to see it because it is different! I did clear the paths out far more than I would do normally, but just to make it easy for that number of people to move around.

Talking Comfrey…

In the end, the weather was great, we had 150 visitors to our garden, with 198 visitors in total to the 12 gardens that were open, raising just over £1,500 for local and Scotland’s Garden scheme charities. The open gardens events are a great way to spread the Permaculture word beyond the normal cirle of interested people into the wider gardening community. And in the ethos of “Fair Shares” a whole new generation of ‘Walking Onions’ managed to hitch a lift to many other gardens across Scotland. The open day two years ago formed one of my Permaculture Diploma designs – Link to Design for garden Open Day

Early Beans

Having a sort through my seed box over the winter,  I thought I’d better check that the saved broad bean seeds from a couple of years ago were still viable before giving my surplus away to friends. Only problem was, having got these poor wee beans to grow in the middle of December, it was too cold to plant them out, and I didn’t have the heart to consign them to the compost heap – so just popped them in the greenhouse. I thought they’d end up too hot as soon as the sun started to appear in the spring, but very soon the greenhouse was buzzing with bumblebees who somehow had managed to find their colourful pink flowers, and we then had a treat of some delicious, early (for Scotland) broad beans in June.

Lessons from France

In May, we took our litte 12 foot sailing dinghy over to Brittany for the Semaine du Golfe de Morbihan – a fabulous sailing experience (check out their website Link to Semaine du Golfe du Morbihan ).  A bit of relaxation was called for after all that excitement, and I’d been really pleased that my google for “Permaculture brittany” had showed Stuart & Gabrielle Anderson’s Brittany Country Gite (as featured in numerous Permaculture Magazine articles)  exactly on the way back from Morbihan to the St Malo ferry port – so it was the perfect reason to book in for a few days on the way home. The little cottage was perfect, a well stocked bookshelf and a log fire (yes, it was May, but some days were colder than Scotland!). Stuart & Gabrielle offer short courses on all sorts of interesting things, from soap making to sausage making, but we opted for an afternoon learning the finer points of using and sharpening a scythe.

A tour of their productive garden highlighted some very French ideas for cane toppers – our Fife snails are big enought to cause damage but their shells are just too smale and fragile for me to be able to copy that trick. We also had the opportunity to watch some of the final touches of Morrocan tadelakt plaster being applied to the bathroom of their recent barn conversion – a lovely looking finish.

On previous visits to France I’ve noticed some amazing spiral tomato supports being used out in the allotments and gardens – now that we had the car with us (normally we’re cycling or walking on holiday) then one of our last jobs was to track some down in a garden centre to bring back with us – not much use outside up here, but so far they are much easier to use than tying up to standard canes, or using a string wrap (photo coming soon!).

And coming back with only a few weeks to go until the open gardens day, my kale seedlings were in desparate need of  a little boost – the copious qualtities of  Breton cider in plastic bottles made the perfect mini – greenhouses!

ScotLAND

We are now a ScotLAND centre! https://www.permaculture.org.uk/people-projects-places/project/west-braes

LAND (Learning and Demonstration Network) centres are permaculture sites which are recognised as demonstrating practical examples of land-based permaculture design in various different places, micro-climates, and cultures throughout Scotland. They include both urban and rural home gardens, community gardens, public spaces, allotments, smallholdings and farms. Find out more about the LAND network in Scotland and the UK at www.permaculture.org.uk/scotland/land

Receiving LAND certificate at the Permaculture Scotland gathering June 2014

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No-dig potatoes

Exciting day today – decided to unearth my Pink Fir Apple potatoes, which I’d subjected to a new (to me) no-dig way of growing.

April 11th, potatoes planted

As part of the garden redesign, this patch had ended up just having turf placed upside down onto growing grass, so the ‘bed’ was already quite raised and I was reluctant to pile yet more soil on top of it. So I just popped the tatties into the gaps between some of the turves.

6 June 2013

Initially, I just piled a bit of twiggy compost and woodchips just to cover them. (and continued to redesign the garden around them, hemming them in with some nice paths!)

And then added lots of straw, topping it up as they grew taller

17 June 2013

And they seemed to grow happily enough

19 July 2013

30 August 2013, Unearthing the Pink Furries

Total yield 12.5kg, from 12 tubers in 2.13m2 area (5.8kg/m2). And they were lovely clean potatoes, no damage from harvesting. The dry under-turf soil was transformed too, into a nice crumbly moist mix, teeming with worms and earwigs (not sure if they are good or bad!)

What a lot!