#30dayswild - My Bee Movie - day26

Today has been a lot about bees. Having noticed that we had bees under our decking I spent a lot of time trying to get pictures and video of them. It wasn't as easy as I thought as can be seen by my very flaky video!! Enjoy the bees as well as the bird sounds regardless!!

I did manage to get other wild pictures and pictures from a different perspective which was fab. And I got to do with this all with my whole family which is rare!!

We visited the York City Art Gallery as they were doing a deal whereby York residents could get in for free.

As has been a strange theme that seems to have taken hold whilst doing this #30dayswild challenge I took pictures of nature finding a hold on the city walls near the art gallery. I did this whilst standing on the decking getting a fabulous new view on this section of city wall as shown below.

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I was also able, whilst standing on the decking, to take pictures of the edible woods mentioned in this blog here after taking photos of these nature-inspired pieces in the art gallery.

I loved the rainbow coloured pieces.

I also loved that as part of the war exhibition my dd wrote that she thought that growing more plants and trees would make the world a better place for everyone.



Whilst sorting out my photos I found these lovely pictures from Newby Hall. I hope I will get more from there next week when I go there again.

I love patterns in nature like in these plants.

#30dayswild days 1 & 2 and my future plans for the month

On day 1 of the #30dayswild challenge run by the Wildlife Trusts I decided to take my new knowledge from my time at the Bushcraft Show 2016 and decided to try making some nettle cord.

I harvested my longest nettles from the bottom of my garden; stripped the leaves and left the stems to dry out in the sun. I will be coming back to this task some time later in the month.

I saved the newer leaves to dry out and use for tea and the older leaves I used as a mulch round the bottom of my fruit trees.

All in all a productive 1st day of the #30dayswild challenge. And even if the cord doesn't work I have some lovely leaves drying for tea and I love nettle tea!!


If you want more information about making nettles string read my blog post here (the string section starts at 16.00) or there are loads of videos on YouTube like this one by Ray Mears.

Today I was considering what I wanted to do as part of the #30dayswild that would also have benefits beyond the challenge. I decided I wanted to get to know my rather overgrown garden a bit better. I want to document the plants in my garden as well as getting to know more of the wildlife - birds, insects, etc.. I am not particularly green fingered - in fact I tend to kill plants quite easily - however as part of my Diploma in Permaculture Design I am trying to make my garden more productive. My design is based around the idea of a forest garden.

Let me take this opportunity to tell you more about Permaculture. Permaculture is an ethically based, integrated system of design for human habitation that is in harmony with the natural world which Bill Mollison and David Holmgren co-developed (worth googling their names to find out more.) There are many other definitions of permaculture and every person or article that talks about it will tell you something different (watch Kevin Hunn's fab videos of people giving their own definitions including me in this video!!!!).

Another simple explanation or permaculture is that the name is taken from permanent agriculture or permanent culture (or both):

permanent - something stable and enduring and that can continue indefinitely e.g.. regenerative systems like renewable energy, perennial vegetables or forest gardens

culture or agriculture obviously refer to food growing systems and people/cultural systems

What everyone agrees on regardless of their definition is that permaculture is underpinned a set of principles (read more here and here or look at the tabs at the top of my blog) and by the 3 very simple but important ethics:
Earth Care - permaculture works with natural systems rather than against them
People Care -  all people have the right to access the resource they need to exist
Fair Shares - a recognition that the earth's resources are finite and need to be distributed fairly so set limits and redistribute surplus

Bill Mollison believed that "the greatest change we need to make is from consumption to production. Even if only on a small scale in our own gardens. If only 10% of us do this there is enough for everyone." So one of my plans for the #30dayswild challenge is to observe what is happening in my garden; learn more about what is growing and flourishing in my garden and start planning how to make it more productive whilst also taking the opportunity to learn more about garden wildlife.

Luckily at this point in writing my blog post my Mum arrived. She is a keen gardener so I thought why not get her to help!!! I took her around the whole of my garden videoing and recording what plants she could name.

I also took the opportunity to refill my bird feeder, make a note to get more bird feed, construct somewhere to put my bird feeder using a branch that was lying around and eat some sweet cicely. Over the next few days I will be looking up what can be done with the various plants and planning what to do next in my evolving forest garden.

My "Help-Yourself" Garden

Ryan has been helping me with gardening again and today we organically came across a cunning plan for utilising the space at the front of my house.  You see, where Ryan is standing in this photo, there used to be a planter.  It wasn't getting enough rain and I (being a serious non-green-fingered person) failed to water it.  So Ryan and I hatched a plan that we would move the planter to somewhere more conducive to getting rained upon.  Sounds simple but there was a lot of stuff that needed to be done along the way.

This is the planter making its way to it's new home.  And along the way we had to saw wood, move logs, get ds to stand on the contents of the green bin so we could fit more stuff into it, photograph frogs (see below), watch hot air balloons go overhead (see photos below), sweep the path, relocate one of the clumps of comfrey from the planter to the back garden, move more logs, move other logs to the back garden and clean the car (which had nothing to do with the cunning plan).  And whilst all this was being done their were vague ideas being discussed of making the planter a herb planter and transplating some of the plants from the raised bed next to the front wall so that that too contained only edible plants.

And from these discussions came an idea of sharing this produce with my neighbours and friends.  And so the help-yourself front garden was born.
The great thing was that during the day whilst tidying the front garden (I wish I had taken a proper before photo so you could ahev seen how untidy it was) we came across black plastic sheeting from when we had the woodburning stove installed.  This will be perfect for creating a pallet-based vertical garden system.

I also got around to cutting up our Christmas tree and that kindly donated by a neighbour for us to burn.  That donated Christmas tree generated another idea for the "help-yourself" garden in that as well as being able to help-yourself to some of the yummy edibles, maybe it could also be a "help-yourself" in donating unwanted trees, wood, and maybe even spare plants to others.

Anyway here is the planter in its new home next to the raised bed. Both beds are going to be planted with wholly edible foods over the next few months and hopefully a fuller system of raised plant pots with various yummies will sit in front of both beds.

There is space under the planter for unwanted wood and people will be invited to drop of wood if they want.



Dd is already designing some signs explaining the concept and there are also ideas for putting out information leaflets for what is being grown as well as recipe ideas.  All this from needing to move the planter to somewhere were it would get more water because I am too forgetful to water it.

Exciting though.

tyre sand-pit to hugelkultur / mound garden

Deciding what to do with my tractor tyre sandpit today, my friend Ryan came up with the idea of using the tyre as a mound garden for growing squashes, courgettes or asparagus.  

Ryan got the idea from the book "Forest Gardening" by Robert A de J Hart and "The Permaculture Garden" by Graham Bell. Having made that decision we got on with it whilst also clearing the bottom of the garden which is covered in wood for the stove which needs sorting and chopping.

The great thing about this idea was that we could use the trimmings from pruning the massively overgrown hedge as part of this plan as well as some of the sand from the sandpit; some of the rotten logs and kindling from the log-pile and some of the apple tree prunings.  

We could also start emptying our compost bins and use that. So as not to have to totally empty the sandpit we decided to do the conversion in 3 stages. 

The idea of mound gardens originated in China and is used a lot in Germany hence the name 'Hugelkultur' or German Mound   We started by clearing some of the sand to make a trench about one-foot deep.  This spare sand will be mixed with compost in containers and used for growing carrots and other veg.

We then piled up woody material such as small branches, hedge cuttings and apple tree prunings.  This makes a porous core which enables air and water to circulate freely.  
We used rotten logs from the log-pile that were not going to burn well, followed by smaller twigs and then the fresh hedge trimmings.

We covered the hedge trimmings with compost from the compost bins and started the middle section.

Having discovered a big bag of well-rotted chicken poo we decided that could be used as well. So the first two sections got a good dose of chicken manure on top of the hedge trimmings.

This isn't the conventional way that a German Mound is made but in true permaculture-style we used what was easily available at the time.  The worms seemed happy enough!!

We then moved all the sand left in the sandpit on top of the first two sections and started phase three.  Again rotten wood and apple tree prunings made the base.  Followed by hedge trimmings straight from the hedge.

Then compost bin compost and sand to cover the whole lot.  At this point it just looks like the sand-pit we started with earlier in the day until we finished it off with some bagged compost we had lying around in the garden.

Now I just need to get some squashes, courgettes and maybe asparagus seedlings growing so I can transplant them and see what happens.  

Edible hedge here we come - stage 1

Well I have had a brilliant day today because I spent the majority of it in the garden doing some major renovating whilst the children had fun with their friends.  As part of my master plan for a big portion of the garden to become a forest garden, Dave bought a large selection of new hedge plants.  The hedge that is at the end of our garden and all the way down the LHS as you look down the garden is horrible.  It is overgrown, ugly, and too thick, doesn’t encourage wildlife and doesn’t produce fruits or anything else edible.  Also no one has any idea what it is!!!!  Luckily for us our neighbours who share the hedge hate it too and so they are happy for us to pull it up and replace it with edible hedge plants.  So today we began!!  And this picture shows how much hedge Dave removed and the newly planted (very small) hazel, june berries and blackthorn plants.

Whilst Dave was busy digging and planting I was chopping up the old hedge for kindling and logs or disposal.  The kids got involved, our neighbours got involved and we even had a visit from the neighbours at the bottom of the garden to investigate what we were doing.  They unfortunately didn’t want us to take down the hedge at the bottom of the garden so we have had to slightly change our plans.

We had some box hedge which we decided to keep but having planted over the kids hedge hole to get from our garden to next door we had to make them another way in so they weren't tempted to trample Dave's newly planted hedge.  Here is the new way in wonderfully modelled by my next door neighbour and cunningly positioned to match the climbing frame!!!  Obviously that was totally planned that way and not just lucky.

We have loads more to do but I am very happy with the start.  I now have one of the huge cardboard boxes that the hedge plants came in full of kindling ready for the winter and some great bigger firewood.  Even more fantastic was the fact that all the kids who dropped in during the day were asking about what we were doing so we could tell them that hedges can grow food,  be productive and encourage wildlife.  Hopefully in the coming years they will be able to see that for themselves and enjoy some of the harvest.  

Here's hoping that these little plants grow to be productive, attractive hedges and make a wonderful border to our ever growing forest garden.  And that we can pay the neighbours back for their help with fruits and nuts on their side too!!!
It was good fun and a brilliantly productive day.

Skydive, allotment and ransom

Yep - that is correct - I did a static line solo parachute jump last weekend for a laugh.  I did injure myself (see below) which is a laugh as I had more injuries from the bramble clearing on the allotment the previous week! Thought it was quite funny that clearing the allotment is more dangerous than jumping out of a plane so thought I had to share.
Anyway the allotment clearing went well so we had a bonfire there last night with some neighbours.  We had s'mores and I took pens and paper so that people could write their wishes and/or things that they wanted to forget on paper and burn them.  It was good fun with lots of laughter, running, giggling and acting round the bonfire (see the collage photo to see the fun.)

Toasting marshmallows and Indie in the trailer ready to be cycled home.

So today I thought I should get on with planting my ransom which arrived in the post from a lovely friend yesterday.  I had always planned that it would go under the trampoline but that meant that some clearing needed to be done (as can be seen from these photos.)

I got going though and the result can be seen below with a large stack of kindling ready for the woodburning stove so I am very pleased.  I also had very happy chickens who got all the cleared vegetation.  There is still more to do but I am very happy with the start.

It was very therapeutic sitting under that trampoline clearing wood and planting ransom.  Can highly recommend it!!
Happy Spring everyone

Insulated cooker, moved chickens and beginning of forest garden

Ok I have been mightily slack in not keeping on top of this blog at all.  To make up for it here is a great article about edible gardens here.  What a fab idea and something I am trying to get involved in with the home ed. group here in York although trying to get it organised is proving to be more tricky than I thought.  Will let you know how I get on with that one in the New Year and probably when it gets warmer!!!

Here are the garden improvements we have done since the last entry.

We got a pile of free wood from a friend which is brill.  Half of it is being used to keep the chickens in but we need to build a new chicken run when the weather improves so hopefully it will be used in that and/or in a new raised bed on the patio.  The patio is turning into a more fluid project as we work out what we do and don't want in that area. As you can see at the moment though the patio is mostly being used to store wood!!


Below is some of the wood being used to keep the new chickens in.  We got 3 new chickens from Meanwood Valley Urban Farm and they have settled in really well and there has been no hen pecking even though little Frizzle Flapjack is very small compared to them.


Planted raspberries and trees to start forming this part of the forest garden.  Hopefully they will take but we will see!!

And below is the bare area where the chickens were before we moved them.  Hopefully there will be loads of planting happening in there in the Spring.

Below is the fab insulated oven that Dave constructed out of left over insulation blocks.  It works really well although we need to find some better fitting pots to go in it.













Really good use of materials that most people would throw away!!

Here is another good use of unwanted material!! We all had fun yesterday dismantling next door's piano and it will now be used on our lovely wood burning stove.

Will try and be more organised in the future to tell you what is going on here in York.