Permaculture Day

Nettles are your friend: Soup, greens, tea, pesto, and amazing fertilizer. 

Did you know its still August? Damn....

Permaculture means letting things grow freely. In this container dandelion leaves and strawberry suckers.

The little tree that started it all. Eight years ago he took root in the wall and we laughed at the little sapling that grew there. Getting big now!! 

Wild Alpine strawberries.

The potatoes in the blue bucket grew in the muck heap two years after being originally planted!  

Raspberry suckers.

Tiny new leaves on this rescued blueberry bush. Hope for next year. 

Miss Biko on mouse patrol ;)

Chickens and Permaculture.

Here on the croft we try and keep our little flock as chicken led as possible and only ever hatch eggs when a hen wants to sit.... and does little blossom ever like to sit!!
The hen is a mega mum..... although we're thinking of renaming her pram face as when her chicks are a few weeks old she likes to do her best to get back to getting laid by her foster son (eww)!

Anyway, as the flock stands we have one ex commercial layer (Sally... knocking on a bit now), two hybrids (Hillary and Nimah) given to us by someone who has surplus, Fluffy legs the cockerel, the two youngsters blossom hatched in April from her own eggs, and now two chicks from the hybrids eggs.     

Currently the flock stands at nine, which is as many as I want for the orchard to house comfortably.
In the medium term though we plan on expanding the flock and splitting it into two.
From a permacultre point of view though we're busy re configuring their runs and housing.

One of the main things we want to do is have as many plants in their runs that  they can eat as possible. This means more berry trees/bushes, herbs and salad leaves.
I also want to make areas that attract bugs/slugs ... this way between what they "forage" and what they get in veg scraps, bought in food should be kept to a minimal.



The plan is to have the chickens in the orchard from early summer to late autumn and then give them the run of the (nearly finished) fruit garden over the winter and spring.
This means they get to finish off any unripe/damaged fruit, scratch about for hibernating bugs and in the spring make a start on weed seedlings before moving back to the orchard.

(in all fairness its only an orchard in name as there's only two trees left.... *sigh*

Anyway, In the meantime, here's some pics!

The new broody run which means the chicks can go outside from day one, safe from cats, crows and the other chickens!! big enough to stand up in for easy maintenance.

Relearning for the future. Food storage solutions.

One of our biggest challenges in our small house with limited storage and space, has been storing fruit and vegetables.
Our teeny tiny fridge is really only there to keep open cartons and things that HAVE to stay in the fridge (ie leftovers to be used the next day) here really isn't space to store fruit and veg to feed five people for a week.
I experimented with several storage places but fund they either sped up decomposition or were so "hidden" that I often forgot I even had them till it was too late!
So seeing as I really wanted to re-embrace Various Shades of Green again, I hit the internet for food storage  solutions.
Sadly most searches came up with "in the fridge" for the storing of most vegetables, salads and fruit ... which was annoying.

HOWEVER!

Lucky me, I stumbled across No Tech Magazine and THIS amazing article about Korean artist Jihyun Ryou's  project on traditional methods of storing foods that her Grandmother used.
PLEASE go and read it as its fascinating!

Anyway, while mid term, we'll look into making some of these storage solutions, I decided to take the basic ideas behind them and try them out myself in the meantime, along with a few other tricks I found along the way.

Tomato and courgette kt at room temperature but humid bu placing a dish of cold water under this colander. 

Lettuce and brassicas stay fresh when kept in a small amount of water....  

A small X cut into the base allows water to be absorbed, tricking the plant into thinking its still growing!

Carrots seem to store better standing up, although packing vertically in sand would be a better longer term solution.

  

I've been absent from here...... Some of it has been because I've been working on other projects, but mostly I'd got to a point where I felt I had nothing relative to say anymore.
The garden here was really pretty neglected the last 12 months. Some of this was to do with the weather (terrible terrible wet summers and late/early frosts), some of it was because I was working... tending other peoples gardens for money.
It was only really a few weeks ago that I realised how ridiculous this was .... what was the point in looking after other peoples gardens for a little money rather than tending my own and growing food.
Seriously, didn't this go against EVERYTHING?

So, currently we're designing and building a real permecultre garden rather than just traditional veg plots, although they will be a small part of it.
We're working hard to find as any native trees, bushes and plants that we can rather than trying to grow "traditional" fruit and veg.... We're in the NE of Scotland, growing tomatos and cucumber without a heated greenhouse is ... if not impossible... at least difficult and at best hit and miss.

Anyway for those that are interested, here's a  pictorial run down of the last year before I crack on with starting this blog up again properly :)