Firewood from the Garden September 2008

Imagine if you didn’t have to work for all your basic needs.  You could just go outside and gather them.  Well once upon a time that’s just what we did.  And we can do again.  The extent to which we can derive our basic needs is limited only by the resources available to us – land, time, seed and understanding.  Literally and metaphorically. That’s what it means to be a hunter-gatherer.

One hour’s harvest in the garden September 2008.  Chard, three types of beans, carrots, one very bifurcated parsnip, blackberries, apples, pears.  The same day we were eating potatoes, onions and pumpkin from the garden, gathering hazelnuts to dry and wondering what to do with a mountain of salad.

Forest gardens give us a modern interpretation of this world-view.  Low input / high output systems, tailored to meeting the maximum productivity from minimum work, by careful thinking, planning, design and execution.  Forests are self-fertile assemblages of mutually beneficial trees, plants, fungi. animals, birds and invertebrates, which are productive throughout the seasons and offer niches for flora and fauna to prosper in a mutually supportive way.  They are sustained by the natural cycles of life where the outputs of each specieas meet the needs of each other in intricate and sustaining ways.

Late pears.  September 2008 – a long neglected pear tree starts to bear good fruit again after continuous pruning for some years.

 The key species as far as we are concerned is us.  We can harvest fruit, nuts, vegetables, salads, timber, fibre, fuel and fish and flesh if it’s your taste too.  The Amazon jungle has been husbanded by the native population for over five thousand years – it’s not just a wilderness. You can do the same wherever you can live on the planet.  My garden in the Scottish Borders supports dozens of varieties af apples, pears, plums, hazelnuts, chestnuts, walnuts, red, white and black currants, gooseberries, a range of hybrid berries (including worcesterberries and loganberries), raspberries, strawberries, blackberries and some more exotic species, such as american and asian chokeberries and walnut species.  They are not all equally productive, but planned and managed as an array of produce which gives little more labour need than picking the produce and an occassional prune to let the light in.  Which in turn yields kindling for the stove and compostable material.

You have to select varieties appropriate for your environment.  This is Blenheim Orange apples in a heavy yielding year (2007) giving hundreds of huge tasty apples off an area of about nine square metres.  Underneath are herbs and golden rod (a great late bee fodder plant).  A cox flavoured apple which can be eaten as a desrt apple or makes an excellent baker, it’s truly north hardy, whereas cox’s orange pippin is a lttle variable in the North of England / Scotland.

If you want to see what the garden produces occassional reports appear on other parts of the website – see pictures of the year, and Today….

As former town councillor Jock Law famously said upon seeing my 1989 10lb pumpkin “Ye cannae grow pumkins in Scotland”.  He went on to found the Coldstream pumpkin club – still running today.  This baby weighs 94lbs and has been gifted to the Marie Curie Foundation for Cancer Care as a raffle prize at their Kelso ball this month.  Hope the winner likes pumpkin.

To find out more, check out these:

THE PERMACULTURE GARDEN
Graham Bell
Learn how to plan your garden for easy access and minimum labour; save time and effort; recycle materials to save money; plan year-round harvests; save energy and harvest water; and garden without chemicals.
ISBN 978 1 85623 027 8. 170pp. 65 line drawings. PBK. £14.95


THE PERMACULTURE WAY
Practical Steps To Create A Self-Sustaining World
Graham Bell
Shows us how to consciously design a lifestyle which is low in environmental impact and highly productive. “Permaculture simply asks people to put as much into life as they demand from it.
ISBN 978 1 85623 028 5. 240pp. 38 line drawings. PBK. £14.95

Which you can order from:

http://www.permanent-publications.co.uk/publications_1.htm in the UK

and

http://www.chelseagreen.com/bookstore/search/=gardening_agriculture/ in the USA

and these:

http://www.risc.org.uk/garden/roberthart.html

http://www.spiralseed.co.uk/forestgarden/

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Forest-Gardening-Robert-Hart/dp/1900322021

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Make-Forest-Garden-Patrick-Whitefield/dp/1856230082/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_b

In an ideal world we would all enjoy food that is in season, as people used to.  Advances in agricultural productivity mean we tend to buy what’s on the supermarket shelf today, regardless of where it comes from (often from the other hemisphere) when the supply system is geared to delivering perfect looking product, which the market demands.  Growing local cultivars (varieties) means we can have fresh produce, with high quality and good taste.

Our garden supports a range of apples which come ready from late July through to Christmas, and sufficient range to keep through to May.  Once upon a time, before supermarket ‘efficiency’ Scotland produced its own apples in this way.  Stobo Castle, and White Melrose cutlivars with a true Borders heritage are stars in this pantheon.  Over twenty years we have planted many historic collections around the country to preserve the best cultivars for the future.  Locally suited varieties can be highly productive.  As people relearn the pleasure of seasonal fruit and vegetables, we hope that commercial viability will re-emerge to bring back the orchards that were grubbed up as ‘unviable’ in the sixties and seventies.

Update 3 November 2007

Despite a rubbish summer it’s been a bumper year for apple crops.  White Melrose, Duke of Devonshire, Blenmeim Orange and Pitmaston Pineapple have been prolific.  James Grieve, Katja, Kerry Pippin, Laxton’s Superb, Margil and Cox’s Orange Pippin have kept pace.  Only Stobo Castle (lots of apples but very small) – seems to have been knocked back.  There are other cultivars out in the jungle of the forest garden too folks, but these are the ones that spring to mind…

Fantastic year for pears too, and the Quince Vranja has yielded very high quality fruit.  Turned into thirteen pounds of quince jelly and five pounds of marmello – the wonderful Portuguese (or in this case Scottish) quince cheese which is probably the origin of the idea (and name) for marmelade!

Quince Vranja October 2007

I should just point out we don’t repost this stuff every season as the garden realiably produces without us doing very much, year on year.

January 2010

Our lingering apple supplies (including some still hanging on the trees) have been a lifesaver for some of the garden birds including fieldfares – scandanavian visitors – in the longest cold snap for forty years.

There have been many different approaches to agroforestry influenced by environment, resources climate, timescale and levels of technology.  There are also many claims that ‘only method X is truly agroforestry’.  Personally I would say all approaches are welcome and can be studied for benefit.

We planted a small scale experimental plot at Tweed Horizons at Newtown St Boswells in the Scottish Borders in the 1990’s.  This is a steep hillside site where the intention is for the strips of woodland to provide shelter for livestock from summer heat and winter chill.  The woodland is rich in wild fruiting plants which were originally used as poultry habitats with an increasing element of self-feed.  As the trees mature they are also available for browsing as a top up feed to livestock when grass production falls in mid-summer and in winter.

Forestry Comissioner Sir Michael Strang-Steel opened the plot for us, and remarked that the original Ettrick Forest (the Wardenship of Sir Walter Scott) was itself agroforestry and that we were seeking to relearn ancient wisdom.  I’m inclined to agree.