As gardeners we sometimes forget that gardening can be unpredictable and we proceed on the basis of total control. We make our plans, buy our stocks and book our diaries to put our dreams into existence. And then Nature throws a googly, like this year, when the weather has been so wet and chilly that our seedlings fail to germinate, and growth only starts when the sun begins to shine. But even that has been unreliable. This Spring season has been a lesson in who is in control of our gardening, and it sometimes isn’t us. We were reminded of this when our planned visit to Wade Muggleton’s garden at Stottesdon had to be changed because, as Wade said, because of the strange weather, there was very little to see. However, he did bring his Fruit and Vegetable Garden to our Monday meeting in the form of inspiring slides and an aspiring talk.
Wade is passionate ‘growing your own’ and proceeded to show how to achieve improved food security, reducing environmental impact of sprays and reducing air/food miles, whilst achieving really fresh food for the table, and having fun and exercise at the same time – what’s not to love!
He is a firm believer in POLYCULTURE, the practice of growing more than one crop species in the same place at the same time, in contrast to monoculture which has been the dominant system since the 1950s. His own plot is 80 feet by 40 feet, into which he packs 20 plus types of vegetables and 35 fruit trees, together with herbs, fruit bushes, and many other one-off food items grown in a variety of recycled containers such as metal sweet tins. He gardens in raised beds following a ‘no-dig’ regime, simply covering any empty space with cardboard or carpet to suppress weeds and repel the worst of the weather. He then adds a surface layer of compost (home-made, of course) when ready to plant. He believes succession planting of seeds is key to keeping his raised vegetable beds productive so sows a first batch of seeds, leaving a month or so between subsequent sowings, which may or may not be in other beds, as space allows. No space is left unsown!
And of course, he takes full advantage of the free water supply from the heavens – it’s an ill wind which blows nobody any good – and has created an amazing, gravity-fed irrigation system to fill his six water butts, sited at differing levels.
To prove that a productive garden can be developed in a very small space, he told us the story of building three 1 metre square raised beds at his parents’ garden. Using ‘Link-a-Board’, made from recycled plastics for the framework, he then laid cardboard on the grass lawn, placed the plastic framework on top, filled them with soil and then planted them up with young plants. All done in a day, and providing three square metres of growing space, adequate for their needs.
He left us inspired to try out polyculture to develop more extensive irrigation systems, to look at cartons and packaging with new eyes, and keep our beds overflowing with vegetables and fruit. He made it all sound so easy….!
We hope to be able to visit Wade’s gardens if the season improves, and if that can be organised, we will include dates and times in future articles/Facebook/Instagram.