Sunday, 15 September 2019

Juicing Grapes, Birds in and Around the Gardens and Moth Trapping - Week 23 - The Polyculture Project

More harvesting and processing this week as we slip into the Autumn. It's cooled down but still very sunny and dry here with average day time temperatures in the mid 20 C. This week we're pleased to welcome Rowan to the project and my brother and his family who have been travelling around Europe over the summer. My brother Peter has been surveying the Moth populations in the gardens and has been continuing his ongoing survey of bird life in the area. You can find Peter's blogging on the trip here.

So here's what we've been up to this week in the gardens     


Moth Trapping 


Peter brought along his moth surveying equipment and has been setting the traps up in three of the project gardens Aponia, Apathia and Ekpyrosis (see garden locations here) 



Here's a photo of the moth trap in the home garden, Apatheia. The trap works by attracting the moths to a box with a lamp during the night. There are openings in the box that the moths crawl into.


Once in the box there are number of empty egg cartoons and the moths settle into the various nooks and crannies!


In the morning you can open the box and look through the cartoons to identify what has settled.  


Pete places the species in pots for a closer look, takes a portrait and releases the moths. Here's a selection of just a few of the moth species recorded in the gardens. For moth names and more photos see Pete's blog here.


Live Webinar Coming up this Autumn


It's that time of year to start planning your garden plantings for this coming Autumn or the Spring. If you would like some guidance and advice on how to choose your plants we'll be running a live webinar this November.  How to Select Fruit and Nut Trees for your Forest Garden/Polyculture Orchard - Webinar - 2nd November 2019 - 18.00 -20.00 UTC. (starting time suitable for US partcipation)


The session will overview what you need to know when selecting Fruit and Nut trees for your Forest Garden/Polyculture Orchard and how to plan the layout of the garden. It will be around 2 hours long and will include:


Selecting trees that suit your climate and location
Choosing the right root stock and cultivar
Selecting trees with pollination compatibility
Pest and Disease Resistance
Choosing the right location and spacing for your trees
Buying Fruit and Nut Trees
Planting out and aftercare
Software for Planning Garden layout
Closing Questions and Answers 
Access to design spreadsheets including a Selection Check List and  Pollination Requirements for Common Fruit and Nut Trees


You can register here . The fee is €30 or €40 if you register as a group of three or €100 as a group of 10. If you would like to register as a group please send an email to balkanecologyproject@gmail.com and we'll take it from there.

Grape Harvest and Juice Making 


Our Vitis vinifera cv. - Grape  vines have done very well this year in all of the gardens. Last week we harvested approx. half of the fruit for juicing. Providing there is not a lot of rainfall, and day time temperature remains above 20 C, the grapes will continue to sweeten. Personally I prefer a slight sourness to the juice but if you are making wine it's best to leave them on the vines until the end of September to increase the sugar content.
    

Here is some of the harvest, washed and ready for crushing.


First the grapes are put through the mangle (yellow tool on the right) after which the separated juice is poured into a container as seen here by Martin and Rowan.



The crushed grapes are then put into the press where the rest of the juice is pressed from the crushed fruits. We'll then sieve the juice as we pour it into bottles and the fruit matter is put on the compost pile.  I would estimate we ended up with at least 40+ L of juice from this first harvest.


Another abundant fruit this time of year are Ficus carica cv. - Fig. There are only so many figs you can eat in a day but fortunately figs are super easy to dry and taste just as good, if not better. Fig cultivar  'Michurniska 10'  are excellent for drying being small and sweet and in a dry summer you can dry many of the figs on the tree. Drying figs is really easy, just cut them in half and leave in the oven overnight at 55 C or better still in the window of your car parked in the sun. For much more info all about figs check our previous post here.


You can find a range of hardy fig cultivars from our bionursery availble from delivery from November - April

Hardy fig cultivars from Balkan Ecology Project Plant Nursery

Garden Wildlife 


This time of year you are most likely to see European mantis - Mantis religiosa. They are busy mating and laying their egg cases that we often find on the underside of rocks and boulders in the gardens. They are predators of many types of insects, including flies, moths, grasshoppers, crickets and aphids (when very young).  Mantids will also feed on some beneficial insect species but are very welcome in the gardens. 



What I think is Argiope bruennichi - Wasp spider is a common resident in the marker garden often spinning up impressive orb webs between the tomato plants. As with most spiders they are generalist predators and will eat whatever happens to find their way into the web. When prey is caught in the web, Argiope bruennichi will immobilise the prey by wrapping it in silk, then it will inject a paralysing venom after which it will proceed to dine.    


Our house cat Cynthia unfortunately is a masterful hunter and each week brings us various trophies such as lizards, slow worms and dragonflies. This week she arrived with a juvenile Red Back Shrike. These birds are excellent pest predators and often hunt in our garden. For many years I have observed a mating pair of shrikes in the garden training their young in the art of the hunt but it seems the hunter has become the hunted. The bird was still alive and we attempted to nurse it back to health but it did not make it.   


Birds in and Around the Gardens 


Some of the technology we have available today to record, monitor and understand wildlife is incredible. eBird is the world’s largest biodiversity-related citizen science project, with more than 100 million bird sightings contributed each year by eBirders around the world. My brother has been contributing to a list of the birds in and around the project gardens here in Shipka. So far there have been 104 species recorded.  You can find the list here 

Here are some photos of some birds from our area taken last week by Peter Alfrey

Gray-headed Woodpecker - Picus canus


 Juvenile Montagu's Harrier - Circus pygargusa, a common bird of prey in our location  


A pair of Black Storks - Ciconia nigra


Juvenile Lesser Kestrel - Falco naumanni


Red-backed Shrike - Lanius collurio with Black Field Cricket 


Eurasian Nuthatch - Sitta europaea perched on Prunus cerasifera - Cherry Plum


Spotted Flycatcher - Muscicapa striata perched on Cydonia oblonga - Quince 



Upcoming Courses

If you would like to create a forest garden and gain some practical hands on experience come and join us this Autumn. We'll be covering site surveying, landscape design software, installing access, beds, irrigation channels, planting tree, shrub, herb and ground layers and wildlife ponds. All in 3 days! And plenty of follow up material to take away with you to digest slowly.


Registration for our October course is now open with 15% discount on accommodation and food fees when you register as a group (2 or more).


If you appreciate the work we are doing you can show your support in several ways.

  • Comment, like and share our content on social media.





Polyculture/Regenerative Landscape Design Webinars 



This season we are running live interactive sessions hosted on Zoom on a range of topics. You can register for a  webinar here.


Would you like to be involved in the project? We are currently offering 1 - 6 month positions on our polyculture study.

Permaculture and Regenerative Design Internships 

We offer a diversity of plants and seeds for permaculture and forest gardens including a range of fruit and nut cultivars. We Deliver all over Europe from Nov - March.

We also offer a range of products all year round from our Online Store 

Give a happy plant a happy home :) 

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Sunday, 8 September 2019

Preserving and Processing, Aquatic Habitat Island for our Rainwater Reservoir and Garden Biodiversity - Week 22 - The Polyculture Project

As the summer draws to a close and the autumn approaches harvest and processing is the order of the days. It's cooled down somewhat here, but the dry heat continues and I'm really looking forward to a few days of cool rain so we can experience a final flush of flowering and growth before autumn decay and dormancy sets into the landscape. With few days of heavy rain it's not uncommon here to experience something like a second spring in the final weeks of September.

We said goodbye to Jolanda and Paul last week who joined us for a few weeks and are returning back to the Netherlands to start a forest garden at their beautiful "eco" home that you can see here. Tx for all of your help in the gardens! 

So... here's what we've been up to this week.     


Preserving and Processing

We've had a nice lot of produce from the vegetable gardens and the team have been busy processing and preserving the last few weeks.  Lea and Ryan have been on top form knocking out jams and chutneys like the apocalypse is coming. Here they are in the kitchen preparing a beautiful chutney.


Sun drying tomatoes, my favourite way to preserve them 


Thanks Simon for the photos



Live Webinar Coming up this Autumn


It's that time of year to start planning your garden plantings for this coming Autumn or the Spring. If you would like some guidance and advice on how to choose your plants we'll running a new live webinar this November.  How to Select Fruit and Nut Trees for your Forest Garden/Polyculture Orchard - Webinar - 2nd November 2019 - 18.00 -20.00 UTC. (starting time suitable for US partcipation)


The session will overview what you need to know when selecting Fruit and Nut trees for your Forest Garden/Polyculture Orchard and how to plan the layout of the garden. It will be around 2 hours long and will include:


Selecting trees that suit your climate and location
Choosing the right root stock and cultivar
Selecting trees with pollination compatibility
Pest and Disease Resistance
Choosing the right location and spacing for your trees
Buying Fruit and Nut Trees
Planting out and aftercare
Software for Planning Garden layout
Closing Questions and Answers 
Access to design spreadsheets including a Selection Check List and  Pollination Requirements for Common Fruit and Nut Trees


You can register here . The fee is €30 or €40 if you register as a group of three or €100 as a group of 10. If you would like to register as a group please send an email to balkanecologyproject@gmail.com and we'll take it from there.


Aquatic Habitat Island for Rainwater Catchment Reservoirs - Katalepsis


Over at the crew house last week we finally got the rainwater guttering fixed (it has been detached since the spring) and now we just need some rain to fill the reservoir up. We have 2 down pipes from the roof draining into the pond on the east side of the house, and one 1000 L IBC tank on the west side with another down pipe diverting the water directly into the garden. Here you can see the reservoir on the east side of the crew house with the two down pipes diverting rainwater from the roof into the lined pit.  


 The roof catchment is approx. 58 m2 (one half of the roof) and our average annual rainfall is 538 mm. The clay tiles on the roof probably absorb light rainfall and brief summer rains so we take off 10% of the available rainfall in a given year when calculating the potential water harvest (catchment coefficient). According to the below rainwater harvesting calculation we can expect to receive 28 m3 or 28 000 L of water from rain collected from this roof .  

RUNOFF CALCULATION
VOLUME (M3) = SURFACE AREA (M2) x AVERAGE ANNUAL RAINFALL (MM) x CATCHMENT COEFFICIENT (%)

SURFACE AREA (M2)58
AVERAGE ANNUAL RAINFALL (MM)538
CATCHMENT COEFFICIENT (%)0.9
VOLUME (M3) =28.0836

The reservoir is almost empty now having been used to irrigate the garden crops for the past few months. Unlike the wildlife ponds we have built in most of our gardens, this reservoir is a basic rectangular shape in order to store as much water as possible in the space we had available. Rectangular water bodies do not provide the proper habitat for wildlife to flourish and can become breeding grounds for Mosquitoes due to the fact that frogs and fish that prey upon the mosquito larvae are unable to survive in such conditions.

  For how we build our wildlife ponds see our previous post here. 


So far we have placed a few logs in the water body for frogs to rest upon and added some floating plants but without banks and slopes and with the water level dropping drastically during the summer months (when we use the water and there is no rainfall to refill)  there is no chance most aquatic plants and wildlife will survive. This being the case I thought we could build a small aquatic habitat island for the reservoir. Here's how we did it.

First we gathered the following materials:

  • 1/2 a pallet
  • 20 empty 1 L bottles with with sealed lids
  • 20 m of 3 mm wire
  • 22 aquatic plant divisions in 10 cm diameter x 10 cm deep pots (with holes in the bottom) - Plant species used were Sagittaria sagittifolia, Alisma sp. Carex sp. and Caltha palustris


and the following tools: 

  • Saw to cut pallet
  • Wire cutters
  • Hose or rope to lower the pallet  


Here's Ryan attaching the empty bottles to the pallet with the wire, leaving a gap between the bottles for the plant pots to sit 


The pallet with all of the bottles fixed. We also tied bottles in the gaps between the left and right planks of the pallet.


Before adding the plants we tested how well the pallet floated, lowering it in with a hose. It floated well, no need to add anymore bottles


We then pushed wire through the top of the pots and placed them in position. The wire threaded through the top of the plant pots will help secure them in place.  The aquatic plants do not need the soil in the pots to survive as they will take their  nutrients directly from the water, but for this to work  it's essential that the bottom of the plants pots are in the water. The soil should provide the extra weight needed to make sure the bottom of the pots are submerged. You could also use pebbles or sand.      


With the plants in place we lowered the pallet back into water and the weight of the plants was enough that the bottom of the pots are underwater. We should have enough time left in the growing season to see the plants flourish and hopefully, if all goes well, the pallet below will be a mass of aquatic plants with frogs resting on the island and dragon fly larvae climbing the stems of the sedges to emerge as adults. The algae that will build up on the wood and bottles will also make good feeding for young carp. We'll see.   



Herb Rockery - Katalepsis 


The team have been putting some love into Katalepsis, the garden over at the crew house, and have made a beautiful herb garden on the corner of the reservoir.



 As all herb gardens should be, it's located near at hand by the kitchen, and includes a number of perennial herbs as well as some annuals such as basil. The perennial herbs include the following:  


In fact the garden was built last month by Shahara, Lea, Simon and Eva but I've not got around to taking photos until last week when we were building the aquatic habitat island. Thanks guys, it's lovely. 


Invertebrate Diversity Surveys - Aponia 


The last five weeks we have been carrying out invertebrate surveys in Aponia (the market garden) looking at which of six habitat types host the highest diversity of insects, spiders etc.  You can read more about how we carry out the surveys in our previous post here and I'll be writing up a full report of these trials at the end of the season including the results, links to our record sheets, and copies of our protocol in case anyone would like to try the survey. Thanks again to Simon Leupi and Eva Goldmann for your help making the protocol for these surveys. 


Here are some of the organisms from the pitfall traps and canopy observations. Thanks Jolanda for the photos.


We made 3 initial weeks of surveying to try out the method and develop the protocol that we are happy with for future use and started the official records 2 weeks ago. Based on the last two weeks of surveys it is very interesting to note the difference that 7 days without rain can have within nearly all of the habitats we looked at, with all but "late scrub" showing nearly 100 % more organisms with rain the day before compared to one week later without rain. 


Week 1 - 1 day after significant rainfall Week 2 - 8 days after significant rainfall
Rank HabitatNumber of Species Rank HabitatNumber of Species
1Annual Polyculture 7.5751Annual Polyculture 3.775
2Perennial Polyculture 6.52Mixed Species
Meadow 		3.425
3Mixed Species
Meadow 		5.83Early Scrub2.9
4Mixed Species
Hedgerow		4.5754Perennial Polyculture 2.525
5Early Scrub4.25Mixed Species
Hedgerow		2.2
6Late Scrub1.856Late Scrub1.7


Forest Garden Plants 


Sambucus ebulus - Dwarf Elderberry  fruit are ripe this time of year. This herbaceous species of elder, growing only to a height of 1.2 m grows well in full sun and in the partial shade of a woodland garden. It can also provide a good spreading drought tolerant ground cover and its clusters of pretty white flowers attract a wide variety of wildlife. The fruits and leaves are widely used in herbal medicine.


Lycopus europaeus - Gypsywort has found it's way into the garden on the banks of our wildlife pond in Aponia.  Unlike with humans, I absolutely love it when plants arrive unannounced. It is in flower from June to September and attracts a wide range of beneficial insects. The plant was used in the past to produce a black dye and is reputed to have medicinal qualities including use as a mild narcotic.




Funded Opportunity to Participate in a Regenerate Project 


On behalf of The Green School Village we are announcing the following opportunity for a Bulgarian male to join a regenerative project in Ireland:

Ако сте на възраст 18-30 години, интересувате се от пермакултура, екоселища, солидарно земеделие и Ирландия, може да заминете за 5 месеца от началото на октомври до края на февруари в http://www.thevillage.ie/ Позицията е финансирана от Европейският корпус за солидарност и е по-подходяща за момче. Ако се интересувате, пратете автобиография и мотивационно писмо на английски на info@greenschoolvillage.org

Upcoming Courses

If you would like to create a forest garden and gain some practical hands on experience come and join us this Autumn. We'll be covering site surveying, landscape design software, installing access, beds, irrigation channels, planting tree, shrub, herb and ground layers and wildlife ponds. All in 3 days! And plenty of follow up material to take away with you to digest slowly.


Registration for our October course is now open with 15% discount on accommodation and food fees when you register as a group (2 or more).


If you appreciate the work we are doing you can show your support in several ways.

  • Comment, like and share our content on social media.





Polyculture/Regenerative Landscape Design Webinars 



This season we are running live interactive sessions hosted on Zoom on a range of topics. You can register for a  webinar here.


Would you like to be involved in the project? We are currently offering 1 - 6 month positions on our polyculture study.

Permaculture and Regenerative Design Internships 

We offer a diversity of plants and seeds for permaculture and forest gardens including a range of fruit and nut cultivars. We Deliver all over Europe from Nov - March.

We also offer a range of products all year round from our Online Store 

Give a happy plant a happy home :) 

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