Polyculture Project - Market Garden Study - Update 6

Here's a little of what we've been up to during the Polyculture Market Garden Study the last few weeks.

With a welcome break from the cool damp conditions the gardens are really starting to get going and all of a sudden, summer has arrived :)

Photos from June 

We said our farewells to Marika Wanklyn (it was great having you on the team!) and a big thank you to Johannes who joined us for just a week during his ZIS trip ( If your adventurous, curious and 16 - 20 years old ZIS provide a great opportunity for travel). We're delighted to welcome back Ala Pekalska who helped to turn some of the garden produce into delicious meals during our Edible Ecosystem Design Course.

But first just to let you know we've revamped our Online Store where you can find Forest Garden/ Permaculture Plants, Seeds, Cuttings, Bulbs, Rhizomes and Polyculture Multi-packs along with digital goods and services such as Online Courses, Webinars, eBooks, and Online Consultancy and finally we've added a Bulk Fruit and Nut Tree order form for Farms, Orchards, Nurseries, and Large Regenerative Landscape Projects. If there is anything in the store you would like to see but is not there, please let us know. We hope you enjoy the store and find something you like :) It's your purchases that keep our Project going. Thank you. Enter Our Store Here

Plants, Seeds, eBooks, Consultancy, Bulk Fruit and Nut Tree Orders for Permaculture, Polyculture, Forest Gardens and Regenerative Landscapes.

The Market Garden Polycultures   

The gardens are coming along nicely albeit a few weeks behind. Tomato, Squash, Chilli and Beans are in flower and the first fruits are setting.  The leafy crops are producing well and the trees and shrubs are filling with fruits and nuts

Our earliest fruiting cutivar is Tigerella. A reliable cropper with very few problems 

We generally don't experience pest problems, however we do keep a close eye on a few organisms in order to prevent them from causing significant damage. Cabbage White are one such organism.

Pieris brassicae - Cabbage White

Pieris brassicae - the large white, also called cabbage butterfly or cabbage white have been flying since early June - always a clear signal to keep an eye out for their eggs on the underside of our Brassica crops which this year include Kale, Borecole and  Kohlrabi.  One adult female can lay up to 600 eggs and a small batch of the larva (20-30) can obliterate a 40 x 20 cm leaf in a few days so this is one potential pest we pay careful attention to.

Large White - Pieris brassicae eggs and new hatched larvae on underside of Kohlrabi leaf

One advantage of polyculture is that it's more difficult for the butterflies to locate our crops among the other crops and they spend more time in flight where that are more likely to be caught by one of the many birds that use the garden as a feeding ground. Some butterflies do manage to mate and lay eggs so we check the underside of leaves every 4-7 days. If we fail to remove the eggs and the larvae emerge they need to travel around various other plants before they can locate another brassica food plant and are again more likely to to be located by the teams of pest predators we work with on the site i.e birds, frogs, toads, ground beetles, predatory wasps etc.

Our Permaculture Market Garden Polycultures 

Comfrey Harvest 

Second Comfrey Cut from the biomass patch 

This second cut of the year was taken from the same 13 m2 trial bed consisting of 42 plants precisely 37 days after the first cut.  For information on the first cut see here. The plants were flowering for 5 days before the cut and full of pollinators as usual

Natasha, Ute and Kata cutting and weighing the 'Bocking 14' comfrey patch 

The biomass weighed in at 32.2 kg. Not far off 1 kg of growth per day  and almost 10 kg more than the previous cut probably due to the longer days and higher temperatures.

We just about managed to squeeze the biomass into a 200 L barrel. This should convert to 15 -20 L of comfert concentrate which can be diluted further to 150 - 200 L of liquid fertliser.

We're using a fast growing hybrid Symphytum x uplandicum 'Bocking 14' - Comfrey in our gardens and for this trial and will publish the full records from the biomass patch at the end of year. For more information on these super plants and how to establish and manage a patch see our previous post here.

Forest Garden

Fruits from the Forest Garden

Plenty of fruit coming out of the gardens this month including raspberries, strawberries, currants, mulberries, cherries and early plums. The main work in the forest garden is cutting back growth around the establishing plants,  maintaining the pathways and harvesting the fruits to eat fresh, preserve and for our Trustika - food coop customers.

Mulberries - a challenge to find in the market due to their short shelf life. Our Mulberries arrive to our customers less than 20 hrs after shaken from the tree.  

Mulberry Harvest   

Here's a video made by my youngest son Archie of a mulberry harvest in the garden.

Paulownia Coppice

We've been experimenting with Paulownia spp. in the gardens for the last 4 years and are seeing some excellent potential for biomass and stake material for the market garden. We're currently focusing on using the plant as a nurse species for vegetable production and  to grow 1.5 m tall tomato support stakes.  I'll be writing a more detailed post on this in the near future, but for now here are some photos of the 4 month old regrowth we are seeing from these plants in our gardens.

Paulownia elongata - 4 month old coppice regrowth  

Pigs and Ducks 

Late spring marks the arrival of new animal residents to the garden. A small flock of ducks and two Bulgarian white pigs join us for the summer.  

Karl and Marx  

The Quackers 

Edible Ecosystems Design Course

Thank you to the wonderful participants of this year's Edible Ecosystems Design Course and for all the crew that helped out. You can check the photos from the course here.

Edible Ecosystems Design Course June 2016 

Regenerative Landscape Design - Online Interactive Course 

Want to learn how to design, build and manage regenerative landscapes?  Join us for our Regenerative Landscape Design - Online Interactive Course from May 1st to Sep 13th, 2023. 

We're super excited about running the course and look forward to providing you with the confidence, inspiration, and opportunity to design, build and manage regenerative landscapes, gardens, and farms that produce food and other resources for humans while enhancing biodiversity.

Regenerative Landscape Design Online Course

You can find out all about the course here and right now we have a 20% discount on the full enrollment fees. Just use the promo code RLD2023 in the section of the registration form to receive your discount. 

We are looking forward to providing you with this unique online learning experience - as far as we know, the very first of its kind. If you are thinking of reasons why you should do this course and whether this course is suitable for you, take a look here where we lay it all out. Looking forward to it!

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We offer a diversity of plants and seeds for permaculture, forest gardens and regenerative landscapes including a range of fruit and nut cultivars. We Deliver all over Europe from Nov - March. - Give a happy plant a happy home :)

Our Bio-Nursery - Permaculture/Polyculture/ Regenerative Landscape Plants 

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Support Our Project 

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

• Make a purchase of plants or seeds from our Bionursery or Online Store 

• Consider joining us for one of our Courses or Online Courses

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

• Donate directly via PayPal to balkanecologyproject@gmail.com or via FTX Pay

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Design and Create Webinars - Forest Gardens, Urban Gardens, Permaculture, Regenerative Farming   

We're hosting a range of online learning sessions including how to create habitat to enhance biodiversity, how to design and build a forest garden, polyculture design software tutorials, regenerative farm, and landscape design, urban gardening and much more. If you would like to be notified when our next sessions are coming up please add your email below and hit subscribe and we'll be in touch.

You can also register for our online training, services, and products directly here.

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Polyculture Project - Market Garden Study - Update 5

We said goodbye to Charlotte who has returned to Norway to make a start on her upcoming project. Thank you Charlotte, for all of your help, it was a pleasure to have you here:)  We're pleased to welcome Natasha from New Zealand to the team. 

But first just to let you know we've revamped our Online Store where you can find Forest Garden/ Permaculture Plants, Seeds, Cuttings, Bulbs, Rhizomes and Polyculture Multi-packs along with digital goods and services such as Online Courses, Webinars, eBooks, and Online Consultancy and finally we've added a Bulk Fruit and Nut Tree order form for Farms, Orchards, Nurseries, and Large Regenerative Landscape Projects. If there is anything in the store you would like to see but is not there, please let us know. We hope you enjoy the store and find something you like :) It's your purchases that keep our Project going. Thank you. Enter Our Store Here

Plants, Seeds, eBooks, Consultancy, Bulk Fruit and Nut Tree Orders for Permaculture, Polyculture, Forest Gardens and Regenerative Landscapes.

The Market Garden Polycultures 

We are growing 3 annual polycultures this year. Ares includes a perennial support crop, but the main crops are annuals. Here are the plant lists for the polycultures.

	Zeno			Epictetus			Ares
	Common Name Cultivar	Family		Common Name Cultivar	Family		Common Name Cultivar	Family
	African Marigold	Asteraceae		Courgette Zucchini Izobilna	Cucurbitaceae		Parsley	Apiaceae
	Pot Marigold	Asteraceae		Courgette Zucchini Black Beauty	Cucurbitaceae		Dill	Apiaceae
	Courgette Zucchini Black Beauty	Cucurbitaceae		Dwarf Yellow Bean Rocquencourt	Fabaceae		Red Onion	Amaryllidaceae
	Squash Waltham Butternuts	Cucurbitaceae		Dwarf Borlotto Bean Lingua Fuoco Nano	Fabaceae		White Onion	Amaryllidaceae
	Summer Squash Yellow Bush Scallop	Cucurbitaceae		Aubergine Black Beauty	Solanaceae		Dwarf Yellow Bean Rocquencourt	Fabaceae
	Courgette Izobilna	Cucurbitaceae		Carrots Autumn King	Apiaceae		Dwarf Borlotto Bean Lingua Fuoco Nano	Fabaceae
	French Climbing Bean Cobra Beans	Fabaceae		Carrots Rainbow Mix	Apiaceae		Kohlrabi Delicacy Purple	Brassicaceae
	French Climbing Bean Hristo's Beans	Fabaceae		Kale - Borecole 'Siberian'	Brassicaceae		Paulownia tomentosa	Paulowniaceae
	Tomato Citrina	Solanaceae		Kale - Borecole 'Scarlet'	Brassicaceae
	Tomato Black Krim	Solanaceae		Swiss Chard Rainbow Mix	Amaranthaceae
	Tomato Ukrainian Purple	Solanaceae		Beetroot Rainbow Mix	Amaranthaceae
	Tomato Marglobe	Solanaceae		Beetroot Saved seed	Amaranthaceae
	Tomato Tigerella	Solanaceae		Parsnip White Gem	Apiaceae
	Tomato Anna Russian	Solanaceae		Kohlrabi - Delicacy Purple	Brassicaceae
	Sweet Genovese Basil	Lamiaceae		Chilli Pepper Saved	Solanaceae

This week we planted out the support species- Calendula officinalis and Tagetes erecta into Zeno. Both of these plants are reliable self seeding annuals.

 As long as you don't mulch where last season's plants were, you can expect many seedlings to emerge in the spring and can use these to stock the beds. Three or four plants can produce 100's of strong seedlings.    

A patch of self seeded Calendula officinalis 

It's been more of the same cool and wet weather over the last few weeks. Parsnips, carrots, chard, dwarf beans and kale in Epictetus have all responded well to the cooler weather, but many of the warm weather crops such as squash, peppers and aubergines are struggling.  Hopefully, they should take off with warmer temperatures forecast.  

Siberian Kale - ready for the first of many harvests

Grasses 

With no clear break in the weather so far, hay making is still on hold and we've had plenty of time to try and identify a range of grasses we have growing on the site. Thanks to Ute for identifying the following grass species from the garden:

Cock's Foot (Dactylis glomerata)
Meadow Brome (Bromus commutatus)
Great Brome (Bromus diandrus)
False Oat grass (Arrhenatherum elatius)
Wall Barley (Hordeum murinum)
Bent or Bentgrass (Agrostis sp.)
Probably also both Poa trivialis and Poa annua

Photos by UteVillavicencio

Forest Garden 

Cherries - It's been a poor year for cherries with what little fruit that set quickly spoiled by heavy rainfall. We still managed to pick at least 20 kg from some very reliable trees in the back garden and have some late ripening cultivars yet to harvest from the orchard. On the bright side, it looks like we're in a for a bumper plum harvest.

Fireblight - For the first time I can remember one of our "semi-wild" pear trees is hosting  Erwinia amylovora - Fireblight,  a pathogenic bacteria.

Natasha cut out all of the infected branches and we removed them from the site for winter kindling. With more wet and stormy weather forecast for June, the bacteria are likely to spread. It's interesting to see how the windward face of the tree carries the majority of the infected branches.

Natasha pruning out the infected branches 

Below is some more information on the disease cycle of Fire blight.

Image from http://web.idiggreenacres.com/blog/fireblight

Regenerative Landscape Design - Online Interactive Course 

Want to learn how to design, build and manage regenerative landscapes?  Join us for our Regenerative Landscape Design - Online Interactive Course from May 1st to Sep 13th, 2023. 

We're super excited about running the course and look forward to providing you with the confidence, inspiration, and opportunity to design, build and manage regenerative landscapes, gardens, and farms that produce food and other resources for humans while enhancing biodiversity.

Regenerative Landscape Design Online Course

You can find out all about the course here and right now we have a 20% discount on the full enrollment fees. Just use the promo code RLD2023 in the section of the registration form to receive your discount. 

We are looking forward to providing you with this unique online learning experience - as far as we know, the very first of its kind. If you are thinking of reasons why you should do this course and whether this course is suitable for you, take a look here where we lay it all out. Looking forward to it!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

We offer a diversity of plants and seeds for permaculture, forest gardens and regenerative landscapes including a range of fruit and nut cultivars. We Deliver all over Europe from Nov - March. - Give a happy plant a happy home :)

Our Bio-Nursery - Permaculture/Polyculture/ Regenerative Landscape Plants 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Support Our Project 

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

• Make a purchase of plants or seeds from our Bionursery or Online Store 

• Consider joining us for one of our Courses or Online Courses

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

• Donate directly via PayPal to balkanecologyproject@gmail.com or via FTX Pay

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Design and Create Webinars - Forest Gardens, Urban Gardens, Permaculture, Regenerative Farming   

We're hosting a range of online learning sessions including how to create habitat to enhance biodiversity, how to design and build a forest garden, polyculture design software tutorials, regenerative farm, and landscape design, urban gardening and much more. If you would like to be notified when our next sessions are coming up please add your email below and hit subscribe and we'll be in touch.

You can also register for our online training, services, and products directly here.

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