Smut, Ducks in the Garden and Green Manures - Week 20 - The Polyculture Project

It's been a relaxed week in the gardens and as the summer draws to a close the harvest season is upon us with plenty to pick and process as we wind down into the Autumn.  

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.

Aponia - The Market Garden 

We're irrigating the market garden once a week during the summer. This can be up to 15 weeks in a dry year but this year we have only needed to water 4 times so far, although I expect another 4 weeks of irrigation will be needed. Our irrigation method is somewhat unusual in that we have access to a mountain stream that we can divert into our gardens. We use the paths as irrigation channels and block the end with sacks full of sawdust thereby raising the water level so that the water permeates into the raised beds. Capillary action also serves to draw the water up into the soil. If we can run the water over night this is sufficient to provide water to all of the plants in the bed but the stream is also used by other growers so we'll also water from above with the watering cans. 

Plenty of greens from the garden 

Victoria, our resident pest and disease identifier, found we have a Mexican delicacy known as  huitlacoche growing in the gardens. Known as Smut and caused by the pathogenic fungus Ustilago maydis that colonizes corn cobs, it can be eaten usually as a filling, in quesadillas and other tortilla-based foods, and soups. See here for more pest and disease observations in the market garden  from Victoria.

The Forest Garden 

The grapes are starting to ripen. For wine it's best to leave the picking until mid September as they will sweeten up in the sunshine and will need less sweetener additive for optimal fermentation. For grape juice I prefer them a little on the tart side of things so now is great time to get juicing.   

We're growing 5 cultivars of Hazelnut - Corylus spp. in the gardens. 'Ata Baba' 'Edske Barcelona' and  'Badeovidim' have ripened already with 'Tonda gentile' and 'Rimski' coming in the first few weeks of September.  

Hazelnuts are really easy to grow and are generally pest and disease free but I did notice these little fellas stripping the leaves - not that I think it's a serious problem. I think they are Sawfly larvae insects of the suborder Symphyta 

You can find a guide to Hazels in our blog post - The Amazing Hazel - The Essential Guide to Everything you need to know about Hazels

Ducks are probably my favourite animal for free ranging in the gardens. The last few years we have been keeping these farm ducks that look like they are from Mallard lineage, they don't have a specific breed name as far as I know.

 In the past we have reared Peking Ducks and found them to be quite quite destructive in the garden even to the point of eating our chilli peppers. These mallard type breeds do not make any such problems and seem to be more interested in shoveling around for slugs and snails which is great. They do a particularly good job in the nursery lifting pots to find the slugs. It's a bit annoying having to upright the pots but worth it considering they take care of the slugs.  The down side is that some worms and frogs also end up as duck fodder, they obliterate the vegetation in the wildlife pond  and turn the pond water murky green. As mentioned above the garden plants are not threatened although they do have a voracious appetite for the leaves of Oxalis tuberosa ​ - Oca

We use the diverted stream to water the beds in the home garden too. The ducks love this and rumage around the irrigation channels picking off grubs and bugs that are flowing into the garden via the stream.

Ataraxia - Perennial Polyculture Trial Garden 

Over at Ataraxia, we've been watering the young trees for the second time this season, giving each tree approx 15 - 20 L of water.

Onobrychis viciifolia - Sainfoin is one of the plants we use for green manure. An ancient legume often overlooked by growers,  Sainfoin is an excellent bee plant and non-bloat causing legume which can be used as hay, or grazed in pastures alone or in a grass-legume mix. The plants deep roots can also assist with relieving compaction.

Another great green manure, this time a local native volunteer, is Hairy Vetch - Vicia villosa.  

This local mint Mentha longifolia is probably one the best local plants for attracting such a wide diversity of flying insects. The plant spreads quite aggressively via rhizomes so it's not a great companion in the productive beds but we certainly find a plenty of room for them around the gardens. They make a pretty good tea too.  

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

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Fastest Growing Trees in the Temperate Zone, Seed Harvesting and a Green Toad Gathering - Week 19 - The Polyculture Project

Another hot week in the gardens, too hot to start new projects but plenty of harvesting, watering and  seed collecting to be done. 

If you follow our project you will probably know that I like to name our gardens after concepts and terminology from the classical period of Ancient Greece or at least you may have noticed that the gardens have weird names :)  Ezekiel who joined us last week asked why the market garden did not have a such a name which prompted me to fix that, so from now on the market garden will be referred to as .........drum rolling .....  

Aponia - The Market Garden 

It's quite amazing how fast Paulownia tomentosa - Foxglove Tree can grow. We use these trees amid some of the vegetable beds to provide shade, biomass and the massive leaves make good temporary containers for small fruits and veg. When the trees get too big (within 3 years) we cut them and use them for fence posts or stakes. Multiple stems grow back from the stump the following year which we thin down to one and can grow tall enough by summer (around 1.5 m tall) to start providing shade to the crops again. We should have the cut the trees last year as they do consume considerable quantities of water. To get an idea of just how fast these trees grow, here is Victoria tying cucumber nets to the trees in June.  

8 weeks later and you can see the radial growth of the Paulownia stem has extended beyond the string. This will likely kill the tree above the string as the cambial layer of cells will be disrupted and minerals and water from the soil will not be able to relocate to the leaves, while the photosynthates (sugars) produced in the leaves will not be able to relocate to the roots.  You can see a dormant bud just below the string has emerged to take over the role of photosynthesis should the above leaves die. Our intention was to cut these trees to ground level this autumn so we will not remove the string this year but it's a good lesson to remember when using trees for structural support.       

We've been loving the Melothria scabra - Cucamelon this year. These are perennial plants but being sub tropical plants they will not survive the winter outdoors in our climate but you can bring them in and replant next season. They are also very easy to grow from seed and produce good crops in the first season 

Nice little crop of Cucamelons in a little biodegradable Paulowina leaf container :)   

An excellent companion to Cucamelons in a salad are these equally ridiculously miniature Currant Tomates. Ezekiel was telling me how these tomatoes are likely to have higher health benefits than larger tomatoes due to the higher quantity of skin you ingest. Tomato skins are full of lycopene, a phytochemical that provides red pigment and health benefits. Lycopene helps eliminate skin-aging free radicals caused by ultraviolet rays—in other words, protecting against sun damage  

The hot summer days are certainly no friend to the slugs and snails in the gardens. In order to survive a summer here they must find a suitably dark and moist place, not too far from a food source. Such a place appears to be the inside edges of plank framed raised beds that we use for dense sowing of crops such as carrots. We don't often use this types of raised beds as I prefer to grow wild plants around the edges of our beds but for a densely sowed bed they do have some benefits.      

Great to see Sagittaria sagittifolia - Arrowhead flowering in the pond. These are great plants to have in your wildlife pond providing dense lush green cover on the margins, beautiful flowers in the summer and like other aquatic plants they offer resting and sheltering places for aquatic insects like dragonflies and damselflies. Another benefit is that they produce good quantities of round edible tubers. I've not tried them yet but according to reports the taste is bland, with a starchy texture, similar to a potato but somewhat crunchier, even when cooked.

French and African Marigolds loving the summer it seems

A quick intermission 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.

Ataraxia - Perennial Polyculture Trial Garden 

We continue to prepare new planting zones in Ataraxia, this time we're experimenting with using plastics from our poly tunnels to kill off the vegetation during the hot summer. Ezekiel is scything the vegetation before laying the plastic and then we top with stones to prevent it from blowing away and let the sun do the rest. In the Autumn will scarify the bed and sow green manures such as Cereal Rye - Secale cereale, Einkorn - Triticum monococcum and White Clover - Trifolium repens. See here for more info on these green manures.

As we clear the vegetation for the incoming plants we removed a patch of Origanum vulgare - Pot Marjoram that we'll plant out in a new garden we'll be starting next spring, Eudaimonia (see below)

Eudaimonia - A Polinator Garden 

I've been keeping an eye on the local wild plants to see which ones are preferred by local pollinators and waiting for the seed to ripen so we can propagate these plants to include in the herb layer of our new pollinator garden Eudaimonia.

 For many of these herbaceous perennials summer is the time of year to harvest seed so we set out on a seed collection mission. 

This was an unusual find by Victoria who identified the plant as Medicago sativa ssp. varia. There are 17 species of Medicago in Bulgaria. 

3D impression of the garden. This garden is named by and dedicated to Fergus Webster who kindly made a generous donation to our project. Thanks again Fergus. 

Always go a little short of bowls this time of year :)

Seeds we harvested include the following 

Cotton Thistle - Onopordum acanthium

Globe-thistle - Echinops bannaticus

Hares Foot Clover - Trifolium arvense

Hemp-leaved hollyhock - Althaea cannabina

Lilac Sage -Salvia verticillata

Wildlife 

Every summer in the village, late at night you can find the streets peppered with these little beauties - the European green toad - Bufo viridis. Dylan came back home with this young specimen who I hope did not mind a quick photo shoot before re-joining the mob :). I believe the gathering is related to breeding.  They are probably the most beautiful toad in Europe and certainly useful pest predators in the gardens, dining on a variety of insects and invertebrates, mainly crickets, meal worms, small butterflies, earthworms, moths, beetles and caterpillars.   

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 

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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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Praying Mantids, Native Medicinal Plants and Garden Produce - Week 18 - The Polyculture Project

It's been a hot and dry week in the gardens - summer has finally shown up this year! We said our goodbyes to Daniel and Emilce last week - thanks so much for joining us and for all of your input into the gardens. We welcomed back Victoria and we're happy to be joined by Ezekiel.     

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.

Always a pleasure to observe The European Praying Mantid - Mantis religiosa in the gardens. This is a young specimen no more than 4 cm long. This time of year through to late September you can find mantids in the garden but you have look quite hard as they are often on plants with similar colouration to their bodies. 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 and female Mantids will often eat the male after mating.

 I often find Mantid cocoons on the underside of rocks protected from the rain but warmed by the winter sun. These egg cases can hatch 100's of baby Mantids that have a voracious appetite for aphids. The cocoons are laid in the autumn will overwinter and hatch in the spring.  

The Market Garden 

Dylan is handling the Trustika food coop orders this year. Tuesday is delivery day and he heads down to the garden early to pick the orders.  

Vegetables from our veggie box posing for a quick photo before delivery to our customers 

Aronia melanocarpa - Black Chokeberry berries are ripe for picking. I prefer to use the berries in teas, juices or for baking as I find them somewhat astringent when eaten fresh.   

Medicago sativa - Alfalfa, also called lucerne flowering in the market. We sowed this patch 4 years ago into an odd triangular bed on the edge of the vegetable beds. They make a good mulch plant, are great animal fodder, very attractive to bees and the young shoots in spring are pretty tasty.  

 Symphytum x uplandicum - Comfrey planted along side the water channel. We've cut this row twice this season already. If you would like to find out more about how much comfrey biomass you can harvest check out our previous post here. 

Over at the volunteer house the apples trees are full this year. 

With all of the rain we've had throughout the last few months our rain water catchment reservoir at the volunteer house is full with water despite the fact that the roof guttering is broken and half of the water runs off the edges rather then into the drain pipes! Unlike the rest of our ponds this is a rectangular shaped reservoir and is not suitable for wildlife. We're going to try building a floating habitat island for this pond in the coming weeks to address this. For more on wildlife pond design see our previous post here.

Local Native Medicinal Plants 

I believe the species we have growing in the local woodlands and our forest garden, and photographed below, is Arum maculatum.  There are 5 species of Arum in Bulgaria. Arum spp. are well known for their thermogenesis i.e they can produce heat. The male plant produces salicylic acid triggering thermogenic reactions that can result in the temperature of the flower being higher by 15-25 C than the surrounding air. This phenomenon is one of two major pollination strategies that aim to attract potential pollinator like insects. The other strategy is releasing a very strong odour that attracts insects. The plants are fruiting at this time of year in the forest garden. All parts of the plant are considered poisonous but the plant has many medicinal properties. In Bulgaria the tubers have traditionally be used to treat haemorrhoids.

Interestingly, according to this report on the medicinal properties of Arum spp. the plant leaves are eaten fresh and cooked in Turkey.  

The ripening berries of Sambucus ebulus - Dwarf Elderberry. Toxic in large quantities but commonly used for medicinal purposes this plant has a long relationship with humans. Remains of pollen, seeds/fruits and charcoals have been found at a Bronze Age archaeological site in Tuscany, at a Neolithic site in the French Alps and here in Bulgaria at the Durankulak site on the Black Sea coast.It may have been a staple food in the past but most certainly would have undergone a culinary treatment to reduce its toxicity.

Eupatorium cannabinum - Hemp Agrimony grows wild around our way. The plant prefers moist soil and is often found beside streams and water channels in full sun to partial shade.  It's greatly loved by butterflies and moths. The genus name Eupatorium can be traced back to the ancient Greek king Mithridates Eupator (120-63 BC), who apparently was the first to use this plant as a medicine. Avicenna (980-1037), a Persian physician and philosopher, wrote about the uses of hemp agrimony as a medicinal plant. This herb also was used by others who practiced Arabic herbal medicine in the early Middle Ages, primarily as an invigorating tonic and detoxifying agent. The plant has been used as an herbal remedy for viral infections such as colds and flu. Additionally it has been used to treat high fever.

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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