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Grape, Blueberry and Jostaberry Polyculture - Hecate
Our productive polyculture of Grape, Blueberry and Jostaberry (nicknamed Hecate) is coming along nicely. I forgot to get a photo of the bed but here is an illustration and some photos of the plants.
Plants look even more beautiful during and after a rain, adorned with little water droplets sparkling in the light. This Vaccinium corymbosum cv. - Blueberry 'Sunshine Blue' is a Dwarf Blueberry and tolerant of a higher pH than most blueberry cultivars. They have delicious fruits and are very productive when grown in pots. We have 8 of these plants in the polyculture planted beneath the Grape Vines.
I found a local supply of a great pest and disease resistant Vitis vinifera cv. - Grape cultivar called 'Moldova' The first shoots are coming along nicely. We'll be growing these in the polyculture trained along wires, a method known as the kniffin system.
We put a few Iris germanica - Bearded Iris on the edges of the polyculture just because of the outrageous flowers! We also have Rubus × loganobaccus - Loganberry planted on the south edge and a trim of the very edible Hemerocallis fulva - Orange Daylily planted 20 cm apart. These plants make a good ground cover and I'm hoping they will provide a barrier to prevent the meadow grasses creeping into the bed.
Phronesis - Forest Garden
We started work on the wildlife pond for our new forest garden this week. Dylan and his friends dug out the bulk of the pond a few weeks back and this week we levelled the banks, defined the shape, created some shelves and dug out a little more depth in preparation for lining. The pond is located at the bottom of the garden as shown in the below illustration.
Installing a pond is probably the single most effective thing you can do in a garden to enhance biodiversity and wildlife and the majority of the wildlife that will be attracted to the pond will be of great benefit to your garden or farm, i.e pollinators and pest predators. For full instructions on how we build our ponds you can read our previous posts - Small Pond Installations for Irrigation and Wildlife - Part 1 and Small Pond Installations for Irrigation and Wildlife - Part 2 - Liners. I'll be writing Part 3 - Planting The Pond using this pond as an example in the coming weeks.
Here is Ronan defining the shelves of the pond that will be used to locate the emergent plants such as Iris psueodocorus and Thypa latifolia
The soil from the excavation is very useful. we laid down some tarps around the edges to make it easier to move around.
We put the soil from the pond to good work separating the top soil from the sub soil and using the sub soil as a layer for the raised beds that are located either side of the pond (as you can see in the above illustration of the garden). We'll be adding layers of the freshly cut surrounding wild vegetation, spoiled straw and fresh manure next week and these beds will be ready for planting next spring.
Pierre Barbieux the founder of Bois de Rode Bos in Belgium visited for the day to see what we're up to here and helped out in the morning with the raised beds. Pierre is growing an excellent variety of rare fruit and nut cultivars at his 3 ha site just outside Brussels.
When making deep mulched raised beds it's important to relieve the compaction in the bed area before applying the layers of organic matter. It's also preferable if the ground is thoroughly soaked before mulching. In this case we had some beautiful rain recently. Here is Ronan and Lea using the broad forks to de-compact the bed area. Note the existing vegetation is not removed or turned over.
With regular rains and warm sunny spells forecast for this month it's a great time to add a few last plantings and sowing to the channels we created. Here is Misha planting Symphytum x uplandicum - Comfrey cuttings along the central irrigation channel of the garden at approx. 50 cm apart. These plants will provide a valuable source of mulch for the trees and shrubs we have planted in the garden and being located right next to the irrigation channel with access to abundant water they should produce very high yields. I 'd estimate within two years we will be able to make 5 cuts per season with yields of 8 kg of biomass per plant per season. We''ll certainly leave the plants to flower during the season as they are very attractive to wildlife. You can read more about this amazing plant here.
Lea and Ronan sowed Trifolium repens - White Clover into the berms that were created when establishing the irrigation channels. Trifolium repens - White Clover provides excellent cover and as long as you don't sow the cultivated variety (often referred to as Dutch Clover) they are very tolerant of foot and light vehicle traffic. We have these seeds along with other green manures and ground covers available from our online store
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'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.
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| 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!
Wildlife in the Gardens
I photographed this array of insects enjoying the blossoms of our Zanthoxylum simulans- Szechuan Pepper during a cup of coffee in the home garden - Apatheia. It's remarkable how attractive this plant is to a range of invertebrates many of which are great pollinators and pest predators. Zanthoxylum simulans- Szechuan Pepper produces a great spice too.
Viburnum opulus 'Xanthocarpum' - Guelder Rose is another plant that is extremely attractive to wildlife and generally very beautiful. The fruits of these plants are edible and I waited eagerly for 4 years for my first and last fruit. The fruits of these plants fall into my 'apocalypse food' category. I might make this a new category for the nursery website :)
This is a Morus alba - White Mulberry pollard we have been growing for about 8 years now. These new shoots will probably reach over a metre by the end of summer. The lush new regrowth makes excellent rabbit and pig food. Here is a video by Arch of cutting the trees a few years back and feeding them to the animals. For more on Mulberry check out our article Mo' Mulberry
Mid week we bio blitzed Phronensis and a new garden we will be developing for our upcoming June Design and Build a Forest garden Course. Bio blitzing is basically taking a careful look at the flora and fauna of the site and photographing the flowering plants and invertebrate activity. We'll do this once per month during the growing season to keep a record of the biodiversity we have on our sites. These are some of the photos from the blitz. Thanks Ronan, Lea, Misha and Philip for these.
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| Bioblitz - Wildlife Gardens |
Other News
Shipka Festival
For all you happy people living nearby, next weekend our friends have organised music, film and crafts in Shipka and you are welcome to come along!
Our gardens will also be open during the day if you would like to have a look around. You can find out more about the activities and schedule here
More news.....
If you are part of the Swedish Permaculture Associataion - Permakultur Sverige you may be interested in this opportunity to attend a range of courses across Europe (all expenses covered) including our Design and Build a Forest Garden Course and Regenerative Landscape Design Course. You can find out more about this opportunity here.
Thank you Misha and Philip from Green School Village - for partnering with Permakultur Sverige to include our project courses.
Food from the Gardens
Ronan Delente a chef who has been travelling the world cooking across the continents has joined as for the polyculture study this year. Ronan has been experimenting with various recipes using the wild plants and perennial vegetables from the gardens. You can find his recipes of on his blog here.
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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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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