Redcurrants - Ribes rubrum are native to parts of Western Europe, and can often be found in shady areas or damp woodlands, making them the perfect candidate for a shrub layer in a polyculture. Once established, plants can produce an abundance of fruit which is most commonly used to make jellies and sauces. We haven't actually tried processing our harvest, but tend to eat them straight off the shrub, add them to some natural yoghurt for breakfast or to green juices or smoothies. You can find out more about this plant on our plant profile. The plants we offer are 1 year old bare roots that should start to produce fruit the next season after planting.
Jewel-like Redcurrants in the home garden
The sheer volume of invertebrates in the gardens continues to amaze. Here you can see on the left Hoverfly - Syrphidae feeding from Erigeron annus and what i think is a Flower Longhorn Beetle- Lepturinae feeding on Achillea millefolium - Yarrow. Beetles play an often underappreciated role in pollination but have been visiting flowers since the relationship between animals and plants began, according to some sources, for the last 200 million years. To this day they still pollinate a huge diversity of plants including the oldest flowering plants such as Magnolia spp. Most beetle-pollinated flowers are flattened or dish-shaped, with pollen easily accessible.
Over at Katelepsis, the volunteer house, the Japanese Persimmon - Diospyros kaki fruit has been forming over the last couple of weeks. I noticed a lot of the blossom and very immature fruits littering the vegetable garden and the tree appeared laden with potential fruit. I was wondering how on earth the branches would cope with the weight of all that fruit, but it seems this shedding process is characteristic of the tree and a natural process of selection. The tree is also alternate bearing, meaning that one year the crop is significantly greater than the next year, so we could be in for a bumper crop.
Blossom and immature fruits buds littering the vegetable beds on the left, and on the right, the tree from which they fell.
One of the fruits that made it safely through the shedding selection process, captured in late June
I'm not sure which cultivar is in our garden, but it's definitely an astringent one. In case you aren't familiar, persimmon cultivars can be divided into 2 main categories, namely Astringent and Non-astringent. Due to the high content of tannins in astringent varieties, you must wait until the fruit is ripe before eating because these tannins are water soluble and when the fruit is soft and ripe they will lose their astringency. That usually means harvesting the fruit while still hard, and ripening them indoors on a windowsill. Conversely, non-astringent varieties can be eaten when hard, much like an apple, as the tannin content is greatly reduced when it turns from green to orange.
An astringent variety of Persimmon, ripening at home in the autumn
If you're interested in finding out more about this fascinating fruit you can see our more detailed blog post 'Persimmon - The Essential Guide'. We also offer a range of exciting cultivars from our bio-nursery and are taking orders now for autumn delivery.
You may remember in a previous blog post we introduced our new Allium nursery, where we've been growing different Allium varieties to start offering bulb packs in the autumn. It's been wonderful to observe them growing this season and compare the differences in height, leave shape, structure, flowers and flowering times and taste. The image below shows Round-Headed Leek - Allium Sphaerocephalon in flower. It's been the last one to flower from all our varieties with a pretty egg shaped head that sits upon tall, slender stems. I've been pleasantly surprised with how long each Allium's flowering period has been, with each one lasting a minimum of 3 weeks and attracting a lot of beneficial invertebrates to the garden. By planting different species in your gardens, you can basically enjoy an Allium flower throughout most of the spring and summer months.
Round-Headed Leek - Allium Sphaerocephalon
We are growing the Alliums in raised beds with wooden frames, and as we had a couple of spare beds we filled them with carrots and onions grown from sets. The onions are doing well but I'm not sure whether the carrots are a bit crowded in their bed. Back in the UK, my brother has had a good result from growing carrots this way without needing to thin them out, but I have some doubts cast by the small size of a few I pulled the other day that was disappointingly small. We'll see.
Welcome to our Online Store where you can find Forest Garden/ Permaculture plants, seeds, bulbs and Polyculture multi-packs along with digital goods and services such as Online Courses, Webinars, eBooks, and Online Consultancy. We hope you enjoy the store and find something you like :) It's your purchases that keep our Project going. Yuu can also find our full list of trees. shrubs and herbs for forest gardens on our website here
Raised beds with carrots on the left and onions on the right
What has done wonderfully well this year are the early potatoes. We harvested the first spuds from seed tubers sown in April. We have had a good amount of rainfall this June which has no doubt helped.
Early new potatoes
This year we've introduced a number of different Blueberry cultivars into our gardens. In our continuing theme of berry goodness, it's been wonderful to add another delicious fruit to our breakfast bowls. Our son, Archie, who is a total fruit monster announced the other day that Blueberries had knocked Strawberries of the top spot. As a plant, they're an incredible addition to the permaculture garden, with highly ornamental cream colored bell-shaped flowers that ate a great food source for bees.
Blueberries also have good polyculture potential. You can see in the below image a design we planted out last year in Aponia, our market garden. This productive polyculture includes an upper canopy of Prunus tomentosa - Nanking Cherry, shrub layer of Vaccinium corymbosum cv. - Blueberry and Rubus idaeus cv. - Raspberry, ground cover of Ajuga reptans - Bugle .with Tulipa sp. - Tulip, Galanthus gracilis - Snowdrop as the bulb layer, with native herbs around the perimeter of the bed and in the basin of the Swale.
A productive polyculture, featuring Blueberry
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!
Let's end this week's post with an update on the ducks. Our mother duck is still sitting on the eggs and we're delighted to discover that another female has gone broody and it sitting on a different clutch of eggs! All being well the second nest should hatch out a week after the first nest, which should be around the 18th of July, give or take a few days. Once the ducklings have successfully hatched they will be moved with Mum to an enclosed area for safety. What's quite interesting is that both mother ducks have chosen to build their nests under the Raspberry plants, but in beds that are opposite to each other for a bit of privacy :)
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.
|
| 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
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- Donate directly via PayPal to balkanecologyproject@gmail.com or via FTX Pay
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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