Friday 13 August 2021

Southern Green Stink Bugs and Forest Garden Appreciation - Week 10- ESC - The Polyculture Project


The baking temperatures continue and with them has come the demise of most of the tomato plants in the home garden. Over the past few weeks my concern over the welfare of the plants has been growing along with the browning leaves and fruit that isn't ripening, and now - a week or 2 earlier than usual but at a critical point that the tomato plants can take little more assault -  the destructive Southern Green Stink Bugs  - Nezara viridula - have arrived, and are breeding abundantly on the tomato and bean plants. With no natural predators that we are aware of, it's a matter of manually removing them. They have a very effective defense mechanism of falling off the fruit or plant when disturbed, but having dealt with them for years, we've learned to position a jam jar underneath and catch them as they fall. 



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 

 

Under attack from Stink Bugs in the third instar stage

It's generally been a disappointing year generally in the home garden for annual vegetables, probably in part due to the unsettled and unusual weather patterns, but also due to setting up the garden much later than usual and planned this year. The ESC volunteers are doing a great job in their home garden, and it's been a real pleasure watching them take control and manage the vegetable plot effectively. Their garden was planted out around a month earlier than the home garden, which might have made a significant difference.

The annual vegetable polyculture beds at the Crew house

On a brighter note the Forest Garden, Aponia has been an absolute pleasure this season.  This week we've been weeding some of the swales, and as it's high summer, spending a significant amount of time watering and counting our blessings in this heatwave to have a perennial water source to tap into and fill up the swales. Now that the grasses and native plants such as Hemlock have died back, the wild plum woodland is navigable again. It's been a pleasure to stroll through the woodland, plucking the odd plum from the branches and enjoying the cool shade provided. One of our volunteers, Markus, helped to clear an irrigation channel so we can divert the water through the woodland. The trees have adapted to our dry, hot summers and are pretty drought resistant, but it felt good to watch the dry land gratefully soak up the flowing water nonetheless.



The view from the woodland by the wildlife pond

Blackberry season starts around now, and the image shows fruits from a thornfree cultivar growing in the home garden.



I got to taste the first pear of the season the other day too - delicious :) You can check out what cultivars we are offering this autumn here.



Part of our ESC project will involve planting some polycultures out in a community space, and I've decided that I'd really like to see Chaste tree - V
itex agnus-castusis as one of the plants in our selection. It's a deciduous shrub with a thousand year old history as a medicinal plant and a great magnet for beneficial organisms. The prolific late summer/early autumn blooms provide great forage for bees, and it's really caught my eye over the last week or two as it's come into bloom.


Check out our range of seeds, tubers and cuttings available all year around - delivery worldwide.


http://www.thepolycultureproject.com/store/c2/Grow_your_Own_Polyculture_.html



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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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.




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