UK Autumn Harvest Survey 2015

......So, what can we really grow in the UK?

Thankyou to the excellent urban foraging website https://urbanharvestuk.wordpress.com/ for posting up photos of loquats growing in North London! One of my favourite fruits...

 As always at this time of year, I invite growers from all over the UK to contribute their own success stories of the past growing season to share with the rest of the permaculture and horticultural community. With so many new crops being trialled in new places, let us share our experiences of which plants and varieties have done really well, and also if there's anything you've been growing that's been less than fruitful, that information could be really useful too.

In Devon we had a decent first half of the growing season, dry with lots of sun, with a much cooler and wetter August than we'd usually expect.


Despite a cool late summer though, I harvested my first ripe Siberian Kiwis! I was very excited to find in late October that the fruits had suddenly gone soft and juicy and were absolutely delicious to eat! My vine is the cultivar 'Issai' which is self fertile, although I will get many more fruits when my male vine starts flowering, hopefully next year.
 
If anyone else has had any luck growing hardy kiwis, please write in.

Diospyrus Kaki in the Paris Botanical Gardens, November 2015

On a tour with Martin Crawford recently, he stated that though true oriental persimmons or 'Kaki' only ripen in the UK in the best summers, hybrids between the Kaki and the American Persimmon can reliably set fruit in most years!

 The cultivar 'Nikita's Gift' is an example of this hybrid 'diospyros kaki x virginiana' - has anybody else have any good crops to report? It'd certainly make a tempting tree for many of us to try planting if it can reliably promise good crops of these exotic fruits each year!

What about Goji Berries, Chilean Guavas, Japanese Bitter Oranges, Kumquats, Chilean Hazels....... there are so many plants I'd love to gather more information about in context to growing in our very special cool temperate climate, to share with all.

Poncitus Trifoliata - Japanese Bitter Orange or Trifoliate Orange is reputed to be hardy and can set fruit in the UK

Please add a comment at the bottom of the page or email me at charlielechat@yahoo.co.uk if you can contribute any of your own experiences of growing unusual crops in the UK.

Clare's Forest Garden

In the late summer of 2013, my lovely friend and employer Clare took me to a quiet corner of her garden that had been turned into a compost area and rubbish heap for anything that wanted to be hidden from sight. Having recently introduced her to the idea of forest gardening Clare suggested to me that we turn the space into an experimental plot.

Of course I was thrilled by the opportunity, though even in my wildest dreams I could never have imagined the forgotten corner looking as beautiful, verdant, and bountiful with the fruits, herbs and vegetables that Clare's now harvesting every day.

A great advantage of the site was that there was already a triangle of apple trees to provide the full canopy area for the small space. Now it was just a question of filling in the multi-levelled understory of fruiting shrubs, climbers, perennial vegetables and ground cover herbs that would supply Clare's family with an abundance of delicious fresh food, whilst requiring very little maintenance.

The vision for the garden would grow to let the space serve equally as a sanctuary for humans and wildlife alike to enjoy a peaceful place where the beauty of the flowers, the sounds of the birds and insects and a small pond would provide stillness and nourishment for the soul, as well as the body.

I'm so happy now to be able to share our work with everyone. I hope the following photos and narrative will inspire others to create beautiful forest gardens too and if you'd like any help with that, please do contact me.

Love to All,

Charlie


Welcome to the garden of food and flowers, a sanctuary for all creatures great and small, a healing space and living lunchbox for humans (and birds)!

                                                                             

Our ground layer design utilises an ocean of wild strawberries - covering the ground effectively against weeds and erosion, whilst taller shrubs, herbs and perennial vegetables grow very happily, like islands among them.

The strawberries started fruiting in the middle of June and as I write this in August, the garden is so full of them that the heady scent of them fills the air as you wander through the plants!

This living mulch means there's very little weeding or maintenance to do, ever - and the system can grow away undisturbed, perennially.

We also planted some cultivated strawberries (pictured right). This variety 'Symphony' has been fantastic, rising above the wild strawberries with its taller foliage and has given us a bumper crop in its second year.

In a Forest Garden we don't ever need to fertilise the ground - we let nature perennially feed the soil for us.

Here a Perennial Lupin in full flower provides nectar for bees whilst powerfully fixing Nitrogen from the air into the Earth. 

Other plants like comfrey and sweet cicely improve soil fertility by sending down deep roots to bring buried nutrients back to the surface that can then nourish neighbouring plants.

The ongoing cycle of growth and decomposition makes the whole system a giant composter, gradually increasing fertility and the number of soil organisms and creating precious hummus and top soil, which will not only benefit us but also generations to come.