21st Oct - Harmonious Assembly

When I took on the allotment plots I had a very basic background in growing veg. Mum and Dad had a decent sized vegetable patch in their garden when I was growing up. I can remember them handing over a section to my sister and I so that we could grow strawberries I think. We dug and planted and then maybe glanced at them a day or so later but they were soon abandoned for Dad to continue the care...there was far to much tree climbing and bike riding to be had.

When Si and I first moved to Whimple, we had a large garden divided by a stream. The bottom end we named the paddock and added plastic sheeting to the polytunnel frame that had been left and we built 3 raised beds. We also had 6 chickens merrily running around and clucking. I successfully grew tomatoes, a glutten of courgettes, 3 sweetcorn and a decent supply of salad. Potatoes failed to do anything but successfully rot.

We moved to the other side of Whimple to a 20 year old house with a garden laid to lawn surrounded by established flower beds. It was mainly in shade so I decided to grow tomatoes in growbags at the front of the house. I sowed the whole packet of seeds thinking they wouldn't all grow. They did! I gave a lot away and grew a lot of tomatoes that year.

I have a very rough plan of what veg I want to grow and which of the three rotating beds they will go in. I also knew about companion planting where you plant plants along with your vegetables to control pests and attract pollinating insects. You often see marigolds in amongst brassicas. Chives with your carrots can improve flavour and growth. What I was unaware of was a planting guild!

Permaculture Guilds - who knew! Well maybe a few more people who read this.

The idea is if you look at a forest, you have trees, and plants, food and animals all living harmoniously together without any input from man. If you scale this down to a garden, you can attempt to create a guild to help out with maintaining the health and balance of your plants. For instance I can remember from childhood, a ring of daffodils circling each apple tree in Mum and Dad's garden. I just assumed this was pretty and welcomed the start of spring rather than it being a mini ecosystem.

If successful you could end up with a beautiful harmonious space that is working for you, with the following elements.

Suppressors In actual fact the daffodils are suppressors. They help to keep grass away which would otherwise compete with the tree for nutrients, the bulb goes dormant in the summer so don't take away precious water and is poisonus to some wildlife so acts as a protector. Alliums are perfect.

Fixers As well as producing tasty fruit and veg, the guild planting system can be fixing the nitrogen in the soil (lupins).

Attractors You need to attract insects to help with pollination. Attractors will also attract a variety of different insects. In this way you won't end up with just one pesky insect causing a nuisance, as there will always be another insect coming along that will happily "remove" the pest for you. Coriander is good for this and is also a very useful herb.

Repellers Fairly self explanitory. You want to keep predators away. Nasturtiums are brilliant.

Accumulators These are plants that send down a tap root deep into the soil and bring up nutrients such as calcium, potassium and sulphur, saving you the job of adding these manually to the soil.

Mulchers Instead of adding mulch to the soil each year, grow plants that you can cut back the leaves to fall on the soil instead. These leaves will rot and in time be dragged into the soild by the worms. This will loosen up the soil (particularly for my clay soil) and this aeration will enable water to seep into the soil. When the frosts come, these little pockets of water will freeze and expand and this in turn will further loosen the soil. We all know dandelions and docks have good tap roots but I'm not willing to plant them! There's a lot of obvious veg that are tap roots.

There's so much to this but it's something that I will definately be trying to follow as best as I can. I want my fruit and veg to be organic and thinking carefully about my guild will suit me so well. It's going to be fun trying my best to companion plant on my rotating veg beds, encourage as much flower growing as I can to help to encourage bees and other insects to help keep my plot healthy and happy. As for my permanent fruit bush bed and fruit cane bed, I've made a start. If you've read the shed building blog you may have though I was a bit absent from proceedings. I was there but I was busy planting 160 daffodils and tulip bulbs around the edge of the beds. I still have alliums to get in the ground. It's a start and will be work in progress but I have all the time in the world and what a happy environment we have created.