ALAN POWER: Thanks for downloading this garden cutting
from the National Trust in these shorter programmes. I'm
exploring a particular aspect of our work.
I'm Alan Power, the head gardener at Stourhead in
Wiltshire for the National Trust. But today I'm at
Sissinghurst Castle Garden in Kent, which surprisingly sits on
clay soil, which is a big challenge for gardeners.
There's a wonderful Veg Garden here, which wasn't part of the
original design at Sissinghurst, but with some clever gardeners
and clever gardening, they're now able to have one.
I'm standing here with Helen Musgrave and Chris Robinson who
are the brains behind the operation in the Veg Garden.
That's true to say, isn't it?
HELEN MUSGRAVE: Yeah, you could say that. So, we're a team of
two members of staff.
And about 26 volunteers who come for a morning a week and help us
out on the day to day running of the Veg Garden.
ALAN POWER: And as I walked up here from the garden below which
we kind of elevated above in this position, I walked past the
restaurant and there was some nice smells coming out of the
restaurant. Is that your food?
HELEN MUSGRAVE: Yes, some of that will be our food. So, one
of the main aims of the Veg Garden when it was set up was to
provide fresh local food to the restaurant and that's what we
do.
So last year we grew, 4.5 tons worth of produce here on our
four acre site and most of that went to the restaurant. But some
of that we also sell in our plant shop for visitors to take
home with them.
ALAN POWER: 4.5 tons?
HELEN MUSGRAVE: That's Right
ALAN POWER: 4.5 tons. I have to say that again to try and
picture 4.5 tons of food. That's amazing, isn't it?
HELEN MUSGRAVE: Yeah, it's really exciting. And we're on
target to make just a little bit more than that year. So we're
really excited.
ALAN POWER: I'm aware that you're on clay soil. It can be
quite tricky, can't it?
HELEN MUSGRAVE: Yes. So clay soil has quite specific
characteristics and that it's quite a dense soil and it can
become quite waterlogged. So in the winter you can get quite wet
soil, but in the summer it will bake hard a bit like concrete.
ALAN POWER: Your boots become 10 tons heavier by the end of the
day, working on this soil. But I know that you've employed a no
dig kind of policy on how you manage your veg here. And I've
heard of this and read about it, but I've never, I've never
actually employed it and I'm quite keen to because it sounds
great.
HELEN MUSGRAVE: It is great. We've been doing no dig
gardening for four years now here at Sissinghurst. And I
guess the main principles of it are you have these narrow beds
which you never walk on. And that means you're not compacting
the soil and then every year, usually over the winter. So
we've started now, as you can see, lots of our beds have got
lovely dark compost on them.
We just add a layer of mulch or compost to the top of the beds
and don't dig it in and we let the worms and micro organisms
take it in for us.
ALAN POWER: So this dark, rich, lovely looking mulch that's on
the beds. Where, where do you get that from?
HELEN MUSGRAVE: So we buy this from a company who buys from the
council all the bits and pieces that go into your wheelie bin at
home. So it's your green waste that you've, you know, chopped
up a tree in your garden or, got some nasty weeds that you don't
particularly like. They take it away. They turn it into compost
at high temperatures. So it gets rid of all the weed seeds that
are in it and they sell it back to us.
ALAN POWER: Because that's really important, isn't it?
Because sometimes you see, you see mulch and compost coming in
and then you'll almost have a wild flower meadow developing
the next year. A wild flower meadow that you don't want in
your Veg Garden!
HELEN MUSGRAVE: Yeah, that's right. I think the key is
keeping it- getting up to that high temperature and then that
just kills off any seeds that are in there.
ALAN POWER: And obviously with the clay soil, you, you must
have to put tons of organic matter on for the worms to come
in.
HELEN MUSGRAVE: And, yeah, so we probably layer about a couple of
inches of compost onto the top beds. But clay soil is great
because it holds nutrients.
So quite often it's quite high in nutrients anyway. So we're
not adding loads of manures, which will have lots of
nutrients to add into the soils. It's almost as if we're just
adding a soil conditioner to break down the soils a little
bit and have a better structure.
ALAN POWER: And Chris, you, you volunteered here for five years
now?
CHRIS ROBINSON: Five years.
ALAN POWER: You've employed no dig at home as well, have you?
CHRIS ROBINSON: I have because I'm on clay as well.
And the no dig gives you the opportunity to work the ground
all year. So with the mulching and not walking on the soil, you
can plant into just the surface.
ALAN POWER: And how narrow are your beds at home?
CHRIS ROBINSON: 4 ft wide
So we can work from either side. No digging would be nothing
without the mulch at home. Don't be afraid to put a good mulch on
top and then just leave it. Don't try and dig it in.
ALAN POWER: And the worms will do all the?
CHRIS ROBINSON: And the worms will do all the digging for you.
ALAN POWER: So you can sit back and have a cup of tea and watch
it happen.
Tell me we're standing here, chilly December Day. Can you
roughly run me through what you've got in the garden at the
moment?
HELEN MUSGRAVE: Lots of lovely winter vegetables. So we've got
leeks, cabbages, Brussels Sprouts have just started to be
ready.
Lots of different types of Kale. We've got early purple
sprouting, which is in which will be harvesting next year And
we're really lucky as well as Sissinghurst because we've got
two polytunnels and these just provide a really nice
environment, a bit of a warmer environment so we can grow crops
and throughout the year.
So we grow all our salad crops in there through the winter so
we can get some really nice spicy different salad mixes out
into the restaurant even when it's snowing outside.
ALAN POWER: That's brilliant. Thank you both very much.
CHRIS ROBINSON: Thank you.
ALAN POWER: Thanks for downloading this garden cutting
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BETTANY HUGHES: I'm Bettany Hughes. I've been visiting
National Trust properties all my life.
But in this series of podcasts, I'm going beyond the delights of
tees and topiary to reveal the surprising European roots of
some of the most splendid sites in England.
You can subscribe to my series by searching for Bettany
Hughes's 10 places, Europe and us on your podcast app.