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Hello and welcome to the June edition of the Organic Gardening podcast. I'm Fiona Taylor and later on I'll be joined by Chris Collins and Garden Organics head gardener, Emma O'Neill. I'm excited to catch up with Chris to see how he's been getting on with his balcony and allotment after such a dry spring. Later on, we'll be exploring the world of permaculture gardening as I visit Hugh Richards in his garden in Midwest Wales. And we answer your questions on pernicious weeds, grafted fruit trees, and how to reuse your grey water. Later on this month, Garden Organic will be doing a show garden at Gardeners World Live at the NEC in Birmingham. It's being created by Emma and Chris as a celebration of how soil, plants and organic methods all add up to a wonderful habitat for wildlife. But for now, I'm off to join Chris here in the potting shirt. Hello Chris. How are you Fiona, you alright? Yeah I'm alright. Are you alright more to the point because we missed you last month. Well you know what I went down and do a little job for us down in Titchfield to talk to a school and I taught seven classes of 30 over the course of five hours and I think I might have picked something up off one of those little ones when I was down there because I was wiped out for a few days. You were wiped out. It takes a lot to put me down. absolutely, absolutely no we did miss you. It's great to have you back. Thank you. So you look fighting fit now. Yes, I feel good. So tell us how you're getting on with the allotment. Well, it's been interesting because I was hanging back. It's been so bone dry in London. I think this has probably occurred all across the country from what I gather. So we've had no rain. We had no rain for, you know, seven, eight weeks maybe. It's felt like a long time. The soil is almost dusty. That's how long it's been. I think it's been a real issue. So I've gone to hell back before going for it as far as putting in seed and euclop, but I had to get on with it. I thought I'd come to the point where I need to do it. So I had a really kind of intense week. It's supposed to be my week off, but I ended up on the allotment all the time, which is where I like to be. As it really was a case, I did about 40 drill sows. So it was a case of, you know, head down bumming, yeah, seeds getting sown. And I've kind of put all my Tommies in, my Obigens in, my Cukes are all in. And at the of the month, I then go for my runner beans, my cool jets. So I've really kind of gone for it in one big go. Now that's fine. That's absolutely fine. The plot is full now, for torrents, centres and purposes. But it just means I've been doing a lot of irrigation. Yeah. So a lot of irrigation. So before I go to work every day, I'm down there at six o'clock with my warring cam warrings, which is quite, quite intense part. It adds another dimension to the day really in terms of your personal output. there's no choice. that and as soon as those plants get up and running, obviously I'll be able to reduce irrigation, but it's all hands to the pump literally at the moment. Yeah. I can imagine. I mean, you talked about some of the plants that I know you've reared, you know, back at home and then taking them down to the allotment and put them in, you know, your cucumbers and stuff. You said you'd done a lot of sowing. So tell us what you've sown. Okay. Yeah. So on the allotment itself, my drill sowing, which is direct sowing to the ground, I have one big group of one area which is all carrots, radish, turnips, swede are all favorites of mine. Parsnips when they're ready, they're in toilet rolls at the moment on the balcony. They'll go in there as well. So what I call the root crops basically, are in one section. you know I'm a big lover of salads. Yes, me too. Mrs. C loves her salad as well. So I've got another big area which is mustard. lot of these are heritage varieties. Mustard, salad, green leaves, rocket. chard, spinach, all those sort of things I would use in salads and stuff. They're all in there. I think I've got a row of about 25 plants probably rows of seed are all in that ground there. So all the stuff I had at home like my Tommies, my Abbezines, that kind of stuff, my runner beans, my courgettes, that's then been hardened off and I've gradually taken them down there and plied them out. So that's been an ongoing thing really, but it's pretty full now. So what I'll do now is as gaps appear, I'll resell, replace. That's how it'll work. So of all of those, have they all germinated? Well, some are still waiting to come through. So most stuff has come. I've also done big bands of hardy annuals. I've got some great hardy annuals. I've got all different types of sunflower for flower cutting and all that. I can't wait to see that. But it's all starting to come through now. So there are a few bits and bobs that haven't appeared. I think that the reason for that is because it's so dry. The is incredibly... sensitive to moisture, will germinate when it thinks there's enough moisture around. If the soil is drying out and it's not sure, it will just sit. So that's why it's so important for me to go down and get the water on it. Otherwise nothing's going to materialize. But I am getting quite a lot of germination, which obviously is quite exciting. Yeah. Always, very much so. I did a box of carrots, just more for fun because I just had a spare packet of seed and I thought I'll just sow them. they've been an absolute joy, but it's only a sort of window box sized container. And I sewed them really, really far too thickly. And now they're about sort of 10 centimeters high. so this morning I thought I better just do start doing some thinning. Anyway, I thinned out and, and of course the bottom is a mini tiny carrot. So I just kind of brushed it off with it, just brushed the soil off and ate it. Absolutely delicious. So now I'm really excited. I've got to thin that whole box of carrots and it's going to be delicious. I'm have a lovely little thing of tiny weeny carrots. So sweet and delicious. sure. Yeah. The tops of course are quite strong, aren't they? Quite sort of parsley-ish. But you can put them into soups and use them as a herb. Yeah, yeah. Brilliant. Amazing. Amazing. And that was just a kind of a thing I did for fun. I'm kind of excited that that that's all. Good container grown carrots. If you're in an area where you suffer from having carrot fly, and once carrot flies are established, the best way to grow them is in containers or high up if you like, and that'll save the problem. I've got my five faves and I've been doing leafy greens, same as you, and that's been a joy already. I've got Italian parsley, a whole row that is absolutely burgeoning. I've got two different types of heritage lettuce that are just fantastic. now, you know, we're not, we're not going and buying lettuce. We're, harvesting our own already. That's quite exciting. I love that. But I need to do the continual sowing thing. Yes, you do. sow, into crop. So you sow a drill of them and then you just leave 20 centimeters or 25 centimeters, sow another crop. That means when your crop's starting to grow, you can put another line in between. So you're perpetuating it then. That's the best way to do it. So I like to roll my leafy greens, my salad crops. I roll them and I do that by into sowing. by leaving big enough gaps between the crop that I can inter-sow a few weeks later and that means I've constantly got it on the go. And I'll tell you this, I've been living, because it's been winter, through the winter, towards the end of the winter, you're going to the supermarket and you're buying it. And I'm back on stuff I've grown myself and I tell you, the taste difference, it's just, it's not even comparable. really isn't. And also when you're buying a vacuum pack, don't know how old it is, what they've been sprayed with, are they hydroponically produced? There's so many sort of unanswered questions around it. that you don't get that information. I just think the taste is really the key. Yeah, I agree. And also the texture of them is somehow completely different. It's absolutely everything. You just munch on them like a bucket of sweets. But definitely the key to having constant supply is to interplant, interplant, interplant. And you've got stuff coming through at different ages basically. that's what I need to be doing more of actually, because I kind of get carried away and get all excited and I sort of end up watching that particular crop. Sometimes I look at them this is too nice to eat. I've all the harvesting. I've done all the effort to grow and they look beautiful. Now I've got to dig them up. But you have a couple of leaves, you might have a couple of leaves, you go, right, they're running the salad tonight. Delicious, absolutely delicious. Potatoes. So I have got the three different types, the first, early, second, early, main crops. I'm too late really for my first earlys and actually to be fair, they've gone over. I just had a small number of those. But what's actually happened is that my row of potatoes last year, which were wilder, which were a huge success, having thought I'd dug them all up, of course I never get them all. So I've got four or five potato plants that I'm just going to let them do their thing and get a harvest off those. know that potatoes as a crop. generally it's one we would really recommend rotation. But obviously if you've got something a little bit lucky like that, why not go with it? Yeah, why not? So if you're not digging, not using the ground, then it doesn't matter, does it? Yeah. Exactly. So I'm looking forward to that. So I'm quite excited about that, but I do still need to get the other two bounds in. Okay, well done. I've got mine in and there, but the growth rate is slow because it's been to dry. So they're nowhere near the size I would expect them to be come June actually, which is fine. I'll let them. I'll let them crack on. But it has been slower just because there's just not been the same moisture around. And I haven't really prioritized them because they'll sit there all right, the potatoes, as time goes by. My watering has been on other, the seeds basically, then stuff that was just starting out. Yeah. Yeah. You need to be strategic about it, really, don't you? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So I have sown my run of beans and they're all starting to germinate. However, I did it in the greenhouse just because it just meant I could keep an eye on it all. And I've had a bit of damping off. Yeah. And so I've lost two or three sweet pea plants where that thing where the stem just shrivels and then it keels over. And I think the same has happened to one of my runner beans, which I'm a bit worried about. So if you were spotting a bit of damping off amongst your seedlings, what would you do? Well, I would certainly pay attention to irrigation. think if you've got compost and irrigation, the compost is a bit heavy and it's bit too wet, that'll cause damping off. spacing is another thing and aeration, yeah, make sure the air is flowing around the plant. I think when I sow in bulk, say in a seed tray, I always try and make sure I distribute the seed evenly. It doesn't really count for runner beans and sweet peas because you tend to sell those. But making sure they've got the room to grow. If they're all packed together, they're more likely to damp off. But certainly air, irrigation and quality of compost are the three things I would focus on. Okay, well I'll keep an eye on it. I'll let you know how I get on. What I've done is I've taken the two sweet pea plants, so I lost about three of them and I had another two that were still okay. So I've put them outside. You could probably plant those now. So give them little bit of something to climb on and let them go, let them do their thing. It's not been a great year for peas again because of the dryness. They like a moist, wet spring, I think. I think so. They've struggled a bit. Every year the weather, the spring seem to be a little bit different. So some things thrive and some things don't. I've got aubergines that are already a foot and a half tall and I would never know we get them that big this time of year. So the sunshine has benefited some things and it upsets others. Okay. Well, my aubergines are tiny at the moment. So we'll see what happens there. there has been a warning that it's a really bad spring for aphids. Yes, every gardener I know is talking about this. It's perfect conditions to be an aphid. Aphids are having a massive party basically at our expense. So yeah, all the unusual things apply really. If you see them on a, if it's ornamental like a rose, if you see the, or a broad bean, if you see them on the apex on the shoot, nip the shoot out, you know, just keep an eye out. Things like black fly on broad beans are pretty, they're going to be a bad year for that. So pinching them out definitely. Planting for predators, make sure you bring, know, put fennel in, it flower, bring in their hoverflies, get as many ladybirds in as you can, so you've got diverse site, so you've got the predators eating the aphids. But some years you'll just have a big infestation and I think the hot spring is what's causing this. So there might be a case that you lose a few bits and bobs. But you know my philosophy, I plant a wide range of plants, so I put lots of fingers in pies basically. I don't stick to certain things. So if some things aren't so good this year, other things will pick up a slack. So, don't panic is my advice really. So, yeah, so mix it up as much as you can. Yeah. Yeah. And if you can get predators in maybe, you know, in wasp, parasitic wasp, maybe you might come in and feed them. Anything like that. Nice diverse site will certainly help. People often say amongst the team here that actually if you mix up your planting, not just sticking to rows, that's another good way of confusing the predators. Yes, it is. So you mix it up hardy annuals like I band them through my edible so you get this mixture of colour. And I do that for two reasons. One is I think I get more crop. It helps keep down pests and disease, but I just love the look of it. just think that's the of, that freeze for flow planting is really my thing. Yes. I think it's mine as well. Loving the sound of that. So it was my birthday in May and I was given a wildlife camera. Oh, very good. Belated happy birthday. Oh, well thank you very much. What a gift that was. Yeah. My family all decided that would be a great idea. they were right. I've had it trained on the pond to see what I can see. I was inspired to get one by Kate Bradbury because obviously went to visit her a couple of months ago and her pond was teeming with frogs. It was absolutely extraordinary and she'd captured this kind of frog fest on her pond on her wildlife camera. I thought, right, okay, time has come. So I was given this, took a bit of rigging up, you know, sometimes a bit of Wi-Fi and all that, you've got to it all sorted out. But anyway, it is now up and running. And I have the most beautiful fox that comes into the garden. I'm pretty sure it's a dog fox. They're quite hard to tell the difference between a dog and a vixen, but I'm pretty sure it's a dog fox. And comes and drinks from the pond. And you can hear the sound on the camera as well. You can hear the fox kind of lapping up. Oh, wow. The pond water. Really, that was really amazing. And it was a nighttime shot as well. you know, it's just magical comes in the night. But the same fox came back a few days later at 10 to five in the morning when it was light. So it was dawn. So I've got this beautiful, you know, daytime shot of this absolutely magnificent fox. I was thrilled with that. We've seen all sorts of lovely birds. We had great tits that have nested in the bird box in the garden and fledged. And then we've just seen yesterday The great tits are back because we know that because they're coming to drink from the pond. And even the pigeons actually that I know you're not terribly fond of Chris, I'm actually quite fond of the pigeons. know how to have a nice bath. Yeah, yeah. I think the pond is a place for them, a balcony is a... Fair point. So yeah, that's been an absolute joy actually just to kind of show that your garden... is a place for wildlife. Well, particularly at night because a lot of wildlife is nocturnal, they stay out the way of us because we're obviously buzzing around during the day and we're probably upset most of the time. So having it at night, especially around a pond really comes to life, doesn't it? So capturing that is a special treat. Yeah, that's right. You see moths fluttering across and just there's always a sound of birdsong as well. at Nighttime, yeah. Well, the dawn chorus starts quite early when it's still dark. Yeah, it's been a, mean, the bird life this time of year is just amazing. It really is. There's so much going on. And we've had a few things I've never seen before just off the mob. I've had a song thrush. Oh, how And this is quite an interesting story. So we were sitting on the sofa and we could hear this, it's quite loud, a song thrush. And I didn't know what it was at the time. It has this chirp in a way and it tends to chirp as the sun at dusk time. So I've got this app that I use to identify. think it's, most people carry this app around now. And was a song for us, so I was really chuffed with that. I've never had one before there. And then the next day it was on one of our roses, eating the aphids. So it was actually doing a job for me as well. So that was kind of a nut hatch and I've had black caps and I've had quite a lot of birds I've never had before off that, you know, off my balcony, which is I live near Green Lane, so I am, you know, I'm London, London. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Wonderful. And also, You know, that actually organic growing is about food and flowers. But the wildlife is there It's another layer, isn't it? I always see birdlife as another layer in the garden. A garden's layers and layers of different things. A birdlife and wildlife are massively part of that as well. You want to stack those things up. You want soil, plants, wildlife all stacked up on each other. And that to me is the ultimate goal. Indeed. And this month we spoke to Hugh Richards for the podcast. who is all about permaculture, course. Absolutely fascinating interview. A lot of it dedicated to food growing, pretty much all of it dedicated to food growing. But the principles of permaculture are really inspiring, especially when we're facing quite a scary future. mean, what's your view on Well, think it's massive on soil preservation to start with, and that's really the key to it. I think growing local food has got to be the way forward. We've said it many, many times. I think, you know, The global suppliers can be very delicate, can't they? Something could change, climate change, weather. So I think, I this theory, I'll put it in a nutshell to you, right? As I go into schools and I think to myself, being able to grow something, food, it should be a life skill, every kid should be taught it. That should just be a life skill. Our grandparents all knew how to grow something. And I think that, you if you wanted to really knuckle it right down to one thing, let's teach our kids to grow. Let's try and grow ourselves and let's embed that in our daily lives, that it's normal for you to go out and plant some carrots in a- in a pot or grow some lettuce in a window box. Let's make that normal everyday life, not something that's off in the distance that we just chap into when we're in a supermarket or in a shop. It should be part of our home life and should be part of our education. A few weeks back, I had the privilege of visiting Hugh Richards in his seven acre experimental permaculture garden in Midwest Wales. Hugh's been gardening his whole life, starting his YouTube channel when he was just 12 years old. He's just brought out a new book, The Permaculture Garden. I spoke with him about his linear food forest, the significance of biodiversity in food production, and the role of permaculture within organic growing. We are here about a mile inland from the sea in Midwest Wales, just above Aberystwyth. And we're at my kind of experimental garden site, which is a seven acres in size. And it is a nice south facing slope. It's a beautiful day today. It's kind of funny being so close to the sea. feels kind of Mediterranean compared to where I used to live on the foothills of the Cambrian mountains. yeah, it's consisting of a lot of... Lots of different things going on. A lot of fun. It's kind of a good representation of my brain, kind of scatty, but it's all coming together as we've just finished our third year here. Okay. Well, we're going to have a walk around. I mean, it doesn't look scatty at all to me. What it does say to me is there are a number of different experimental methods going on, that there are lots of areas where you're trying different things out and we're going to have a walk around and talk about those, is really exciting. So where shall we start, Hugh? What's the area you're most passionate about today? I mean, today, it has to be like right this second. I think as I was showing you, it's that linear food forest and seeing all these little things developing and it's just a small space, but it's cool. Okay. Let's start with the linear food forest. That's really great. You've just brought out a book. So tell us about that. What's that called first of all? It's called the permaculture garden and it's kind of my way of trying to make permaculture accessible. I'm trying to kind of bring it to the mainstream because the thing about permaculture is that it's all principles that anyone can use. It's not a rule book. It's designed for flexibility. And so for me, it's been really fun using that journey, showing the principles, just showing lots of different examples and using it hopefully as a book that people can feel inspired by to just go out and explore what they're interested in. It's not just a book. mean, it's a tome. It really is. And it's full of not just sort of sensible research advice. It's also full of your tips as well. I really like that. That things that you've tried out and, you know, really giving people a kind of, you know, an encouraging boost, but also demystifying it. Yeah. Yeah. I think one of the biggest things to demystify is soil health. I think it's got way too complicated, especially for the common gardener. I feel like it's getting on par with soil, with like rocket science and all of that kind of stuff. It really is very simple to have healthy soil. don't need to know barely anything. The way that I see it is a gardener's responsibility is to create the conditions for soil to basically work its magic. And to do that, you want to have plants growing in your soil, just disturb it as least as possible and apply some organic matter each year. That's all you need to do. That's all you need to know. So go out there and get gardening. Well, one of the things that you could do if you were going to go out there and get gardening is you could create a linear food forest. We're standing by this. probably about 10 meters long, I would say. Not much more than a meter wide, maybe a meter and a half, two meters wide. I mean, it's long and narrow, entirely translatable into my own garden and probably lots of other people's gardens. Yeah, it's really fun. It's kind of working with the idea of layers. That's what a food forest is. There were seven core layers that were inspired by from nature, but really in our temperate climate, I prefer working more with three. So I'm looking at like the upper canopy, the middle canopy, which is more of the soft fruit and then the lower canopy, which is more herbaceous. And what we have is a huge mix of things. have a Tanzi or Wild Yarrow right at the top because of biodiversity is fantastic. We've got Lupins and then coming down, we've got all sorts of things. It's Gooseberries, Chokeberries, Elephant Garlic, Patient's Dock, Comfrey, Rhubarb, Nine Star Perennial Broccoli. We've got Taunton Dean, Perennial Kale, Dorberton's Perennial Kale, Chinese Garlic Crest, Nigella, Bronze Fennel, all of these different things, all sorts of other herbs that I'll save everyone's time and not mention it. everlasting onion and chives and garlic. It's here, it's designed to be kind of just a bit of its own ecosystem. One of my favourite little patches is where I've got three plants coming together and they're all super productive and healthy of a rhubarb, wild garlic and the Dorberton's kale. And it's just, it's so nice to see it developing so quickly. And what I love about perennials is that especially for things like the patient stock, they emerge out of nowhere. earlier on in the season, they don't get impacted by slugs. You've got a huge amount of food being pumped out. You can let it grow on so it creates a structural feature with its flower spike, or you can cut it back and start again, chop and drop it like an alternative to comfrey. The leaves are lovely, they have this lovely citrusy flavour to them. And yeah, really, this is an example of me being quite free spirited, but I am just making sure that the things that I plant have enough space for them to really come into their own and not be too, too cramped because it's easy to put especially perennials too close together. But then again, if things are too close together, I can chop off a few leaves, put them on the ground, chop and drop, just build up the soil fertility. anything is possible. You are absolutely blown away by perennials, aren't you? Yeah, I am because I had a really not fun year, start of last year with slugs. And I noticed the one thing that slugs weren't really going for were a lot of my perennial veg and herbs. So I've just kind of doubled down on that instead of trying to fight the slugs. I'm like, well, I could adapt my ways. And it is a bit of a mindset shift of working then with the perennial vegetable side of things. But one of the core things that you've got a lot of alliums, you've got a lot of leafy greens. those together with maybe bit of olive oil and salt and stir fry them and it's a really delicious snack to have as a side dish. It is simple. And I think as well as what we were chatting about before, as we were having a, you know, just a little catch up was I love fruit. And I think that fruit is one thing that we can do very well here in Britain, especially soft fruit. And so that's really what I'm trying to... put more of the redcurrants and the jostaberries here. We've also got alpine strawberries and summer bearing strawberries. So yeah, it's not forgetting the fruit. It's not forgetting the herbs. It's not forgetting the flowers. It's not forgetting the vegetables. It's not forgetting the trees. It's actually bringing them all into one system. And so much of it is perennial when you stop and think about it. But I think that's the thing that's key to this linear food forest. Forest is one of those words that conjures up a huge area. This is a small area. but it's got a huge amount of food in it, a huge amount of production going on. mean, this is a whole kind of extraordinary project dedicated really to all the different ways that you can grow food, but also how you can use the land to protect the food plants and how, you know, we're on a really quite a steep slope and that would probably put quite a lot of gardeners off actually, but you have created terraces and you've worked with the contours. Can you talk a little bit about that? I mean, to me, It's not so much a hindrance, it's an opportunity. So one of the great things about a slope is that we don't have lots of sitting water. So when it's really wet last year, we were actually okay, which is nice. Everything is a mindset. It's a mindset kind of shift in a way, because permaculture is about seeking opportunities. And so here we're just like, well, an opportunity is to plant along contour. Like right now we're walking past a load of gooseberries and redcurrants, which are planted on contour. So any of the water coming down will then like percolate and go down into them and they slow down the speed of water. So that's kind of the main thing. Yeah. So they're a bit of a break, aren't they, to the slope? Yeah, I can see that. It's kind of a self-watering system. Yeah. Yeah. It works well. then, I mean, this, this fork, cause it is a large site, we have got diggers in and there is... for the practical reasons of having a bit of flat ground like for the plant nursery, we do need some slightly flatter areas. Again, it's not perfectly flat because I don't want standing water, but it's flat enough that things and plant pots won't start rolling down the hill. exactly. We're just approaching the chickens who I think are probably the most spoiled chickens. Certainly in this neighbourhood I would have thought, look they're all coming to us, which is absolutely lovely. And Hugh has just managed to give them a handful of grass which they're pecking happily. They look absolutely like they're just having a wonderful life, I must say. They really do. But I know that they're an important part of the system for you here. So explain how you integrate keeping chickens into your system here. Yeah. So the chickens here, I call this area Fort Clucks to protect them from foxes. So we have an automatic system. So if we do need to leave them over the weekend, they're perfectly safe. They've got enough water and food and the door shuts and everything. But chickens are my chief composters. That's what they are. Every day we bring in a load of different greens and material and they just obliterate it. The next day there was no evidence whatsoever. And they're turning that. Into compost through the act of scratching. We'll turn it over and then right in front of us, that bin is half full. We've been using it, but it's half full of finished compost. So we just have it here, grab it when we need it. Really simple. They've actually got two other areas. So we've got a little chicken tunnel that can take them down to the bottom area. There's an in-between area that we've just planted with quite a lot of soft fruit actually with the idea of them foraging that. And also it's really nice just to have a little bit of company and someone to chat to. Yes, you are quite remote out here. You are on your own. There's no phone signal either. Which is kind of a joy in some ways, but in other ways, it does make life more difficult, especially trying to run a business. Yeah, it does, but you've got to adapt. We are going to be getting an off-grid system here, but it still means that here I still wouldn't have phone signal. So I might have to go somewhere else, but it's lovely and it's a very rural place. You might be able to hear it at the moment on the microphone, but you can hear tractors in the background and the farmers are busy cutting a lot of silage at the moment. And I think there is a bit of a worry, was speaking to our farmer next door, Martin, yesterday about it. There's quite a lot of concern already with the severe lack of rainfall, whether there's going to be enough hay. And I think another thing that especially like for gardeners, it's not just a lack of rainfall for the developing plants. For me, it's a lot of my mulch is made from the living plants. So if the living plants aren't growing as much, like even with grass, I do have a lot of grass here and I use it as a yield. I harvest the grass to mulch my plants with. So there's a little bit of a concern around there, but again, That's what we just talking about earlier with perennials. They've got a lot more developed root systems and annuals and they don't have that mindset of life is a bit stressful, let's reproduce otherwise we die out. Whereas perennials have that inbuilt mechanism of we're not going to die out if it's a bit stressful, we'll hold on a little bit more. So in terms of building a more resilient garden, then that's an absolute need for more perennials. Talking about the farmers and thinking about the chickens and what you've got here, is permaculture affecting all areas of your life or is it just gardening and growing? so permaculture in its simplest nutshell is nature-inspired design. It's kind of a form of biomimicry, but looking at not just patterns, but also systems. I think it's just, for me, I use it for problem solving. There's a lot of businesses now that are using the 12 core principles of permaculture and the three ethics of permaculture of people care, earth care and fair share. They're using that to build meaningful, purposeful businesses, which I think is really beautiful. so, yeah, it's a big part of what I'm doing. like with the plant nursery that we've just started called Dovey Plants, the whole ethos there, there's been a lot of permaculture design and thinking about it, thinking about the environment, but especially with People Care, it's like for every 10 plants we sell, one is going to be donated to a community growing project around the UK. it's just trying to understand that nature is interconnected. so everything that every part of the garden is interconnected, but also it's thinking about the connections beyond just your area. In permaculture, we talk about the five zones, like zone one is immediately out your house, which is probably where you'll have your herbs and your salads that you need the most. Zone five is the wild boundaries around. But I think about zone six, zone six then encompasses a community around you. And I think that that's really important. And it's, I like this community, it's rural. It's There's some things that I don't agree with what the farmers are doing, but there are many things that I do. think farmers are sadly, they're the easy group to try and bully in quite a complex world, especially talking about food system. They're between a rock and a hard place. So I have a lot of sympathy and I think it's really important to have that nuance. We need that diversity in food production. A lot more people growing their own food in their back gardens. We need more community gardens and also here just producing based on what the land can provide. Here in Wales, we're really good at growing grass and we're really good at growing trees. You can cater for all diets off trees and grass. You can run a market garden just off those two materials, no problem whatsoever. But one of the ways of converting grass into food is also through milk or dairy or through meat. so regardless of what someone's own dietary needs, I think it's really important to look at how our diet can reflect what the land is most suitable at producing. And I think that that's an interesting thought because even throughout the UK, what a truly sustainable diet would actually change quite rapidly within different areas of the UK. Whereas I feel that we're becoming obsessed as a world with this monoculture approach to food. we know, you know, I'm preaching to the converted here, monoculture anything is dangerous. It's dangerous because it's not what creates strength. And diversity is key. Diversity is the underlying principle of everything that I do. Absolutely. Okay. But it's interesting, isn't it, in the small space that that does make a real difference. You you think, oh, well, it's, you know, it's only inches away from its planting companion, but actually, yeah, you know, figure it out, observe where the sun is and it still makes a difference. I think that's what I love about permaculture is it can be done on a tiny scale as well as a massive scale. You've actually raised a really important point here because people think to do permaculture you need a big area like this and no permaculture is a design approach it is just a method of design so it means whether you have a balcony or a patio or a massive farm or anything like that you can apply the principle. Last night I had a call with the permaculture association and one of the things that I said there is I actually think the more challenging that someone's context is Like it could be like little to no money, really struggling with space. think the more challenging something is, the more permaculture comes into its own. I think if you have, you know, a lot of disposable income and a nice back garden, know, permaculture is cute and stuff, but that's not where its strength lies. The strength of permaculture lies in where you do have a challenging environment to think outside the box, to make something work. And I think that's really important, especially in this day and age. A lot of people ask us about shade. They've got a really shady garden and there's nothing they can do about that or a really shady balcony perhaps. How would you apply principles to that? Well, firstly, you've got to understand what kind of shade. There's lots of different kinds of shades. The way that I think about it, now this is quite interesting. I grow a lot of things in deep shade that you shouldn't grow in deep shade that still do well. In the old garden, we had red currants. directly under sycamore trees. It's still yielded really healthy as well as trusamata tubers. Any garden book would say you can't plant anything in there because there's no direct sunlight at any part of the day, but we're growing stuff. Of course, the simplest thing are leafy greens. I think a really nice way of thinking about it, if you have got a shady garden, but you look directly above you and if you can see the sky directly above you, there's actually a huge amount of things that will grow. And I've even seen people in that situation, even without direct sunlight, grow tomatoes outside. Again, this is in America, but it's a similar idea. It wasn't like Florida or anything. I think they were somewhere in New England, so a not too dissimilar climate, especially fruit, vegetables and herbs and brassicas, all those kinds of things. As long as there's nothing directly overhead, you can be surprised with, and I've been surprised with how much I can grow. I've grown amazing beetroot. We're right next to my like little allotment garden plot and the far corner there's a fence and the way that it works is that there's actually no direct sunlight on the things directly underneath it. And I've grown all sorts of things there, including amazing golden beetroot that has had no direct sun, but it's produced. And so don't let shade hold you back. And we are just next to what you've just called your garden plot. And this is probably the more famous area of your whole place here because this is where you do a lot on Instagram and YouTube, it? From here. Yeah. This here was, well, this is my, based on the official allotment figures from the National Allotment Society of a full-size allotment being 250 square meters. This is scaled to exactly a half-size allotment. which is 125 square meters, or another way of thinking about it is half a tennis court within the white lines. It's huge. It feels huge. I would actually take a step back and say that when you grow 600 kilos of food here in a year, even if you have half or quarter of that, that's still a huge amount of food. What I would actually say is most people walk in and they say it's than I thought. based on the video. it's interesting for you to say it's huge. I'm just thinking about it in terms of a vegetable garden and just the way you've put it into context about the size of a full allotment would be twice of this. That's what made me say it's huge because it's ample, isn't it? It is. mean, it's more than enough. It's lovely space and it's kind of funny because I can walk from one end to the other. side in less than 10 seconds compared to the garden at my parents. This is like really small in comparison. And it's nice because I can kind of keep on top of it. I've got a few different things growing around the place. Of course I've got raised beds. I've got a hot bed. I've got a lot of perennials, especially around the vicinity, around the boundaries and then the polytunnel in the corner. But this was here to show you that I think the main thing that we got from the experiment of the self-sufficiency garden is that on average per square metre of growing space, we grew eight kilos of food. Now, if we think about portion sizes, a portion of vegetables of whatever NHS say is 80 grams of vegetables, that means we're growing a hundred portions of food per square metre. So yes, this might be bigger, but even if people have six square metres, they can grow 600 portions of food. And I think that that was like the winning part of this experiment. That's amazing, isn't it? How long did you run the experiment for? We just ran it for a growing season, start to finish. The goal was 365 kilos, but we got there in five months from starting this first of March. yeah, and then we finished counting. So it didn't include the things happening the next year. It was actually within about nine or 10 months in fact. But yeah, really, really pleased with it. Very exciting. And was that? Perennials you'd even planted within that timeframe or were they already established? No, so with the Self-Sufficiency Garden, that was based on high yields. So that was very much more focused on annuals. We did have some really good perennials. Even the rhubarb did really well that year. We got a few kilos of rhubarb and some more soft fruit and herbs as well. was important to me that I still had herbs and I still had things like edible flowers that won't add to the yield, but would add to the biodiversity and add to the aesthetics of it. But like now, I've now changed this so it is more perennially dominated and also because I don't actually need that much food. We are heading out towards a lot of fruit growing and I know you're really passionate about fruit as a crop around the UK in general, but also it's not something that... that perhaps we talk about enough is the potential for fruit and not just this straightforward stuff that we always think of, whole host of other plants here that you're using to grow berries. So I'd just love to introduce people to some of the more unusual bushes that you can grow and actually how you grow those. Yeah, I mean, my favourite one at the moment, well, the one that I'm most excited about is what I'm now kind of calling the hungry gap. fruit which is honey berries and honey berries are great essentially they're they look like an elongated blueberry but they don't need acidic soil and they they're ripe to eat in May so it's a bit of a no-brainer now what you need to understand about honey berries is that they do need a pollination partner a variety don't just buy one variety you will get some berries but you're not going to have a very good fruit set so make sure you get two varieties and yeah honey berries are fantastic another one is choke berries So these are like, just like little, I don't know really how to describe them. They're almost like these little crab appley things that work really well. We've got all sorts of other things that we're trialling like Worcester berries. Worcester berries are a hybrid between gooseberry and blackcurrant. And they actually make a really good security fence because they're two by two meters and very spiky and thorny, but they give you an excellent berry crop. it's a little similar to josterberry in vigour. but just not the same size. And also another one that we're trying this year, a greencurrant. So greencurrant is a blackcurrant variety, just ripe and sweet when it's still green. So that's, that's a lot of fun. So you've got to remember to pick it. That's it. Well, basically, yeah, it is. Kind of goes against the grain, doesn't it? A bit to pick a green berry. It does, but I think that's pretty cool, isn't it? is. It's really cool. And that's what I love. We've got all of these different... plants and varieties and almost endless things at our disposal that we can use. There's a type of, there's all sorts of other berries as well that I'm growing here, like sea buckthorn. That's really exciting because sea buckthorn is a native to the UK, but there were different varieties of sea buckthorn that have been bred to be more productive in a way. But if you're buying these, these are the female varieties. So just a little tip is if you are buying named female varieties, you do need a male to pollinate them and you need like one male per eight female sea buckthorn. But I'm really excited about sea buckthorn. There's all sorts of other things like obviously you can then look more at the tree kind of scale or the shrubby scale. So roses, rose of a gossar, the fruit there, you've got the rose hips. We've got loads of elder. So we've got the elderberries, we've got lots of rowan, crab apples, common pears. And then the fruits just keep on growing. I love autumn raspberries because I'm a little bit of a lazy gardener. I haven't got time to go through and start like clearing out particular things and looking for like the one year old canes. Autumn raspberries are just dead simple because you just cut them all at the end of the season and they grow back again and they're really productive. Another one that we're growing, lots of things. Japanese wineberry, that is lovely up against the south facing wall. Goji berry, got my first Goji berry harvest, a really good one last year. Just a word of caution, don't eat Goji berries raw, they're disgusting. You want to dehydrate them. You can eat the leaves of Goji berry though. So that's an additional harvest. And then all sorts of different things like Sylvan berries, Tay berries, Blackberries. And then within one of the poly tunnels, it's a little bit more Mediterranean in a way. We've got apricots and nectarines and a peach and cherries. keeping it vibrant. Loads of apples, over a hundred, nearly a hundred different varieties of apple planted here as well. That's incredible. mean, I know it is a big space, you know, it's seven acres, but you have really gone for it. And that diversity, just in that list you've just come out with, must be helping and it must be helping the plants as well as the soil. Yeah. And the thing is, I'm a very ambitious person and this is just the start. I wish I could show you what my mind is thinking of how this will be in five years time because even within here, I basically want it so people can come here and just get tons of inspiration and they can walk around in every single corner with something new and exciting to see. can tell you they won't be disappointed. I wanted to finish, if I may, with a question to you. about organic methods and whether that is truly embedded throughout permaculture, not in a judgmental way, just in a way of working in harmony with nature. Yeah, mean, organic has always been what I've known and I have my dad to thank for that. was a keen organic gardener, still absolutely is. And it was also He's also fought for a while actually, the small holding was approved by the soil association, like registered and stuff. So my parents are very into the organic side of things. And so that was my default as a kid was organic, appreciating nature and understanding that you need to work with nature. And I think a lot of people fear nature. Like I don't mind having some pests in my garden because that means Hopefully I'll also have my predators there to control. I don't want a sterile environment. And so the organic side here is that it was that attitude of respect for nature that I learned from the get-go, thanks to my dad being an organic gardener, that will always remain with me and is through and through core to what I do. Time now for the post bag and I'm here with Chris Collins, of course, and also this time we're joined by Emma O'Neill, our head gardener here at Garden Organic. Hello, both of you. Hiya. So first question, weeds. Let's crack on to this perennial weed. So I have recently moved into a house with a garden infested with ground elder and giant bindweed. I wonder if you can give any advice. I'm digging out the elder, but the roots are massive systems and are aware that it's impossible to get everything out. And that question is from Kath. Well, first of all, Kath, just to say giant bindweed is also known as field bindweed. So just in case people are wondering what giant bindweed is, that gives us a bit more breadth on that. first of all, Emma, what would you say here? What would you do in this situation? Well, first of all, I feel your pain, Kat. Yeah. We also have bindweed, albeit the hedge bindweed here. And you're doing everything right really. With ground algae in particular, instead of trying to dig it out, you could just keep cutting it down. It doesn't like to be cut. So the more you cut it, the more you're going to weaken it. Obviously where you can dig it out, that is great, but actually they're rhizomes and so... If you leave a tiny bit in, it will grow from that, which is exactly the same with bindweed. So again, you want to try and dig out as much of the root as possible, really. An alternative is to grow some things that potentially could try and smother those plants, but really is a case of just keep going at them. They are both very pernicious weeds. So I've got bindweed in a path. And I just keep hoeing it and just keep hoeing it. And every time a shoot appears, I hoe it off. And occasionally I try and pull some out, but the root system is, you know, ahead of root system is massive. We had a problem previously and eventually we sewed a lawn over it and we just kept mowing it and mowing it and mowing it out. So it is just a case of persistence. Really. You've just got to keep it on and on. If you have it in lots of different sections, can obviously smother it. So cover it with something to block out the light so that that weakens it and then move on to that section when you've got time. How quickly does ground elder spread? I think it's a bit more controllable. Well, it depends on the conditions really. They tend to prefer shadier conditions. So we've got some here and it's under a hedge. But once you've got it, it just spreads quite readily, really. I don't mind ground elder quite so much. Some people just use it as ground cover. You plant shrubs through it, deciduous shrubs through it, and it acts almost like a ground cover. can, that's one way to do it. Like Emma says, the other way to do it is to try and snuff it out from the light, by applying evergreens above it. I mean, it's a character. really is. You know what mean? It's there. Yeah, I mean it does attract pollinators though, because it has those unbelieverous flowers and pollinators love it. And I do believe when it's younger, you can eat it. You can. Not buying weed, don't think I'm wrong. certainly elder... Buying weed pie. Yeah, ground elder, I've heard that too, that you can eat the shoots. But I'd like people to check that out before they do that. And, and vineweed does have a very pretty trumpet flower. Well, if it's funny, it? Cause if you were in the Mediterranean and it was more in glory and it was purple, we'd be saying how wonderful it is. But it's just, it's the fact that it's so invasive. It's the problem. Yeah, it does tend to strangle other plants. I think that's one of the issues with vineweed. if it gets into your sweet corn, you've got a nightmare. Yeah. And I think it's that sense with vineweed that, you know, it's so prolific. You know, it kind of has that stickiness, doesn't it? When you try and we can try and get rid of it. I've got a real binary problem and you you turn your back and get on with something else and it's back. You know, in a sense we're all living with it, Cath. So don't think anybody's on top of it because... Just keep pulling away. keep pulling away. All right. Well... Moving on, we've got a question here from Hannah. We have some grafted fruit trees which are producing shoots and blossom from below the graft. Should we just leave these shoots and blossom or should we remove them? Well, Chris, you're our grafting man. Yeah, well, no, what's happening is obviously when you graft, you have a root stock and that will be probably a wild plant like a wild apple or a wild clematis or a wild rose. And then you take your scion... basically, which is that you hybridize and you graft the two together. And what's happening here is, is the root ball, the wild part of the plant is reverting. So it's sending up shoots from the rootstock. So the thing to do is you don't want that to happen because it's taking energy away from the scion, from the part of the plant you want to grow. It's just cut them out. So this brings back memories to me because when I first started gardening, one of my jobs was to go to the rose garden and you get these big long whippy shoots coming out the base of the hybrid tea roses. And that would be the rootstock. So it'd be my job to cut them off, but particularly important. with apples because you wanted to set fruit basically. So the answer is yeah, do please cut them out. It can be actually a sign of stress on the plant. So they tend to be, you tend to get more shoots off the root stock if the plant is struggling. So it might be an idea to give it a good old mulch, maybe spike the ground around it and give it a good mulch and inject some health into the plant. might help. Sometimes it happens, doesn't it, if that plant has been damaged in some way? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So if it's under stress of some kind. So you see it in other ways, you see it in variegation on hybrids where the plant wants to revert to what it used to be. That's what the rootstock's doing. says, this is what I really am, not this imposter above me. Yeah. So it's been grafted onto me. So it's trying to be what it is basically. Yeah. I have it in the garden with one of our roses. So we've got a Rose Rosa cupurae and that's been grafted onto a dog rose. And now I've got double. So I've got part dog rose, part cupurae. And I've left it because it's in a wilder area, yes, eventually the dog rows will completely out complete. I've seen it on apples in orchards where the apples got really old and ropey and you get two things out and get the root stock, get all the shoots off that. And then they start sending up big water shoots as well, which is like I've taught sign that they're struggling. Yeah. But it's an interesting thing grafting and it's very clever. It's a, when I was an apprentice, you didn't get to do it. It was one old boy who did it because it's very skillful and all you're doing is you're aligning the cambium. So. If you imagine the scale of it, like a hybrid tea on a rose, you're literally working with something that's a centimeter by half a centimeter. So you'll peel back the outside of the rose and then take a bud of another rose and slot it into place. And you've got to line up the cambium, which is your live cells. So they bond together basically, and you wrap it in tape and wait for it to take. It's a really skillful job. incredible. Yeah, it's a very skillful job. And we have a lot of our apple varieties to thank for it as well. I fruit varieties. Amazing and you means that you end up with much more harvest really doesn't it? the context of an apple tree that's why we do it. The reason we graft is often the rootstock is a healthier and more vigorous plant and so then you graft onto it so that the scion that you want to grow is going to get away better. Yeah okay. More resilience to pests and disease, that kind of thing coming from the wild root stock. So would you say if you went to go and buy an apple tree, it's most likely to be grafted or are there some that just aren't grafted, they're just good apple trees, if you were buying a tree from a tree nursery? I think all of them were probably grafted. So that's the way it's gone now. Yeah, because if you had a wild apple, they're pretty inedible, they're not something you're going to eat. So they've been hybridized deliberately through grafting so we can... all these wonderful varieties. And I think there's something like 30,000 heritage varieties in this country. So it's a very rich part of our culture in many ways. Yes. Interesting. And same with roses. Would they all be grafted? Pretty much. No, not all of them. No, shrub roses like Legosa that Emma mentioned. You've got that's our native rose, you know, rose hip. lot of anything like hybrid tea, which are those big, glossy ones that are really popular in the 80s and 90s, they'll all be, they'll all be grafted. Yeah. Okay. And you can always tell where the graft is because there's a lump on the stem basically. Yes, yeah, you'll see the joy in fruit trees. Sometimes it's really glaringly obvious. How fascinating. I didn't realize that everything pretty much was grafted in the apple world. That is interesting to me. Thank you very much. Right, moving on to the dry conditions that we've been having an awful lot of dryness, haven't we, lately. So with this dry weather, I have been saving grey water to help with watering my plants. Do you have any guidelines on how to use it? And is there anything I shouldn't use it on? So that's an interesting one. So Emma, first of all, would you use grey water? I think that you can use grey water, but I would use it sparingly. I don't think that it's a long-term solution and I definitely wouldn't be using it on edibles or my young plants and seedlings because it does contain chemical residue, even if the soap that you're using is organic. And obviously at Garden Organic, we have the certificate from the Soil Association. we are limited with that type of thing anyway. But domestically, I think you still need to take some care about what you're putting into your soil. So particularly edibles and young plants, you would advise against using grey water. Okay. So stick with rainwater there. Other tips too, if you still got a water and it's terribly dry, what are your tips? Well, really prevention is always better than cure. So mulching regularly, making sure that you've got the right plant in the right place, that you're now starting to look at our climate, which is obviously changing and you're picking the right plants for there. If you're doing things in containers that you're trying to group your containers together so that they're in effect sort of protecting each other. So, and creating a bit of humidity amongst themselves. And if it's containers also, if you can move them into the shade. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Chris, is there any context in which you would use grey water? I think on mature plants, think that maybe, maybe a tree that's a bit not long in the ground, maybe it's only been there two seasons, that might be really struggling at the moment. So I would probably lip the soil around it, what I call puddling. So I sort of raise the soil up around. the trunk and then I'd mainly use grey water to puddle I think because those plants. I think it's not something like MSS you want to do too often. I think it could affect pH as well because a lot of this detergents tend to be alkaloid as well in nature. I think yeah, mature specimens. It's interesting, it's been so dry that I've noticed shrubs starting to flag like spirea and duches and stuff, which normally doesn't happen. So I would be maybe looking to use grey water on those sort of more mature specimens. So we're okay broadly with shrubs and flowers. and probably containers, but we're not okay particularly with edibles or young Yeah, I wouldn't put it on seedlings or seeds or plants I'm raising. I certainly wouldn't put it on edibles, I don't think so. So it's a question of common sense, it? As well also is when you collect as much rain, it's going to rain sooner or later, collect as much of that as you can. Make sure you've got water bins like we've got here, right? And make sure you collect as much as you can for when that rain comes, because then you can get through these drier periods. Also timing. for water when it's going to have a maximum effect. I'm literally down by a lot when it's six in the morning at the moment, putting water on because it has a maximum effect. It's not transpiring straight away. So you're hitting the target. the deep water as well. think watering is quite, Enel agrees, quite a skillful job watering. Yes. lot of people get it wrong. think it's just splashing a bit of water about you. You need to think about it. So if you can really deep water when we have got water available, which by that means make sure they get a really, really good soaking. because that's better than little and often. And also you want to your roots of your plants downwards. So by deep watering and then it drying out, you're forcing the roots down and you get healthier plant that way as well. Do you agree with that Emma? Yeah, definitely. Okay. And the whole point of looking after your soil and keeping your soil covered. Yes. If you've got good soil, then it will be retaining the moisture even if you can't see that. it will be retained. And is there something about planting a bit closer together maybe to make sure that there isn't sort of patches of soil? So we do a mix, we intermingle our produce with flowers. So then we're reducing the amount of exposed soil and you're protecting them. So not only are you protecting them from pests and diseases, you are then shading, giving them some shading and some shelter as well. So from things like drying winds. I always plant thick. I think you're saying, by July I don't want to see soil, I just want to see plants. yeah, want to see. And that is going to pester the weed in to be done then because you've cut the light out from the soil and it's much better at retaining moisture. then the weeds aren't also taking any of that moisture. They're not stealing the moisture. Yeah, they're not stealing the moisture. Yeah. Okay, lots of really good ideas in there. Just to also mention, we did a whole podcast on water and saving water and water shortages last year, last June. So I do have a listen back to that if you want some more sort of in-depth advice around this. for now, thanks ever so much, Chris. Thanks, Emma. See you next time. That's all we've got time for this month. My thanks to Chris and Emma for all their wisdom and to Hugh Richards. I'm now working out how to incorporate a linear food forest in my own garden. You can follow Hugh online on Instagram, YouTube and TikTok at HughesGarden. If you're thinking of coming to Gardener's World live at the NEC, which is running from the 12th to the 15th of June, then do come and find us at our garden, which is the EcoTalk Rooted in Nature garden. We'd love to see you. All that's left now is for me to thank Kevin McLeod for the music and I'll see you next time.