This year i really want to make my garden into a den!

A garden is not just a place to grow vegetables, it is a human habitat and can be an extension of a home.

My garden currently consists of 3 main beds, a coldframe, a pond, benches, a climbing frame, paths, composts and imo bins and the start of a hedge. This year i will start to build it more into a den and give it an atmosphere.

Ever tried to give a garden a feeling of nostalgia? This years the chance to really start to make your habitat as a base in your garden.

By making a den i give myself a free invite into my garden. A den includes resting places such as a bench, a shed or a picnic area can make a place for me to stay still in my garden and enjoy.

Rocks in the garden = Minerals in our diet

Here is why we often remove stones from the garden:
– Easier cultivation
– Keeping root vegetables straight
– Easier on the hands
– No gaps in growth

Here is why we need to keep the stones:
– a source material for minerals and nutrients
– keeping air gaps and preventing soil compaction
– helping with the correct
water retention/drainage

Solution:
– Cultivation may need constant stone removal due to the soil movement and loss. The stones constantly are replaced from beneath.
– No-dig gardens may keep a layer of stone under the garden as a source material beneath the harvest depth.

So is your body short on magnesium or calcium? Try limestone as an underlayer. Potassium? granite?

It is well worth trying the longterm garden solutions as intensional input so that we have plants the really do contain what they should and therefore we contain what we should.

The ideal of water retention in the garden.

Water is a nutrient so we need it for the plants, however too much water damages plants and destroys soil. I could get a little umbrella for each plant in my garden when it rains or give them each a waterbottle in hot weather but this increases my shopping bill.

Whereas a watering can, hose or cover often solves the problem, the root hair damage is often still affected therefore stunting plant growth. The question is can we get rid of the problem or at least some of it (depending on your climate) instead of trying to put a plaster on a broken leg?

It looks like a yes if we look at some of our local eco-systems that filter and keep a sufficient retention of water (not too much or too little). After all we dont water our forests.

By copying them and layering our gardens with:
– A mulch (cover)
– Compost (organic matter)
– A soil that is an uncompacted Loam (the correct balance of silt, sand and clay)
– While making sure our gardens do not have a pre-existing flood problem.

This corrects water retention and helps prevent future compaction

With the right foundation the gardens can overflow at a correct retention. Meaning they both hold water and overflow the excess water.

Like a cup that can hold the right amount of water and not leak, that can cope with abundance and drought.

How to grow plants and not weeds.

The soil always tries to cover itself with something. You can fight it or give it what it needs.

The argument often looks like this,

Me: Ground, i want you to grow this plant as i do not like or cant eat your plants. So i will take your plants away and plant some seeds. In the process i will also cultivate and make you softer.

Ground: I will work for you but I will have no protection and can not hold onto my nutrients so i will grow your plants and whatever else i can to survive and i will become hard again.

Me: What are these other plants doing here? I cant eat them and will constantly need to remove them so my plants do well, i will also need to loosen the soil again by working hard or i will have no food!

Ground: Give me seeds for me to grow along with food and clothes. If you pay me with these i will work for you! You will only need to direct me and i will grow for you.

So i can choose how to pay my garden and expect the garden to work well if i care for it and maintain it.

Mulching and replacing what is taken from the garden is a fair exchange and will lead to specific garden growth. This means the plants you plant will be specifically grown and the garden will work for you specifically.

Why mulch especially woodchip can be a problem if used incorrectly.

The two problems are acidity and nitrogen fixing which you may find in a woodland also. This is due to wood or harder organic matter decomposing under the soil where microbes take longer to digest the material causing nitrogen to be used up and acidity to increase. Alike to our stomachs.

The main solution comes with keeping the woodchip on the surface of the garden and not mixed in.

This comes from experience and the 4 hour version of the back to eden garden video as the shorter videos can seem misleading without the full video.

This is also why in a ‘collective garden’ there are layers and gradients of decomposition. The woodchip sits on compost not soil, I.M.O (microbes) are added, the woodchip has started to decompose prior to purpose, is sifted and is never mixed into the garden.

The main example i have seen of this mistake is on a big scale where woodchip paths between rows were cultivated into the garden and re-ridged causing extremely little growth in the garden from the next year onwards. The solution in this case would mean heavy fertilising and lime for a long period of time or re-purposing the plot
(Perhaps to an orchard or raised beds with brought in soil and compost).

Your hard work can make nature redundant…

Imagine a car on a road on a hill about to go down, it free-wheels down and builds momentum, reaches the bottom and starts to ascend the next hill with it’s momentum. However this car has no engine and shortly loses it’s speed.

So you start to push the car up the next hill hopefully with help from your friends in order to climb and through a momentus effort you make it to the start of the next hill. Then start again.

Imagine a garden the same way, by missing out key components you only have momentum from your effort and not a powered capability. So by using an engine which could be symbolised as I.M.O. (microbes) we can drive the car rather than push it. Maybe we need to refil the car (or charge) and generally manage the machine but this is managing not labouring.

The momentus effort to push a car up a hill is like a seasonal cultivation in order to break up the weathered, compacted ground or by refertilising and removing weeds. By putting the effort into the initial garden build you can put that engine into the garden and cruise around town.

This is done through no-dig and I.M.O. methods focusing on the real reason why plants grow and the real food content that we need to be healthy without the pain and heartbreak to do so.

The micro climate kept within your garden is benefitted by a microbe/insect and plant exchange via cycling oxygen and c02 or via decomposition.

A micro-climate harbours life and is key to the garden. Even when the plants are harvested an eco-system can still be kept within the mulch and compost ready for it’s next expansion into your next plant canopy!

Try to keep your climates.

The use of gaps in the garden. Referring to walkways, borders, weed barriers and rises.

The reasons why we have these divides is usually due to our interaction with the garden such as walkways to water and weed the garden or borders to shape the garden design or raised beds to contain soil and rest our cups of tea/coffee on.

This interaction reason alone is an excellent reason to have a ‘gap’ in the garden but is there more to it?

When building a garden very often we are building onto a pre-existing ecosystem. This includes a lawn, an area of overgrowth or even next to an area of growth like a hedge.

When building a garden you are either changing or combining with an area’s current ecosystem in order to be plant specific.

So in order to make a garden successful we can use ‘gaps’ to prevent the majority of invasive species we call weeds and pests.

In our typical gardens use a path and a raised bed as we find seeding plants do not reach the bed especially when cut by machine they are not spread onto the bed but the path. We also find one of the biggest garden pests, the slug usually travels over our woodchip path and gets turned around back to the grass as it prefers to travel less distance for food. We also have a border edging onto the grass which helps stop root growth under the path.

One of the main gaps/barriers we use is a lining and biodegradable material such as cardboard to initially stop weeds however still allow microbes and water to travel through.

Having gaps like these means that the main infiltrators to your garden may come from the air not the ground or from lesser invasive plants like a shrub rather than grass or weeds which should give the garden a better chance to flourish.

Does a garden puke? Have you seen a garden puke? Should a garden puke?

Puke or Defecate depending on where your standing in forms such as mud, water throughflow and leeching. 🤮

No-dig gardens often retain a measure of water and drain excess at a steady rate. This means they puke less but digest thier input. This is mostly a big advantage except when it comes to toxins.

This is where no-dig methods need to pay vital attention to thier garden input as these gardens accumulate and ideally do not puke! This leads to plants potentially containing on them or in them a harmful chemical.

Chemicals are not necessarily going to kill us and generally our bodies balance themselves (even by puking). However there are toxic concentrations and inorganic versions we need to avoid.

Here are some inputs that can cause toxic concentrations or introduce inorganic harmful chemicals;
Some timber, some plastics, pesticides, herbicides, ocassionally manure, occassionally soil and compost, even mulch and also some forms of garden sterilisation such as burning.

Pretty much everything 😅 but when you take time to setup the garden the materials to purchase or use can all be caringly sourced. Garden communities are particularly useful in this!

If you would like some help or ideas please contact me i can share my alternatives or material sources i have used with you. Or if you have ideas on reliable suppliers in your area comment on this post.

A healthy garden means less plumbing bills!

Why cover soil?

One of my main goals in life is to stay alive, luckily the soil contains what i need to stay alive however, strangely i can not eat soil and live.

Recognising i am part of a larger system of eating living things that also share my goal of life i need to eat a living thing to survive!

So on this occasion i have decided to eat a carrot.

The main consumers/processors of soil are microbes however thier main diet would be compost (organic matter) with mineral rich soils also being part processed by them.

These microbes break down materials enough to supply plantlife with absorbable nutrients and minerals in this case my carrot. Not only is the carrot capable of growth, it is also capable of containing digestable nutrients for me!

So if i were to intentionally grow a carrot i would like it to not only grow to a hunger satisfiying size but have a life satisfying content. (This only works if i am not eaten by something that believes the same)

By covering soil with not only an organic, decaying material but a harder more durable surface we achieve the following:

1. Provide a source of minerals and nutrients.
2. Protect the soil and material from weather and compaction.
3. Make a habitat for microbes to transfer the nutrients and minerals to the plants.
4. Help prevent leeching which is due to a fast waterflow removing nutrients and minerals from the carrot.
5. Make a long term growing method with less work involved for me.