The ‘Treadit’ Garden Concept
The garden is designed to be as accessible as possible with the least amount of work while gaining the most out of any produce.
Water is retained in soil by soil particles which is neccessary for garden life. Any excess water should drain away between these particles depending on the garden’s soil compaction. Soil with a high compaction suffers from decreased pore space (less macropores) which prevents water movement/drainage and air permiability.
In the prescence of heat, water retained between soil particles can evaporate, especially so in an open soil garden devoid of a covering. This loss of water between soil particles causes particle movement into the macropores leading to compaction.
Reduction in pore space reduces water infiltration, air permeability and space for plant root hairs which are essential to plant growth as they absorb water, nutrients and minerals. This stunts any plant growth as the root hairs require moisture. Once the moisture is lacking the root hairs wither and take time to regrow which prevents plant growth. Then once the moisture returns and after time when the root hairs do regrow, the plant can attempt to restart it’s growth.
Water retention can be maintained by having a covering layer over the surface of the garden such as manure or even aggregate however the preferred material comes from the plants themselves. To replicate this cover we use a light woodchip or woodland debris.
In comparison woodchip has a high level of water absorbancy and reduces water evaporation. Woodchip also has a whole range of additional benefits that other covering layers may lack such as fertilisation, insulation, protection, compaction suspension, habitation to microbes and mycelium and weed prevention and it is harsh weather resistant.
The ‘Treadit’ garden method is organic which means no dependance on chemicals in the garden. All materials such as soil and woodchip can be free of chemicals like weedkiller, chemical fertiliser and pestisides. Timber construction materials can be treated with an organic preservative.
By refraining from the use of chemicals we can prevent any harm through these chemicals being digested or absorbed into the human body. With these measures in place the gardens are kept as chemical free as possible and therefore safer to us.
Organic growing does not necessarily mean healthy plant growth or healthy food. The problems that the chemicals were made to solve in gardens may still be present. There can often be deficiencies in the garden especially if it is unprotected. These deficiencies in the soil mean deficiencies in the plants such as stunted growth and dry fibrous plants which pests love. Ultimately plant deficiencies lead to deficiencies in us.
By focusing on the microbial life inside a garden, these microbes and fungi naturally become a type that is specific to your garden and plantlife and due to thier habitat create the best opportunity for the plant’s mineral and nutrient uptake. This makes sure a full range of minerals and nutrients are eaten by you and benefits your health.
This natural solution is employed in collective gardens making nutrient and mineral rich plants as they are meant to grow. Nutrients contribute to our health and these decrease during the time it takes from picking to eating through processes such as storage, transport and cooking. Therefore plants are best grazed and picked fresh. By digesting a fullness of nutrients and minerals we can build up our bodies’ health and immunity.
Allot of beneficial health from the garden comes from interaction in and around the garden including resting in a garden. If a garden can be made our habitat then what better place for health, enjoyment and interaction with nature?
Due to reduced compaction, the soil in a collective garden is easily managed and can be done with hand tools such as a trawel or rake. The woodchip is a cover and should be moved to the side in order to expose the soil and compost beneath. Separation between woodchip and soil should always be maintained and should not be mixed together.
The weeding should be easy and far less intense. Due to the woodchip cover there are less weeds and due to the looser soil any weeds that grow are easier to pull out intact rather than snapping off in the soil and regrowing. The loose soil also means easier harvesting.
The collective method reduces time required for actions such as weeding, watering, fertilising, planting and harvesting from hours to minutes and can even eliminate the need for some of these actions altogether.
In an average, organic, hand cultivated, open soil garden in the U.K. the estimated time required from seed to harvest per square metre is approximately 7.5 hours (soil preparation: 30m/fertilising: 15m/seeding: 10m/daily watering for one month in summer: 2 hours/pest control: 30m/weeding: 3.5 hours/harvesting: 15m/balancing any soil deficiencies: 10m)
In the raised bed collective method the average time per square metre is approximately 50 minutes (fertilising with woodchip (if required): 10m/seeding: 10m/ weeding: 15m/harvesting: 15m)
By recruiting the natural methods and processes of nature rather than rendering them redundant, issues of soil pH balance, soil mineral and nutrient deficiencies, cultivation and use of chemicals are eliminated. A garden can be where our work creates a space for natures work to be done.
People of a broad age range including children can utilise and maintain a garden successfully using the collective method as they are very easy to manage and instil basic gardening principles.
Typically the frame and spacing is designed for easy accessibility. The surrounding paths have a woodchip base with an underground weed barrier. The woodchip paths maintain a dry walking area and prevent water pooling and mud accumulation and can be walked on in more varying weather conditions compared to soil or grass.
The construction with ‘treadit’ ideology can incorporate features such as design, seating and shelter which can make the garden a focal point of the home to interact with and enjoy.
A garden is a human habitat in which we can work, eat, play, relax, and pass time. Within our minds there may seem to be a gulf between ‘work’ and ‘play’ however they are inextricably interlinked with both actions having a potential to bring joy.
Play should be the constant foundation of work and work should be the expansion of play. The ‘treadit’ ideology is to make a habitat for a person to interact with and enjoy (tread-it).
The machinery used in the garden setup would be for the materials involved such as wood, wood chip, compost, soil and their transport. Other than the setup there is little to no need for machinery or chemical use in the garden.
The woodchip layer requires infrequent maintenance through the addition of fresh woodchip which can be found as a by product of tree surgery and clearing operations. Alternatively you can use finely cut hedge clippings however this may mean more work in the garden.
Eating from your own garden is not only far healthier for you but also has a low environmental impact. Home grown produce eliminates the need for eco-damaging processes such as mechanised agriculture, food transport, supermarkets and food packaging. The garden supports life.
Being a no-dig, long term garden with water retaining properties means less damage and depletion to soil, less soil erosion and less water consumption. A continual collection of uninterrupted natural processes.
‘Permaculture’ is defined as the development of agricultural ecosystems intended to be sustainable and self-sufficient which might seem like a form of cheating as in agriculture hard work is usually equated with high returns.
However, human effort and intervention in the garden can render nature redundant as nature is ultimately the better worker.
A collective garden is crafted by human hands however it employs forest processes in order to be as self-sufficient as possible to properly grow plantlife. With this method it’s hard to find a more sustainable ‘not showing up to work’ style method of gardening. Having said that, a permaculture setup has a strong place for human interaction. One way this is observed is with the paths, after being seasoned and well trodden, being used as a compost and mulch on the garden.
The garden needs food and usually whatever grows in the garden would die and become that food but the content of the garden is consumed by us therefore the garden needs a replacement food. The collective method uses woodchip or can even uses hedge cuttings or leaves to do this effectively without causing problems in the garden. This layer however only occasionally needs attention as woodchip takes time to compost.
An alternative to applying woodchip would be to grow a shrub alongside the garden whose leaves or cuttings can be used as the covering organic material to make an even more sustainable Permaculture outside of a forest setting.
Compost needs 4 things:
- Air – Compost is created via the breakdown of plant material due to the activity of microbes which require oxygen to survive. The more important microbial workers need at least 5% Oxygen to survive.
- Fuel – Both ‘brown’ carbon rich and ‘green’ nitrogen rich materials are required for compost production in an ideal ratio of between 25:1 and 30:1 which is found in woodchip. Carbon rich material provide the energy necessary for microbial activity and nitrogen rich materials provide the nutrition. The correct ratio optimises microbial activity meaning a faster production of compost.
- Water – A moisture level of between 40% and 60% is sufficient to prevent microbes from drying out and becoming dormant but is not excessive to the point of blocking oxygen.
- Heat – Heat speeds up the composting process by accelerating enzymatic processes within microbes and increasing microbial mass through specific growth temperature requirements.
A normal compost pile needs to be turned in order to shorten composting time which then needs to be transported and applied onto your garden bed.
The woodchip and forest debris layer in the collective method introduces microbes and biodiversity directly onto the garden which speeds up the garden’s composting processes and is a form of sheet composting which joins the compost heap and garden into one.
Korean Natural Farming (KNF) is a method of introducing indigenous micro-organisms (IMO’s) to your garden. The IMO’s include bacteria, fungi and protozoa. These IMO’s inhabit the soil and enhance it’s fertility. Korean Natural Farming focuses on these invisible microbes that make the garden function and can be otherwise ignored in everyday gardening.
Direct sunlight kills microbes in the soil so protective layers prevent this. The collective gardens are micro-habitats for microbes that are introduced mainly via the forest debris but also the other layers. This makes the garden active quickly and ready to create healthy abundant plants. The garden’s microbial population increases and improves the garden over time.
The larger life in the garden such as worms and certain insects help break down the organic matter for the microbes to digest more efficiently. They also act as an encouragement for us as they signify garden fertility. Kids also enjoy the bug hunts!
The gardens qualities accumulate over time. Cycles that normally are disturbed through digging or weather can continue uninterrupted. The garden is constantly fertilised by the wood chip. Minerals and nutrients accumulate and transfer to the plants and then to you. Microbes increase and speed up the garden allowing plants to grow quicker. You can receive an even greater quantity and greater quality as time goes by.
A bare soil garden creates imbalance through interrupting natural cycles. We can try to correct this balance through fertilization, altering the pH, pest control, irrigation etc.
In the collective method these natural cycles are permitted to continue without strong human interruption which maintains balance therefore eliminating the need for these corrective methods. This eliminates allot of the problem solving we go through in our garden and stops the uneccesary ‘science work’.
Collective gardens are ideally raised beds and normally have the amazing advantage of being fillable. As the collective method means a long term garden we can pick the best content for the bed. We can use a loamy top soil which is a mixture of sand, clay and silty soil. This soil offers excellent drainage, has a high mineral content and has large pore space allowing roots to roam freely. All the materials should be carefully sourced so that they are high quality ensuring that they are free of weed seed and chemicals.
Then we add a layer of compost so that there is a layer of introduction between the soil and cover for the microbes. The compost also helps insulate and hold moisture. The plants should be rooted in the soil but cloaked by the compost. The compost also kickstarts a type of humus layer as like in nature and starts to blend the decomposing layers.
Due to the protection of the covering layers the garden can grow a larger variety of vegetables that you may not expect to grow in an outdoor garden. Different plants require a differing concentration of mulch especially at early stages of growth to mimic different plant environments giving the garden a certain level of adaptability to suit a potentially broader range of plants. The frame and wood chip path has an underlying weed barrier and they act as a separator between neighbouring weeds such as grass and the garden. Which means the bed that you plant into can stay very plant specific according to your desire and the invasion of local plant life is less likely.
The soil and bed filling should not contain weed seed eliminating an interior source of weeds. Any weed seeds that travel via wind or animal meet a wood chip surface. In order for weeds seeds to sprout they need to meet the lower levels of soil and moisture. The uppermost layer of wood chip can act as a partial barrier between the seeds and the soil. Any weed seeds on the surface have less places to root and are susceptible to being destroyed.
The ground is constantly trying to protect itself in order for it to continue its natural processes. It does this by growing whatever seeds it can to protect its surface which means the ground desires weeds. When we uncover the ground we invite weeds into where we plant. In the collective gardens the ground is covered so the weeds are seldom and due to a lack of compaction any that do sprout are removed easily. The key to this garden is not to let things go to seed unless you want it to. If you have one weed in a big garden and leave it alone until it seeds there will be a larger opportunity for the seed to catch in the garden. Weeding should take minutes rather than hours.
Compaction in soil stunts root growth, causes water logging, prevents root removal and is inhospitable to micro-organisms. It’s also harder work for us and we often resort to machinery to cultivate this soil. Compaction is usually caused by creature traffic, weathering or a lack of microbial activity. Traffic such as people or machinery cause compaction through their weight. The wood chip on the surface absorbs and distributes weight like a suspension layer and therefore prevents the most immediate compaction in the layers underneath. The organic layers in the garden are also less compactive.
Over watering or excessive rain washes soil downward amassing it into a muddy dense state and hot weather dries up the soil causing further compaction. The wood chip on the collective gardens acts as a crashworthy layer when it comes to heavy rainfall, it also controls water to a steadier movement through the soil and insulates the ground from heat and cold.
Due to low compaction and loose absorbing layers the water, micro-organisms and roots move more freely through the soil. The loose soil can also facilitate air filtration through the soil for microbes to continue at lower levels of the soil. This allows nutrients and minerals to be readily available and in the right place for the use of the plant. Due to the capacity of the garden, the problem of leeching is slowed and nutrients and mineral loss is greatly reduced.
Treadit Gardens 