Melissa Corkhill

By Melissa Corkhill

22nd June 2016

Lisa Hallden shares how gardening for the family’s vegetable needs can be hugely rewarding from the sprout of the first seed to the picking of the harvest

Melissa Corkhill

By Melissa Corkhill

22nd June 2016

Melissa Corkhill

By Melissa Corkhill

22nd June 2016

Growing our own food can make us eat greener, cut food costs and teach our children about science and biology. But gardening can also be expensive, time consuming and back-breaking. How many young families have not stood in an overgrown garden, scattered with deflated footballs and covered in weeds, and decided that digging in the odd daffodil bulb is as far as their time, energy or money would take them? We certainly did. With a small garden, two even smaller children and very little spare money or time we were hard set on minimising the garden work to mowing the grass occasionally. We were told by numerous people that the children would have nowhere to play unless we kept the garden open, and that vegetable farming would never prove more economic than supermarket shopping. And after several failed attempts at gardening in previous homes, with weed-covered plots as a result, we had decided to keep a lawn and nothing else. But our attitudes where swiftly shifted after stumbling upon permaculture. A permaculture garden aims to imitate natural ecosystems, such as a forest where the ground is teeming with life without recourse to pesticides or digging. By setting up a garden that imitates nature, the garden can become a self-maintained system and vegetable gardening can be smart, space efficient and done on a shoestring, without back-breaking weeding and digging. It became the solution for our family’s vegetable growing ambitions when time was short, space limited and finances stretched.

“The garden can become a self-maintained system and vegetable gardening can be smart, space efficient and done on a shoestring”

PLANNING YOUR GARDEN
It has been one year since we first decided to give permaculture a go and our garden now provides us with a major part of the vegetable needs in our vegetarian household. We have spent no more than £500 on soil, fertilisers and seeds, we spend very little time on gardening, and our children still have plenty of space to roam and play. The trick has been to plan well but to do very little. When setting out to build the vegetable garden we realised that soil would be our biggest expense. So by collecting all the food waste the family generated and making compost out of it, we saved bucket loads of money. We made beds in the autumn from layers of fallen apples, kitchen waste, grass cuttings and leaves. We layered this on top of cardboard or newspapers that we placed straight on the lawn to kill off grass and weeds. It did feel a bit mad at times, to rake out eggshells, breakfast cereals and old discarded sandwiches onto a lawn. But we persisted and by spring the beds sported lush rich soil ready for planting. The digging work was left entirely to worms and insects, which saved our backs, and we could maximise our limited space as the autumn leaves were put straight onto the beds, instead of being piled in dingy corners of the garden. Mulched up leaves (the lawnmower did the trick nicely) were also great for covering the soil and keeping the goodness in, as well as offering high-carbon nutrition. We realised the virtues of having the soil covered when last summer we decided to have a month’s holiday away from our garden. We covered the beds with straw (which was what we had to hand; leaves or grass cuttings would also have worked) to help the moisture remain in the soil and block out light and prevent weeds. We then left, with only a promise from a neighbour to give the beds a weekly water. We came back at the start of August to a thriving garden. The straw cover on the beds had kept most of the weeds down and ensured that the weekly watering had been enough also during a very dry summer.

“Overgrown hedges and patches of tall grass and weeds have been left to attract pollinating insects, as well as giving room for children’s games in a way that manicured gardens never seem to do”

A FAMILY SPACE
In many ways our garden has been planned to fit our life, rather than the other way around. The beds are close to the house so that the work that is needed can be done in-between the other things that require attention in a young family’s life. Gardening can some days be a family event with the children enthusiastic and involved helpers. But just as often the kids want to be left to play with Lego, or to draw, or to take all the cushions off the sofa and build a fort. And by having the gardening beds close to the house they can do that while we tend the garden, within sight and calling distance. We have also abandoned any aspiration for a tidy garden and we embrace the unruly mess (although this is a work in progress for my slightly pedantic husband). Overgrown hedges and patches of tall grass and weeds have been left to attract pollinating insects, as well as giving room for children’s games in a way that manicured gardens never seem to do. The gardening beds have also given the kids great spots for play. A favourite is the keyhole-bed, which is circular with winding paths and a willow den that doubles as a bean pole in the middle. The individual beds in the keyhole have different forms and have plants with different colour and scent and height, which have triggered thousands of games. The den makes an ideal hiding place, and the beds offer plenty of props for play. In fact, the sunflowers that grew all over our garden last summer were the result of the dinosaur war that raged among the leftover bird feed in the spring. This playfulness, as well as our intrinsic laziness, has been a key part of the whole gardening development. By not taking it too seriously, and not breaking our back or sacrificing all spare time over it, we have managed to enjoy the whole process of gardening. Planning, building, sowing, maintaining and reaping – none of it has been too time-consuming or tiring to overshadow the fun.

LESSONS LEARNED
A year into the project, we are armed with knowledge about what works and what doesn’t (no more cabbage! Those caterpillars just proved too much work for us), as well as what we eat (courgettes. In their thousands) and what we could do without (there’s only so many chillies a family could eat). And now we expand. We have collected seeds from the harvest for germination this year, which will save us money as well as, hopefully, make the seed hardier for the specific conditions of our garden. Crops have been put into the soil under low tunnel greenhouses, made out of discarded plastic found at a building site. And four hens are moving into a little DIY-designed hut in a couple of weeks, in the hope that they can coexist with the messiest part of our garden. I’m not sure their production will cover our egg consumption, but their pecking and plucking are sure to bring this semi-detached house and its garden a little bit closer to feeling like a smallholding.

CREATE A ZONE SYSTEM AT HOME
Zones are a way of intelligently organising design elements in a living environment, for example; your home. Elements that are frequently used or harvested are located close to the house in zones 1 and 2. Less frequently used or manipulated elements, and elements that benefit from isolation (such as wild species) are farther away. Zones are about positioning things appropriately.

Zone 0 The house. Here permaculture principles would be applied in terms of aiming to reduce energy and water needs, harnessing natural resources such as sunlight, and generally creating a harmonious, sustainable environment in which to live and work.
Zone 1 The zone nearest to the house, the location for those elements in the system that require frequent attention, or that need to be visited often, such as salad crops, herb plants, soft fruit like strawberries or raspberries, greenhouse and cold frames, propagation areas, worm compost bin for kitchen waste, etc. Raised beds are often used in zone 1 in urban areas.
Zone 2 This area is used for siting perennial plants that require less frequent maintenance, such as occasional weed control or pruning, including currant bushes and orchards, pumpkins, sweet potato, etc. This would also be a good place for beehives, larger scale composting bins, and so on.
Zone 3 The area where main-crops are grown, both for domestic use and for trade purposes. After establishment, care and maintenance required are fairly minimal (provided mulches and similar things are used), such as watering or weed control maybe once a week.
Zone 4 A semi-wild area. This zone is mainly used for forage and collecting wild food as well as production of timber for construction or firewood.
Zone 5 A wilderness area. There is no human intervention in zone 5 apart from the observation of natural ecosystems and cycles. Through this zone we build up a natural reserve of bacteria, moulds and insects that can aid the other zones.

APPLY THE PRINCIPLES TO ENHANCE YOUR LIFE
Permculature is based on three principles; Earth Care, People Care and Fair Share.
1 CARE OF THE EARTH: Permaculture works with natural systems, rather than in competition with them. Earth Care can be taken to mean caring for the living soil. The state of the soil is often the best measure for the health and well-being of society. There are many different techniques for looking after soil, but the easiest method to tell if soil is healthy is to see how much life exists there. Our forests and rivers are the lungs and veins of our planet, helping the Earth live and breathe and supporting many diverse life forms. All life forms have their own intrinsic value, and need to be respected for the functions they perform – even if we don’t see them as useful to our needs. By reducing our consumption of “stuff”, we reduce our impact on the environment, which is the best way to care for all living things.

2 CARE OF PEOPLE: Look after self, kin and community. If people’s needs are met in compassionate and simple ways, the environment surrounding them will prosper. People Care begins with ourselves and expands to include our families, neighbours and wider communities. The challenge is to grow through self-reliance and personal responsibility. Self-reliance becomes more feasible when we focus on non-material well-being, taking care of ourselves and others without producing or consuming unnecessary material resources. By accepting personal responsibility for our situation as far as possible, rather than blaming others, we empower ourselves. If we can recognise that a greater wisdom lies within a group of people, we can work with others to bring about the best outcomes for all involved. The permaculture approach is to focus on the positives, the opportunities that exist rather than the obstacles, even in the most desperate situations.

3 SET LIMITS AND REDISTRIBUTE
This principle represents the taking of what we need and sharing what we don’t whilst recognising that there are limits to how much we can give and how much we can take. Established fruiting trees are likely to produce more than one person can eat. It takes time to pick and preserve the harvest, and there are limits to how much fruit we can use. There are many ways that we benefit from giving a fair share of the bounty to others in our community. The growth in human consumption and the accelerating extinction of species make clear the impossibility of continuous growth. Sometimes we need to make hard decisions and consider what enough is. We need to focus on what is appropriate for us to do, rather than what others should do. By finding the right balance in our own lives we provide positive examples for others, so that they can find their own balance.

To find out more about the principles visit permacultureprinciples.com

Lisa is a freelance journalist and political analyst. She lives on an island outside Stockholm in Sweden, where she grows her garden using permaculture techniques, with her husband and their children; Aiden, five, and Eleanor, three.

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