Digging & Dreaming

Bringing Light

For many of us the depths of winter are trying times. The long, dark days can be difficult to deal with, especially when they are accompanied by dull, wet, cold weather. Though that on its own would be tolerable - it's the lack of sunlight that is horrible. But, looking on the positive side, these gloomy times do offer the opportunity to fill our homes with light in all different forms to create cosy, welcoming places to sit out the winter.

It's a time of year when I love nothing more than to fill the house with candles and wrap up in blankets until Spring arrives. Safe in the knowledge that each day is a little bit longer and that hopeful, warmer days are not far off.

Primary Permaculture

Between now and Christmas I am lucky enough to be working in some primary schools in Manchester supporting the work of Manchester International Festival and its Biospheric Project. This is an innovative urban food project looking at food production and food security in urban communities through the creation of an urban farm in an old industrial building in Blackfriars, Salford. There are two different strands of work that I am doing in the schools:

• Firstly I am working with children who visited the Biospheric Project last summer to recap their learning and create an assembly to share this with the rest of the school.
• Secondly I am working with children who attend the assemblies to support them to think about food within their own community by developing plans for their own urban farm on their school site.

The project is a real pleasure as all of the children are so engaged by the idea of food growing in the city, and they all have brilliant ideas and responses. I have also particularly enjoyed using simple Permaculture design tools to take the children through a design process thinking about how they may make their school site more productive. What is particularly satisfying about this is how going through a simple site survey with them in a space that they are very familiar with allows them to observe the world around them in totally different ways. It has also been a great education for me thinking about the design processes that I use myself, and how to make them accessible to other people.

The notes above were written by one of the children at Marlborough Road Academy. It was brilliant to see what creative ideas they had and how excited they were by the idea of making their school site more productive. I look forward to seeing their final designs and to see which ideas they manage to implement in reality.

The Allotment Planner by Matthew Appleby

I have lots of gardening books. Probably more than I need, and more than I would care to admit to! But when I leaf through the pages of a new one I find it hard to resist adding it to my library. It was for this reason that I was particulalrly delighted to be sent a copy of The Allotment Planner by Matthew Appleby, hot off the press, a couple of weeks ago.

The book's author is on the team of Horticulture Week, where he also writes his own blog about gardening. As an allotment holder himself, this book is an irreverent guide to keeping an allotment, and is totally different to other allotment books that I have read. If you are looking for a guide to growing specific crops and to plot maintenance this may not be the thing for you. But if you are looking for an imaginative way to rethink your allotment and the things that you do there it could be just what you are looking for.

The book is beautifully designed and offers month by month suggestions of what to do when on your allotment. From tips on keeping chickens to growing super sized veg, the book is ideal to dip into and find inspiration for projects to try on your own allotment. It offers specific tips to get different projects started alongside sections to record on what you have been doing on your own plot.

I think this book is a great addition to any gardener's library and adds a new angle to your thinking on growing, alongside more traditional horticultural books. You can pick up your own copy of the book here.

 

Having a Souper Time

For me, as the weather becomes cooler and moves into autumn, my appetite makes a parallel shift towards warm, comforting food like soup. As soon as the evenings begin to draw in the soup pan comes out and all manner of soupy delights are concocted in our kitchen.

The first soup recipe I really fell for was a delightfully simple Minestrone by Antonio Carluccio. It is the kind of straightforward, one-pot dish that people have cooked for generations. It is easy peasy to make and reaches levels of sublime deliciousness which are absolutely disproportionate to the effort involved in its preparation. It is this recipe that still forms the basis of most forays into soup creation that occur in my house.

There are two suggestions I would offer to anyone going to have a go at soup making themselves...

Firstly, many recipes suggest the addition of pasta or beans to the pot but I would generally choose barley in preference to either of these, especially if I am going to be heating up the leftovers the next day. Barley is ridiculously cheap and gloriously filling and wholesome. It also holds together brilliantly if you are planning to eat your soup over a couple of meals.

Secondly, I would invest in some good quality bay leaves. Their addition will be the making of any soup. The ones I am currently using were picked for me by my friends Java and Jon from the banks of a river in the South of France. Unsurprisingly they smell and taste divine!

Glorious Garlic

There is something inherently comforting about the process of planting, growing, picking and eating garlic. As a grower it is a relationship you can be sure of. One where you know exactly where you stand. Getting to the end of the harvest that was picked in 2012, this year's harvest is drying off nicely and the bulbs that will become next year's are in a bag waiting to be taken to the allotment and be planted. It's a cycle that is straightforward and reliable, serving as a robust and reliable foundation to the growing year.

Amidst the complexity of growing many different things with wildly varying needs, garlic is a constant. It simmers awy in the background requiring minimal attention, then rewards you with a cupboard full of delicious bulbs to flavour your food through the winter, and beyond into the hopeful, exhaling days of spring and the long luxury of summer. And planting it now in autumn is a clear indication of the end of the growing season, but an end marker with confident anticipation of the following summer when fresh young garlic will be picked as the allotment's abundance reaches its pinnacle.

If you want to have a go at growing garlic it prefers a position in full sun with a well drained, light soil. The bulbs will not tolerate water logging so dig in plenty of organic matter like compost or well rotted manure before planting. This will also keep your garlic fed as they are quite nutrient hungry!

Carefully split your bulbs into individual cloves and plant each clove 2.5cm below the surface of the soil with the pointed end facing up (so the bulb sits just below the soil surface). Plant each clove 10cm apart and in rows 30cm apart. You may find birds are tempted to pull your garlic out of the ground when it is freshly planted so it can be a good idea to cover the area with netting after planting.

If you live in a particularly cold area or your soil is heavy then plant the cloves into module trays during the winter. Fill the tray with multi-purpose compost and place one clove 2.5cm deep in each module; covering the cloves with more compost afterwards. Garlic needs a cold period to grow successfully so place the module tray in a sheltered position outdoors. Garlic grown in this way can be planted out to its final position in the spring when the cloves have sprouted.

Food, Memory and Place

The Mr Seel's Garden project I was involved in earlier in the year and which I am now documenting for my Permaculture Diploma was a dream project for me bringing together the themes of food, narrative and community. Looking particularly at the part that food plays in our relation to place and the people we share that place with.

This project took place in Liverpool which is a city with particualrly fascinating food heritage. In revisiting my notes to write the project up for my diploma I was reminded of the wonderful pictures that we had found as Mr Seel's Garden developed and thought that they were so lovely that it would be a shame not to share some of them here with you.

Cazneau Street Market

A cowkeeper outside their dairy in Central Liverpool - urban dairies were a unique feature of the urban food infrastructure in Liverpool

A potato hut in Everton

A Liverpool milkman

Joynson's Market Garden after it closed

The Heritage of Hops

I have been growing hops in my garden for a couple of years now. It is a beautiful, vigorous plant that grows well and easily. It is also a plant with a fascinating heritage and history. The modern hop has been developed from a wild plant as ancient as history itself. As far back as the first Century A.D. they were described as a salad plant and are believed to originate from Egypt. It is also a plant surrounded in fascinating facts and legend - here are a few interesting things that we have learned about the plant:

1. Hops are often referred to as the ‘spice of beer’.
2. Hops have been in regular use as a beer-making ingredient for approximately 1,000 years. It gives beer its distinctive flavour and aroma, acts as a natural preservative, and is a key component in foam quality.
3. A climbing vine, Hops, like cannabis (marijuana), comes from the hemp family Cannabaceae but do not offer the same psychoactive effects as cannabis. Interestingly enough, the hop plant has both male and female forms: the cones on the female plant are used in the brewing process, while male hops are used for breeding the plant.
4. Hop cones contain resins including alpha acids, beta acids and essential oils. The acid components (primarily alpha acid) contribute to the bitterness of beer, while the oils contribute to flavour and aroma.
5. Aroma hops are generally lower in alpha acid content, and have essential oils that are associated with great aroma. Bittering hops have high levels of alpha acids in particular. There are also dual-purpose hops that play for both teams.
6. Hop varietals can impart widely different flavours and aromas, depending on where, and the conditions in which it is grown. Randy Mosher, in his book TASTING BEER, says German hops are generally considered to be herbal, English hops spicy, earthy and fruity, and American hops – while widely variable – are generally more citrus, piney and resiny.
7. The so-called noble hops, traditional varieties from Europe, are: Saaz, Hallertauer Mittlefrüh, Tettnanger and Spalt. These can often be found in traditional lager beers.
8. Breweries use hops in a variety of forms, depending on their needs. This can include pelletized, liquid, dried, or wet hops.
9. Hops are added into the brewing process during the boil where the alpha acids are isomerized. Bitterness is enhanced with a longer boil, while aroma is reduced. This governs the timing of the additions of various hops throughout the boil. Other hopping techniques require the addition of hops at later points in the brewing process (i.e. dry hopping).
10. Hops generally impart bitterness ranging from 5-7 International Bittering Units (IBUs or parts per million iso-acids) for  Light Lagers, and up to 100 IBUs for an Imperial IPA. However these days, some experimental brewers are exploring extreme hopping, creating beers with 1,000s of IBUs. This is a largely theoretical exercise, because the human palate can only perceive a maximum bitterness somewhere in the range of 120 IBUs. This maximum is also related to the solubility of iso-alpha acids in beer.

Writing Up - My Action Learning Pathway

Today I was lucky enough to have an afternoon where I could fully focus on my Permaculture Diploma - something I have desperately needed for quite some time. I took the time to make the final touches writing up my design for my Action Learning Pathway. In writing and drawing things together I also had time to think about how I was progressing with my diploma as a whole. There are a couple of key observations that I was able to make about how my learning is taking shape and how my permaculture practice is developing as a result of my diploma:

• I feel that Permaculture design gives me a sense of process and time in the different work that I am doing. This is especially important for me when I am busy and juggling lots of different work as it allows me to think of things as a continuum, a thought process which in itself seems to slow things down and make things calmer.
• Investigation around my own diploma learning has made me more confident in explaining what Permaculture is to other people, and what it means to embark upon a Permaculture design process. This in itself has pushed my confidence in sharing and teaching the field.
• Using a design process allows me to think more clearly about each different decision that I am making and to clarify the detail within. This means an increased level of attention to detail throughout which in turn means the creation of a final result which is better crafted in terms of function and form.

Blackbird On The Fence

I love the blackbirds in my garden. Not flashy or flamboyant but beautiful none the less in their simplicity. They are ground feeders so are particularly attracted by the bugs and worms that they find in my rather overgrown garden. At the moment there are a couple of young ones on the scene who are eagerly taking in the world around them and learning to fend for themselves before they have to head out and establish their own territory in somebody else's garden. What luck for the owner of the plot where they decide to take residence.

Diploma Tutorial - Looking Back & Looking Forward

Last week as I began organising my planting and growing plans for the coming year I also took an hour out to have my first tutorial as part of my Permaculture Diploma. As I live in Manchester and my tutor, Hedvig Murray, lives down in Brighton this meant arranging time to hook up on Skype and spend an hour talking about where things are up to with my Diploma. Tutorials are an important part of the Diploma process as they are a great way of stepping back and considering where you are really up to with things and where you would like to head with them next.

I have to admit that before the tutorial I was a little apprehensive as life has been very busy for me so far this year meaning I was not sure how much progress I had actually made on my diploma. I knew I had been doing things (though not as much as I had wanted to!) but a lot of this doing had not been recorded meaning I was feeling a bit behind in the documentation aspect in particular.

We began the tutorial by talking about where I felt I was up to with things - this is where I outlined to Hedvig the things I have just shared with you in the previous paragraph! Despite the seeming setbacks, in talking to Hedvig, I realised that I was actually well on track with things and that it was just me documentation that had slipped a little. In order to start things moving forward with this we talked about different tactics that I could used to start getting my projects and ideas on to paper.

From my tutorial it became clear that my key learning so far had been:

• increased understanding of the Permaculture Design process and how it fits into my personal and professional practice.
• increased confidence in explaining what Permaculture means within my practice to other people, who may or may not know about Permaculture.
• developing my Action Learning Pathway.
• developing a design process that suits my work, and the predominantly non-landbased projects that I am working on.
• clarification of what my diploma guild was and how it would support my learning.

I also became clearer about the key objectives that I have for my diploma in the coming months:

• to research and develop ways that work for me of recording my work as I go along.
• to use my blog more as a way of documenting my learning and development.
• to complete the documentation of my first two designs and to allocate time to proper development of my third design - creating a eco garden for my friend Anne.

All in all my tutorial felt like a very positive experience and I am looking forward to putting the actions that I have identified into practice.