How I Plan to Never Buy Compost Again

There is a thought that many gardeners have and it is something that I have definitely had in the past and I think about it constantly to help improve the productivity of my garden and this video is not just about this garden but about the rest. from the permaculture experimental site here at dan ronen and if you have a garden you will probably recognize this thought: how do I get the most out of my space with the minimum input? It's kind of an old question: We're trying to find that golden ratio. where we can achieve that balance and feel that the garden or space is working in Perfect Harmony.

Now obviously a garden has multiple gears in motion at any given time, some of us are in control of others, not as much as time or climate, but In this video I want to focus on perhaps one of the most important steps you can take to create a more resilient garden and is to analyze the fertilizer or, more broadly, fertility. This video shares the strategy I have to make this site unnecessary. buy back external

compost

and also make sure I have a system where if I suddenly can't rely on external resources, such as picking seaweed from a local beach or horse manual from a local farm, this site could still be successful and be incredibly productive.

I'm going to break down my three-part strategy, add tons of ideas, and hope this video is a catalyst in helping your garden not only be more productive but also more resilient. I have to apologize. because this video is not so much about doing Every garden is different, every gardener is different and we all have our own goals, challenges, opportunities. what we want to get out of the space, you might have a small yard, you might have a whole farm, so don't take everything I say in this video at face value. I'm sharing what I'm doing here. different to what you're doing, but that's part of the joy of growing your own food, it's a very creative process, you can choose what kind of groups of

plan

ts you want to grow and you can always change it, you can always adapt it.

One of the most important things that I have learned about growing is that it is very important to be adaptable, to be flexible, to not get trapped in some kind of ideology that really prevents you from thinking outside the box and you have to do that if we are trying to create a resilient system based on permaculture. Permaculture is a largely misunderstood design tool and my next big project is to try to return the widespread understanding of permaculture to its original roots as a fantastic design tool that can be applied in almost any environment, but as I said, I'm going to share with you my thoughts about what I'm doing here on this site and ask you questions or give you suggestions to take home, so don't just think about why I'm doing it this way, you should do it that way.

In the next phase of this site and there is a central theme that summarizes the second phase of this site and that topic is perennials. The biggest difference between this site last year and this grain season is that it will grow about 50% less. annuals annuals will only be found in a polytunnel, in these flowerbeds behind me and in the self-sufficient garden that I am now converting into a permaculture garden, so not only am I integrating much more diversity in terms of annuals than grow there, but also the introduction of many more perennials. One of the key turning points for me on the gardening journey was realizing that the relationship between you and the garden needs to be two-way, it doesn't always have to be you working for the garden.

I want to make sure that the garden works for you and the only way that the garden works for you is if you know what you want it to give you, so it's very easy to go all out like, oh, I need to

plan

t this and think that that's what you want, but the question is what do you really want, what do you really value. Sometimes it just takes time for that to appear. It has become evident that I want this space to be as low maintenance as possible, but as inspiring as possible. I want every corner I turn to to be something interesting to look at, to have lots of flavors to grow all the vegetables I need, but to go beyond that and grow things I could

never

buy at a shop and enjoy it, and that's why that I'm greatly reducing the number of annuals grown on this site so I can really lean into what I really want the garden to do for me.

I want it to be an absolute source of flavor inspiration. and as a nice escape, I don't want to show up here and think, "Oh my God, I have to go to the far corner to water the Market Garden." Well, we are not going to have a Market Garden this year and already in this video it has become quite evident how powerful perennials are for this transition and that is a very good point and it is because perennials do not need fertilizer. The opportunity I have with this site is that I have space and so the requirement to create as much food as possible within a small footprint is much less, it's a little complicated because I have the garden and I'm treating it as something independent that It won't depend on anything else working. within the site, but for the rest of the site I have realized that I have space and that means I can change priorities.

I'm not trying to extract as much food from each square meter, but I am trying to make sure each square meter is as manageable as possible and therefore with perennials I have red currents here. I have Goose Brees in front of me. They need very little handling. I need to give them a basic pruning and may need to mulch. once or twice or just cut them around the base a couple of times to clear the soil and then it's a matter of harvesting them because they are perennials. I don't need to worry about watering them even in times of drought and because perennials are much less hungry than annuals.

I don't need to provide extra fertility, starved fertility, fertilizer-like fertility, which is what annuals in the vegetable category require in a garden. Now you have annuals and perennials of course there are banuls but just put that in the annuals box for now because that's how they are treated so I think just looking at the greens the annuals are where you find maybe the best variety, the best flavor and, obviously, the best productivity per square meter compared to perennial vegetables. but what you have to understand about annals is that they are pioneer plants and pioneer plants require a lot of fertility, they want to grow fast, they want to mature fast, they need to run to seed fast, so they are very hungry plants, but perennials. it is quite different it will have a much better root system it is not trying to reproduce in one go because that is the only chance it has perennials have time to form strong connections with their microbiology in the soil which really helps with the exchange of nutrients and so perennials don't need fertilizer, you can, you can get away with even planting them without needing fertilizer in almost any case, in my climate, an annual garden where I grow hand plants like this would really struggle without fertilizer, yes, for Of course I can. cut and drop and there are many other ways you can reduce the amount of

compost

you need, but in an ideal situation, if you want to make the most of that space, you will need compost, so all of this means that, in the future, you will still need it.

I will need compost, but I don't need as much compost as before, so inside this garden behind me, I think the only warm bed I have and these two compost bins next to me are going to produce more than enough compost that I need for the annuals . and I will also be making my own seed planting mixes etc. starting next year, because next year is the year in which I will not afford to buy fertilizer

again

for any part of this site, but because a greater proportion of this garden. is going to transition to perennials, it means that I need less fertilizer, but it also means that I have opportunities to bring in other phases of fertility over time, for example, a lot more fertilizer, so now that I have shared the rough idea of ​​how to think and how My approach to this site has changed.

I'm going to share with you my short, medium and long term strategy for how I plan for this site to be completely self-sufficient in terms of compost production, but for me to have that too. peace of mind that if I suddenly can't access any external resources, for example if a huge wall or barrier appeared and I was trapped here, this Garden could still produce for decades to come, my short term goals are as follows: as many perennial plants as possible this is what we have been doing for the last few months and it is what we are going to do for at least the next four to six weeks, right towards the end of the bear defeat season there are still a couple left several weeks so I have a lot more to do to try and make the most of the time I have and then I can get on with planting perennials in pots now for those of you in the UK this is not sponsored or anything else.

I am collaborating with Frank P Matthews on several different projects. This is me, from the future, just to say it's the end of bear rot season with Frank P Matthews and there are still apples currently available. They have a 20% discount on the site. and if you use the code Hugh Gard you can get an extra 20% off and I think the cut off is this weekend so literally three days after I upload this video so make sure you place your orders and you'll get 20% discount on the rest. the site too so I hope you can get something nice for your garden and the great thing about be Roots is that since they don't come in pots it is much more affordable to buy my decision process on the types of perennials to put on the The site It is for growing less perennial vegetables.

There are some that I think taste very good, like asparagus, but my main focus is particular fruits and herbs, but mainly fruits or fruit trees, also growing them in one of the polytunnels that has been modified. in a mini undercover fruit forest because there is a lot of joy in growing fruit and it's something I really enjoy and haven't done enough of in the past so now I'm making the most of that opportunity and that's the first thing in the short term or I would say short term is to plant as many perennials as you physically can.

The medium-term strategy involves these very loud ladies, our chickens. This spot here was where the Wi-Fi Garden was. This is now. It will become a permanent chicken composting facility, so the chickens will have other areas within the site that they can go to, but this will be their permanent home and will be planted as a sort of fodder forest for them. Gravity, a fundamental way to be able to put all the plant matter on top and then at the end of the bottom, the flow of nutrients will be the finished compost that will then go to the raised beds.

We are also behind me here, the only other area during the winter in the only poly tunnel where we are going to grow annuals, the chickens will live there and have access here, but that will be a deep mulch setup so all the compost will be produce there over the winter, ready for a new groin season. I'm collaborating with sha from edible Acres on this project, helping to design the most functional, efficient, but hopefully beautiful chicken compost setup, and the goal is By the end of this year, most of this system will be set up and A decent volume of compost will be produced in this space and the long term goal is to generate as much plant biomass as possible to use for either cutting or dropping. or to create our own wood chips which we can then use as mulch on this site, but also, just like with branch wood chips, you can use them to create warm beds, which is also very useful, so this It's an additional willow that we've been very busy on.

In recent months we have placed many more willow sticks. Willow plugs. We have also opened a new area for that, so in three or four years this will be a copper system suitable for biomass that we will be able to produce. The thing about perennials is that they are very easy to propagate. I got these free cuttings from Willow that I planted a couple of years ago, so it's very easy to quickly increase the population and another example that is part of this long term strategy. It is greatly increasing the amount of corn we are producing as well.

I know it's a bit of a cliché permaculture plant, but it's popular for a reason and it's very easy to propagate by division or root cutting, and that's alsowhat I think. I'm also focusing on a lot of things to get it into full production within a couple of years and no, I haven't forgotten about the most abundant resource I have access to here on this site, which is grass, so it's not exactly the most suitable material for mulching many perennials right now just because they are in their infancy stage, they are in their starting stage and I like to use wood, like wood chips, etc., to help encourage that fungal dominated soil, but in two In three years I see a big transition from wood to using grass as the main MCH material for all the perennials here on the site, once they have become a little more established.

I'm doing some interesting projects and experiments here based on grass in particular and will be sharing them over the next few months. I thought the easiest way for you guys to get an idea of ​​the direction this is going would be to create a very simple sketch and do it on the screen at the end. This moment is a sketch of what the site was like at the end of the last growing season and now in red you can see all the additional changes that have occurred since then and the final rendering is where I expect to see this site by June of this year, if you want to spend five days learning about kitchen garden permaculture, how to make them productive, how to design them, how to design your space, I'm teaching this really fun course at hband permaculture in North Wales, a couple of places left.

They will be very fun full days of blended learning, hands-on practice, theoretical research, working on your own projects, there will also be lots of good food so if you want to find out more there is a link below.