Healthy sustainable food production on small spaces plus books and gardens
Sally is an experienced organic gardener, smallholder and writer. Here you can read about the organic one-acre plot that Sally has set up at Empire Farm in Somerset. Sally blogs regularly about the plot – what's being grown and raised, her polytunnel, the organic allotments and her walled garden, as well as matters that concern her - climate change, healthy soils, organic growing, peatfree compost, biodiversity, sustainability etc. She writes about her visits to farms, gardens, allotments and growers during the year. You can also find out about her workshops that she runs from Empire Farm and the books she has written, including The Healthy Vegetable Garden, The Climate Change Garden and Living on One Acre or Less. She is a regular contributor to Country Smallholding Magazine.
Hoverflies are regular visitors to fields and gardens, flitting around flowers where they feed on nectar and pollen from late spring to autumn. Hoverflies, or flower flies, are a fascinating group of insects that mimic the appearance of bees, wasps
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Our gardens are important wildlife refuges and to sustain a healthy insect population in our gardens and allotments, we need a wide diversity of flowers for as much of the year as possible. Read on to find out about my
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I’ve just planted out a row of 5 new perennial kale plants that I propagated last winter. These are Taunton Deane kale (or cottagers kale) which can grow up to 2m or more so will create a barrier between my
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As a new gardener many years ago, all the books I read described growing vegetables in a rotation with neat, weed-free rows. But over the years, I have moved to a polyculture approach in which I grow a number of
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To celebrate World Soil Day, I’m writing about soil regeneration. You hear this term tossed around but what does this mean and how is it achieved? Simply, soil regeneration means rebuilding soil organic matter and improving soil life. Many soils
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I’ve used biochar for many years after seeing the results of horticultural trials where it was mixed into potting compost. Seedlings grown with added biochar had healthy shoots and a better root system compared with those without. My own very
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Tithonia or Mexican sunflower (Tithonia rotundifoliaare) is a brilliant pollinator plant. Mine are covered in bees and other insects at this time of year and the flowers provide nectar well into autumn. They are imposing plants, reaching around 1.5m or
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Finally – its publication day for the Healthy Vegetable Garden!!! Huge thanks to all at @chelseagreenbooks in the UK and US for all their amazing work – really proud to be one of their authors.Thanks too to the people who
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My veg plot has Nasturtiums everywhere – it’s not just that they look good, attract insects and are tasty in salads ( it’s a really punchy, peppery taste) but they are brilliant trap plants. You can see from the photo
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These Ailsa Craig onions were grown from seeds, not sets. Sown in modules in Feb / March and transplanted in April and May. They are later than set grown, but looking good. Not only is it much cheaper to raise
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