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 and walled garden that Sally has set up at Empire Farm in Somerset. Sally blogs regularly about what's being grown and raised, her greenhouse, 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 Resilient Garden and Allotment Handbook, The Climate Change Garden and Living on One Acre or Less. She is a contributor to Amateur Gardening, Bloom and other gardening magazines. She publishes a weekly newsletter on Substack, the Climate Change Garden, which covers a wide range of gardening topics.
There’s been a lot of tweeting around compost in recent weeks; the #peatfree campaign which is vital to saving our peat bogs, biodiversity, climate change and flooding; the risk of #aminopyralid contamination in manures and composts and the growing popularity
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Coming back from the one-acre plot the other evening, I noticed a comma butterfly flitting around an overgrown patch of brambles festooned in flower. Stopping to watch, I was mesmerised by the sheer wealth of insect life in this sunny
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One year on and I’m back a #RHSHamptoncourt. This year I went on the preview evening as well as the Tuesday to make sure I could get to see everything. If you want to see the show gardens, I would
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It was a comment from one of the speakers on BBC Radio 4 Farming Today (Sat 15 June) that got me thinking about #nectar, or rather the lack of nectar. The topic of discussion was flea beetles and oilseed rape
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Hurrah, some rain is forecast. I know it’s June and we all want to be outside enjoying the sun and the last thing we want is rain. But 2019 has been a dry year so far. Down in the South
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I’ll never tire of sitting down in the plot on a sunny day to simply watch and listen. Today the phacelia was alive with pollinators, mostly honey bees and bumblebees, while the birds were in full voice. The video says
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The orchards are full of blossom at the moment and bees (hopefully) are busy. But all may not be well. I have just watched a Countryfile Spring report on fruit trees, pollinators and the threat of climate change. The item
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For the last few years I have been growing chickpeas (Cicer arietinum) and had a bumper crop in 2018 as the weather was perfect for them. Chickpeas come from the Mediterranean and beyond, so like it warm and dry and
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Once again the news is full of record breaking temperatures. This time it’s the warmest February day on record. Already temperatures have hit 17oC in North Wales and 19 oC in London. The average temperature for this time of year
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I took advantage of a bright and still morning to watch the comings and goings on a patch of asters. These gaudy flowers were obviously a hit with #pollinators, within a few minutes I observed visits from bees, hoverflies and
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