It is a grey damp November morning in Harwich, and clusters of children are in an allotment perched on a small cliff overlooking the sea.
One group are watering the winter salad they have sown in the polytunnel that they have put up in the summer. Another group are pricking out seedlings for more winter salad on benches outside, and further group are trying to catch baby frogs. Squeals of laughter echo around the garden.
The children have been creating the garden for one day per week for the last year. Starting from a derelict patch, we have cleared, dug, planted, harvested, battled with the weeds, put up the tunnel and created wildlife areas. “ We” are the children, teachers, teaching assistants, parents, me a professional grower and Creative Partnerships; a national initiative to develop creative teaching and learning in schools. I go to the school every week to help develop gardening skills, Creative Partnerships help to develop the learning techniques in collaboration with the teacher. At the end of the year the project is passed over to the school to run.
The teacher has been using the garden as a way of teaching maths, literacy, science, social skills, and perhaps most importantly the building of self esteem. The teacher herself is a musician and she has used the gardening project as inspiration to create music with her class.
The other vital part of the project is the life skills that are learnt; growing cooking and then eating the vegetables has lead to the children trying and eating a much wider range of fresh produce in one short year. We regularly cook the produce, starting off with simple soups, we have moved on to jams, cakes, (carrot and courgette), elderflower cordial, chutney. The children sell the produce at the fete and Christmas fairs and are currently making a cookery book with stories of the year. This links the project to home, and many parents come in to help with the larger tasks like digging. We have run the garden and cooking on organic lines, with the seeds, compost and gardening methods used, and most of the ingredients where possible have been organic.
This learning style is tactile, and practical, outdoors and grabs the interest of most children. Going back into the classroom the teacher can draw on these experiences to reinforce learning. This project has had remarkable results.
There are also the magic moments, all of us can remember some of these from our own school days. On the day I have mentioned here, there was a thin ribbon of migrating birds silver and white flying against the grey skies, the children all stopped and stared. Half an hour later we were admiring the work we had done when one of the children noticed a rainbow across the sky. This was beautiful drawn in at least one child’s garden diary the next week. An extraordinary moment for an ordinary day.
Marina O’Connell is an Organic fruit grower in Essex, she also runs the Apricot centre, a small training venue on her farm. She works as a Creative Practioner in many schools in Tendring setting up gardens and projects and farm visits in collaboration with teachers.
You can visit my Apricot Centre website at www.apricotcentre.co.uk
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Dreaming the Vegetable garden into being – and Sowing seeds
At the time of writing it is deep in the sleepy time of the Solstice and Christmas.
As a grower I find it important to give myself a break like everyone else, and use it as a time of reflection on the up and coming year and the mania that spring brings to the organic grower.
The seed catalogues come plumping through the letterbox, I rescue them from the kids before they get cut up and made in to collages. It’s a time to flick through and dream of the growing season to come, what worked well last year and what I want to have a go at this year. I always chose from the organic and biodynamic options, which are quite wide now, and find over the years I am growing more and more unusual varieties of salads in my glasshouse and polytunnel. With the advent of farmers markets my experience is that people want fruit and vegetables they cannot find on the supermarket shelves and will happily buy knobbly tomatoes, Asian leaves; mibuna, tatsoi, namenia, texel greens, frilly endives from Europe, old fashioned cucumbers that are ridged and huge. And my surprise crop last year was Chinese celery. It grew to be enormous, about twice the size of other celery and people staggered off with it excited about the prospect of celery soup, braised celery, celery cooked the Indian way with gee and spices, and even used for juicing.
I start seed sowing in February, or March, depending upon the weather. If it is too cold the slugs will graze them all off, or the mice collect them from the seed trays and store them for later. Too warm and there is a danger of a cold snap and they will all be frosted when they are at their most vunerable.
The seeds are sown according to the biodynamic calendar, leaves when the moon is in a water sign, roots when the moon is in an earth sign, flowers when the moon is in an air sign. The Biodynamic calendar tells you which is which; it changes every 2-3 days. It requires a convergence of the moon with the right sign of the zodiac, reasonable weather (not snowing, pouring with rain, blowing a gale, or freezing cold), my youngest daughter being in the right mood to come out with me, and the arrival of the potting compost to get the seeds sown, it is quite a quick job once the alignment is correct. If not I often just sow them anyway and hope for the best! Last year it took four goes and it resulted in the best fed mice in the whole of Essex and a huge seed bill. This year I will try to do better.
The other reflective job at this time of the year is the application of preparation 500. This is a Biodynamic preparation that is applied to the soil in the winter months to sensitise the soil to the cosmic forces. I buy in the preparations as my garden is too small to make them myself. It then requires potentising by stirring for an hour before application to the soil. A small amount, enough to fill the palm of the hand is mixed with a barrel full of water, stirring in one direction and then the other to create a vortex and then a moment of chaos as the direction is changed. I do it in my glasshouse, with some friends. I usually make tea and we have a chat. It is hard physical work to do alone but with a few people it is very social. The preparation is then flicked on to the ground in small quantities. I fill buckets and load them into a wheel barrow, and trundle up my long and thin orchard. Even though I have planted hedges it is not a very private place and on both sides there are holdings of a similar size with my neighbours regularly walking up and down about their work. It is winter as well and the leaves are off. It is a deeply satisfying task; the children love it and understand it intuitively. But it is difficult to explain to conventional growers if they are not of the same mindset. In this context I have become a covert Preparation 500 applier. I like my neighbours and I don’t want them to think I am a witch; I want them to let their children play with mine. This is after all the village where the witch finder general found his first witch 400 years ago. So I tend to do it when it is getting dark, and I walk down the middle of my orchard flicking as far as I can reach without going to close to the edges.
The results are now, in my opinion, becoming evident. The soil is fantastic, the crops healthy, the produce tastes great. Customers at the farmers market come back week after week and tell me how fantastic the fruit is. So I will continue my covert Preparation applications.
Seasonal Notes
Sowing seeds
The seed packets give instructions of sowing each type of seed. To ease the confusion however most seeds fit into three categories;
1. Those that must be sown direct into the soil are mainly the root crops such as carrots, parsnips, beetroot, Broad beans they can be sown from February onwards.
2. Those that cannot withstand a frost must be sown first in a seed tray and then transplanted after the last frost is over. Sow in March transplant late April, this includes pumpkins, courgettes, sunflowers, tomatoes and peppers, French beans.
3. Those that can withstand a frost but do better sown in seed trays and transplanted later, start sowing February and March plant out mid April. This includes Lettuce, Brassicas, and Leeks.
Catalogues for organic and biodynamic seeds
Suffolk Herbs / Kings Seeds (01376) 570000
Tuckers Seeds. (01364) 652233
Stormy Hall Seeds. (01287) 661368
Biodynamic Sowing and Planting Calendar 2006 by Maria Thun and Preparation 500 available from the Biodynamic Agriculture Association. (01453) 759501
Marina O’Connell
January 2009
You can visit my Apricot Centre website at www.apricotcentre.co.uk
As a grower I find it important to give myself a break like everyone else, and use it as a time of reflection on the up and coming year and the mania that spring brings to the organic grower.
The seed catalogues come plumping through the letterbox, I rescue them from the kids before they get cut up and made in to collages. It’s a time to flick through and dream of the growing season to come, what worked well last year and what I want to have a go at this year. I always chose from the organic and biodynamic options, which are quite wide now, and find over the years I am growing more and more unusual varieties of salads in my glasshouse and polytunnel. With the advent of farmers markets my experience is that people want fruit and vegetables they cannot find on the supermarket shelves and will happily buy knobbly tomatoes, Asian leaves; mibuna, tatsoi, namenia, texel greens, frilly endives from Europe, old fashioned cucumbers that are ridged and huge. And my surprise crop last year was Chinese celery. It grew to be enormous, about twice the size of other celery and people staggered off with it excited about the prospect of celery soup, braised celery, celery cooked the Indian way with gee and spices, and even used for juicing.
I start seed sowing in February, or March, depending upon the weather. If it is too cold the slugs will graze them all off, or the mice collect them from the seed trays and store them for later. Too warm and there is a danger of a cold snap and they will all be frosted when they are at their most vunerable.
The seeds are sown according to the biodynamic calendar, leaves when the moon is in a water sign, roots when the moon is in an earth sign, flowers when the moon is in an air sign. The Biodynamic calendar tells you which is which; it changes every 2-3 days. It requires a convergence of the moon with the right sign of the zodiac, reasonable weather (not snowing, pouring with rain, blowing a gale, or freezing cold), my youngest daughter being in the right mood to come out with me, and the arrival of the potting compost to get the seeds sown, it is quite a quick job once the alignment is correct. If not I often just sow them anyway and hope for the best! Last year it took four goes and it resulted in the best fed mice in the whole of Essex and a huge seed bill. This year I will try to do better.
The other reflective job at this time of the year is the application of preparation 500. This is a Biodynamic preparation that is applied to the soil in the winter months to sensitise the soil to the cosmic forces. I buy in the preparations as my garden is too small to make them myself. It then requires potentising by stirring for an hour before application to the soil. A small amount, enough to fill the palm of the hand is mixed with a barrel full of water, stirring in one direction and then the other to create a vortex and then a moment of chaos as the direction is changed. I do it in my glasshouse, with some friends. I usually make tea and we have a chat. It is hard physical work to do alone but with a few people it is very social. The preparation is then flicked on to the ground in small quantities. I fill buckets and load them into a wheel barrow, and trundle up my long and thin orchard. Even though I have planted hedges it is not a very private place and on both sides there are holdings of a similar size with my neighbours regularly walking up and down about their work. It is winter as well and the leaves are off. It is a deeply satisfying task; the children love it and understand it intuitively. But it is difficult to explain to conventional growers if they are not of the same mindset. In this context I have become a covert Preparation 500 applier. I like my neighbours and I don’t want them to think I am a witch; I want them to let their children play with mine. This is after all the village where the witch finder general found his first witch 400 years ago. So I tend to do it when it is getting dark, and I walk down the middle of my orchard flicking as far as I can reach without going to close to the edges.
The results are now, in my opinion, becoming evident. The soil is fantastic, the crops healthy, the produce tastes great. Customers at the farmers market come back week after week and tell me how fantastic the fruit is. So I will continue my covert Preparation applications.
Seasonal Notes
Sowing seeds
The seed packets give instructions of sowing each type of seed. To ease the confusion however most seeds fit into three categories;
1. Those that must be sown direct into the soil are mainly the root crops such as carrots, parsnips, beetroot, Broad beans they can be sown from February onwards.
2. Those that cannot withstand a frost must be sown first in a seed tray and then transplanted after the last frost is over. Sow in March transplant late April, this includes pumpkins, courgettes, sunflowers, tomatoes and peppers, French beans.
3. Those that can withstand a frost but do better sown in seed trays and transplanted later, start sowing February and March plant out mid April. This includes Lettuce, Brassicas, and Leeks.
Catalogues for organic and biodynamic seeds
Suffolk Herbs / Kings Seeds (01376) 570000
Tuckers Seeds. (01364) 652233
Stormy Hall Seeds. (01287) 661368
Biodynamic Sowing and Planting Calendar 2006 by Maria Thun and Preparation 500 available from the Biodynamic Agriculture Association. (01453) 759501
Marina O’Connell
January 2009
You can visit my Apricot Centre website at www.apricotcentre.co.uk
Starting out at Hungerdown Lane
Just before the millennium my partner and I were fortunate enough to find a house and four acres of land that we could afford to buy. It was virtually derelict, the land had been left untouched for fifteen years, 300 square meters of glass was a home to a colony of rabbits, known locally as “Centre Parks for rabbits”. The orchard that had been planted in 1949 was still intact but overgrown. The house was horrid and filthy. It was our dream come true.
We moved to Essex in order to be close to our parents and about to become parents ourselves we wanted grandparents on hand. After ten years of living in Totnes in Devon we suffered from culture shock. Where were all the cafes and where were all the bookshops? Although living in Totnes had been wonderful for some reason that time seemed to be over and here we were in the mainstream world. We were a bit shocked by our decision as were many of our Totnes friends, moving to Essex is not somehow part of an alternative lifestyle. This part of Essex is very beautiful, close to the Stour Estuary it is the home of Constable and those beautiful paintings, tourists are rare, and we are close to a still fully functioning small market town.
Our new home was on a Land Settlement Estate, these are dotted about the country and were build for unemployed miners in the 1930’s. They are made up of small semi-detached houses with four or more acres of land per plot, with outhouses originally intended for pigs and machinery. Ours were also planted with small orchards. Close by is a co-operative originally intended to market the produce from the 60 holdings on the estate. These holdings were privatised and sold off in the Thatcher years and they are now populated by high-tech growers, in this area predominantly out-of-season strawberry growers, where a four acre plot of high-tech glass still just about works as an economic unit. The rest are still occupied by the original “old boys” who have been growing for 30 odd years but cannot now make a living from it and more and more by people with horses.
I however planned to plant an organic orchard, at a time when most people were grubbing out their orchards. I also planted half an acre of woodland and extensive hedgerows. In all, I have planted 3000 trees in five years, 500 of which are fruit trees.
The glasshouse was cleared of rabbits in the nicest possible way …. By digging and watering the soil, they moved out to find another holiday destination. I started to grow salad leaves to put into salad bags.
The field was ploughed and sowed with clover to improve the soil structure and provide nutrients and the trees planted. The contractor who ploughed the soil could not sow the clover for me as the seed was too fine for his machines so we sowed it by hand. The contractor could not quite understand that I, being a woman, was the grower, and referred all of his questions to my partner, who, being a psychotherapist didn’t understand what he was talking about and referred him back to me !
I chose to plant 25 varieties of fruit, apples, pears and plums to spread the picking season and to slow down the spread of pests and diseases through the orchard. These were mostly new varieties bred to resist scab, a disease that puts spots on the apples and makes them unsaleable. Most winters I add a few local old varieties such as “Chelmsford Wonder” and “George Cave” and “Peasgood Nonsuch” ( which is not local but just has a lovely name).
I used permaculture methods to plan the layout of the holding, and biodynamic preparations to enliven the otherwise dead soil.
Growing Communities invited me to sell weekly at a Farmers Market in Stoke Newington, now I pick and sell there over the fruit season. I am not rich but it does mean that when the orchard comes into full cropping in another few years I will earn a decent living via direct retail sales in London. Out grades, or produce not good enough to sell I make into jam or juice and sell in the winter months. In fact I am doing what the original market gardeners did here 50 years ago.
It has taken seven years to develop the garden, and I now have two young children and a thriving orchard, and apples and plums in the summer drop from the sky !
What I have done with my holding seems counter intuitive for many of the local high-tech growers that are my neighbours. Low turnover, but most of it is profit, low tech (one rusty tractor mower) but setting up a system that does not need technology to function, low energy (or carbon) input because I have chosen plants that function at different times of the year to provide continual cropping. It all makes sense to the person versed in organic or permaculture methods, but is somewhat strange to the grower who supplies the supermarkets. I was initially trained myself this way so I can understand how and why they do what they do, but it is a meeting of two worlds. Four acres of glass covered in white plastic with strawberry plants grown on table tops and fed with water and fertilisers in peat, planted every year, sitting next door to a clover field with a wonky orchard (ever tried planting a straight line with young children about ?) a woodland, and a glasshouse that is home to at least 25 crops grown in succession with very few straight lines. But it works, we get on fine, the children play together and we swap produce.
Marina O’Connell
5.1.06
You can visit my Apricot Centre website at www.apricotcentre.co.uk
We moved to Essex in order to be close to our parents and about to become parents ourselves we wanted grandparents on hand. After ten years of living in Totnes in Devon we suffered from culture shock. Where were all the cafes and where were all the bookshops? Although living in Totnes had been wonderful for some reason that time seemed to be over and here we were in the mainstream world. We were a bit shocked by our decision as were many of our Totnes friends, moving to Essex is not somehow part of an alternative lifestyle. This part of Essex is very beautiful, close to the Stour Estuary it is the home of Constable and those beautiful paintings, tourists are rare, and we are close to a still fully functioning small market town.
Our new home was on a Land Settlement Estate, these are dotted about the country and were build for unemployed miners in the 1930’s. They are made up of small semi-detached houses with four or more acres of land per plot, with outhouses originally intended for pigs and machinery. Ours were also planted with small orchards. Close by is a co-operative originally intended to market the produce from the 60 holdings on the estate. These holdings were privatised and sold off in the Thatcher years and they are now populated by high-tech growers, in this area predominantly out-of-season strawberry growers, where a four acre plot of high-tech glass still just about works as an economic unit. The rest are still occupied by the original “old boys” who have been growing for 30 odd years but cannot now make a living from it and more and more by people with horses.
I however planned to plant an organic orchard, at a time when most people were grubbing out their orchards. I also planted half an acre of woodland and extensive hedgerows. In all, I have planted 3000 trees in five years, 500 of which are fruit trees.
The glasshouse was cleared of rabbits in the nicest possible way …. By digging and watering the soil, they moved out to find another holiday destination. I started to grow salad leaves to put into salad bags.
The field was ploughed and sowed with clover to improve the soil structure and provide nutrients and the trees planted. The contractor who ploughed the soil could not sow the clover for me as the seed was too fine for his machines so we sowed it by hand. The contractor could not quite understand that I, being a woman, was the grower, and referred all of his questions to my partner, who, being a psychotherapist didn’t understand what he was talking about and referred him back to me !
I chose to plant 25 varieties of fruit, apples, pears and plums to spread the picking season and to slow down the spread of pests and diseases through the orchard. These were mostly new varieties bred to resist scab, a disease that puts spots on the apples and makes them unsaleable. Most winters I add a few local old varieties such as “Chelmsford Wonder” and “George Cave” and “Peasgood Nonsuch” ( which is not local but just has a lovely name).
I used permaculture methods to plan the layout of the holding, and biodynamic preparations to enliven the otherwise dead soil.
Growing Communities invited me to sell weekly at a Farmers Market in Stoke Newington, now I pick and sell there over the fruit season. I am not rich but it does mean that when the orchard comes into full cropping in another few years I will earn a decent living via direct retail sales in London. Out grades, or produce not good enough to sell I make into jam or juice and sell in the winter months. In fact I am doing what the original market gardeners did here 50 years ago.
It has taken seven years to develop the garden, and I now have two young children and a thriving orchard, and apples and plums in the summer drop from the sky !
What I have done with my holding seems counter intuitive for many of the local high-tech growers that are my neighbours. Low turnover, but most of it is profit, low tech (one rusty tractor mower) but setting up a system that does not need technology to function, low energy (or carbon) input because I have chosen plants that function at different times of the year to provide continual cropping. It all makes sense to the person versed in organic or permaculture methods, but is somewhat strange to the grower who supplies the supermarkets. I was initially trained myself this way so I can understand how and why they do what they do, but it is a meeting of two worlds. Four acres of glass covered in white plastic with strawberry plants grown on table tops and fed with water and fertilisers in peat, planted every year, sitting next door to a clover field with a wonky orchard (ever tried planting a straight line with young children about ?) a woodland, and a glasshouse that is home to at least 25 crops grown in succession with very few straight lines. But it works, we get on fine, the children play together and we swap produce.
Marina O’Connell
5.1.06
You can visit my Apricot Centre website at www.apricotcentre.co.uk
Communing with Nature – Planting Raspberries
Today it was warm and cosy in the kitchen, outside it was a cold autumnal day with huge grey east Anglian skies and biting cold. Today, however, was the day to prepare the soil for planting Raspberries. I know being outside and communing with nature is good for me – it is proven – stress levels decrease, heart rates slow and blood pressure drops when people go into or even glimpse a natural wooded area. But all I want to do is commune with my coffee (organic of course) in the nice warm kitchen.
Finally after an hour of procrastination, I go outside; it starts to rain. I have a Ferrari rotavator and this roars into action and chugs away and after a short while 100 meters of Raspberry furrow is roughly carved out between the rows of plum trees. Then it stops and I can’t get it to start again, no matter how I poke it with a screwdriver. So I get out the fork and start digging, I am really communing with nature now. I meet 23 worms, 1 millipede, 1 duck, 2 seagulls and quite a lot of couch grass roots that I pull out. I am not over-whelmed by deep and meaningful thoughts but I am hot, my back aches and the sun has penetrated the deep grey. My headache, from too much red wine the night before (probably not organic) has eased up. I feel good.
The digging has given me a chance to look at the soil – it is in good condition nice and crumbly even though it is damp, not a huge number of worms but it is winter and they go down deep. Steiner says that the life forces draw down into the soil in the winter, the soil is at its most vital in the winter. This is the time to apply the Biodynamic preparation 500 in homeopathic doses to the soil to draw the cosmic forces into the soil so in turn the Raspberries can become imbued with the cosmic forces, and then of course we eat the Raspberries and we too then become imbued with cosmic forces – or so the theory goes. My community has expanded even further and now includes the cosmos. I am no longer alone in my field. I cam imagine hundreds of thousands of bacteria and fungi working away there to carry out the myriad of functions to keep all the plants growing, well actually I cant imagine them at all it seems so amazing to me that it all happens at all.
The Raspberry plants (organic of course) are arriving next week to be planted out, on a fruit day – when the moon is in a fire sign. Next July I will sell the fruit at the farmers market in London. It makes me think of summer and heat, ummmm how lovely. Wendell Berry said “eating is an agricultural act”, the Londoners that will eat my Raspberries next summer are probably sitting in a nice warm office or home right now not very agricultural! But they are supporting me financially to farm this way and they are now a part of my community along with the worms, millipede, duck and seagulls and the cosmos in my field.
The Raspberries once planted will need mulching to keep the weeds down. I can buy plastic or use my ever growing pile of duck manure to carry out the same job. The orchard is home to 200 ducks running up to Christmas. The manure will not keep the weeds down quite as much as plastic but it is free and more environmentally friendly than plastic. As I dig I decide upon using the manure.
Finally the ground is ready for planting. The Ferrari miraculously starts again ready to go back in the shed, and I head in for lunch feeling hot and hungry and connected to my by now huge community. I realised that I did feel less stressed, and the day seemed brighter, so, as I knew, fresh air, exercise and time in nature is good for you. Even on a cold grey day.
Seasonal notes;
• Winter is the time for ground preparation and planting of perennial plants, trees, shrubs. Soil can be dug over roughly and preferably mulched so the rain does not damage the soil structure. The soil structure is important to allow the fungi and bacteria to function properly and this will help the trees to establish better.
• The first three years after planting bare root trees are vulnerable to drying out and competition from weeds. Mulching will suppress weeds, and keep moisture in the soil helping the tree to establish.
• Bare root plants can be bought from nurseries and garden centres between November and February and are cheaper to buy than pot grown plants. They also use less resources, such as peat and plastic and water to produce. Bare root trees and shrubs need to be planted before March but can be stored in the garden by heeling in, covering the roots with soil so they do not dry out.
• Pruning of fruit trees and shrubs can begin once the leaves are off during the months of December to February. Plums should be pruned in June to prevent infection from Silver Leaf.
• Many studies have found that contact with a natural environment increases healing in hospitals, and wellbeing in other settings. A recent report found that exercise in the green environment lifted and improved the mood.
Marina O’Connell
Autumn 2007
You can visit my Apricot Centre website at www.apricotcentre.co.uk
Finally after an hour of procrastination, I go outside; it starts to rain. I have a Ferrari rotavator and this roars into action and chugs away and after a short while 100 meters of Raspberry furrow is roughly carved out between the rows of plum trees. Then it stops and I can’t get it to start again, no matter how I poke it with a screwdriver. So I get out the fork and start digging, I am really communing with nature now. I meet 23 worms, 1 millipede, 1 duck, 2 seagulls and quite a lot of couch grass roots that I pull out. I am not over-whelmed by deep and meaningful thoughts but I am hot, my back aches and the sun has penetrated the deep grey. My headache, from too much red wine the night before (probably not organic) has eased up. I feel good.
The digging has given me a chance to look at the soil – it is in good condition nice and crumbly even though it is damp, not a huge number of worms but it is winter and they go down deep. Steiner says that the life forces draw down into the soil in the winter, the soil is at its most vital in the winter. This is the time to apply the Biodynamic preparation 500 in homeopathic doses to the soil to draw the cosmic forces into the soil so in turn the Raspberries can become imbued with the cosmic forces, and then of course we eat the Raspberries and we too then become imbued with cosmic forces – or so the theory goes. My community has expanded even further and now includes the cosmos. I am no longer alone in my field. I cam imagine hundreds of thousands of bacteria and fungi working away there to carry out the myriad of functions to keep all the plants growing, well actually I cant imagine them at all it seems so amazing to me that it all happens at all.
The Raspberry plants (organic of course) are arriving next week to be planted out, on a fruit day – when the moon is in a fire sign. Next July I will sell the fruit at the farmers market in London. It makes me think of summer and heat, ummmm how lovely. Wendell Berry said “eating is an agricultural act”, the Londoners that will eat my Raspberries next summer are probably sitting in a nice warm office or home right now not very agricultural! But they are supporting me financially to farm this way and they are now a part of my community along with the worms, millipede, duck and seagulls and the cosmos in my field.
The Raspberries once planted will need mulching to keep the weeds down. I can buy plastic or use my ever growing pile of duck manure to carry out the same job. The orchard is home to 200 ducks running up to Christmas. The manure will not keep the weeds down quite as much as plastic but it is free and more environmentally friendly than plastic. As I dig I decide upon using the manure.
Finally the ground is ready for planting. The Ferrari miraculously starts again ready to go back in the shed, and I head in for lunch feeling hot and hungry and connected to my by now huge community. I realised that I did feel less stressed, and the day seemed brighter, so, as I knew, fresh air, exercise and time in nature is good for you. Even on a cold grey day.
Seasonal notes;
• Winter is the time for ground preparation and planting of perennial plants, trees, shrubs. Soil can be dug over roughly and preferably mulched so the rain does not damage the soil structure. The soil structure is important to allow the fungi and bacteria to function properly and this will help the trees to establish better.
• The first three years after planting bare root trees are vulnerable to drying out and competition from weeds. Mulching will suppress weeds, and keep moisture in the soil helping the tree to establish.
• Bare root plants can be bought from nurseries and garden centres between November and February and are cheaper to buy than pot grown plants. They also use less resources, such as peat and plastic and water to produce. Bare root trees and shrubs need to be planted before March but can be stored in the garden by heeling in, covering the roots with soil so they do not dry out.
• Pruning of fruit trees and shrubs can begin once the leaves are off during the months of December to February. Plums should be pruned in June to prevent infection from Silver Leaf.
• Many studies have found that contact with a natural environment increases healing in hospitals, and wellbeing in other settings. A recent report found that exercise in the green environment lifted and improved the mood.
Marina O’Connell
Autumn 2007
You can visit my Apricot Centre website at www.apricotcentre.co.uk
Building the Apricot Centre – Building with Shipping Containers
In 2006 on taking redundancy from my lecturing job, I decided to use the money along with a grant and a loan to build a small training centre in the middle of my organic orchard in
I had a top budget of £36,000 and wanted to build a space of about 80 – 100 square meters to house training room, food processing kitchen for jams and cordials and an office. I was applying for a redundant building grant and for this reason could not go over the £36,000 thresh-hold. This gave me a budget of between £360 - £450 per square meter, and seemed to me more than enough money, having carried out a number of house renovations before. The difference this time was that being a mother of 2 including a newly adopted baby, and my husband working full time we didn’t have time to do much of the work ourselves.
Discussing the plan with a local architect I found out that normal building costs would be about £800 per square meter, and if we wanted a “green” breathing wall construction the first plan, then were looking at a much higher price than that. His solution was to go and find a lot more money. However with the permaculture adage “the solution is in the problem” ringing in my ears I kept asking for more quotes, and casting about for different types of building. Of course the solution was right on the doorstep!
We live not far from Felixstowe docks where mountains of old containers are piled up, they are a waste product of globalization where products are shipped around the world. A local company modify them for offices and mess rooms for buildings sites. With this company we came up with a design that fitted our plan – 2 x 40 ft containers cut down to 30 ft welded together with the walls removed, the ends sliced off and fitted with sliding door windows a bit like a huge box. Another 40 ft container cut down to 24 ft with the end sliced off and fitted with sliding door windows is the kitchen and the forth similar container contains the office. Doors are cut through and a toilet built in the end of one of the rooms. The whole structure was welded together and clad and stained to fit in to the orchard, and a sedum roof was installed on top of a roof decking to provide insulation. The inside was insulated and lined with plaster board and wooden floor and painted in the normal way.
The whole structure sits on a plinth of engineering bricks 2 wide, and 4 high, the foundations are relatively shallow – in our case there was an existing concrete pad where an old building had sat. (In fact the Machinery shed and
The building was ordered in February and craned onto site in April 2006, it took a further 3 months to clad, paint, hook up to amenities, (water and electricity), and have a ceramic stove installed. No trees had to be removed they simply hoiked the containers over the existing trees so it now sits nestled amongst a group of established trees.
The cost of the building on site was £27,000 for 82 square meters, £330 per square meter. The cost of the plinth, and the hooking the building up to services was extra, as was “greening” the building, the sedum roof, the ceramic stove and a small wind turbine were added so the building could run more or less carbon zero. It came in one budget and on time. The heating is provided from wood from the orchard, the wind turbine providing electricity for running lighting and small water heaters for cooking and cleaning. We had permission to install a composting toilet, but complications with building regulations – composting toilets and disabled access ( as we are open to the public) could not be resolved and as the toilet was yards from an existing drain we installed a conventional one in the end.
The whole process was taken through planning permission and building regulations with surprisingly little problems.
It is in no way a deep green building, we deliberately used mass produced materials to keep the cost down, but overall the materials used were considerably reduced by using the containers as the structure of the building. We were also using up a waste product – the containers. The low cost has in turn helped us to install the equipment we needed to run the building as much as off the grid as we could. It is also a surprisingly beautiful building, box like it has beautiful space and light, it had incredible passive solar gain all year round because of the huge windows and N/S orientation and high insulation. I would be very happy to live in it.
The containers are incredibly versatile, they come in 20 ft and 40 ft lengths, but they are all about 8 ft wide – probably the worst draw back as this can be a bit narrow for some rooms. They can be stacked on top of one another, have walls removed to make them wider, and windows can be cut in the sides or whole ends removed to provide doors and windows. They can be clad have pitched roofs put on top, and made to look not like containers! They can in the end be easily removed from a site leaving only narrow concrete plinths behind. And they are incredibly cheap !
Marina O’Connell
November 2008
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