We are at the beginning of another year in the gardens, and although the growing
season hasn’t really started yet, there are lots of things to prepare and plan for.
And soon, as the weather warms up, plants will start to grow again in the gardens,
and there will be beds to prepare and seeds to sow and within a couple of months we will
be very busy in the gardens. And like every year there
will be quite a few changes in 2023. We plan to develop new growing spaces, explore
new methods and crops, radically change some planting plans, and keep other plans similar to
what they have been for the past few years, with the usual continual adaptation and refinements.
We also plan to drop some crops from some spaces, consolidate other areas, and to work
to make other tasks much more efficient, so that we can have the time to focus elsewhere.
And I thought it would be useful to go through it all, to outline the plans for 2023 for all
of the different growing spaces that we manage as part of this ever expanding RED Gardens Project.
The series of family scale gardens remains the core part of this project,
and the oldest part, with a series of 100 square meter growing spaces, each being
managed with a different approach or method. In 2023 we will continue with the 6 gardens that
we were growing in last year, and hopefully adding a seventh, but with a reduced range of crops,
mainly because we won’t be planting as many of the salad or quick rotation crops in these gardens.
We want to make these gardens easier to manage, without losing the broader
exploration of comparing the different methods. There will be the same reduced planting in the
Simple Garden, a radically altered and simplified planting plan in the Polytunnel Garden,
and we will continue to grow a diverse range vegetables in the other 4 gardens,
with 3 of them being more directly comparable, with very similar layouts and planting plans.
The main changes in the Extensive Garden will be moderate adjustments to the range of crops and bed
layouts so that this garden will be more directly comparable to the Intensive and No-Dig Gardens,
while still maintaining the focus on higher nutritional quality and resilience.
We will continue with wide spacing of plants and direct sowing of seeds where possible into the
soil that will be dug as usual with a reasonable amount of higher quality compost to feed the soil.
This garden still relies on a Complete Organic Fertiliser to feed the plants,
which is a mix of concentrated amendments balanced for the type of soil we have, and I
will be adding additional concentrates to amend the nutrients in the soil based on a soil test.
I also want to focus more on providing additional feeding for the plants later in the season,
as I think this has been a limiting factor for this garden in the past few years.
The Intensive Garden will have similar layout and range of vegetables with a higher density of
planting and more effort and resources put in. The previous focus on trying to grow more
vegetables in this garden will be shifted a bit this year to trying to grow more in
general, including green manures. I am interested in maximising the
photosynthesis potential in this garden to try to grow more soil so that we can produce more plants,
essentially trying to limit the amount of bare soil throughout the year, which is
something I haven’t been good at in the past. In addition to this significant shift in focus,
we have decided to replace the annual double digging of the beds in this garden with the
easier and less disruptive use of a broadfork to manage the soil.
The No-Dig Garden is also quite intensive, but we have never cultivated or dug this soil,
apart from removing perennial weed roots. This will be the 5th season of following the
Dowding No-Dig method, of mulching the full garden with a layer of compost each season.
And because I have realised how infertile the municipal compost that we buy in for the task is,
we will also be amending the beds with a concentrated source of nitrogen this year.
This garden finally seems to be working, with a buildup of sufficient supplies
of compost over the years to adequately feed the plants for most of the season,
and it will be interesting to see how it compares to the other two gardens.
The Polyculture Garden has a very different approach to bed layout and planting plans,
and we will continue with the method of dividing the beds into grids or clustered planting.
This is the one garden in the set in which we will continue
to grow the range of salad and other quick crops,
as part of the focus on integrating a diverse range of crops and other beneficial plants.
There has always been a tension in this Polyculture Garden between a random planting and
establishing enough order or control to be able to plan and ensure better success with most crops.
This garden will continue to take the most work and attention, and has the chance to
produce significantly more food than the other gardens, but with a higher risk of
failure as well, and it’s the garden in which I feel I have the most to learn.
The Simple Garden is the easiest to manage and radically different to the Polyculture Garden
beside it, with only four crops in a basic crop rotation, with integrated sheet composting as
the primary form of adding fertility. This season we will continue with the
same four crops, with variety trials of carrots and onions, as well as a
few different varieties of potatoes and squash. The one big change will be to explore using grass
clippings to mulch around the base of the potato plants, in order to keep the sun off of the buried
potatoes to prevent them turning green, and to provide some additional fertility to the plants.
I started this garden originally as a reaction to the much more complicated planting plans of
the other gardens, and this will be the seventh season with the same basic plan.
There is also a 100 square meter polytunnel that has been part of the series of family
scale gardens, which I have managed in the past as if it was the only growing space
that a family had to grow food in, in which we tried to grow a wide range of different crops.
But this tended to double up on a lot of the crops
that were were growing in other spaces, and took a lot of time.
I have decided to really scale back the planting plans for this garden, at least for this season,
to try growing a protected cropping version of what is commonly known as the three sisters,
including a large variety trial of squash, with maize or sweetcorn
and climbing beans for producing dry seeds. This will be a big change, with a lot less work,
but hopefully still a valuable crop, and a lot to experience and learning.
There is a seventh space for an outside garden which I had developed years ago as
a Perennial Garden, and then abandoned it when it got overrun with persistent weeds.
Last year it was the site of one of the big potato grow bag trials,
while holding down the ground cover fabric to kill off some of the established vegetation.
I want to redevelop this space into another vegetable garden that is focused on generating
all of the fertility for the vegetable plants within the space of the garden itself,
with the use of cover crops and green manures. This is the biggest new development in this
area of family scale gardens, and for me it is a reaction to all of the compost,
fertility, materials and equipment that I need to bring in for all the other gardens.
I want to explore how to grow vegetables without the use of plastics, materials,
imported fertility and other resources, apart from seeds and a few basic tools,
and I think this could be really interesting.
Watering has always been a big task in the polytunnels, where we use both
overhead sprinklers and drip line pipes on the soil, as well as occasional hand watering.
In the outside gardens we have used a moveable sprinkler bar,
and hand watering whenever the rain isn’t providing enough moisture for the plants,
but this takes a fair amount of regular attention moving the sprinklers during the day.
Unlike many other places in the world watering infrastructure isn’t so common here in Ireland,
as we generally only have a few weeks every season where watering is might be essential.
But with the scale if this RED Gardens Project, I want to invest in putting drip line watering
systems for all of the outside garden, mainly to save a lot time for focusing on other tasks.
I will also be putting together a dripper watering systems for the numerous grow bags,
which will save a lot of time compared to all the hand watering I did last year, as well
as being better for the plants, many of which suffered when the hand watering wasn’t enough.
I also want to capture rainfall water off of the polytunnels, but this will require
additional infrastructure of gutters and storage as well as an off grid solar electricity supply,
and I am not sure I will have the time to put that in this season.
There are a few other growing spaces in the same area as the family scale gardens, especially
the spaces on either side of the Polytunnel Garden, that I want to continue to develop.
On one side we are growing strawberries and want to continue to use some of the space
for seed saving and other explorations that don’t fit into the other gardens.
On the other side there is a space that still needs some
work to remove all of the perennial weeds. I am not sure what we will grow in this space
this year, perhaps some wheat, or another squash variety trial, or perhaps we will
sow it with a green manure to start to build the soil health and fertility for next year.
The One-Rule compost project beside the gardens will continue for another season,
which is where we compost most of the material from the family scale gardens.
It also works as a Community Composting Facility that quite
a few households in the area use to get rid of their household compostable waste.
This has worked well in the past few years, and I want to continue to refine the methods,
including how often the piles are turned and possibly installing pipes for better aeration.
I want to see if we can get more good quality compost in a shorter time out
of this space, while still keeping it accessible and without too much work.
The other major part of this RED gardens project is the larger spaces of the Black
Plot, which is across the road on partially degraded and overgrown land that we have been
slowly developing over the past few years. The focus of the Black Plot is to explore
growing vegetables on an intermediate scale, and to explore things that we can’t really
fit into the existing structures and methods of the family scale gardens.
The first space that I was able to establish in this Black Plot was a fairly large polytunnel,
with a slightly larger footprint, but quite a bit taller than the other polytunnel.
We had been managing this protected growing space for the past few years with minimum
disturbance of the soil, and it has been a hugely productive space, but it has been empty over
winter because I ran out of steam last autumn. We will soon be sowing a succession of salad
greens and other quick rotation crops in the five fixed beds, and to follow that with lots
of tomatoes, peppers, eggplants or aubergines. This planting will be similar to the one last
year in the other similar polytunnel, with a continued focus on different varieties
and pruning techniques, as well as possibly grafting some plants onto different rootstocks.
The third and newest polytunnel is also in the Black Plot and was only established a year ago.
We had some issues with fertility in this soil last year and will be
focusing on making sure that the soil continues to develop and that there is
enough fertility for the heavy feeding plants that we want to grow this year.
There will be a few early crops, before the main planting of salad cucumbers,
pickling cucumbers, as well as early and late plantings of climbing beans and courgettes.
And we plan to grow a fair amount of sweetcorn, melons and a few other heat loving crops that are
only really suitable for growing in these kind of protected growing spaces here in Ireland.
Late last year we finally established a large trial of five different methods for
creating a no-till growing space. We set up five side by side areas,
each covered first with cardboard, and then with fertile soil, partially decomposed woodchip,
layers of hay, a thick layer of compost, and a lasagne or permaculture deep litter mulch.
We are planning to wait until the summer before planting any crops,
to make sure that the different coverings are able to prevent the existing vegetation from regrowing.
If a lot of weeds make it through the coverings, then we may cover the whole
area with a fabric for the rest of the season to make sure the pernicious weeds don’t come back.
But if the space is clear enough then we plan to plant crops in the long beds so that each crop
is growing in all five of the no-till options, so that we can see how the different methods compare.
There is another space in between the two large polytunnels of the Black Plot that
has been covered with a ground cover fabric for over a year, which was the space for the
second large potato grow bag trial last year. By now the soil under the fabric should be
clear of most of the problematic weeds and a lot of the vegetation will have rotted down,
and we plan to clear and level the soil, and bring in lots of compost
and woodchip to establish five long no-till beds. I want to use this space for growing a continual
succession of quick rotation crops, including fast growing roots, lettuce and other salad crops.
I am hoping to develop a schedule of succession planting dates, a changing selection of crop
types and the use of protective coverings so that we can harvest close to a continual
supply of these types of high value crops, for as much of the season as possible.
There is another space beside the No-Till trial area in which I grew squash last year,
and I want to set up another trial of different approaches to amending cultivated soil.
I am interested in comparing the use of biochar, approaches using biology or using
remineralisation, and others, where we can grow the same crop across a range of different method
to see how they compare over a few season. I am not sure if we will have time this spring
to get the beds established, or the capacity to manage the crops during year, but that is
the direction I want to take this space, and I at least want to get it started in 2023.
The other big project for this year will be continuing with the two large
potato grow bag trials that we started last year,
to continue with the explorations of different growing medium and amendment options.
I want to consolidate all of the bags in one area, to place them over ground cover fabric
to start to clear the rough ground at the south end of the polytunnels.
The big improvement will be dripper watering system, as watering all of the bags required a lot
of time last year, which was a key limitation in the trial, and some of the plants really suffered.
There are lots of other things I want to do,
and spaces around the gardens and the Black Plot that I want to develop.
I am starting to buy in fruit trees, and grape vines, I want to get more hens for eggs and
managing another composting system, and to develop vermiculture bins for composting food waste.
I am planning a fair amount of seed saving and variety trials in the gardens and other spaces,
and to start to grow more herbs and other types of plants.
But of course all of this depends on how much time we have, and having listed it all here,
it does feels like a huge amount of work this season, and a lot to keep track of.
As usual we’ve probably taken on too much, and will likely need to drop some of the plans.
Of course there is also this YouTube channel, which is the third large
component of this RED Gardens Project. For the past few months I have been making
and uploading more videos than usual, and I want to continue with more frequent uploads,
to make videos of all the things we are doing and stuff that we learn along the way.
But this is a lot of work, in addition to growing all that food,
trying all these new things, and managing such a diverse range of growing spaces.
There is also all of the filming, and data gathering and analysis that goes along with
a project like this, and then there’s the writing scripts, filming, editing
videos and responding to all the comments. But I think all of this is worth doing,
and thankfully I have Kris helping in the gardens again this year
If you have the capacity and would like to help support this project and my work for
the coming year, I’ve left links to my Patreon and PayPal accounts in the description below.
But most importantly, I want to thank everyone for watching.