(upbeat music)
- I'm Adam and I garden here in West Wales.
This is my little patch of paradise.
This is where my life is.
This is in a way, gardening is my life.
It's what I do every day.
And I've always gardened
and I haven't actually chosen gardening as a hobby,
gardening found me from a very young age,
and it's because I was brought up in a family
that's kind of always gardened
from generation to generation.
It's never really been something we've thought about.
It's more something we just do because it's the way of life.
It's my hobby, it's my delight,
it's my lifestyle, it's everything I do (chuckling)
And yeah, and sometimes people always say,
that you should, have an escape from the world.
Well, when your world is gardening,
you don't need an escape because that is the escape.
And I've never felt the need to escape
because gardening has always been a part of me
and hopefully always will be.
(soft upbeat music)
(ducks quacking)
Well when I moved to this property
about five years ago now I think,
this garden was completely unusable, wild,
and with every invasive weed species you could think of.
And to me it was a big space.
It's about just over a third of an acre to half an acre.
So, it's a large garden
in terms of what you generally would have of a household.
But again, it's a manageable size
to be able to live a self-sufficient life.
Yeah and there was always an ambition to create a garden
that sustains us as a family.
There's two of us in the house at the moment,
but we really like to find a way in a way
that we can produce our own foods
in a way that is self-sufficient, is sustainable,
is friendly to the environment.
'Cause I do garden in a way
that encourages nature into the garden.
I feel strongly that it's not just my garden,
although it's my kingdom, it's where I live,
it's where I grow my produce,
it's actually was a garden
to wildlife before I was here.
So, for me, it's paramount that bring
the wildlife into the garden.
So, I grow flowers in the garden,
primarily because it's beneficial
to attract pollinators into the garden,
which then creates great yields with my vegetables,
and I also like the fact that it makes it prettier,
it beautifies the garden.
Veg garden doesn't need to be something that's industrial.
It can be beautiful as well.
Before I moved here,
I gardened in a very traditional way, because like I said,
gardening has always been something that's part of me.
And I've been taught
through experience from my family members,
who've just gardened over generations.
And when I had my own garden,
I could reverse all that
and think what's the best way of growing things
in the space that I've got.
And I learnt
some of the principles surrounding permaculture,
and not disrupting structures
that are already in the garden, the soil structure.
So, following the No-Dig method is something we've done
since the outset from establishing this garden.
And raised beds as well in terms of being able to,
not manipulate such but control the soil conditions.
Because in West Wales, we're really (chuckling) known
for a lot of wet weather and rain.
And where I live is called Gorslas.
and Gorslas translates into English as the green bog.
So, the land around this garden is
mushy grassland pasture.
So, when it rains, it doesn't only rain
but it creates rivers within seconds.
So, one of the things we had to do
from the outset to protect our crops
was to create a raised bed garden.
So, just six inches to nine inches off the ground
is just enough for that water to wash away
rather than battling against the elements in the garden.
You need to garden to the environment that you live in.
And you've always got to alter the way you garden based
upon the ground conditions.
And so, it's a very wet space,
but actually we use that to our advantage
because obviously growth is not a problem.
We don't suffer much from drought.
in this bed here I'm growing a Russian kale,
but as you can see I'm mulching it
with a layer of wool fleece.
Now this is a byproduct from packaging
that's used to insulate.
And the reason I'm doing it is
because it's a weed suppresent,
obviously 'cause the light can't reach the soil to
germinate the weed seeds, but it retains moisture
because you get less evaporation during the intense heat
but it's also is a great slug and snail deterrent
because the fiber in the wool themselves.
Slugs don't tend to like to travel over it.
I'm not saying it's going to completely
eliminate the amount of slugs that reach the plants,
but it's definitely as you can see from this kale
quite young luscious leaves ordinarily
would be eaten by slugs, I've got no problems whatsoever.
We're right by the field
by a wildlife end which is an absolutely fantastic area
for slugs to live in the nighttime.
But yet again, there's no damage
not even on the edges and the other long grass
because the wool is suppressing the population
of the slugs actually coming on to the bed to eat the kale.
When it comes to techniques, gardening techniques
you couldn't crop rotate in this garden.
For example, crop rotation wouldn't work.
And I'm veering away
from the idea that you need to follow principles
of crop rotation because I planted similar plants
in the same areas in the past five years.
And, you know, following those principles, you
you expect probably a greater sense of disease
but I'm not seeing that at all.
And when, when you've got a confined
I say confined space, it's a large garden
but when you've got confined conditions to
garden in, crop rotation is not viable.
So for us, for example, because we do have shade
in the garden, I've got to grow currants
or rhubarb or shade loving plants in those areas.
It's continuously, I can't alternate my salad beds
because that's where they grow best.
And you know, I, even though it's a large garden
I grow a lot to my veg in containers as well.
So potatoes, for example, carrots
they're always grown in containers in 30litre buckets.
When it comes to growing potatoes, growing Sarpo Mira
is one of the best varieties I found in the garden
because you can grow them throughout the year.
Now, for example, here
I've got some young Sarpo Miras that I planted
a fortnight ago after harvesting some new potatoes.
Yet these would be ready to have this any time
from late September onwards.
And the beauty of them is that they have blight resistance.
And so I've got, these planted traditionally, you know
when you plant your main crop
of potatoes early April, end of March.
And so these will be ready to harvest anytime
from August onwards.
But the beauty of them
is because they are blight resistant.
You don't have to worry
about rushing to get them out to the soil.
You can leave these
in these buckets or in the soil, if you're growing them in
in the ground, throughout the winter.
And they don't, they don't damage at all from blight
obviously if it's a wetter than average winter
you may suffer a bit of rot or slug damage in the soil
but essentially they're a crop of potatoes
a store so well in the ground and with the buckets
what I will do, I'll cut away the foliage here
and I'll just pop it in the corner of the shed.
Then in a dry space, I leave it.
And then when I want my potato
they'll just go in and harvest them.
And it's as simple as that.
There's no stress to it.
It's easy.
The potatoes are tasty and you have a large prolific crop
for such a small area of space.
You know, I would have easily three
or four feeds of potato from one bucket like this.
So that's three or four weeks worth of Sunday lunch.
When you think of it like that, you know
and that's that for me, when you work
out the calendar of the winter, 16, 16 weeks, four months
maybe you've got loads of crops there to help you
through the winter.
I've, I've never actually
been someone who gets dissapointed when something hasn't
grown, I just think, well, why hasn't it grown?
And I find that a new challenge
and I get excited about trying to combat that challenge.
And yes I've got the luxury
of many beds where I can experiment,
but even if you've only got one bed
maybe the Northern side of that bed to the southern side
of that bed varies greatly in terms
of wind exposure in terms of the condition of the soil
in terms of how the sun turns around.
You may have eight hours
of sunlight at bottom of the bed.
You can grow most vegetables easily and only six
and a half at this top corner, but that actually
allows you then to plan that bad in that way.
So get to know your garden,
get to feel the essence of it and adapt it over time.
Trees grow, trees will change the shade
and the garden over two years.
So maybe where I'm having eight hours
of sunlight now will only be six hours in two years time.
So then I'll have to adapt the garden again
but that's the best bit of a garden.
And it's just, it's just a continuous experiment
of chopping and changing and having fun.
Naturally part of being self-sufficient is producing food
in many different ways.
And one of the ways that we produce our own food here is
by breeding poultry and using poultry around the garden.
I've got quails, I've got hens and I have also got ducks
and they've all got very different uses in the garden.
One of the best things about quail bedding, especially
if you use pine needles is what I use as bedding
material is that it's naturally acidic when it breaks down.
So it makes a fantastic mulch for around the blueberries.
And although there's conflicting evidence in terms
of when you should use it in the garden
I must admit I use it straight away on the soil.
So I put a mulch down here about two inches of mulch
of quail bedding as you can see here.
In the beginning of march
this is fresh bedding and the blueberry crop is fantastic.
The yields are heavy every year from doing this.
And I think it's
because there's a combination of the nitrogen within
the bedding, the manure itself,
but also the acidity of the pine needles
as they break down and compost.
Ducks are absolutely, the quack pack I call.
And they're just robots they're machines.
When it comes to slug and snail control, they, they
they seem to find a way to meander around the beds
in this garden without harming the lettuce,
without eating the Brassicas.
Although the love Brassicas's leaves,
their ultimate goal is to hunt out the slugs, to forage
for those little creatures that can sometimes
create problems in the garden
but slug control here, we're completely organic.
We don't use any, any kinds of chemicals to prevent slugs.
My ducks are a Welsh Harlequin breed
a native Weslh breed, the only Welsh breed there is,
originated from Khaki Campbells.
They are very docile, they're very tame ,
they're not flighty.
You can, you know, they're manageable.
You don't, you don't necessarily have to have
a large space to have three or four ducks
and three or four ducks in a garden of this size
is absolutely fantastic to help you control slugs.
You know, they're my gardeners.
I'm not the only garden in this garden,
the quack pack are my gardeners as well.
Poultry to me is a key element
in vegetable gardening especially ,
and No-dig gardening because
if you want to mulch the soil every year
they're the biggest producers of compost I know.
you put weeds, the weeds never mmake the compost heap
in our garden,
they make the chicken pen because the chickens
will eat that they'll compact it ,
they'll trod it into the ground.
And then annually I'll go
into the chicken pen with a few wheelbarrows
and I'll have tons of well rotted manure
and soil, that's a great soil conditioner
and a mulch to chuck straight onto the garden.
So why waste time turning compost heaps when
you can have the chickens do that
for you and have fresh eggs for it at the same time.
So, yeah, so if you've got the space
I definitely encourage anyone not to be afraid to
take that leap and to house some poultry in the garden
small spaces, quails, larger spaces, hens and ducks.
The biggest influence in my life when it comes
to gardening was my grandfather, I was brought
up in a council house by, in a small village
in West Wales where we didn't have much space.
We had, you know
maybe 7 meters by 10 meter courtyard type garden.
But we produced a ton of veg in that small space.
My grandfather has been a massive influence on my life
especially when it comes to gardening.
I lived with my grandfather
after my grandmother passed away.
And I think, you know, during that time
my gardening delight really intensified.
Gardening for me is an international language.
Now my first language is Welsh, I use Welsh
in my day-to-day life and I've always known gardening
through the medium of Welsh.
However, I have a keen interest
in languages and learning languages.
So one of the things that I do is
I use social media to promote Welsh
but through the medium of gardening, for example
at the moment I have 7,000 followers on Instagram.
And, but I only use Welsh
as the language of the posts on Instagram.
Now, now I use hashtags in many languages
as a medium of pulling traffic to the posts.
The beauty of Instagram is
that it's got a translation facilities.
So it doesn't matter where you are in the world.
You can link into that message.
And sometimes the translation can be questionable
but you can like, for example, I follow a lot of Spanish,
French, Italian accounts, I speak German and that.
So I can, I can look into those accounts and I'd love it,
If you can find an opportunity just to pop over
and say, hello.