(gentle music)
- I'm Stephanie Hafferty and I'm a no dig gardener
and I've been growing really since my teens,
but that was mostly to grow things to make wine with.
And I dabbled, I grew the odd thing like herbs,
until about 27, 28 years ago when I started growing
my first at home gardens and I've been growing
as a no dig gardener for 13 years now.
And that has also been my job.
So as well as growing at home,
I was growing on market gardens, on private estates.
I ran kitchen gardens for clients,
so it's been quite a varied career in gardening.
So I moved from Somerset, from Bruton in Somerset
here five months ago, and when I arrived here,
it was this area where I'm sitting now
was completely grass, weedy grass.
It's got creeping buttercup in
and clover and dandelions and things like that.
And there's various other bits to the garden as well,
different beds and an orchard behind me,
which again, the flower beds, had things in,
but they were fairly neglected
and everywhere else was grass.
I started this on March the 31st
by making the first bed over there.
I did this a bed at a time,
which was mainly for practical reasons
'cause I was mulching with cardboard.
So I needed to unpack first
to get the cardboard to make the bed.
And I think keep things simple and manageable.
So these were made by putting cardboard down
on the weedy grass, which was mown first
and then five centimeters of compost on top
with a wood chip for the paths.
And that is using less compost and it helps kill the grass
underneath and you can start growing straight away,
but you just do an area
that you can manage and then do the next bit.
You don't have to feel that you need to set up
the whole garden immediately because
I think that way it would just get too stressful.
In my previous garden,
I would put one to two centimeters of compost a year
on top of the beds.
This was all bought in.
'Cause obviously I moved such a long distance.
It would have been impractical
to bring all my compost heaps with me,
but in future I plan to make all the compost that I need.
That's my mission, in my previous garden,
which was smaller than this,
I was able to make all the compost that I needed.
Whereas here I've got extra resources
that mean I can make more compost,
such as I've got areas of grass in the orchard.
And I've got a lot of leaves,
which I'll be able to compost.
The opportunity for making enough compost
eventually is here.
And I'm interested in fermented teas as a way of feeding
the soil without having to add any compost.
And I went to a market garden in Oxfordshire and so farm
and there, he's using different fermented teas
from Korean natural agriculture,
which is a way, he's exploring using less mulch
and using these teas.
But one of the criticisms of no dig gardening,
which is valid, is how do you make enough compost,
particularly for people in smaller gardens?
And the reality is if you're digging, you need compost.
You know, it's not an either or,
exploring other forms of fertility
I think is beneficial and it's actually really good fun too.
One of the key ways that I garden
is looking at getting a balance between the predators
and the prey and working with nature
so that things will flourish.
And in my previous garden, I was there 20 years.
So by the time I left, it was really in balance.
And I knew that when I would see aphids in the spring,
that I didn't have to think about it at all,
'cause within two weeks,
all of the predators were there.
That was something that I know works really well.
And obviously there's no way
I would use herbicides or pesticides.
Here it's new.
And I'm learning constantly about getting the balance right.
So I know there are wasps here,
which is handy because social wasps are phenomenal predators
of lots of the bugs that attack the things I want to grow.
This time next year,
there'll be a lot less habitat
and hopefully things will be far more in balance.
I think what surprised me the most actually
is how quickly things got established
and started to flourish.
And yeah, I think it's just,
it actually surprises me every time I walk out of the house
that this is here, even though I put it here,
which I know sounds a bit mad,
but it's like this isn't a lawn, this is lots of food.
I grow a lot of annual flowers every year.
And I like to put them in amongst things,
partly because it's good for bringing in
different kinds of insects, but also I think it's cheerful.
And I just like it.
And that's an awful lot of green
when you're growing vegetables
and it's nice to have splashes of color.
So some people brought me lovely presents when I moved here,
like welcome to Wales presents,
like sacks of alpaca poo and sacks of pooey sheep's fleece,
which I experimented with as mulches.
Both of those I've not used before and also wood chip.
I had to have some trees chopped down
because they were dangerous.
And so I've got a supply beach and fur wood chip,
I've used cardboard with polythene on top
to clear the ground.
Some of them I knew would cause slug habitat.
That one certainly did.
I planted squash in it and they all got eaten,
but it's just different ways of trying things out.
And the one that has surprised me the most
was a kind of little Hugellette.
So it's kind of Hugelkulture,
but not quite the way it's normally advised to make it.
And I know that hugels in this country can be a habitat
for vermin and can be a habitat for slugs.
But I planted rhubarb in which not a lot tends to go for.
And then we put in squash and tomatoes
and soy beans and a few other things.
And I thought it's all gonna get eaten
apart from my rhubarb,
but at least it's spare plants.
And actually it's been the best squash that I've grown here.
So that was an experiment
that I wasn't convinced would work,
and actually it's flourished.
I like trying out different things.
I have some things that I grow every year,
such as the zar beans there because I know they work well.
I know they're very versatile
and they're winter food and they're yummy.
I like to grow Grenoble red salad every winter,
just sown the seeds now for the poly tunnel,
because I know that works well undercover
and it works well outside,
but every year I do like to try different things.
I'm keen to see what has been brought here
from other countries as well.
There's such a wide amount of choice.
I've just managed to find some different Japanese greens
that you can grow over winter that I've never tried before.
So I'm excited to see those.
I do like to support smaller seed companies,
but also I think from my work as a garden writer,
I think it's also important to be aware
of what seeds they're selling in the supermarkets,
particularly the ones that will do four packets for a pound.
Because back in the day I was raising three kids on my own
and we were skint and that is how I grew a garden.
I could afford to buy four packets for a pound seeds.
I wouldn't have been able to afford to order them online.
I don't think anything it's ever a good idea
to just stick with a few things.
I much prefer variety.
I've had one gardening book published,
which I co-wrote with Charles,
and that was published in 2017.
And the following year I wrote a book
called the Creative Kitchen, which is about recipes
which you can grow yourself, almost entirely.
There's a few things in there that you can't like olive oil,
but everything else could be grown
on an allotment in England or Wales.
And it's all plant-based, but it's not a vegan book.
It's just is plant-based 'cause that's what I grow.
I grow vegetables and fruit and herbs.
I'm currently writing a book about growing year round
in smaller spaces based on my experience
of growing at home, at allotments.
And it's a very practical book for people
whatever size situation they've got.
Social media wise, I've recently started a YouTube channel,
which is my name.
And I publish on Instagram updates about the garden,
pretty much every day really.
And I do very short videos on that too.
And that's also my name, Stephanie Hafferty.
So all of my social media is my name,
which is quite handy really.
'Cause I don't have to remember anything else.
I have a website as well and a blog
where I update fairly regularly.
And that has lots of information on about what I do.
I think one thing that is important is I work from home.
Unfortunately, you know, a lot of the work I did
when I was traveling around giving talks has been canceled
because of the pandemic and that is unlikely
to start properly till next year.
So much of what I'm doing is from here,
which gives me the flexibility
to look at the weather forecast and think, okay,
I've got to spend this amount of time writing.
And this is when it's going to be nice weather.
So that's when I'm going to go and make a new bed
or side shoot the tomatoes or whatever the job is,
it is beneficial because I'm not having to be somewhere else
when the weather's great, I can have that flexibility.
And for a lot of people, they wouldn't have that.
You know, if you've got to be working
in an office or in a supermarket or in a different location,
that is the reality for most people,
even the people working from home,
they've got to be there at certain times.
They don't have that flexibility.
So I think it's important to note that I do have that,
and that is a great advantage
and I don't want it to look like,
hey, look, I've done all this, aren't my marvelous?
It's also because I can adjust my day.
I do work very long days,
but I can adjust what I'm doing
to fit around what I'm wanting to make.
And that isn't something that is available for everybody.
In a couple of years time,
I will have more of the orchard mulched
and a productive area there
and a fruit cage over my soft fruit,
which is hopefully happening this winter.
I'm gonna make it so I'm hoping it doesn't all fall down.
I will have more soft fruit.
I will have more fruit trees and fruit bushes.
I will have finally unpacked in a couple of years as well.
I'm hoping, I would be hoping
that there will be the balance that one can create
between the predators and the pests
and everything that I'm growing.
I'll certainly know a lot more about growing
in this location because at the moment,
I don't know what the winters are like here.
I keep hearing about them,
but I will have more plants growing for other projects
I like such as dyeing, as in dyeing clothes,
I'm really interested in getting more,
exploring other ways of gathering water.
And I will have more of my potions going
for the different ferments
that I'm wanting to experiment with.
I try to be a self-sufficient as possible.
That was my goal where I lived before.
And it's certainly one of the things
I'm looking at doing here.
I do a lot of preserving in a normal year, this year,
I won't be, I've not produced the stuff.
Next year, I have dehydrators.
I have a water bath canner,
that kind of thing, I make a lot of wine.
So I do like that, but I don't want to be self-sufficient,
kind of closed loop because part of what I want to do
is I like seeing people.
And I think you could end up, there's a bit of a pressure
sometimes I think that you just keep everything yourself
and in your little loop,
but I want to be able to go into Lampeter
and buy things from small shops.
If I don't do that, there won't be small shops.
They'll just be supermarkets.
And I like the interaction and the chatting,
I was joking with a friend the other day that the advantage
of me having lost almost all of my squash to slugs
is I'm gonna have to go and buy squash this winter.
And you know, when you work from home,
you can just be happy in your own little bubble.
It will make me go out and chat with other people.
And that's important, it's important to interact.
I think one of the things we've learnt
as well in the pandemic with a lot of isolation,
is how important human interaction is.
And I don't think there should be a pressure.
Sometimes I've been criticized for buying in compost
because I didn't make it,
even though it wouldn't have been humanly possible,
you know, nothing in life is perfect.
And I don't think being close-loop,
entirely self-sufficient is possible for most people.
I need to run a car, can't make my own petrol.
Or is it necessarily a healthy thing socially?
Maybe that's just me, 'cause I like talking, I don't know.
(gentle music)