I just got in a big delivery of stuff from my main supplier, a full pallet of bulky materials,
fertility and other stuff that I try to stock up on at the beginning of the growing season.
We manage a lot of growing space as part of this RED Gardens Project, and as we continue
to add more spaces, and I want to try new things, it seems I’m buying more every year.
We have also been doing a lot of sorting of all the stuff we already have,
trying to get everything in order, before the growing season really starts, clearing out a
lot of the mess in the storage areas, and doing a full reorganisation of everything,
something that was definitely needed. And I’ve been thinking about all this stuff,
and how most of it is not really necessary for growing vegetables, but useful in many different
ways, and I can easily justify having most of it as part of the divers range of explorations we do.
But when I actually look at all, there is definitely too much stuff, and I though it
might be useful to go through all the different types of stuff that I have on hand, probably
more of a cautionary tale than any advice. But there is so much it would take two videos
to even touch on it all, and this first video is mainly about all the stuff that I need to
buy and have available to propagate and protect all the plants that we need in the gardens.
Seeds are probably the most essential thing in any vegetable garden, and I have bought in a
lot of seeds from a few different suppliers, often needing to buy fairly large quantities
with all of the space that we grow in. I have lots of different varieties of seeds,
for many different types of crops, and extra seeds that I had bought in and stored in the
freezer to get over the mess that Brexit made of our seed supplies here in Ireland for a few years,
in addition to the disruptions caused by the global health crisis.
I also have lots of different seeds from a few large variety trials that we have done,
including a wide range of different varieties of tomato, onion, squash, carrot, and beetroot seeds,
which add up to many different packets of seeds that I need to keep track of,
store and make sure are still viable. I have also been saving seeds, with a
lot of different varieties of bean seeds, which are easy to save but take up a lot of space,
many tomato varieties, and bulk quantities of lettuce, beetroot and radish seed, and I am still
trying to figure out what to do with it all. I have also been buying in seed mixes for
green manures and cover crops, which I have used a bit in the past but want to explore
different options a lot more this year in order to help build soil fertility.
And I have a lot of seeds for growing microgreens, some of them in quite large quantities,
which I didn’t use so much last year, but plan to grow a lot more of this year.
So, I have hundreds of packages of seeds, most of them quite small, and some of them quite large
and bulky, and I really need to reorganise it all, and do more germination testing and
get rid of the older, less viable seeds. And I need to repackage a lot of the seeds
I saved for sharing with others before the season really starts.
I have also amassed a lot of propagation equipment, moving away from the collection
of reused pots and makeshift trays that I relied on in the early years.
I have bought lots of pots of different sizes, mainly for tomatoes and other large long season
plants, and most of these get used each spring, and then are stored for the rest of the season.
There are also quite a few trays of modules, several different sizes that we use for a
lot of different types of crops, and different size base trays, some with holes and without.
We use a lot of these trays for soil blocks, which are made with a standard size blocker
which we used for most of the large brassicas and other plants, and a blocker that produces
much smaller cubes that I find useful for starting slower germinating seeds.
I also use the same types of trays for microgreens which are much easier
and more convenient to use than the trays I made a few years ago out of scraps of wood.
And I was given a lot of trays with an open grill for a base that I find useful
for potted plants and chitting seed potatoes.
A recent addition to the propagation supplies has been a lot of grow bags, in three different sizes,
which I mainly got for pot trials and trying a lot of things out that don’t easily fit
into the plans of the other growing space. Many of the larger bags are already filled,
and are now objects in the landscape that need to be moved and kept track of,
and we still have a stack of small and medium sized grow bags hanging in shed.
The biggest part of the delivery I just unpacked was growing medium or potting
compost, which justified the expense of filling a full pallet for delivery.
We use a lot of seed compost for starting seeds in trays and plugs,
and also use it as a base for microgreens. The coarser potting compost has more fertility
in it, and is used for filling larger pots, especially with all of the tomato, pepper,
aubergine and cucumber plants we grow. It is also useful as part of the
mix within a lot of the grow bags. And we use a specially mixed compost
for making soil blocks, which seems to have the right mix of materials to hold together well.
I have been buying in lots of bags of these types of growing medium from the same supplier
for years, as I find it reliable and convenient. But I just bought a few bags of another brand of
growing medium, which is produced in Ireland that I want to try, and I am planning to
try a few more types of growing medium to compare, including ones that I mix myself.
I have also been buying large bags of perlite and vermiculite, which are different types of
light weight filler that are useful to reduce the weight and increase the drainage and water
holding capacity of the grow bags and pots. And I’m continuing to collect other materials
for use in propagation, including leaf mould and decomposed woodchip,
which all translates into more bags of bulky material and more space needed to store it all.
I also bought in a fair amount of concentrated fertility, and this is probably the type of
material I buy that I have the most options of, apart from all the packages of seeds.
Some of the gardens that we manage don’t use any concentrated fertility, and others heavily rely
on a range of different types of imported powders and pellets for growing vegetables.
Each year I buy in bags of pelleted chicken manure as a form of general fertility,
and I have been buying in a few different forms of high nitrogen material including
hair meal pellets, seed meals, and few other forms of plant based nitrogen I want to try,
as this often seems to be a limiting nutrient in the gardens and grow bags.
I also have a load of conventional fertiliser that I bought last year for use in the grow
bag experiments, which was really cheap to buy in a large sack of, but now I need to store it.
We use a lot of seaweed meal to provide trace elements for a few of the gardens,
and have supplies of gypsum, lime, soft rock phosphate, and high potassium rock dust,
mainly for the Complete Organic Fertiliser that I mix up for use in the Extensive Garden.
We also have bags of Basalt rock dust, and bentonite clay I have been experimenting with,
and containers of liquid fertiliser, with different proportions of NPK, and a liquid
seaweed, all of which we use for liquid and foliar feeding in the different gardens.
And I have a collection of much more concentrated compounds used mainly in
the Complete Organic Fertiliser mix, including copper, boron, magnesium, zinc, and manganese.
We only use a very small amount of these concentrates,
but still have enough of it around and have to store carefully.
It is the sheets of material that I buy that are most obvious and visible in the gardens.
Especially over winter and into the spring when a lot of the crops in the gardens are
covered to protect them from the elements and from being damage by birds and other animals.
We have used a lot of woven ground cover fabric as an essential component within
a few of the gardens, and it is useful for covering other beds to protect over winter.
We also use this material for clearing rough ground especially with the abundant
amounts of scutch grass and other pernicious weeds in the landscape.
I have not been great at keeping this stuff in good shape, as it needs to be
lifted and repositioned regularly, sealed at the edges to prevent fraying and kept
in use rather than just storing it. We also use a lot of crop covers and
horticultural fleece, which are really useful as a combination in spring to
protect from frosts and the high winds. We use a lot of netting during the growing
season to keep the cabbage butterflies off of the brassicas plants, and since we have started
using these wide pieces of netting, the caterpillar damage has been almost non existent.
And we keep the same netting over some of the plants for a lot of the season,
especially to prevent the birds from eaten the hardy overwintering brassicas.
We use a finer mesh to prevent carrot fly from getting in and damaging the roots of carrots,
though we haven’t been so successful with this, I think mainly because we
haven’t covered the crop early enough and sealed adequately around the edges.
This material can also get holes in it, especially from the claws of birds and other animals that
can push aside the strands to make numerous holes that are large enough for the carrot
fly to get into the crop to lay their eggs. And more holes can be made if the material
isn’t handled carefully, and it takes a fair amount of time to work the strands
in order to close over the holes, but at least it is repairable a lot of the time.
I buy in rolls of all these types of materials or covers, and cut them down
into lengths appropriate for the gardens, many of which are in use at any one time, but there
are also some stored depending on the season. I use to get pre-cut lengths 10m long thinking
this was enough to cover the 10m beds of the family scale garden,
but that was a mistake, as the cover needs to be longer than the bed to have enough to wrap
down and secure over the ends of the bed. So I have a collection of old sheets of
this fabric, that are not really long enough, and others that are a bit too damaged to use,
but are possibly still useful for other growing spaces or uses.
Some of this material is only made to last a few seasons, others can be useful for many
seasons if cared for and stored well, which I am trying to get better at, as I have lost
some material in storage, especially the fleece that rodents seem to like building nests in.
So we have the sheets of different types of material that need to be stored when not in use,
in a way that prevents any damage and makes it easy to identify appropriate
sizes and condition when we need them, and we are still working in the best method for that.
And I also have invested in a lot of rolls of this material,
which significantly reduces the cost per sheet, and it means that I have the supply
when it is needed, especially as it was so hard to get many things a few years ago.
And I am able to supply some to friends and neighbours when they need it,
but I still need to make space to store all the rolls, and to keep them from getting damaged.
There are lots of other things that we have, that could be included in this broad list of things
that I buy in or collect, in order to propagate and feed and protect the plants in the gardens.
There are so many other options, equipment and supplies that I could buy in for propagating
and protecting vegetable plants in the gardens. And a lot of other tools and other stuff that
I make, assemble and repurpose to help grow more vegetables in these gardens,
and to save time and effort, but that will be the focus of another video.
It is of course possible to grow vegetables on a small scale without the use of all this stuff,
especially if it’s possible to build fertility on site,
as only a few simple tools and some seeds might be needed.
Going through a lot of what I actually use, it is a lot of stuff, with a lot of expense
and impact on the environment, and I want to explore the possibilities of growing
vegetables with very little stuff, which is the focus of a new garden I want to establish.
But I also recognise that most of this stuff can be quite useful, and can save a lot of time and
effort, especially if I want to grow a wide range of vegetables over a long growing season, and to
grow a lot of food in a relatively small space. And I am also interested in trying out new things,
as a big part of this RED Gardens Project is to explore a wide range of different approaches,
and I need to try out a lot of thing out in order to be able to compare them.
Each method or approach or material has its benefits and its downsides,
but the amount of material and stuff that I need to buy in to manage particular gardens,
and to manage this RED Gardens Project in general, does bother me at times, especially
when I consider the amount of time and space that it takes to organise, store and look after it all.