Blog – Page 8 – Sustainable Life Birmingham

Day 5 – Digging and Setting up Compost Bins

Another 2 hours at the allotment and I was able to get some more digging work done and clearing some dried bramble heaps. Not only this however but we also dropped off 4 pallets of varying sizes found in skips around the neighbourhood.

Day Five

A good square of land was carefully dug with the removal of roots, rubbish and pebbles as I went. It’s tough going to get through the solid ground but steady progress has been made none the less.

I then managed to construct one and a half compost bins from the pallets by using the fencing as main support and tying the bins together at the corners with twine. I am going to need more pallets to complete this section of the plot to create front panels and build 3 compost bins in total.

Compost Bin One

General weeds and other unusables that time a long time and/or a lot of care to produce compost that could be used. Or as storage throughout the year until a bonfire can be made (allowed on our plot every november).

Compost Bin Two

Compost to be used on the plot in the next year when it is ready. This year’s compost will be added to this bin but not used. To be rotated with compost bin three.

Compost Bin Three

Compost to be used in the current year (not applicable for the first year of the plot). This compost will have been breaking down in the previous year. To be rotated with compost bin two.

Day Four – A Quick Hours Work

Sometimes when you are looking after an allotment or garden, you only get one or two hours here and there. With so much going on, it can be hard to find the time to go the plot, but even if you can only go down for 10 minutes do your best to do so because chipping away at it a little bit at a time will help you tremendously in the long run.

So today, Day four at the plot, I only had time for an hours work and here is what I did…

Day 4

First of all I got to work clearing the dried bramble cuttings from our last day of clearing and piling them up in the main weed pile at the front of the plot.

This only took a short while, so I got out the spade and started digging up the ground at the front of the plot. I thought I would start and what looked like the easiest section of the allotment but the ground had lots of clumps of wire, plastic, glass and rubble as well as the standard weeds.

It wasn’t long before the sun’s heat was too strong for me and I was tired of pulling up debris so I had to call it a day after only doing a small corner, but I had to get back anyway so it wasn’t a loss.

Fuchsia Berries and Flowers for Foraging and Permaculture

Name: Fuchsia (that’s ch-s not s-ch)

Location: Mostly gardens or public garden spaces

Months: Flowers and berries in summer/Autumn

Edible Parts: Flowers and Berries

Non-Edible Parts: Leaves, Stalks

Fuchsia is a great flowering plant to have in your garden or allotment. For one thing the BEES love it! So if you are adding it to any area, bear this in mind and place it away from seating areas and preferably in the middle of crop plants to encourage the bees.

There are lots of different varieties of fuchsia – some have large flowers, and large berries and others are light pink or purple or fuchsia coloured! However, none of them are poisonous. Each different variety has it’s own flavour and sweetness so try them out and taste for yourself what kind of berry they produce before you buy to make sure you get a strain that suits you. Some are super sweet and some are a bit bitter and have an after taste.

I purchased this plant here for my new permaculture allotment because of the following key reasons:

You can eat the berries fresh or make them into jams etc
You can eat the flowers or use them as food decorations
They attract bees to your plot
They look pretty and add an extra edible dimension to a standard plot

Chicken of the Woods – Mushroom

Name: Chicken of the Woods

Location: Oak Trees

Identifiers: Semi circular brackets, velvety upper surface, zoned bands of bright orange/yellow.

Months: Usually spring to autumn

Edible Parts: All flesh

Non-Edible Parts: The hardest part where it was attached to the wood

As with all mushrooms you gather do not pick unless you are absolutely sure. The chicken of the woods also does not agree with everyone and can cause tummy upset if not properly cooked through. Always try a little first to see if your digestive system likes it or not. The great thing about Chicken of the Woods is that it is quite meaty – like chicken – in texture. Chicken of the Woods is not hairy, so if you see a yellow lookalike that is hairy leave it alone.

Day Three – BIG Permaculture Project Helpers Day

On my third day of working on the allotment I asked for helpers to come along to the plot to help out and drink some alcohol with a facebook event. We had a shaky start as one of our helpers had previously hurt his shoulder and was therefore mostly supervising but we didn’t mind.

Day 3

The first problem I encountered while on the plot was a lack of access to our tools storage box. The box was a gift from our wonderful friend Wayne, so it was brand new but the padlock we used was also new and desperately needed oiling. I waited for Alan and Killian to arrive with the oil but they were not due to land for an hour or so.

In the meantime, I began work on the vertical growing fence.

This fence is constructed out of plastic 2L bottles and twine. I have started from the one end of my plot where the seating will be, so that the first area covered will provide some privacy. I am told that particularly in winter time the fence along the side of my plot is very see through as the plant life dies off. My plot is immediately next to the park, so it’s important to me to have some kind of barrier between us. I am thinking about planting lettuces in this plastic bottle wall next spring if not sooner as they don’t mind the shady bits under the trees.

The aim is to create a “Lettuce Hedge” across the plot which would take little to no space and produce more lettuce than we know what to do with. For now we are building it little by little with whatever 2L bottles we can get our hands on. I will produce a quick guide for building a vertical garden like this so stay tuned.

We then got to work clearing the last third of the plot of brambles including the mound at the back. As it turns out, there is lots of rubbish and stones all over the plot we need to deal with before we break our tools trying to dig. In this picture you can see our good friend Dean working hard scraping up the loose brambles and plants into piles (or rows as he decided).

We then borrowed Alan’s wheelbarrow for the day and began collecting pebbles of all sizes and poured them into a pile at the end of the plot. We don’t want these pebbles in our way on the allotment – some of them are quite large! However, we can reuse these later underneath our polytunnel/aquaponics system. I’ll tell you more about this later though so stay tuned to find out what happens to these pebbles.

According to the allotment council, the plot has been sneakily used as a dump site for trash, weeds and gone over crops for many years now and several allotmenteers have had to be told off about it. Hopefully now we are working on this plot they will stop but in the meantime that still means an awful lot of rubbish and dangerous items to be cleared off the plot! I got to work collecting buried plastic carrier bags, bottles, broken shards of glass, bricks, concrete, plastic and twisted metal to name just a few little surprises on the plot. There is still plenty more to be done however, so we will have to continue this another day!

A BIG thank you to everyone who turned up to offer a helping hand or donated materials or gifts to the project.

Hawthorn Berries – Haws

Name: Hawthorn Berries

Location: Found on Hawthorn trees, identify the tree first and make sure you have the right one before venturing this one.

Months: August, September, October, November

Edible Parts: Berries

Non-Edible Parts: The pips/stones inside are poisonous, never consume these.

Hawthorn berries are very common across the UK and last well into the deep winter so they are quite important as a food stuff. These haws pictured are quite a large variety but they are normally a bit thinner than this.

They make a great savoury flavour to accompany meat particularly game so I make them into a Haw Sauce (like ketchup but with much more flavour). I have found a lot of large ones this year that are lovely and soft so I will be exploring some alternatives.

How to Make your own Fruit Leather

Making fruit leather is one of the easiest and cheapest methods of storing fruit over winter. If you have ever had sticky coils of fruit flavoured roll before you should definitely try making it for yourself.

All you need to make fruit leather is a bunch of fruit, and some sugar. However, unlike jams and cordials that require a high percentage of sugar to preserve the fruit, fruit leather is dried out so only requires as much sugar as you want in order to stop it tasting bitter or sour.

First of all take your chosen fruit of any quantity and mush it together in a pan. Taste the fruit and decide how much sugar you want to add to the mixture. Simmer for 5 minutes or until thoroughly mushy and the sugar is completely dissolved.

If you do not like skins and seeds in your fruit leather, now is the time to sieve them out. Spread the mixture thinly onto greaseproof paper. Use a second piece of paper on top if necessary to roll it out with a rolling pin.

Remove the top layer of grease proof paper and place into the oven at around 75 degrees, or into a dehydrator machine.

Wait for about a day and test the leather to make sure it is no longer sticky, and dry enough to touch. Remove from the machine and gently peel off the greaseproof paper, cut into strips and roll. To store for any length of time dust with icing sugar to prevent the rolls from sticking to each other.

Darwin’s Barberry

Darwin’s Barberry is a plant very similar to the Mahonia and also produces a fruit that is extremely similar in flavour and uses.

In fact, you may often come across a Barberry bush and mistake it for a Mahonia because they look so similar. You won’t come to any harm if you do, just bear in mind the differences. While the Mahonia berries are clustered into a grape like bunch across a stem, the Barberry hangs in bunches instead. The leaves are also the same as the Mahonia leaves, but tend to be much smaller, like a miniature version of the Mahonia. The Darwin’s Barberry bush is more commonly seen used as a hedge, whereas the Mahonia is a bit more of a stand alone plant.

Name: Darwin’s Barberry

Location: The berry of this plant, is typically found around early autumn in a plant that looks very similar to the Mahonia but smaller and often as part of a hedge.

Months: August, September

Edible Parts: Berries

Non-Edible Parts: Anything else

Darwin’s Barberry can be used very much in the same way as the Mahonia (Oregon Grape) to make jams and wine and perhaps even cordials. As a fresh fruit it is edible but a bit too tart to be a treat so is best used cooked/preserved.

Day Two: Chicken Experimentation

I say it’s day two, but actually it’s day 2.5 as I did manage to get to the plot yesterday and do a rough half hours work getting some extra clearing done but hopefully you won’t mind me bundling it into Day Two.

Day Two

Today I concentrated mainly on more clearing armed with my trusty hedge trimmers and fork. I managed to get up to the next tree stump cleared which means I have about 1/3 to 1/4 of the plot left to do. Yay! The main thing not to think about however, is that after I have finally finished clearing I will need to do some serious digging!

While I was doing the clearing however I had a couple of extra helpers on my plot today. Killian (5 years old) helped me with some light digging work and keeping an eye on my other helper: Chickeny the chicken. We brought her along to the allotment today for a bit of enrichment and to see if she can get any of the soil loose. The soil right now as it stands is quite rock solid! Chickeny did more egg laying than anything else but I aim to bring her back and see if we can get something more done. I’m going to need to dig it up several times so every little helps.

If you are thinking about getting chickens on to your plot there are just a few simple things to remember:

Keep the chicken/s supervised. Cats and other animals are usually lurking around and the chicken may even dig very deep and escape.
You can use a netted cloche like the one in the picture to keep the chicken in a controlled location. Our chicken doesn’t really “escape” but the netted cloche stops her wandering into someone else’s plot by mistake. You can learn about how to make these in our blog post: making divan’s into cloches.
Ensure they have water available – bring along a spare drinker.
Ensure they have shade available (I used my old hoodie draped over the cloche to provide a shaded corner).
Make sure they are placed away from any plants you want to keep. The tastiest plants for us are the tastiest plants for chickens!

Day One: Clearing the Plot

I am just starting my own new permaculture project by taking on a second allotment with a list of permaculture ideas in mind. The “crops”I will be growing on this plot are going to be varieties that are designed to stay there such as berry bushes, trees, strawberries artichokes and more.

In addition to this I am going to try to develop symbiosis between my plants and supporting structures including a wormery, aquaponics, fish farming, irrigation and more.

As well as this I hope to create a small mushroom growing section and a polytunnel with more peppers and grapes and whatnot inside that cannot grow on my standard allotment.

All in all it will be a BIG project to take on, so I have decided to recount to you the progress of this project under the new category of Permaculture. If you are looking for regular allotment tips and tricks please take a look at the Grown your Own section instead.

Because the project is so large, I will be taking a step back from the regular farming allotment and let Alan take control of it instead so I can concentrate and take control of the permaculture one.

But wait… I can’t do any of this yet without first setting up the allotment.

As the pictures below will show you, the allotment I have chosen is extremely overgrown with plenty of trees and brambles across it.

So the first thing I need to do is start cutting back all these brambles and see what kind of work I have to do on the ground!

Day One

Taking some handy hedge trimmers, I set to work on the plot hacking away at the tree stump growth and brambles.

I managed to get about half way down the plot in this manner and built up a sizeable pile of brambles and a pile of rubbish found underneath them such as bits of glass or old gardening gloves.

The plot has been unattended for a while, so I already attracted some attention from nearby allotmenters commenting on the amount of work to be done…

Not to be deterred I got a good 1-2 hours of work done in the afternoon.