Geology & Soil Analysis

In addition to performing a soil analysis (below), I have done some research on the soils in my area. British Geological Survey maps show the geological bedrock to be alluvium. Sitting on top of the alluvium are “Loamey and Clayey soils with naturally high groundwater” (National Soils Resources Institute), or more scientifically “Dry Clay Loams, or Gleyo Eutric Fluvisols” (European Union Survey).

I took several pH measurements around the garden, thus:

Area	pH	Number on Map
Lawn (next to fruit bushes)	7.0	1
Vegetable plot	6.5	2
Orchard (centre, away from trees)	7.1	3
Nettle Stand	7.1	4
Compost Heap	7.0	5
Ash from recent fire	7.1	6

The 'Number on Map' column refers to the numbers visible on the Topology, Pedology Samples & Hydrology Contours map, in lime green. I made observations of soil samples from three of the areas above (the other two are not as functionally important to me):

Area	Description
1. Lawn (next to fruit bushes)	Very dark brown to black in colour. Clumps of soil. Grey appearance. Greasey smear mark on glass (forma 5- 10 cm clumps). Much undecomposed material; small twigs, and root- like.
2. Vegetable plot	More friable than above. Less clumped together. Some lumps, circa 1- 2 cm across. Light grease marks on side of glass. Loamy appearance, little undecomposed material. Intermediate in colour between sample 1 and sample 3. Dark brown.
3. Orchard (centre, away from trees)	Lighter brown in colour. Some undecomposed material; rootlets, blades of grass, etc. More clumps than sample 2 about 1-2 cm across. One larger clump c 10cm. No reasemarks on glass. Examination with a x 10 handlens reveals occasional grains of sand, which are absent with sample 1.

 

The results in all cases are indicative of clay loams. All samples have virtually no silt, but varying degrees of sand and mostly clay. Samples 1 and 3 have the largest fraction of clay, and a modicum of sand (10- 20%). Sample 2 (from the vegetable plot) however, has a larger proportion of sand (circa 40%), and also a lower pH (the standout value of 6.5 from the table above). This is not so surprising when we consider the vegetable plot has been used historically, and was used in recent years to grow vegetables following a hiatus for an unknown period of time. I delivered a topping of manure to the plot about a year ago, which may account for the lower pH (plus the sandier condition of the plot). Samples 1 and 3 are more akin to the ‘natural’ state of the soil. I would hazard a guess that the area which floods (sample 1) which is more clay- like than any of the other samples, and accounts for a slight hollow in the lawn, has had a layer of topsoil removed which was transported to the vegetable plot. This would make sense. The bungalow was built in the inter- war period. Self sufficiency and vegetable growing was much more prevalent than today, and the homeowner no doubt needed to extract as much productivity from the thin soils as possible in their vegetable plot, and could afford to sacrifice a bit of lawn, although the seasonal flooding may have come as a surprise. All of this is conjecture, but explains the nature of the soils I have analysed.  

From left to right: soil jar test samples from the lawn, vegetable plots, and orchard respectively. 

The Earth Laughs in Flowers

The Earth laughs in flowers. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson~

Margaret Fuller: The Prose of Life

I fear I have not one good word to say this fair morning, though the sun shines so encouragingly on the distant hills and gentle river and the trees are in their festive hues. I am not festive, though contented. When obliged to give myself to the prose of life, as I am on this occasion of being established in a new home I like to do the thing, wholly and quite, - to weave my web for the day solely from the grey yarn. ~Margaret Fuller~

Meditations of John Muir

“This grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never dried all at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls.”  ~John Muir~

John Burroughs: The Healing Power of Nature

I go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in order.
~John Burroughs~

[Image: sunset from the front of the bungalow]

Osho on Nature

Look at the trees, look at the birds, look at the clouds, look at the stars... and if you have eyes you will be able to see that the whole existence is joyful. Everything is simply happy. Trees are happy for no reason; they are not going to become prime ministers or presidents and they are not going to become rich and they will never have any bank balance. Look at the flowers — for no reason. It is simply unbelievable how happy flowers are.  ~Osho~

Damp Meadow Species for Borders

Primary damp meadow herbs	Secondary meadow herbs to consider
Common bentgrass Crested dogstail Smaller catstail Hard fescue Trophy chewings fescue Smooth stalked meadowgrass Ladys Bedstraw Ragged Robin Ox-eye Daisy Meadow Buttercup Meadowsweet Ribwort Plantain Self Heal Common Sorrel Yellow Rattle	Agrimony Betony Birdsfoot trefoil Buttercup, meadow Common centuary Cowslip Cranesbill, meadow Cuckoo flower/ Lady’s smock Dyers Greenweed Field Scabious Goatsbeard Great Burnet Knapweed, common Pasque Flower Quaking Grass Rock Rose Salsify Snakeshead fritillary Sneezewort St. John’s Wort Vetch, common Majoram Meadow Vetchling Meadow Saxifrage Musk Mallow Wild Carrot Wild Thyme Yarrow

Margins, Hedges and Fences

Site of removal of large fig tree. 

 Site of previous Leylandii hedge along border of lawn. It has since been planted up with some perennial ornamentals but has become overgrown. I have ear- marked the border for damp meadow herbs in future.

 Further down the border, the plants thicken into bushes and an overgrown ornamental grass specimen. This has been left for conservation cover and to maintain visual variety in the garden.

The border runs up to the vegetable plot and provides a natural screen containing brambles, roses and other bushes. 

Mature Leylandii adjacent to the vegetable plot. As they are getting quite obtrusive and will probably undermine a neighbour's outbuilding, they will ultimately be removed. I intend to plant an indigenous conservation  hedge in its place, incoorporating hawthorn, beech, blackthorn and alder. They could be maintained by laying every 7- 10 years. Food plants such as blackcurrents, brambles, and elder would be encouraged.

Spring daffodils in the margins.

 The very back border of the garden was reinforced with materials I found whilst clearing the compost heap. It has so far remained stock proof, preventing egress of chickens and access by foxes, farm dogs or cats.

This area right at the back of the garden and pressing up against the farm stables is due to be up- planted with architectural herbs such as comfrey, mullein, or ferns. I will probably clear the area of debris and use some excess compost as a substrate into which to plant the herbs. 

Garage & Patio Area

Looking down the drive towards the front of the house.

View down the length of garden, including lawned area, patio & chimnea

Breeze block wall with potential for enhancement using climbing trees, fruit bushes, and ornamentals.

View of the rear- facing aspect of the house.

Nettle Stand & Log Pile

It is a basic tenet of conservation that certain areas need to be given over to nature. In the Permaculture design, wild areas supply highways into and out of more intensively managed sectors by encouraging predatory insects and birds, self seeding flowers and other ‘blow ins’ which contribute to species diversity and resilience. At the back of the garden, adjacent to the orchard is a nettle stand which had an accompanying log pile from some previous clearance work. Nettle is particularly good for butterfly conservation. It did cross my mind, however, to bring the area into production for food; it has a generous supply of sunlight, and the fact nettles are growing suggests there is a good mineral composition to the soil. 

The soil, however, is full of small rubble and pebbles, and would be difficult to dig, or grow root crops. The sector is also next to a tall (7 ft) breeze block wall, which abuts on to the adjacent farm. Peeking over the wall reveals a disused stables with concrete floor, about half an acre of overgrown waste land, a rusting tractor, and a number of plastic 50 litre containers that appear to have had agricultural chemicals in at some point. Right next to the wall seems to be a storage/ loading bay which may have been used to load up tractors or booms with chemical sprays. As I cannot rule out the containers are from pesticides, and leaching has not occurred, I am disinclined to launch into cultivation of this portion of the garden, preferring to use it as a buffer against a possible contamination source. The sector is some distance from the house, and watering and intensive maintenance tasks would be problematic, applying some zonal thinking to the situation.

Wherever humans have settled, nettles appear. The oldest human latrines, tips, food stores and waste ground have nettles growing on them. They thrive on the nutrient rich waste of humans, and as a result purify the ground and redeem the soil. For now, letting the nettles do their work is satisfactory. If in future this area is to be cultivated, I would suggest shrubs and fruit bushes to accompany the orchard plants and circumvent any problems with digging soil.

Whitebeam Tree in the Study Area

Chicken Feeding Station

In order to eliminate a rodent problem, I changed the timing and location of chicken feeding, in addition to installing a bucket trap. This was highly effective. The feeding station was located underneath a (pre- existing) corrugated plastic canopy previously used to house a BBQ. This prevented rain water getting into the plastic feeders and clogging the dispenser with soggy feed pellets. The feeding station was at the rear of the garage, and sufficiently exposed to deter rodents, although I did find a hedgehog mooching around one evening when I went out to put the feeders indoors.  

Chickens

 I reared the chicks from 1 day old

 

As pullets, sunbathing

 

Making use of the temporary pond, as mature hens

Chicken Coop

After 8 weeks or so, the chickens (now pullets) were ready to be transferred outside. The chickens were hatched and arrived in June, so I was lucky in being able to bring them on during the warmest months of the year, transferring them outside in early August. 

I bought a chicken coop with a small run for about £100, which was more than adequate in size for two chickens. It had an upper portion which could be locked at night, with an exposed area for movement and roosting, and an inner chamber laid with straw, which was suitable for laying. The bottom part of the coop was a wire run, in which I initially placed a feeder with the Grower’s pellets, and a dispenser for water.  The coop could be opened from the top, and from the upper doors and laying chamber, and the coop, so allowed easy access for cleaning and egg collection.

 

My cleaning regime for the chickens is every few days to weekly, depending on my commitments, the weather (heavy rain needs cleaning sooner) and the state of the coop. I rake out the coop- run area, sweep up the straw and sawdust from the roosting and laying box, and use simple no- odour antiseptic wipes to clean the coop before restocking it with clean straw and sawdust, above and below. In this way, I have not experienced any pests such as red spider mite at all. As a consequence, I have not had to use insecticidal or strong odour cleaning fluids in the coop. I am mindful of the quality of the egg I am eating. 

I added a security feature (in the form of a trellis) to the wall against which the chicken coop sat. It would otherwise be too easy for them to jump up on top of the coop roof and hop across the wall to the adjacent farm. As the wall was tall, they would be unlikely to return. In order to bolster this effect and discourage chickens on top of the coop roof, I also rolled up a section of chicken wire which was secured by hooking to screws on the wall.

Compost System

Probably the single most important intervention I made in the garden was instituting a compost system in the very back section early on. When I moved in to the house, this area was badly organised and overgrown, with piles of grass clippings, weeds, general household junk, and garden waste with logs, branches and twigs intertwined.

I took the time to work through this waste, because I believe the compost system to be the ‘engine’ of the garden. Without recycling of waste materials and energy, there can be no good crops, no adequate disposal, and the system becomes clogged up and broken. Building the structure and fertility of the clay soils of the garden is also a major priority in terms of food production. Making energy and materials flow smoothly in this part of the garden is about closing the loop.

I also discovered a large rusted brazier which came in handy for burning off the excess woody and other combustible material. As mentioned in the Natural Energy Survey, I sorted the woody material into ‘large, medium and small’ wood ranging from larger logs to twigs suitable for kindling. Most of this was recovered from the pile and stored/ cured under the large Leylandii trees at the back of the garden for about a year to become used on the log fire, or if still too wet (and likely to spit) it was earmarked for the chimnea. Tidying the rear part of the garden up also permitted me to make the back fences stock proof, using only materials I had come across as part of the tidying process.

The brazier was not the only find during this process. As I excavated the pile, it became clear there was a chest high, 6ft x 3ft ‘U’ shaped brick structure which seemed to have been an outbuilding at one point. Although it had concrete as its base, it served as an ideal location for the compost pile, and permitted me to operate two different piles of garden waste simultaneously. This allowed me to institute an alternating system; one year building up a compost pile, whilst using the other.

There was a very large mound of (mostly) grass clippings which lay under the trees and had been kept in a reasonably dry state. Because of its size and location, it had not rotted down in the conventional slightly anaerobic slimy way, but had instead turned to a type of leaf mould. This would make for excellent compost, and so I felt like I had unlocked a time capsule of useful material which could be fed into the compost system but over a period of time to aid its decomposition. My approximate ‘golden’ ratio was

1 part fresh grass clippings
1 part green waste, clippings, etc
1 part leaf mould from the pile

That is, until the chickens came along, when ‘1 part of chicken manure’ was added to the mix. This served as a kind of ‘turbo power’ for the compost mix, and I have never really looked back. Taking the time to reorganise this area has proved very beneficial, and rewarded the effort I have put in, but the best part is that it will now continue to reward that initial effort because of the sustainable nature of the design. Whether it is building a green school, a water purification system, or a humble composting system, such sustainable design gives features a self sustaining energy of their own, which is typical of Permaculture projects, and which elevates overall function of the whole.

The A- Frame

The A- frame was made from bamboo sticks joined by string in the same manner as the tomato plant supports in the greenhouse, and were made at the same time. The A- frame consisted of several of these joined together to make a 3D structure approximately 8ft long x 6 ft high by 5 ft wide. There were longitudinal bamboo supports through the structure to stabilise it. This made for a light, transportable structure on which plants could be grown, and was used as an experiment to grow gourds and peas together. More precisely, the arrangement was:

• Sweet peas, French beans up the sides of the A- frame
• Pumpkin and Butternut squash in the central portion of the structure.

Both types of plant are climbers which use tendrils, but the peas are better at climbing and siting them on the outside of the A- frame facilitated their fast growth. The gourds found support in the central and lower portions of the frame.

The idea was designed to enable a 3D vertical polyculture of companion plants which made maximum use of space for photosynthesis, and which was capable of protecting itself from winds and water loss. The A- frame can be moved about to different parts of the garden each year in order to nitrify and fertilise the soil, as the peas are legumes. 

My first location for the A- frame was in the cenrtre of the orchard. As discussed in the Orchard section, I was making an attempt to improve the soils there with view to making a backyard orchard. The plants grew very well and led me to speculate they would be well suited to being brought into the vegetable plots to migrate my traditional rotational system into more of a Permaculture.