Permaculture Courses

Well the last few weeks have been focussed on preparing for running an Introduction to Permaculture Course, which along with another Lincolnshire based Permacuture designer, I ran at the weekend.

The Introduction to Permaculture Course followed a taster session, which Nick Vowles and I ran in August. That session was for the Lincolnshire Organic Gardeners’ Organisation.

LOGO WEBSITE

This meeting, held in August, was also attended by members of the Lincolnshire Smallholding and Self-Sufficiency Club

LSSSC WEBSITE

and by members of Transition Horncastle, Louth and Lincoln. Here is a picture of the audience during the first session, Permaculture Ethics, taken by Nick

Audience at Permaculture afternoon

Nick and I were asked to teach the Introduction Course, which was held last weekend at the Riseholme Campus of the University of Lincoln. Twenty people came for the weekend, and judging from the feedback it went pretty well. As this was our first course, there were things that we can tweak to improve things, but the feedback was pretty good.

Here is a picture of us at the end of the weekend, taken outside the fantastic building that we were given to teach in.

Students on Introduction to Permaculture Course

I have to say that it was a fantastic place to teach, and I hope to get the chance to repeat it.

Preparing to teach something also helped me to broaden my understanding of Permaculture, which has already fed into my own plans to re-design my own smallholding. So I’m pausing with my current plans and taking a few more weeks to think about it.

If any of you would like to check out Nick’s blog, you can use the link below.

Nick’s Blog

Now I need to find some good, cheap/free Landscape Design software, to use in my future projects.

Take Care

Deano

Sustainable Transport

Well, I’ve finally got rid of my van. I figured that whilst there were many good reasons to keep it, the reasons for letting it go were more compelling.

Most of my traveling is fairly local, and we have a decent bus service, roughly one an hour. So many of my journeys could be done using public transport. I have a bicycle, but it’s pretty hilly here, and I’m not as fit as I used to be. Nevertheless, I gave my van away to the Doris Banham Charity, who rescue dogs. They have a shop in Horncastle, and I was moved by the work that they do.

Their website is here

Website

The home page shows my van, which has been sign written.

The site shows a number of dogs looking for homes, and as our greyhounds pass on, I’m tempted to rehome a Staffie. I’m not sure that my wife will approve, but that’s something to look at later.

I’m Fifty later this year, so my mother, when she discovered that I was giving my van away, offered to buy me an electric bicycle for my birthday. I accepted, and here it is.

The battery is where the water bottle would be. So far I’ve been reasonably pleased with it. The motor needs some pedaling assistance whilst climbing the steepest hills, but it’s easier than pedal power alone. I’ve been using it quite regularly. It’s very cheap to operate. I charge it at night, when we get a cheaper tariff, and we use 100% renewable electricity, from Good Energy. My rough calculation reckons that I’m saving £50 per month, without taking into account what I would have spent on diesel. As I get a bit fitter, I may start to use my normal bike more frequently. My wife has just bought a normal bicycle, so I’m probably going to have to keep her company on some riding from now on.

Where will I find the time?

All of the best

Deano

Sustainability in Human Terms

Well it’s been two months since my last post, and there have been quite a few days when I have taken pictures for an article, but not actually written one. There have been lots of individual reasons for that, but the simple answer is that I have been too busy, and the reason for that is that I have been trying to do too much, and that isn’t sustainable.

A little background information might be useful here. Up until five years ago, we were breeding and racing greyhounds here, so the smallholding was designed in a way that suited that purpose. It was a good system, logical, and well thought out, but it used up all of our cash to do so. About six years ago I had started to grow vegetables again. I had wanted a smallholding for a long time, but was sort of side tracked by the dogs. Once I started to grow stuff again, I knew that the racing wasn’t for me, so we re-homed most of the younger dogs, and kept about nine, mainly the older ones. Being short of cash, and having unused fenced enclosures, we utilised these existing structures for growing stuff. That wasn’t a problem for some time, but as I added to the stuff that I did, the amount of work needed to run it went up too.

This year I guess that I reached the point where I realised that something had to change. There were a number of things that contributed to that. Firstly, I increased my involvement in outside stuff. I became chairman of the Lincolnshire Beekeepers, and a member of the steering group for Transition Horncastle. I was also fortunate to get some work helping to keep bees. This was great, but took up another six or seven hours a week of my time. On top of that I was mentoring some new beekeepers, ran some scything courses, and growing a lot more experimental plants, principally in pots/modules, all of which needed watering etc. Typing up stuff for my blogs added to the workload.

I had a plan of what I wanted to achieve here, but it became increasingly obvious that I didn’t have any extra time to implement changes. In light of that, I asked some friends of mine to come up with some ideas to help me out. So the weekend before last,seven friends who did the same Permaculture Design course as me, brought their families here, camped, did some work, and contributed some ideas.

Many of the suggestions that they made were things that I was already considering, but one or two new ideas did come out, mainly whilst chatting during work. I’ve had time to think about all that they have said, and the stuff that I had already concluded for myself, and have decided on some of the steps that I’m going to take.

Firstly, I need to take some immediate action to reduce the number of hours spent on cyclical tasks (weeding, watering etc.). These steps could be permanent, or temporary. The aim is to give me some time free, which I can then use to implement longer term changes to reduce the workload. One of the ways that I can do this is to mulch the paths between the raised beds. These paths occupy nearly a third of the growing space, but due to compaction, are harder to weed. A small amount of one off work, should yield a long term reduction in labour, perhaps by as much as half, which is a saving of about six to eight hours a week. Initially I was going to use a permanent mulch (geotextile), and probably still will, but I’m not going to cut it up too much as I’m not sure how much of the growing area to retain, so would like to be able to use it elsewhere later.

This leads me to the second area to look at. I have nearly 1500 sq metres of growing area. Nearly a third of an acre, but there’s only two of us to feed, and much of what I grow is either given away or wasted. This needs to be reduced, as it is all managed alone, by hand, with no machinery or chemicals. I don’t want to just let it go back to wilderness, and I have some ideas for ways to use it that will be more efficient, using Permaculture principles, but I need to find some time, and finish the designs, before that can go ahead. In the meanwhile, I’m going to cover any space not used for growing, to cut down on the weeding. It was always my intention to grow using mulch for weed suppression, but the sheer volume of growing area made the finding, and moving of so much organic matter seem difficult. I’m going to solve that by growing more trees and shrubs close by, and using them to provide mulch material. Increasing the proportion of perennial plants will reduce the amount of sowing/watering needed, and using white clover as a living mulch should help to reduce weeding. I also need to look carefully at whether the benefits of scything three acres of grass, justify the time that it takes to do so, and to clear the grass, when I no longer have animals.

Further efficiencies could be made by creating a new protected area for plants in pots/modules, big enough to allow me to keep all of the stuff that I’m growing together, and near to roof spaces that could be used to harvest water. In the Summer, watering was taking me two hours, but nearly half of this time was spent walking between the water butts, and the plants. I’m using some of my time to help create this new area, and expect to have it up and running by the end of the year.

Perhaps the most important thing to come out of this  for me, is that it has reminded me that it is worth spending time, energy, and money  getting the placement of things right, even when I’m busy, as the long term saving of energy, is far greater than the energy expended getting it right.

On that note, I  think it’s time to finish.

Take Care

Deano

Scything, Wheat, and Bees (again)

Well it’s been another busy fortnight, with the emphasis on Scything, but with some good news on both my bees, and Wheat.

The main focus has been Scything. I have helped some friends, taught and competed at the West Country Scything Festival, conducted a workshop in Kent, and run one of my scheduled courses here in Lincolnshire. I’ve just put details about the Scything on my other blog, and if you want to read more about it, please visit The Grinning Reaper

for more details.

The bees seem to be happy to help me out. I was called to a swarm just over two weeks ago, and managed to get a helper to take some pictures. here’s the sequence.

An Easy Swarm

Probably the easiest swarm ever.

Spread a sheet

The swarm is cut away from the tree, and lowered into a box.

Cut and Lower

The box is inverted, and a gap left for any stragglers to make their way in, before tying up the sheet.

Invert Box

The swarm is shaken out onto a sheet, placed on a ramp, leading into the hive entrance. the sheet helps prevent the queen getting under the ramp, and just hanging there.

Shake onto Ramp

Once the first bees go in, and decide that it’s a good home, they come to the entrance, and fan pheromones to call the rest of the swarm inside. Here the move in has just started.

The March begins

We tried to get a picture of the queen, but I’m not sure that we got her, and the clarity is poor.

Bees marching

Most of the bees are inside now

Almost in

I had promised a friend a swarm, but wasn’t sure whether to keep this one, or take it to him. My generous nature won out, and so these bees ended up with him. It seems that there is some sort of balance to doing good deeds, because a couple of days later this happenned.

Arriving

An effortless swarm

Going

Swarm Entering Hive

Gone

So much easier than collecting them, isn’t it. If you get the bait hives right, the bees will come to you, providing that you are the right distance from an existing colony. To put an even bigger grin on my face, I had another take up residence today. It was a smaller swarm, possibly an unmated queen, but I’m not complaining. Tomorrow I’ve got to put together some more hives just in case there are more to come.

Finally a quick word about the wheat. I counted the ears on one of my plants today, and there were 72. What an amazing result. I don’t know how much will escape the birds, but it certainly proves that the Bon Fils method works.

Take Care

Deano

Bees almost all in

Scything, Wheat, Bees, and Time

Again it has been a while since my last post. The things keeping me busy are Bees, Scything, and Planting out, and all are linked.

One of the things that has occupied me of late is Scything. I ran the first course here on the 23rd May, am teaching at the Scything festival next weekend 13/14 June, running a workshop in Kent on the 18th, and another course here on the 20th. In addition to that, I have my own grass to mow. You can read a little more on my Scything Blog, the Grinning Reaper

Beekeeping has also been keeping me busy. I introduced four new queens last week, and so far all are OK. I still have to locate a queen, who somehow managed to get above the queen excluder. I found no evidence of eggs/larvae in the brood chamber, assumed the worst, and ordered another queen, which arrives tomorrow. Today I found larvae and queen cells in the supers, and will have to hunt through three boxes to find the queen, before splitting the hive, and introducing another queen. I have also been helping other people with their bees, and have to get everything fitted in so that all of the swarming checks, fit around my scything schedule.

In the Vegetable Garden I have been planting out as much as I can. Most things are growing well, although something is eating my lentils, and clover. The wheat experiment is going well, with most plants having between Twenty and Thirty Tillers, each of which should develop into an ear of Wheat. here is a picture of one of the beds. Sadly I didn’t include anything to give you an idea of the height of the plants, which have reached about three feet. One or two of the plants have blown over in strong winds, but most are growing really strongly. I will sprout and grow the next batch after the Summer Solstice, and plant them out later in the year, perhaps after lifting main crop potatoes. The lentils are growing well in the gaps between the wheat, and I think that peas would also grow well there. I’ve started the tedious job of potting on nearly two hundred Eucalyptus seedlings, some of which will be planted out in the Autumn, depending on how big they get. The smaller ones will wait until next year. I have the same to do with Mimosa and Passion Flowers. All for the bees. My work would be much less if I didn’t have bees.

Until next time

Deano

Small Scale Wheat growing

Hectic, Honey, and Happy

Things have been hectic again, and I cannot believe that it’s been so long since my last post. The aspect of my smallholding life that has been keeping me so busy has been beekeeping. This is a hectic time of the year as far as the bees are concerned, but the changeable weather, and a breakdown in communications, has made it even busier.

Firstly the good news. I extracted my first batch of honey for this year. 37lbs from one hive, which came from two supers. That is all of the honey that we will use in the next twelve months, put into jars in mid May. There is still a full super on, plus a spare brood body, which is being filled as well. The brood body is to give me frames of food to give to new hives, when I make increase. That should have been last week. I ordered four new queens, from an importer who has always been good in the past, with instructions to let me know if there was going to be a delay. No message came, so I created three new hives, and removed an old failing queen from another, ready to introduce the new queens the following day. They didn’t turn up, and will not get here before the end of this week, nine days late, at least. I have had to buy a product called Bee Boost, which is an artificial pheremone, designed to replace one given out by the queen. I’m hoping that this will keep the queenless hives working, and believing that there is a queen present, until the new queens cam be introduced. I’ve not tried it before, and it’s not what I would have chosen to do, but I don’t want to lose them. The bees for the three hives all came from one huge colony. Each hive has six frames of bees, including stores, but not much sealed brood. The colony was preparing to swarm, and I think that they had stopped the queen from laying, and were trimming her down to fly. The parent colony is still very strong, and I will need to monitor them, to see if the removal of so many bees has deterred them from swarming, and that the queen is laying again.

I have also been helping a local business with their bees. We have carried out a shook swarm on one colony, and moved it to a new location, and I have to do the second hive tomorrow. Weather permitting. The work is helping out my finances, and it’s nice to work with bees in a situation where cost is not a concern. I’m hoping that this will develop into something really special. The bees are being moved temporarily, so that a better apiary can be constructed. The bees will go back onto a 500 acre Biodynamic farm, and we may be able to adjust their planting regime, in order to provide additional forage. They already grow acres of good stuff, and the farm is just over the road from my own bees:-)  I’ll keep you posted.

I have used essential oils in my feed, hoping that it would help with my varroa regime. I came across this article recently, which you might find interesting.                                                                               varroa article

It’s dated 1996, so I’m not sure how up to date it is, but if you look at some of the treatments offerred these days, they are just essential oils, either natural, or synthetic. the same goes for some of the feed supplements.

Here are some more useful links. Varroa Control

Essential Oil again

I hope that you find them useful. I got the most from them by reading them, and then following all of the links, and reading those too. It helps with doses, methods, etc.

As I’m not looking to sell honey, but would prefer to raise more bees, I’m toying with the idea of only having two colonies at a time producing honey, and keeping the remainder for bee breeding. This would allow me to keep feeding with essential oils, without worrying about them getting into the honey. Having said that, I would rather have them in my honey, than some of the other chemicals. This regime would allow me to create strong colonies for splitting, with plenty of stores. The stores would contain the oils, which would then be used to raise young bees. The benefits of that are apparent from the first link. Less varroa, more bees, clean bees.

I’ve been making new hives, nucleus hives, a swarm box, and a couple of bait hives. I have liaised with a local pest control company, and arranged to collect their swarms, and put leaflets through doors in my village, to let people know that they can contact me for swarm collection. I suspect that when this windy, wet weather breaks, swarming will start in earnest, and I might run out of hives. I should be so lucky.

There are some things to update you with, that are not bee related, but I’ll save that for later this week.

Take Care

Deano

Soil Microbe Article

I have written a post about soil microbes on the BugBrewer blog, which some of you might find interesting. If you would like to read it just follow this link       BugBrewer

I hope that you find it interesting.

Deano

Busy, Busy Busy, a Smallholder’s Life is Busy

Things have been really hectic over the last seven days, so I thought that I would put together a short update of what’s been going on here on the Smallholding, in the last week.

Wheat

My wheat plants are really forging ahead. I had a visit from my friend who runs the local biodynamic farm. I showed him my plants, and he was amazed at how far ahead they were. Here’s a picture. Note the trowel in the foreground, to give you an idea of the scale.

Bon- Fils Wheat

It will not be long before the plants start to produce ears. He (Jason) gave me some of his biodynamic preparations, which I added to my compost tea, my wormeries, and to my compost heaps, as well as scattering over the smallholding.

Vegetables

I have been planting out as well. Tomatoes into the greenhouse beds, courgettes under cloches, Onions, Rocket, Red Orach, Buckshorn Plaintain, Mallow, Thyme, and Lettuce into the beds, Borage and Willowherb into the hedgerows.

I also managed to sow some more Eucalyptus (Viminalis), and some Manuka. I’m not sure if the Manuka will be hardy enough, but it’s worth a try for the price of a packet of seeds. I’ve put some more Clover in, for the vegetable beds, and some more Tagetes, for companion planting.

There are still lots of things to plant out, and re-pot, but it’s slowly going outside now. It’s also time to get some frames put up for the outdoor Tomatoes, Melons, Runner Beans etc. So much to do, so little time.

Beekeeping

On the beekeeping front, I’ve put out some bait hives, and built a swarm box, for collecting swarms. Pictures to follow. The baithive here is white and yellow. I’m hoping that the colours will encourage bees to investitage it, as they seem to examine all sorts of yellow stuff that’s laid around here. I’ve also carried out a shook swarm for a young girl that I am mentoring. I have another three to do for other people, over the course of the next week or so. (Shook swarming is a bio-mechanical method that helps to reduce varroa infestation, and brood disease). Once they have seen it done, they should all be able to do it for themselves next time (the people, not the bees, although that would be great, wouldn’t it?). I will be checking to see if there is enough honey collected, to make it worth extracting. If the weather stays bad, the bees will eat it themselves, and who could hold that against them. They’ve done all of the work.

Most of the stuff that I’ve read suggests that the bees will ignore most sources of nectar whilst they’re working Oilseed Rape (canola), because the nectar is so high in sugar, but for the last few days, I’ve watched my bees working a very pretty, yellow Tree Peony. I had never seen a flower on it until I gave it a good ‘haircut’ a few years ago, and it has flowered wonderfully ever since. It produces large black seeds, encased in a big red seed pod. I planted a few of the seeds last year, which didn’t do anything, but some of them have come up this Spring. Now that I know that the seeds are viable, I’ll put some more in this year. I have some more hives to assemble, and some more to make, prior to increasing the number of colonies.

Other

The Sustainable Watch has arrived. My mother found one at a car boot sale this morning. A Sekonda, cost £2. here’s what it looks like.

The Sustainable Watch

I,ve asked her to look out for another, as this one is too pretty to damage whilst working.

I went to Debyshire for a wedding reception. Hi Bob and Heidi. I had a great time.

When it’s written down like this, it doesn’t seem as though I’ve done very much at all. Where did the week go?

Take Care

Deano

Bees and Compost Tea

The last ten days have been hectic, with the extra work down to Beekeeping, and Compost Tea. Just recently, the normal jobs that I have to do on the Smallholding, have been rushed so that I can finish my preparations for the swarming season.

The rush started last week. I went to help a friend check his hives, and we found that one was queenless. There were youngish bees in the hive, so it had probably occurred recently. He ordered a new queen, and later came to the Smallholding so that I could show him how to put together new frames, so that we could carry out a shook swarm, as soon as the Oilseed rape (canola) has finished flowering. I was also putting together hive bodies and frames, ready for making increase of my own stock of bees.

On Tuesday, I had a call from a friend to tell me that he had seen his first swarm, so I continued to put hives together. By Thursday night, I had six new hives, waiting for bees. On Friday I noticed scout bees going into a hive that I had put out the night before. There were quite a few, and I got my camera ready, in case they brought a swarm in. Despite a high level of activity, no swarm arrived. That afternoon I got a call to say that the new queen had arrived, so I went along, and we shook the workers into a new, clean hive, with fresh foundation, and let them settle, before introducing the queen in her cage. We will have to wait and see if they accept her. As they have been queenless for some time, that should help, but I’m not sure how the disruption to the hive due to the shook swarming will affect them.

Scouting activity at the home hive continued throughout Friday and Saturday, and on Sunday morning, but then stopped. I didn’t notice the stop, because I was away giving a presentation on Actively Aerated Compost Tea (ACT), to the Lincolnshire Organic Gardener’s Organisation (LOGO). I think that it went well, and have had orders for at least one Compost Tea Brewer, possibly two. More importantly, I hope that an undersdanding of the Soilfoodweb will help them to grow more successfully. It has certainly helped me over the last two years. I’ll publish some pictures, when they’re sent to me, and perhaps do a short Compost Tea article.

Back to the bees. I’m not sure why the activity at the empty hive stopped. It could be that the bees knew that the weather was changing. Perhaps they chose another site, and there is a new colony not to far away. If the bees were from a managed hive, it’s possible that the beekeeper discovered that the hive was about to swarm, and intervened. If not, once this unsettled weather clears up, those bees are going to go somewhere, preferably into my hive. There were bees from at least two colonies checking out the hives. Occasionally a bee from another colony would approach the busiest hive, and would be chased away. Bees looking at another hive all appeared darker than the first batch.

Here’s a picture of the scouts outside the hive entrance.

Swarming preparation

There were more at times, and I also saw bees doing what looked like ‘waggle dances’ on the front of the hive, above the entrance. It would be great to get pictures of a swarm going in of their own accord.

As well as putting together new hives, I’ve built a couple of ‘bait hives’, to try and catch escaped swarms. Whilst I like the idea of feral swarms, many of them die out, if untreated for diseases. When I finish this post, I’m going to do some map work, and plot all of the hive locations that I know of in the area, and use it to predict where the most likely areas are to place the hives.

You can read  a good article about bait hives here         Bait hives

I’ve got to go out tomorrow, and see if I can get permission to set them out in the areas that I identify.

Last year a pest controller said that he would be able to provide me with some swarms, but nothing ever came of it. I thought that I would contact him again, but had lost his number. Whilst looking for it in the telephone directory, I came across another company, working out of the next village. I gave them a ring, only to discover that they had been looking for a local beekeeper to contact when they are called about swarms. If I hadn’t have lost the original number, I would never have known about them. Working on the assumption that I’d better be ready, I built a very simple swarm collection box, only to realise that it was probably a bit heavy to hold in one hand, whilst balancing on a ladder, so I’ve had to buy some thinner plywood, and will work on that tomorrow. The plans that I have seen are a bit complicated, probably for good reason, but I would need to see one, to work out how they were put together. I’ll stick to a more simple design, until I’ve worked out what modifications need to be made.

I guess it’s time to plan the location sfor the bait hives. I already have some ideas, but I find that it’s always better to approach these things without bias, in case there are better options than my original ideas.

Take Care

Deano

Pre-Soaking Seeds

Hi All

I plant most of my seeds into Rootrainers, before planting out, or potting on. The germination rates of some seeds, such as peas, seem to be pretty poor, so I soak all of the larger seeds first, and then sow them as I see them start to germinate.

This picture illustrates the difference.

Pre-Soaked pea Seedlings

There are three Rootrainers with pea seedlings. The one on the right was planted after soaking, but before the roots started to appear. As you can see, not all of them have germinated.

The second tray contains seedlings that started to show roots early. Almost all have made it. The third tray contains seedlings that took longer to germinate, but again, almost all have made it. What is interesting is that many people blame mice for the failure of their peas to germinate, but even under ideal conditions, sometimes as many as 50% fail.

The way that I do the larger seeds, is to soak them for 12 hours in compost tea, then rinse and drain. The rinse and drain is repeated each day, ensuring that the seeds stay moist. I fill the cells of the Rootrainers with compost, and every day, plant any seeds that have germinated into a cell. The tray stays next to the potting bench until it is full. Not only does this method reduce the number of failures in the cells, but it also allows you to check on the germination rate. Each tray has 32 cells, so it’s easy to see how many full cells (successes) there are, and how many failures left in the soaking container.

Another useful benefit of doing this, is that you get to see how the seed and it’s root are orientated. For example, the root of a runner bean seed appears from a swelling (after soaking) at one end of the scar on the seed, opposite the little triangular shaped lump. The root will pass along the edge of the seed, past the scar. As the seed opens, the first true leaf appears from between the large seed leaves (the bulk of the seed), and grows upwards. The seed leaves then twist upwards, and appear above the soil. Knowing this, you can plant the seed facing the optimum direction for growth, with the emerging root pointing downwards. If you leave it too long before planting, as the seed soaks laid flat, on it’s side, the root starts to twist to point downwards.

Soaked Runner Bean Seeds

This picture shows the roots emerging, and starting to twist downwards. the seeds top centre, and bottom right, are probably the best to show the roots running down past the scar. I plant them by pushing the seeds longways down into the compost, with the root pointing downwards. Sometimes the root gets stuck under the skin of the seed, and planting them this way allows me to help them get out.

The next picture shows sweetcorn after it starts to germinate. It sends out a root first, and then a shoot, fairly soon after. Both are close together. I plant them with the roots and shoots at the top, and the bulk of the seed below.

Soaked Sweetcorn Seed

I couldn’t get a better close up, but the bottom seed is just starting to show the root and shoot emerging.

The final picture shows the runner bean seeds from the first picture, planted in the cells. They are placed scar side downwards, as the roots had already started to twist.

Many of the larger seeds can be sprouted in this way, and save space in the modules.

Take Care

Deano

Runner Bean Seeds in Rootrainer