Two weekends ago, the Giant Kiwi and i went to a farm field in deepest darkest Findon to retrieve a large amount of Horse poo. Diligently we dug and dug and dug filling a trailer to drive back the 30 minutes to Brighton. Within about 2 minutes of getting out of the field and onto the Farm road the bottom fell out of our world, well the trailer at least!
Luckily the Giant Kiwi's lady-bint, Vicky, was nearby with a horse-trailer. She drove that over and we dug and dug and dug again transferring all the poo into the trailer. Off we set again to the allotment. Once we arrived, we realilsed that we wouldn't be able to get close to it, so had to wheel-barrow loads upto the allotment.
This will certainly keep us fit. Shandy had graciously prepared the ground for us by covering a corner of the garden with cardboard which we dutifully covered with poo. Quite a few loads later we had a chance to sit down and camp-styley have a nice cup-o-tea!
During the next week, Shandy went up solo and dug a swale not far above where the poo was placed. I'll have him explain in a posting what the purpose of the swale is and provide pictures, if he ever gets online and posts to this blog (incompetent boob!).
The next stage is to plant some fruit and/or nut trees just downslope of the swales as a starting point for a kind of bastardised permaculture/forest-garden set up. The principle of which is explained briefly like this...
Forest gardening is a food production and land management system based on replicating woodland ecosystems, but substituting trees (such as fruit or nut trees), bushes, shrubs, herbs and vegetables which have yields directly useful to humans. By exploiting the premise of
companion planting, these can be intermixed to grow on multiple levels in the same area, as do the plants in a forest.
If successfully planned and executed, it should look something like this:
