Garden

In an attempt to be more organised with looking after my garden I have started to think about next year. We have a small garden behind our house, long and thin, which we grow vegetables and fruit in.  We also have a few flowering plants to attract the bees and a small, currently very overgrown, pond which the birds love to visit.  We have a short growing season, we are at about 400m and pretty exposed so we have a poly tunnel to grow stuff that most people could grow outside like courgettes and cucumbers.  I have tried tender plants such as tomatoes, peppers and aubergines but they rarely fruit let alone ripen.  So I stick to mostly root vegetables, brassicas and garlic.

Part of my planning for next year has been some research into biodynamic gardening.  I first heard about this many years ago from a colleague who gardened in this way and at the time thought it rather bizarre.  However recent camping trips have served to remind me that we humans have lost touch with our surroundings.  We can no longer feel the days cooling down or warming up as the seasons change or the subtle changes in the air when the weather is changing.  Our ancestors who first started farming did not have watches or calendars to keep track of time they had to do this in other ways.  One of those methods they may have used is cycle of the moon and that is one of the aspects of biodynamic gardening.

It is thought, by those that practice this method, that different plants grow better if they are planted during specific stages of the luna cycle.  So as part of my planning I have found this rather useful website and purchased this rather eye catching wall planner,  which is already on the wall in my hall.  I am hoping that this will help me plan the best days to work in the garden, and because this method suggests doing certain planting at certain times, I am also hoping that I will spend more time in the garden as I will be doing specific tasks at specific times rather than thinking of all the things I need to do and then not really achieving any of them.  Focus that is what I need.

So I have spent two hours today sewing garlic cloves, 74 to be precise, and sorting out my leeks for overwintering, removing all the dead plants from the poly tunnel and tidying up my potting bench.  My next jobs are to divide my rhubarb plant, move two fruit bushes, prune the plum tree and the grape vine and sew some spring bulbs.  I now need to work out the optimum time to do these jobs, but I hope they  will feel achievable as I am guessing it will not be best to do the all of the same day, now that is my kind of gardening.