Permanent edible planting (part one)
Winter tasks for permaculture crops across our farm
When we moved to our farm in Yorkshire we inherited a number of forest garden areas from the previous owners. The smallholding has a long history of permaculture, growing permanent food crops. Before moving, over the previous decade I’d been experimenting with forest gardening and permaculture techniques in most of my garden designs and on my old allotment. For the last five years I’ve let these experiments run absolutely wild on our farm and this year I’m going to start introducing you to more of them.
Wild way gardening is all about learning from natural ecosystems to establish planting that is long term, low effort and high yield. Our main wildlife garden is about establishing permanent plant communities for birds, insects and mammals, as well as a beautiful place for us. All around our small farm, we have areas of edible plants for us that I’ve been getting to know, nurturing, enhancing and in a number of cases, starting myself.
I’m currently designing two big forest gardens for clients I’ll share in due course and I’ve a big plan for planting up even more areas of our farm this year. Let me introduce you to some of the areas I’ve been working on...