Regenerative gardening, micro clover lawn and poo gnats
While editing Organic Farming Mag for the Soil Association, I run a fair few articles on regenerative farming. There was quite a debate about the difference between organic and regenerative, which I won’t dive into here, but today I want to think about regenerative gardening.
Regenerative gardening
Firstly, what is it? It’s described as a style of sustainable gardening that focuses on restoring and enhancing the health of the soil, ecosystems, and environment. Unlike traditional gardening that tends to rely on synthetic chemicals which can deplete natural resources, regenerative gardening aims to create a self-sustaining system that mimics natural processes. It works to improve and restore ecosystems and to create systems that improve the environment, promote soil health and biodiversity.
There is a focus on improving soil health through increasing biodiversity, enriching the soil with organic matter, making good use of water and helping to reverse climate change. A regenerative gardener might use practices, such as no-dig gardening, agroforestry, and permaculture, to enhance the overall resilience of their garden ecosystem. There is considerable overlap with permaculture, a sustainable system of living created by observing natural systems.
A few weeks ago, I visited Damson Farm nr Bath, home of Alison Jenkins. Alison is a former garden designer and, having completed a permaculture course, is applying these principles to her gardens. She has a programme of workshops at Damson Farm and the topics are great, making it really difficult to decide which one to attend. In the end, I decided on the garden photography workshop with Eva Nemeth, which gave me a chance to get my DSLR out and wander around the gardens. Alison describes her regenerative edible garden as wilder than a traditional vegetable garden, a bit softer around the edges with lots of flowers, perennial veg and ornamental edibles. The aim here to grow nutrient dense food in a rich soil that teems with microbes and supports a wide variety of insects and birds.
So here are a few glimpses of the wonderful edible garden with its hazel structures, overflowing beds and produce. I was very envious of the black kale bed, undersown with my favourite cover crop phacelia - so much further ahead than mine!!
If you are enjoying my newsletter, I think you will love the courses on offer at Damson Farm https://www.alisonjenkins.co.uk/workshops-2024
And finally a flay lay. I had been wanting to play with this technique for a while and Eva had some backgrounds with her. You may see more of these in the future.
Microclover
I am not a fan of a traditional lawn for all sorts of reasons. Our last lawn in our previous house became very diverse, and I was pleased with the fact that there were 17 different species growing in it, but it still needed a regular cut. So, I planned to do something different in the new garden.
The garden designer had identified two areas of lawn on the plans, so rather than grass, I went with microclover. There are several advantages - no mowing, flowers for pollinators and more resilience to drought.
The soil is very weedy so I left it under cover for a year, occasionally lifting the covers to allow seeds to germinate which I would then terminate. Finally, it was ready for sowing back in April. And I have been really pleased with it. Just a few months on and the clover has formed a dense mat. There are some weeds, mostly scentless mayweed, but the clover is doing as good job of outcompeting it.
I bought the variety Euromic which is supposed to be low growing with few flowers, Well, not sure about that description! The plants are a bit larger than I was expecting and there are loads of flowers, but all in all, its turned out well. I don’t walk on it so may be that accounts for its lush growth.
The only frustrating thing is that there is a 20cm bare strip along the path edge. It was definitely sown, so I can only think that ants stole / ate the seed, as there is no clover in evidence despite plenty of seeds being distributed across the area. But the rate at which the clover is spreading, it will soon be covered.
Poo
Back to poo again or dung if you prefer. As you will have gathered from my newsletter on dung a while ago, I am fascinated by the life that lives on and around dung. If you own livestock or dogs you may have a similar interest in poo. I have spent years, sampling sheep poo for worms, and sending off dog poo samples for a worm count (OK probably too much information!)
So, the other day I noticed that some newly delivered goose poo (and yes they produce copious quantities of the stuff) was attracting a lot of tiny flies. They appear within seconds, probably attracted by the smell. But it was interesting to see so many flies on the dung in such a short space of time of it appearing on the grass.
Some people call them poo gnats or poop flies - they don’t bite and although irritating, they have an important role to play in the breakdown of dung as they soon lay eggs and the larvae feed on the dung, recycling nutrients and making sure the pasture is not covered in dung. I find it worrying that there is so much discussion on horse forums about getting rid of them using all sorts of chemical sprays!