Year 1 (2018)
As part of our observation year, I did a bit of experimenting with growing annual veg. Annual veg is good - if it doesn't work, you can move the beds and try something new the next year. Obviously it's ideal to stay in one place and build up the soil fertility, but on a new patch of land it can be a good way to obtain an edible yield while expanding your knowledge of the conditions.
Our land mostly slopes down in a north easterly direction, and we're near the top of an exposed and windy hillside at 1300 feet above sea level. For the first growing experiments I chose the flattest field, reasoning that it was also the highest, with the most sunlight, and I could see it from the house. I made a compost bin and greenhouse in the same field, and installed a bench from which to watch the sun rise over the hills and the house.
What worked?
I loved sitting on that bench, and I was right, it did get a lot of sunlight. The walk up through the meadow was lovely, and I did manage to grown a few courgettes.
The meandering path through the growing meadow was lovely to walk through, and less lovely to push a wheelbarrow up, or to navigate carrying watering cans. When the cows arrived, their presence, plus the electric fence, made things just that tiny bit more difficult, and I barely visited at all except for harvesting.
The land constantly wanted to return to grass, and once I stopped visiting regularly it felt unkept and unloved.
But small and slow solutions were just what was needed, and I cleared space for one bed at a time and left the rest just grass.
This space was a manageable size, much closer to the house, and closer to the greenhouse (which has a water butt attached - although this wasn't quite enough to get us through the unusually dry summer that year). We did grow a decent amount of veg here.
Some of our leafy veg was nibbled by hares and escapee sheep, and even on one occasion, a cow. There is no protection from the prevailing south westerly wind, and everything got rather windswept.
I decided to use this area to create an edible windbreak (which became one of my diploma designs, and will also have the advantage of screening the garden slightly from the nearby footpath).
Over the winter I planted the edible windbreak, cleared the area of long grass on the left of the photo above, and created several new beds. These had wood around the edge and were mulched and no dig, and I left the paths wide enough to be scythed. We mulched with reams of slightly damp old printer paper that were left in the loft when we moved in, covered with our own compost and some manure from the dairy farm.
By this point we'd added an outdoor chicken run, which is close to this area, meaning I visit it at least twice each day. It's close to the greenhouse, and will eventually be protected by the edible windbreak. The ground is flat, and the soil seems in reasonable condition. The view is good, and it feels like a nice space to spend time.
Initially I'd been worried about shade from the sycamores - one of the reasons I'd originally planted in the top of the field - but by keeping the beds to the right hand side of this space, this hasn't been a problem, and they do provide some protection from east winds.
I planted veg here, but my rudimentary attempts at fending off the chickens were ineffective, and each time I planted something out, it was dug up by them or nibbled by the hare. We also had quite an invasion of sheep from a neighbouring farm (the farm boundary is now more secure so I'm hoping that won't happen again).
The summer of 2019 was a busy one with work, and with various other projects, and I also felt quite overwhelmed as this still had the feeling of 'small beds in a large field', with grass encroaching from all around.
Through a process of observation over the last two years, and incremental tweaks to the design, I feel like we've arrived at the right space to grow vegetables here. This year I'm working to tackle two of the limitations from last year - other things nibbling our crops, and my sense of being overwhelmed.
We're building a fence.
So not a cheap solution on this occasion, but having spent two years observing and moving and planning, I was willing to spend a little to keep various creatures out of this space, and I hope this fence will last quite a while. It wouldn't keep out a determined goat (I've never seen one of those roaming free round here anyway) but will be enough of a barrier for the chickens, hares and to discourage a passing sheep.
Of course ideally I would have done this last autumn, and have laid mulch over the beds back then, and now be just planting through into beautiful friable soil. I didn't, and so I'm now pulling out the grass from one bed at a time. I could just mulch, but given that we're not far from planting out, at this stage removing grass seems wise, then I'll add mulch to plant through. I'm not properly digging though.
But I'm hopeful that with a manageable sized space, and the exclusion of chickens, hares and sheep, I might be able to get a better crop than last year. I'll report back each month to see where we're up to.