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permaculture

No. 79

www.permaculture.co.uk

Welcome to permaculture

Permaculture is...
an innovative framework for creating sustainable
ways of living; a practical method for developing
ecologically harmonious, efficient and productive
systems that can be used by anyone, anywhere.

www.permaculture.co.uk

Maddy
Harland
editor

Sebastian von Holstein

At the beginning of spring I look out over the garden and see
our no dig veggie beds, weed free and mulched with home-made
compost, the fruit trees pruned, and new trees planted to add to
the forest garden. The snowdrops have pushed through the frost
and the birdsong has intensified telling me the birds are nest
building. As I watch the natural world regenerate in this
wonderful seasonal cycle, I feel inspiration and hope rising
within me like sap.
Recently, my eldest daughter and I walked in the woods and
visited a special beech tree that is over 300 hundred years old.
Its branches were pollarded long ago, possibly to mark a field
boundary, and now its huge limbs reach up beyond the canopy
into the sky. We have been visiting this tree for 27 years, longer
than both our daughters lives. Someone carved a heart on the
trunk years ago and we named it The Heart Tree, but that too
is disappearing under new bark. My daughter told me that
whenever she walks in the woods she visits the tree. I like to think
of this continuity, of the values Tim and I may have engendered
in our children. However far they travel in the world, they still
come home to this special tree. We must celebrate its calm
presence whilst it is still standing. Many ancient giants have
fallen due to an unusually wet and stormy winter brought to us
across the Atlantic by an oscillating jet stream.
The weather has made me think a lot about my garden and
the food we grow. It is hard to predict the last frosts, the hail in
spring that destroys fruit tree blossom, or a wet summer as in
2012 that rotted crops in the ground. In response, I have started
to grow as much as I can under glass and we are developing
microclimates in the forest garden whilst still leaving enough space
for as much light as possible. Food forests are wonderful but we
have to be careful so far from the Equator not to weaken our trees
and shrubs by cramming too many together in naive optimism.
We dont only grow perennials much though I love the
diversity we can achieve, the fabulous blossom, the resilience of
established edible perennials and the experience of foraging in
our own wilderness we like annuals too. Hence our visit to
Charles Dowdings organic no dig market garden (see my article
on page 4). There is no better learning than to observe a truly
experienced gardener (or farmer). They know what works
through years of observation, trial and error. Charles inspired
me and encouraged us to plant more annual varieties as well as
perennials, experiment with at least two new crops every year,
and be prepared to be challenged by the weather.
In a rapidly changing world, resilience occupies my mind ...
David Holmgren, the co-founder of permaculture, has been raising
unpalatable questions in his recent paper Crash on Demand
Welcome to the Brow Tech Future (2013, http://holmgren.com
.au/crash-demand). It is an update on his book, Future Scenarios
(2009) and his paper Oil vs Money Battle for Control of the
World (2009). It has sparked an online debate that has engaged

many commentators in the permaculture, transition and environmental activism movements. Is David a Collapsnik actively
encouraging a crash to avert an even greater global disaster,
namely runaway climate change? Or is he simply commentating
on what that crash may look like if it occurs, and how positive
environmental movements (like permaculture and transition)
can engage others in constructive resilience building strategies?
David MacLeod wrote (on www.resilience.org) a useful
appraisal of the debate and a summary of Davids underlying
philosophy. This first appeared in Permaculture One (1978),
was concluded in his essay Energy and Permaculture (1998),
and appears again in this recent paper. So where do we start?
Here is Davids code to live by:

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle (in that order).

Grow a garden and eat what it produces.
Avoid imported resources where possible.
Use labour and skill in preference to materials and technology.
Design, build and purchase for durability and repairability.
Use resources for their greatest potential use (e.g. electricity
for tools and lighting, food scraps for animal feed).
Use renewable resources wherever possible even if local environmental costs appear higher (e.g. wood rather than electricity
for fuel and timber rather than steel for construction).
Use non-renewable and embodied energies primarily to
establish sustainable systems (e.g. passive solar housing, food
gardens, water storage, forests).
When using high technology (e.g. computers) avoid using
state of the art equipment.
Avoid debt and long-distance commuting.
Reduce taxation by earning less.
Develop a home-based lifestyle, be domestically responsible.

I do not anticipate with pleasure the chaos and suffering an

economic crash will bring to ordinary peoples lives. I doubt
David does either. What I appreciate is Davids thoughtful
capacity to project into the future and offer a code to live by
for a positive and unifying response.

Maddy Harland and the Permaculture team

See Maddys regular blog at:
www.permaculture.co.uk/writers/maddy-harland

To Subscribe log on to
www.permaculture.co.uk or see page 87

No. 79

permaculture

permaculture

Contents

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to the editorial guidelines at: www.permaculture.co.uk/submit_an_article

Tim Harland

Gardening and Cultivation

A Visit to Charles Dowdings

No Dig Garden

Maddy and Tim Harland visit market gardener,

Charles Dowdings no dig garden and are
wowed by the yumminess of it all.

31

DIY Geodesic Growdome

51

Caring For Fruit Trees

Simon Mitchell, aka SimontheScribe, shares

some of his experience of building his
experimental, low-cost geodesic growdomes.
Wade Muggleton advises on buying fruit trees
and how to care for them to ensure healthy
specimens and good yields.

Regulars
17 Product Reviews

COPYRIGHT
All writings are the copyright of Permanent Publications and/or
individual contributors. All rights reserved. No part, written or visual,
of this magazine may be reproduced, except for short credited and
sourced passages for criticism or review, without written permission
of the publisher.

19 Solutions!
35 Permaculture News
44 Perma Kids Zone
67 Green Shopping

Permaculture magazine and Permanent Publications are trading names

of Hyden House Ltd. Registered in England No 2470704.

permaculture

No. 79

Tim Harland

DISCLAIMER
The opinions expressed in Permaculture are not necessarily those
of the publisher. Whilst the publisher takes every care in checking
the validity of information given in articles and other contributions,
it cannot accept responsibility for its accuracy or liability for any
form of damages incurred by the use of any such information.

Cover photo

View from the Permaculture

Gardens into the Green Fields,
Glastonbury Festival, 2013.

71 Letters
73 Reviews
77 Courses
83 Classified Exchange
86 Subscriptions
www.permaculture.co.uk

Spring 2014
Sustainable Technology

13
47

Shedding Light on LEDs

John Adams looks at the lighting revolution

that can dramatically reduce your bills as well
as being kinder to the planet.

Log Now, Burn Later

Will Rolls suggests we should be thinking about

next winters logs to get the hottest, most energy
efficient and money saving burn from our stoves.

Building Soil With Biochar

In this second of three articles Ed Revill

explains how to build soil depth and fertility
with biochar.

Politics & Economics

25

Farming & Smallholding

How Fairtrade was Born

Francisco Van der Hoff Boersma, co-founder

of the Fairtrade Movement, describes how it
all started in Mexico and explains why it is
a vital economic ingredient in the creation
of a better world.

Permaculture

37

41

Nelson Lebo

Is Learning Permaculture Online

Right For You?

TH E S

UN

E
OW R

28

Dog Whispering Permaculture-Style

41

BY

pm

Sustainable Beekeeping

Monica Barlow describes the habits of bees

and explains how we can make beekeeping
truly sustainable by using nature as a model.
Moss was aggressive and a sheep worrier...
until Kate McDonald applied permacultural
thinking to his behaviour.

Sustainable Living

Stuart and Gabrielle Anderson compare and

contrast online Permaculture Design Courses
to the conventional face to face models.
ED

20

Eco-Thrifty Baby

Nelson Lebo shows that having a baby doesnt

have to stop you living a sustainable lifestyle.

Community and Groups

54

Repair Caf

Vivienne Johnson reports on a project that is

changing attitudes to our consumer society,
one broken item at a time, by mending them.

Plus

57

www.permaculture.co.uk

Permaculture APP
Bees for Development

20

PMs Guide to Festivals, Fairs & Events 2014

Permaculture magazine
is also available for
iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch. Just visit the
Apple App Store and search for Permaculture magazine.

No. 79

permaculture

A Visit to
Charles Dowdings

No Dig Garden

all photos Tim Harland

Maddy and Tim

Harland visit market
gardener, Charles
Dowdings
no dig garden and
are wowed by the
yumminess of it all
4

permaculture

No. 79

ne of Tim and my great

pleasures in life is to visit a
really fine edible garden. We
come home full of ideas and
enthusiasm for improvements we can
make to our own plot. So it was with
some anticipation that we arranged
to visit no dig gardeners, Charles
Dowding and Stephanie Hafferty, at
Charles market garden. The pleasure
was compounded by the fact that this
new garden was only set up only 10
months before our visit and so it was

an excellent opportunity to see how

Charles had established his growing
systems in such a short space of time
and how productive they were.
The first impression on arrival is a
line of newly planted fruit trees, a
row of busy compost heaps built out
of pallets in various stages of
decomposition, rows and rows of
beautifully tended beds full of
edibles, and a fabulously large pile
of cow manure that was slowly
composting, ready for the spring
www.permaculture.co.uk

Gardening and Cultivation

mulching. Living in rural Somerset,
cow manure is easy to come by and
so Charles has made sure delivery
into the heart of the garden can
easily be achieved.
The garden itself used to be an old
market garden attached to a cottage.
When Charles bought the property,
it was mostly paddock with a disused
chicken run, and remains of
dismantled greenhouses with broken
glass, rubbish and pads of concrete
under the grass. If you think it is a
big site, think again. With only 35
beds of 1.2m width and 5-10m
length, in one fifth of an acre, plus
some beds of flowers and fruit trees,
this is a large-ish rural garden, not a
farm. Charles demonstrates just how
much you can grow in a relatively
small space for the market. Revenue
in 2013 was 7,200 (Charles first
growing year there.) Two thirds of
this was from the outdoor beds.
Most of the revenue is from bags of
mixed salad leaves.
Creating The Beds
Whilst setting up his new no dig
garden, he decided to experiment
with ways of establishing beds. He
mulched a few beds with carpet
made of natural fibres and left them
for a few months to kill the weeds.
Some he mulched with card and
added wood shavings. Others he

www.permaculture.co.uk

upturned the sods of grass, added

compost on top and/or rockdust and
planted straight into the mix. Some
he simply upturned the sod and
planted direct with no additional
fertility. He was surprised by just
how successful these unfertilised
beds proved to be. The plants grew
on well and shaded out most of the
competing weeds. (See his website
for results.)
The beds are a wonderful
collection of colours, shapes, heights
and varieties of vegetables. Charles
doesnt just grow veg, he paints
with them and has an obvious
empathy. He has years of growing
experience and understands his
plants and what they need in terms
of space, care and companions.
There are beds full of squashes,
greens, many varieties of salads,
brassicas, alliums, fennel and
celeriac, the occasional perennial
bed, but mostly annuals, all weed
free and thriving in late November.
The weather had been mild but it
was still a masterclass in successional
sowing throughout the year.
I get the impression that Charles
is an avid hoe-er and he jumps on
weeds at an early stage, with
minimal disturbance to the soil and
consequently with minimal work.
He is also careful to interplant
densely and sow successionally so

Above: Charles Dowding.

Left: Charles manages to grow a great
deal in a relatively small space.
Below: Newly established no dig beds
with temporary wooden edging.
that bare soil is rarely exposed for
long. Last summer, the garlic was
replaced by intersown beetroot,
lettuce by oriental leaves, garlic and
spinach by lettuce, pea shoots and
peas by lettuce and endive, lettuce

No. 79

permaculture

Gardening and Cultivation

and broad beans by land cress and
kale, cabbage and cauliflower by
fennel and spinach.
He favours specific varieties (you
can find a comprehensive list on his
website). I loved the look of his
pointy cabbages Filderkraut from
Mr Fothergills which make large,
pointed hearts that are tender and
delicious in coleslaw and sauerkraut.
Thats definitely one for my new list
of plants to grow and ferment.
Charles is not an advocate of
green manures. He prefers to feed
the soil with compost which also acts
as a mulch. Green manures require
digging in before they seed, or
mulching with cardboard. He keeps
his use of cardboard to an absolute
minimum as it can encourage slugs.
He also doesnt recommend wooden
or other permanent edges to raised
beds for the same reason. He will use
waste wood to establish the raised
beds and then remove it once the
edges are established. He also says
that too much mulch on paths is an
invitation to slugs. I saw just a little
wood shavings or card to suppress
weeds on paths that are narrow in
width enough to get the
wheelbarrow through.
This approach minimises slug and
snail habitats and is very low work.
It pleased me too as Tim and I are
just about to rebuild our raised bed
area and the thought of finding/
buying lots of timber for edges and
barrowing in woodchip was not
appealing. We are going to imitate
the master of no dig and set up our
new veggie garden, Dowding-style!
If we get 10% of his success we will
be well fed!

Above: Charles and Maddy inspect his

lettuces in the polytunnel.
Top right: Charles employs an artistic
approach to the laying out and planting
of his beds while creating just the right
conditions for each species.
6

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No. 79

Growing Under Glass

Like the raised bed system, Charles
greenhouse is very beautiful! It is
wooden framed and I like the
eccentric addition of a pendulum
clock hanging in the rafters (won at
a village fete!). In the greenhouse
and polytunnel he mainly grows
tomatoes and salads. Favoured cold
season varieties are three mustards
Pizzo (Brassica juncea), Green in
the Snow and Red Dragon lettuce
Red Grenoble (you can start sowing
this variety in February and they are
hardier and less slug prone than
others) and chervil (Anthriscus

cerefolium). Again you can find a

comprehensive list on his website for
year round growing.
Charles also recommends a
number of varieties of tomato
including Rosada F1 (I concur, its
deliciously sweet) and Sungold F1
(I am trying this this year) and a
beefsteak, Country Taste F1. He
grows tomatoes in good market
garden fashion, strung from the
structure of the greenhouse or
polytunnel with leaves removed to
the level of the truss as soon as it is
harvested. This allows in more light
for the crops undersown below.
Hotbeds
Tucked in one corner of the greenhouse is a hotbed. The sides are
constructed of bits of plywood, or
other waste board, held in place by
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