A Few Days Off

After a busy two weeks at work, as explained in my last post, the Shop Manager returned this week, get swhich has lightened the load a bit.  I left the stockroom last night, looking much better, with nearly empty donation cages and hardly any clothes on the pricing table for once.  I'm not back there until Sunday, so I'm going to enjoy my three days off and do some more cutting back in the garden and harvesting at the allotment.

This last week, when I've had spare time, I've found myself falling down a bit of a YouTube rabbit hole. On account of doing more gardening recently, I've kind of rekindled my love of all things horticultural, partly aided and abetted by discovering a couple of new and interesting YouTube channels.

The first is Roots and Refuge Farm, a young family in the US who have moved to the country and are applying permaculture principles to their homestead. I've enjoyed watching some of their videos this week.

The second and probably most inspiring has been permaculture expert Geoff Lawton's YouTube channel called Geoff Lawton: Permaculture Online.  I am loving this channel and particularly enjoyed his series on Greening the Desert, whereby over a period of 20 years, he has helped local people to create sustainable Food Forests in the Jordan desert, which receives very little rainfall and has to cope with very arid conditions.  It was fascinating to see what can be done, even in the most extreme conditions to create a food producing environment.

Geoff also has a farm (Zaytuna Farm) in northern New South Wales in Australia, where he teaches permaculture and applies it's principles to create sustainable food forests and food growing on a reasonably large scale, in conditions that can be quite difficult due to shortages of water. I'm currently working my way through his video series about this farm and it is very interesting. I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys growing their own food.

Watching these videos has really inspired me to try to grow as much food as I can.  We're now getting good crops of tomatoes, cucumbers, raspberries, potatoes, beans, carrots and sweetcorn from the allotment, which is great.  Some things were a disaster this year, i.e. lettuce and I didn't sow enough beetroot, although I might sow some more this week. Peas and climbing beans didn't do well either, although bush beans are doing okay.

I've decided to try to give away my rhubarb plants as no-one but myself enjoys eating it and it is going to waste more often than not as I don't feel motivated to use it all for just myself.  I'm sure there'll be some takers at the allotment for the plants.  In it's place I want to grow more raspberries, as I can  get plants for just £1 at Poundland and they seem to do well. Besides, OH eats lots of these so it would save me money buying them.

I've bought a new plant or two in the last week, namely a white hydrangea for the border I'm replanting. At £10, I thought it was pretty reasonable. It's quite small in comparison to the space, but will grow into it eventually.  It might look strange for a while though. I still want some floral interest in the border, so this will be ideal, especially for attracting pollinators. I might even be able to cut some of the flowers to bring into the house eventually.

Just a bit of an update before I try to get stuck in again.