Projects

Wildlife pond

I picked up a preformed pond from Facebook Marketplace in the summer of 2023. I already have a small pond at the top end of the plot, but my thoughts were another larger wildlife pond would be useful for frogs and other wildlife. Frogs eat slugs which is excellent, as I seem to have a lot of slugs. Where you have water, you also have birds and insects, which are also pest controllers. It seemed like an excellent plan.

I have put in ponds before using a liner, I thought using a preformed shape would be easier, I was wrong. It has been scuppered many times. I thought the best plan was to dig a big hole, larger than the liner and let it fill up naturally with water over the winter. However, as soon as it rained, the whole area the pond sat in was flooded out and the liner bobbed up and down on the water, essentially I had a pond in a pond. Eventually the water subsided and the liner settled at the bottom of the hole, I levelled the liner again and weighed the liner down. The pond filled up, but because I hadn’t backfilled the soil around the liner to support it, it became distorted and out of shape, so I had to bale the water out and start to backfill the liner properly. The problem I am having is that the area I have put it in is full of horrible weeds, particularly couch grass and horsetail, so I am having to pick out the roots as I dig and move the soil around.

The surrounding area is clearing, once finished I will rake it all level and sow with wild flowers.

May 24, Still digging this area out, it is an exercise in Mindfulness. I am slowly clearing the grass and levelling. It will be worth it for the extra space to plant out all my brassicas, sweetcorn and pumpkins. Around the pond I have sown some wildflower plants- a bee mix and some cornflowers, hopefully some of it will germinate.

July 24, I have cleared some of the surrounding area and am weighing down the sides to try and improve the shape. It is fairly full with rain water and the plants are multiplying

This is the pond by August. It is hardly visible! The borage has taken off and obscured it and it is entirely surrounded by brassicas. I have planted two Angelicas either side of the pond which seem to have survived the slug invasion. Next year I will landscape it further.

Botanicals

I am fascinated by wild plants, and their medicinal benefits. I am lucky to have enough space that I can experiment with this aspect of growing. I want to intersperse botanicals with the traditional fruit and veg, to add variety, for colour from their flowers and to encourage pollinators. I have already planted out a stand of mullein that I grew from collected seed, and this year I have also sown some feverfew into pots. This is one of my favourite plants, it is beautiful, it self seeds everywhere without crowding out other plants and it has a host of medicinal benefits including for treating migraines. Its other properties include: relieving stress, lowering inflammation, to reduce pain, break fever, ease menstrual discomfort, increase appetite, and boost respiratory health.

I collected some feverfew seeds last summer which I dried, stored in a paper envelope and then sowed out in March 24. The seed needs light to germinate so I scattered it on the surface of the soil and left it in a sunny windowsill and kept misting with water. I sowed pretty liberally and as a result I am now overwhelmed with seedlings.

Mullein

They look a bit sorry for themselves now. I think they were weakened by the caterpillar attack, or stressed by the weather, because they seem to have some kind of mould attack on them, like rust. They should self seed now and hopefully become a permanent resident.

Sweet potatoes

Sweet potatoes are a new one for me. I have tried and tried to get some slips from shop bought vegetables, but with no success. So I have relented and bought some in, they arrived in the post as jumbo plug plants and I potted them straight up. I have given two away and have three in my new greenhouse. One is in an elevated frame, so has plenty of soil to grow into. The other two are level in the bed. I have added sand, as apparently they don’t like heavy soil. I have also added compost and manure. I have started constructing a frame for them to grow up. I am intrigued to see how well these grow.

Sept 24. They have certainly grown well, I hope they have also produced a crop below the soil.