!! food glorious LOCAL food !!

 PART ONE - TOMNAH'A MARKET GARDEN

We feel our main role at Perth Community Farm is to teach and demonstrate food growing, gardening and about environmental issues in general, rather than growing tons of food. So it was very interesting for me to visit Tomnah'a Market Garden, near Crieff, where they are growing a huge amount of fruit and veg, as well as building community food resilience and local people's connection to their land.

Tomnah'a from the air, five acre site with lots of polytunnels

COMFREY - HERB OF MAGIC

We always have loads of comfrey in our gardens. It's a brilliant fertiliser, bees love it and it also has medicinal uses. It's best to plant the infertile variety, Bocking 14, as other varieties will spread a bit over enthusiastically... Links to Bocking 14 for sale and an article with lots more detail on comfrey below:

Masses of foliage can be cut down 3 or 4 times a year for mulching or to make liquid fertiliser

BOCKING 14 FOR SALE

ARTICLE IN PERMACULTURE MAGAZINE

All About Perth Community Farm - Spring 2022

 WHAT DOES THE FARM DO?

A small group of environmental and gardening enthusiasts started the farm three years ago on an area of waste ground rented from the council, part of the much larger Westbank project. We have worked hard to keep the farm going through Covid and the lockdown because we feel projects like these are vitally important at so many levels - whether it's simply to help more people to grow more food locally, or as a place where we can explore and demonstrate local solutions to the Climate Emergency.
We grow a wide range of fruit and vegetables which we share amongst our volunteer helpers or give away to local charities. We love to show people how to grow food, to get them started in their own gardens, but we aim to show people much more than that...

Strawberry picking last summer

FRUIT TREE PRUNING AND GENERAL TREE-CARE

We were really lucky with the weather for this course, the first time we've held it at Perth Community Farm. Somehow we managed to hit a calm slot right between two storms, and it started to rain just as we were finishing up...

Here's some notes for the folk who were on the course and for anyone who's interested in tree care generally. I think trees and woodland will prove to be the backbone of the sustainable future...

PRUNING, WHY AND HOW

We prune so that fruit will be accessible, to keep the trees open and at a reasonable height.

It's an opportunity to check them for any dead, damaged and diseased wood and remove it. Removing any branches that are crossing other branches at the same time, keeping the centre of the tree open,  removing most of branches going straight upwards.

30%

Generally, 30% is about the maximum you can take of in any one year. Sometimes there's no option other than being really radical with a damaged tree or one that's leaning right over. Very often trees will survive radical treatment and even come away really well.

FORMATIVE PRUNING

When pruning a tree for the first time look for the first major junction on the trunk, there might be three or four branches coming off round about here. Anything else below this point can be taken away. Dead, damaged wood can be taken away and this is a good time to lower the tree's overall height.

GROWTH RING

The best place to trim a branch is just beyond the growth ring, that kind of wrinkly area growing out just half an inch or so from it's junction with the trunk.

ON GOING CARE - MULCHING AND FEEDING

Trees compete with grass, so it's good to clear an area around their bases and maybe try planting up with a ground cover, possibly Comfrey (BOCKING 14 non-seeding variety). Comfrey is an amazing accumulator of deep nutrients and good to have anyway. We've been experimenting with borage, clover and buckwheat as well at the farm. Keep in touch about that if you're interested because it's a really important topic and it will be good to share experiences. 

DISEASES

I don't have much experience of treating tree diseases, generally I've focused on promoting the trees' strength and health. There's a good guide here at the RHS, includes a bit about canker.

Here's a few photos from my fruit tree adventures... 

Early pruning experiences with olives in Portugal

Radical pruning of an apple tree in Shropshire...

Same tree later that year, it came away fine

Orchards are a lovely meeting place - eg for Permaculture students

Our home in the woods, early days of the logcabavan conversion

Amazing amount of fruit from just on tree

Orchard companions...

Silver

!!! COURSES WOODWORKING AND GARDENING !!!

 ... LATEST PCF COURSE NEWS ...

At 9th September 2021

It's brilliant to have had so much interest in the first courses we've been running since lockdown, three Basic Woodwork Level Ones have sold out, and been a big hit with our participants, well done to you all :-) There's a link below to another one in about two weeks' time.

Our first Level Two course, planing and sharpening etc, went down very well, and there's a link to another one below.

No takers for the Gardening Beginners course so I think I'll change the format for that, 

COMING UP NEXT...

BASIC WOODWORK LEVEL ONE - 21st SEPTEMBER 2021

Next chance to do this course for complete beginners, women and men welcome, over 18's please, just four places on these, so plenty of personal attention, also we will try to explain and demonstrate everything in a way that suits your style of learning.  

BASIC WOODWORK LEVEL TWO  - 28th SEPTEMBER 2021 

This course carries on from level one, starts with planing, one of the most useful things you could ever learn, goes on to sharpening, cutting a simple joint and more. With a small group like this there's time to talk about specific projects you have in mind.

MORE WOODWORK - I'm thinking about how best to help people practice and progress. One idea is to have project days where people can work on various different things, combining reclaimed, salvaged and green wood, simple things like a stool, plant stand, small table, maybe a work bench, bookshelf...  course should be hatching out soon :-)

SIMILARLY WITH GARDENING AND ECO STUFF GENERALLY...

There is so much to show people at Perth Community Farm, practical gardening skills, orchard and woodland care, and also the thinking and patterns that will help us to live in a sustainable way with (rather than on) our planet. I'd be delighted to put on some kind of Eco Day with an overview of Permaculture, look round the farm, time for people to talk about their hopes and fears for the future. We are not powerless as individuals, we can make a huge difference in all sorts of ways - and what is a government anyway but a collection of individuals? why shouldn't government individuals take personal responsibility for climate emergency?

 

TO GET LATEST DETAILS OF COURSES ETC:

I know I won't be able to keep up with individual enquiries so the best ways to keep in touch are to:

• FOLLOW ME ON EVENTBRITE find one of my events, scroll down to the organiser section and click follow
• FOLLOW THIS BLOG for latest course details, also eco news and goings-on, links to my therapy work, writing etc etc...

Our first ever level one course :-)

Second level one course

first level two, mostly planing, sharpening and a first simple joint

a flight of planes resting before level two...

2021 - Perth Community Farm - getting ready for the growing season

Happy New Year Everyone! Sure 2021 will be an interesting journey...  it seems to be going a bit crazy already... 

I don't think we can do anything much more useful, lock-down or no lock-down, than gardening: growing some food, looking after our local area and finding out more about how to help it regenerate its wonderful complexity, and learning more and more how to change from our crazy industrial way of life to something our local area could actually support - and have fun with it all too.

I've been looking after Perth Community Farm through 2020 with a small but dedicated band of friends and plan to keep on doing that this year. We'll be sorting out what to plant, getting any seeds we need and getting some plants started off soon. We'lI take all possible covid precautions for now, I hope we can get more people down again soon and start the courses and classes we've been wanting to put on for ages. See you soon!

A photo of last year's summery abundance - it doesn't look anything like that at the moment, everything's frozen solid...

Perth Community Fam Nov 2020 - WOODLAND AREAS

The areas of woodland at the farm are some of the most interesting, especially since they're developing in a very natural way, without much conscious planning. Also very pleasant to explore!

A couple of years ago at the start of our farm project, we had an idea to develop the area to the back of the site for more fruit and veg, possibly even putting a polytunnel along the line of the fence. We never got round to doing any of that, so the area started to grow out into scrubland, regenerating naturally towards woodland. This is such a fascinating process in itself that we decided simply to let it happen, using it for teaching and demonstration, and making paths into this area to link up with an area of existing mature woodland and the existing wheelchair-access paths made by the Westbank project.

The top of the wheelchair-accessible walkway built by the Westbank project

Looking down towards our new enormous polytunnel

Very interesting to see that there can be life after Spruce... light getting in and a thriving under-storey

THE MORE YOU LOOK THE MORE YOU SEE
There's so much going on in there! Looking around as you walk along the pathways you can see regeneration and succession in process, how different light levels effect what will grow, what grows in and around the different trees, the effect of a full canopy and how it's different to the woodland edge, the difference bewteen the North and South sides, the abundant and varied under-storey, various edible plants and berries, loads of insects, birds, squirrels... and that's just a start...

Also mature broad-leaved trees...

Loads of elder, great for flowers as well as berries

WOODLAND YIELDS
We have a rough plan to continue to allow the area to develop naturally, with minimum management, so as to gain a variety of yields while allowing its general diversity to develop. Yields, not just of berries and other food but also of poles for woodwork, medicinal herbs, blossom to support the bees on the site, and mushrooms to name just a few, though it's main yield will no doubt be as a teaching/demonstration asset.
Our idea is to show how abundant local woodland can lie at the heart of a sustainable, local, natural, healthy economy and support this with a range of courses on the necessary skills such as treecare, foraging and green woodwork.

I've already been using poles from this area of willow for furniture

BY THE WAY...

Much of my personal input for the woodland development comes from a visit way back in 2008 I made helping on a project in Wales where a large area had been allowed to regenerate back into woodland, Tir Penrhos Isaf. The result was a fascinating journey of observation for the owners, Chris and Lyn Dixon. Being permaculture teachers, the woodland became an excellent teaching resource for them. Chris says, "Doing nothing produced our best yield".