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Sailchearnach

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Commenced:	01/01/1995
Submitted:	24/05/2012
Last updated:	15/10/2021
Location:	Clogher, Kilfenora, Co. Clare, IE
Climate zone:	Cool Temperate

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Sailchearnach

Kilfenora, IE

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Ianto Evans's Polyculture

Project: Sailchearnach

Posted by Ute Bohnsack almost 13 years ago

Trying out Ianto Evans's Polyculture in a polytunnel (hoophouse) in Ireland

Inspired by Toby Hemenway's description of Ianto Evans's Polyculture in "Gaia's Garden" I am trying it this year, albeit in our polytunnel. We are in the West in Ireland and this spring it has been unusually cold, except for a very warm spell in the week before Easter. It was still unseasonally cold until mid-May with temps dropping below zero most nights, even in the polytunnel. During the day, when there is good sun, the temps can go up to 40C, so quite a challenge for the little plants. I water every second day.

On April 2 I sowed an area of about 40 square feet
*Pot Marigold
*Lettuces Cimmaron, Marvel of the Four Seasons, Bath Island (Cos), Crisp Mint Lettuce (Cos/Romaine), Rouge d'Hiver (Romaine)
*some Salad leaves Stir Fry Mixed (Mizuna, Kanton Pak Choy, Red Mustard, Texel Greens, Cavolo Nero=Tuscan kale)
*Radish, Oriental Rosa 2 (Ostergruss) + Cherry Belle
* Spinach Bloomsdale Long Standing
* Dill
* Parsnip Bedford Monarch
I also threw in a few seeds of Ragged Jack Kale.

The soil is drained fen peat, so very rich in organic matter, great gardening soil. I had a dozen or so young roosters in the polytunnel over the winter to clear it out, manure it, and eat slugs etc. so the soil is nice and fertile. I never dig the soil in there, just pull weeds and loosen it a bit.

This is on Apr. 2. The 2 existing plants on the left side of the bed are Shungkiku (Chrysanthemum coronarium) and Korean Mint (Agastache anisata).

Then my camera broke...

Germination started after about a week and after a month I could begin harvesting bits and pieces. It's become a dense carpet of greens. There are plenty young lettuces, a good bit of Mizuna, leaf mustard, spinach and Pak Choy. We started getting a daily little bowl of mixed leaves, young lettuce plants and a few radishes. There is also a bit of self-seeded borage coming up.

One little "problem" I have, if you want to call it that, is volunteers:
1) Chickweed: A thick carpet of it coming up, crowding and shading the other young plants. It comes back year after year as the seeds are so tiny that the chickens don't find them. I know its edible and nutritious but tastewise it wouldn't be my favourite green. I pull it for the chickens but it takes a good bit of time to stay ahead of it amongst all the other plants. I guess the solution would be to water the polytunnel well once or twice while the chicken crew is at work so that the seeds all sprout and get eaten that way, leaving a "clean" bed.
2) Some kind of wild radish or fodder radish: I haven't yet figured out what this is. I think it may have come in with the wheat I had fed the chickens. It's difficult to tell from the radishes sown, and there is lot of it. Like the chickweed I pull it and feed it to the birds.
3) Chenopodium: I have had the beautiful Chenopodium giganteum 'Magentaspreen' self-seed in the polytunnel for years. Again, not really a problem except it takes a good bit of time staying ahead of the myriad of seedlings where I don't want them.

This is it on May 29 (8 weeks after sowing)

It does take daily tending alright. Things happen so fast! Pretty much every day for the last 4 weeks I have removed a bunch of greens for a salad and/or stirfry and a big bucket full of volunteers for our chickens. I have Mizuna practically coming out of my ears :)

The soil is always covered - you pull out a plant and there's something else underneath just ready to burst up - so it definitely retains moisture better than a conventional sowing in rows. On the downside there is a bit more slug damage but nothing unacceptable.

The Calendulas are pushing through now and should soon be flowering. Dill is also slowly pushing through. The radishes are almost gone. It's now getting too hot for the Brassicas and the spinach - they are starting to bolt - so I'm chancing my arm with the caulis and 'Delaway' cabbages. I have yet to spot any parsnips.

Next will be some French beans or maybe I'll go for peas.

It's a bit like 'Alice in Wonderland'. Cool stuff.

For more info on polycultures check Toby's book 'Gaia's Garden' and/or check this nice little booklet by Chris Evans (Nepal/UK):

http://www.permaculture.org.uk/sites/default/files...VegGarden_A4_colourbooklet.pdf

Comments (3)

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Carolyn Payne-Gemmell : Hi Ute, I just started following you, great stuff. Despite being opposite ends of the earth, most of our plants are the same, I love the photo above, I practice this method and I teach it to my students. A lot of them admit it is difficult to stop planting things in mono- culture rows, but they can see how it works. I have only ever had one person tell me it was an "unacceptable" method. Yours Abundantly Carolyn

Posted almost 12 years ago

Ute Bohnsack : Hi Carolyn, I only just saw your comment here as I checked on the sowing dates (starting earlier this year). Yes it is a bit of a leap of faith. I was trained in "normal" organic horticulture and this goes against what I learned. Some things are worth 'unlearning'. This works so well and is so easy. I had a chap look into the polytunnel once and he looked at the patch and said "it's time you weed that patch!"; he was quite shocked when I said that it was intended to look like that and that all he saw was salad greens. He simply couldn't recognize it as food because it wasn't in tidy rows with bare soil in between...

Posted about 11 years ago

Robert Hones : we schedule our service around what’s convenient for you so that it’s easy and stress-free. Olympia Onsite Truck Repair

Posted over 1 year ago

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