Events

Farming for a Future

Thursday November 26th

7pm-7.45 UK Time

Streaming live on Facebook and Youtube

Our panel will discuss how farming can create carbon sinks and revive nature as well as answering questions sent in by the audience.

Send your questions to: events@veganorganic.net

Tune in to our next show for a lively topical debate with:

Jenny Hall from Climate Friendly Foods

Tolly who runs Tolhurst Organic

Peter Albrecht: Swedish farmer and forest gardener

Iain Tolhurst (Tolly) has been at the forefront of the UK organic farming movement for over 40 years. His 8-hectare farm has won many awards the most recent being “soil farmer of the year”. His most recent book “Back to the Land” is a chronological compilation of many of the articles and papers that he has written during his long career, and gives a fascinating account of the way his farm and business has developed with much emphasis on soil management. His earlier work co-written with Jenny Hall has become a text book for many especially the newly emerging young people keen to get into Stockfree organic food production.

More information: https://www.tolhurstorganic.co.uk/ 

Tolly’s Books

Peter Albrecht: Operates a micro farm growing veggies for seed for a seed firm called Nordfrö in Sweden. He also grows for his family and puts on events, for example: vegan farming classes, vegan permaculture and private events.  They grow a large variety of vegetables and beans. They also do lectures to promote vegan agriculture. They have a large forest garden with perennial vegetables, fruit and berries, and teach forest garden design and host pupils studying agriculture, small scale farming and permaculture. They mainly use no-dig methods. 
Find Peter on Instagram @vegantradgard and Facebook 

Jenny Hall: Co-author of Growing Green and many other books. She set up Fir Tree Community Growers which is the small holding she runs as Climate Friendly Food CIC. She has twenty years of experience providing therapeutic horticultural experience. Her current part time job is about getting new audiences out into green spaces.

More info: https://www.facebook.com/FirTreeCommunityGrowersCropshare / Growing Green Organic Techniques for a Sustainable Future https://veganorganic.net/product/growing-green

Jenny’s Books

Veganic Gardeners’ Question Time hopes to inspire and bring new ideas to foragers, growers and gardeners alike.

Now more than ever it is vital that we engage with how our food is grown.

Tune into our show and become part of the growing revolution which can not only transform your garden plot but also change the way the world grows its food.

A Vegan Organic Network production.

The Autumn Garden
Our relationship with the garden is a dance, for this is an ecosystem with which we need to get the beat if we are to interact gracefully and productively. Gabrielle Roth’s ‘Five Rhythms’ dance movement archetypes can almost be thought of as metaphors for the way our activities change throughout the growing year. Early spring is the ‘Flowing’ season of fresh growth when the soil starts to warm up and become workable and first green shoots emerge. ‘Staccato’ reflects the activities of late spring and early summer when we need to keep on it, with little time to pause as we try and keep up with planting and controlling the wild plants that seem to spring up all over the place, then it’s the ‘Chaos’ of midsummer when things really get busy. Late summer and autumn is the time of more ‘Lyrical’ rhythms, we can begin to relax as the leaves turn red and gold and harvests become ready for picking. Finally it’s the ‘Stillness’ of winter, when the earth rests and retreats within itself before the cycle of life begins once again.
Right now we are in the slowing down and reflective stage of the dance, the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness. The harvest has been gathered, the pumpkins carved into grinning Halloween masks and their flesh made into rich and warming soup, and the apples have been picked and stored or pressed into juice and cider. Now it is time to slow down, ready for the quiet of winter…
Yet there are still a few activities to keep us busy before it is quite time to snuggle up by the fire with next year’s seed catalogues…

Making Leaf Mould
The autumn days become shorter as the sun drops lower in the sky, and trees are no longer able to efficiently photosynthesise sunlight into carbohydrates, sugars and biomass. At the same time the temperature begins to drop, increasing the risk of frost damage to leaves. Thus deciduous trees use a process called abscision to shed their leaves and become dormant, saving their energy resources for more active times. Many gardeners consider this annual leaf fall to be a nuisance, expending great amounts of time and energy in sweeping them up and either burning them or taking them to the tip where they end up as landfill. This is wasteful however, a practice that is not only polluting but removes a valuable resource from the fertility cycle. Instead why not simply collect them up and allow them to break down into leaf mould, an excellent free-of-charge soil conditioner.  Note that due to the tough lignins in their cell walls autumn leaves decompose very slowly, and so should not be added to other garden compost. Instead pile them up separately in an out of the way corner in black plastic sacks, and after a year or so they will have broken down into a pleasant smelling, dark brown, crumbly substance that is a good soil improver, lawn conditioner and mulch, as well as being useful in seed and potting mixes.

Sowing Green Manures
The autumn of 2016 has been mild so far, and so there is still time to sow ‘Green Manures’ such as grazing rye, tares and winter field beans. These are temporary cover crops that will germinate and provide protection for bare soil over winter, helping to prevent erosion and the leaching of nutrients, as well as fixing nitrogen from the air or accumulating minerals from deep in the subsoil with their root systems. The plant foliage is then chopped down either in spring or before being allowed to flower, and either lightly hoed into the soil or left on the surface as a rough mulch, whilst the roots are left in the soil to break down and improve its structure, building up the populations of soil life and increasing it’s capacity to store carbon.

Crops for Autumn
Unless you have access to a greenhouse there aren’t too many edible annual crops that can be sown at this time of year, although those hardier souls that can be planted directly outside include broad beans, overwintering onions and garlic.
Growing broad beans over the winter months gives them a head start against blackfly, a type of aphid. Their attacks tend to be more severe against more tender spring sown varieties that havn’t had a chance to toughen up. Broad beans have large brown seeds that look a bit like small ears – Traditionally these are sown an inch or two deep about five inches apart in rows with about 18 inches between them. Some of the books say they need to be grown up canes in the same way as runner beans, but I’ve not found this to be the case as they are usually sturdy enough to be self-supporting. I’ve also been experimenting with abandoning the row system of growing, and instead scatter them randomly on ground that has been lightly cultivated to loosen it and remove competing weeds, then push them an inch or so under the soil where they land. My not very scientific observation against a ‘control’ plot of beans sown in the more traditional way would seem to suggest that they do better, and that there are less losses to hard frosts and mice who sometimes like to steal the seeds, but more rigorous research is probably needed… Over wintering varieties include Bunyards Exhibition, Aquadulce Claudia and Super Aquadulce.
Some varieties of onion such as Senshyu, Radar (whites) or Electric (red) can be planted as ‘sets’ (tiny onion bulbs that have already been grown from seed by the nursery) in autumn to overwinter, the main advantage being that they are ready to harvest around a month before the main spring-sown onion crop. However overwintering onions can be liable to bolt, which means that they produce a flower and run to seed. Bolted onions are still usable, although the eating quality is impaired. Overwintering onions also do not tend to keep as well as those sown in sping, and so should be used straight away rather than used for storing. Plant onion sets by gently pushing them into loose soil with your fingers so that they are just covered below the surface. They should be spaced about 6 inches apart, with 12 inches between rows. Garlic are also members of the alium family, and can be grown in the same way. The easiest way of obtaining garlic for planting is to buy good quality bulbs from the greengrocer and break these into cloves (usually 8 to 10 per bulb), each of which can be planted to yield a whole new bulb the following summer.
Bare rooted fruit trees and bushes can also be planted in late autumn, provided they are fully dormant, although avoid planting into ground that is frozen or waterlogged.

Graham Burnett is a permaculture activist and teacher, and the author of ‘Permaculture A Beginners Guide’ and ‘The Vegan Book of Permaculture’. He will be running a number of courses in 2017, for more information see www.spiralseed.co.uk

Graham Burnett www.spiralseed.co.uk

Send questions to: events@veganorganic.net

Veganic Gardeners’ Question Time 

Join us for an entertaining evening and some twenty-four carrot advice from Swedish Veganic Farmer Peter Albrecht, Aranya Austin Permaculture designer and Wildlife Film Maker Piers Warren from the comfort of their own homes, answering gardening questions sent in by the audience.
Get tips, ideas and inspiration on growing your own.
Veganic Gardeners’ Question Time hopes to inspire and bring new ideas to foragers, growers and gardeners alike.

Tuesday 22^nd September 7pm UK Time Zone 45 minutes

Watch on YouTube

Please send your questions to: events@veganorganic.net
Our panel will include:

Peter Albrecht: Operates a micro farm growing Veggies for seed for a seed firm called Nordfrö in Sweden. He also grows for his family and put on events, for example; vegan farming classes, vegan permaculture and private events.  They grow a large variety of vegetables and beans. They also do lectures to promote vegan agriculture. They also have a large forest garden with perennial vegetables, fruit and berries. They also teach forest garden design and host pupils studying agriculture, small scale farming and permaculture. Mainly use no-dig methods. 
Find Peter on Instagram @vegantradgard and Facebook 

Aranya Austin: Permaculture designer, teacher, and author of ‘Permaculture Design – a Step-by-Step Guide’. Aranya also writes occasionally for magazines and from time to time shares interesting items on his blog. He is currently writing a second book, about a subject he’s especially fascinated by, the application of systems thinking and patterns in permaculture design.
He’s been vegan since 1984, especially loves applying permaculture thinking in the garden, and feels that it’s a privilege to have the opportunity to teach “something that can make a real difference in all our lives”.
https://learnpermaculture.com/

Piers Warren: Conservationist, author and keen grower of organic fruit and vegetables. He is the founder of Wildeye – The International School of Wildlife Film-making. Writer of several books and co-author of The Vegan Cook and Gardener.
More about Piers https://wildeye.co.uk/piers-warren/The Vegan Cook & Gardener https://veganorganic.net/product/vegan-cook-and-gardener/

Now more than ever it is vital that we engage with how our food is grown. Tune into our show and become part of the growing revolution which can not only transform your garden plot but also change the way the world grows its food.
Grow veganic for a cruelty free world with clean rivers and oceans, wild life, trees and safe food that doesn’t cause deadly viruses which come from the trade in dead animals.

Vegan Organic Network:
Working for a Green, Clean and Cruelty Free World
Producer: Dan Graham
Assistant Producer: IzaaK Chung-Graham
A Vegan Organic Network Production