New Growing Plans in Year Three

Yesterday, the first day of the last week of November, was the first day where for the full 24 hours, the temperature had a “minus” at the start of it.

This makes it a good day to write a blog post and, when winter is most definitely on it’s way, the gardener starts to plan for next year.

It's not when you start to think about next year, or coming up with crazy ideas.

Standing out in the field all day, weeding, chopping wood, are all good mindful, meditative practices. Ideas and improvements come to you at an uncontrollable rate. Winter is not about thinking about what to do next, it is about deciding what not to do.

It’s also the time to start prioritising. Priorities are flexible. They change as soon as you do something as crazy as write a list of them.

If I could make a Top-10 list of Important Things To Do, and prioritise them, today, in my current state of being and in a quantum world of change, it might look a bit like this:

1. Create a new area for growing Pig food - 400m2

2. Increase the Veg garden to 6-year rotation

3. Kitchen herbs, teas and edible flowers

4. Progress with the vineyard

5. Grains - 500m2

6. Plant hedgerows

7. Build a row of cold frames

8. Medicinal herbs / Poisonous plants of Europe

9. Increase the number of permanent / soft fruit beds to 10

10. Increase the size and scope of the Nutzfläche

Maybe I could say a few words on some of these…

Pig Food

Absolutely the top priority. This year, I didn't have food for them for the winter, needed some help with buying it in, and help was gloriously forthcoming (and can still be added to, of course! ;) ).

Next year, I need to grow them enough for them here. It's hardly sustainable or sufficient any other way! Which means about another 400m2 of space, just for pig food.

I haven’t done the complete planning for this yet - how many rows of everything - but I do know where it is going to go, and have started preparing the ground for it.

I do know the main bulk of what I’m going to grow, though, and that will be:

Root mangold

Sweetcorn

Sunflowers

Soya

Swedes

Pumpkins

And maybe some potatoes.

I am also going to prepare some space for hay as well. Probably. I’m going to start running out of room soon!

Kitchen herbs, teas and edible flowers

I was originally planning on having these in three different beds, but then where do you put lavender or rosemary? They (and many others) can happily live in all three areas. So, I’m going to plan for lots of overlap, a big beautiful bed, informally scattered with maybe 60 different scented, aromatic, tasty and beautiful “herbs”; decorative and tasty flowers and bee-alluring temptations, criss-crossed by natural slate footpaths.

I know where it’s going to go. I’m not sure how big it’s going to be. Maybe about 60m2.

Maybe I’ll go crazy.

Foraging hedgerows

There is some foraging to be done around here, but nothing really interesting. Also, hedgerows rock. They are amazingly important as wildlife corridors, for stabilising soil, as windbreaks, and, most importantly, for the delicious and usually quite tart flavours you get from them. Crab apples, hawberries, sloes, rosehips, hazels, blackthorn… and many more!

Poisonous plants of Europe

I want to grow all the poisonous plants of Europe.

Because that would be cool!

It's almost too wild an idea that I am about to enter year three.

The original post on the Three Year Plan is here. I was always sure what years one and two meant. It is far more recently that I have discovered what year three should look like.

That'll probably be in another post soon.