The idea of growing vegetables with no mulching, netting, slug pellets or hoeing might seem like an impossible dream. A dream in which we also want to grow our food as part of a complex and diverse ecosystem that will help build and protect biodiversity; where a vegetable garden looks more like a beautiful wilderness full of food and flowering weeds.
One where you find hedgehogs hiding under cabbages or snakes sunbathing on hay-mulched beds, constantly surrounded by an orchestra of insects and birds from dawn to dusk.
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Natural farming, I hope, is how we fulfil this dream, and it is something we’ve been experimenting with at Birch Farm, which for the past five years has supplied fresh produce for the kitchens at the Farmers Arms pub and other projects for the Collective at Woolsery in Devon.
minimise digging while creating a rich habitat full of spiders and snakes. ©Andrew Montgomery
Natural farming is about us trying to understand and mimic nature – nothing grows in isolation and it is important to develop complex polycultures. Polyculture is a method of growing a diverse range of plants together in one bed.
Natural farming makes your vegetable garden feel always busy and in motion, with an abundance of different communities.
The main benefit is that by having a diverse range of plants in one space, you also get a vast range of wildlife, including lots of toads, newts and predatory insects. Every polyculture also includes a range of flower types, such as Asteraceae and Apiaceae, and an aromatic herb. One of my favourite combinations is kale, chard, beetroot, lettuce, rocket, peas and fennel.
A basic polyculture for us is planned in three stages: long term, secondary and intermediate. Long terms will generally be crops that will last more than nine months, such as brassicas and parsnips. Secondaries are shorter crops of around three months, such as beetroot and turnips; and our intermediates are
a quick harvest, which for us is our salad crops such as lettuce and rocket.
Height also plays an important role in the polyculture, as we alternate taller and smaller plants – for example, a long-term row could be a rotation of kale and chard, with the chard sitting below the canopy
of kale once mature. It’s important to break up monocultures whenever possible.
I’ve found life is far easier and more enjoyable when working with rather than fighting against nature
Four rows of our long-term crops will be planted in our 1.2m-wide beds, and our secondary crops will be planted in the rows between. The fun part is when we plant all our intermediates between the other
Joshua and senior grower Russell Mayne prepare the morning harvest before sending the vegetables down to the kitchens at the Farmers Arms pub for the evening menu.
When we plant a repetition of kale and chard, one or two lettuce plants can be placed in between them. By the time the kale needs room, the lettuce has been harvested, and before too much shade develops, the secondary crop of beetroot will be ready. In the end, the beds will be a mass of kales, chards and herbs going into winter.
When we started, I remember staring at a blank field that had once been a dairy pasture with no sound of birds or any life. I knew natural farming was about letting go. What I never factored in was the time it would take for nature to recover after years of ploughing and fertilising.
The first few years saw an apocalyptic number of slugs, as we had no predators to combat them. I knew, though, that if we interfered with pellets or removed their habitat we would also be removing the
predators. Now we have negligible damage from our slugs and can grow all our crops next to grass banks or log piles.
We have even planted three agroforestry rows within our veg to give the slugs and beetles habitat and breeding space. Slugs are crucial to the overall health of the ecosystem as decomposers and a food source. We have only found them to be a problem when the system is out of balance.
Weeds also play a huge role, as they are key to the farm’s fertility. Many of our polycultures will include ten to 15 different weeds that have a huge diversity of rooting depths, with roots being our main soil improver. Weeds are kept in check for the first six weeks of planting when we systematically sickle or harvest the emerging weeds.
We have found that giving the vegetables a helping hand for six weeks means they have enough of a head start to outcompete weeds. After that, we no longer manage the weeds, and let them grow as part of the polyculture. The reason we sickle is because we want to keep all the root systems in the ground, so we never hoe or pull our weeds out.
The weeds can be cut back and dropped as mulch multiple times during the year and we harvest them daily with vegetables for eating. Weeds are some of the best pollinators, adapted for our local insects and those insects are also key food sources for our other wildlife.
All our plants start off being sown into soil blocks, so we don’t need masses of plastic trays. We use a potting mix made on the farm that uses worm compost and loam which we harvest from our paths. The loam is key because it will familiarise our seedlings to the farm soil. So much of food growing today is about the suppression of nature. Fear of weeds, ‘pests’ and the need for efficiency has led us to mulch nature into oblivion, often leading to sterile and monoculture systems.
Our methods at Birch Farm have proved we can grow all of our favourite vegetables with minimal input and sympathetic gardening, but most importantly in a way that creates an ecosystem that self regulates, and builds fertility through agroforestry, perennials and root diversity.
Weeds also play a huge role, as they are key to the farm’s fertility. Many of our polycultures will include ten to 15 different weeds that have a huge diversity of rooting depths, with roots being our main soil improver.
It’s far more satisfying watching beetles eat your slugs, and hawks keeping the pigeons away. Natural farming makes your vegetable garden feel always busy and in motion, with an abundance of different communities.
I’ve found life is far easier and more enjoyable when working with rather than fighting nature. In my experience, nature has an answer for most problems and it is up to us to trust the process. Many of the things we are told to fear and worry about are usually man-made problems when we interfere with nature’s rhythm. Time, resilience and patience are key, but when you get there, natural farming is the most rewarding way to grow food.
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Find out more about The Collective at Woolsery at woolsery.com
