Edible Garden The view of my edible garden (from my bedroom window), on the last day of October  The last of my bean and courgette/squash harvest (supervised by Floss)  I mulched the raised bed left empty after the last of the squash and courgette harvest with the contents of one of my compost bins.  ….and then sowed phacelia as a green manure cover crop/mulch to remain in place until next spring. (The glass jar of marbles and water is an insect water station. I have several of these throughout my garden, as well as being good for insects and birds, they also look pretty. Aesthetics is a big function in my garden design, I love to create beautiful spaces).  A week or so later, phacelia pushing its first leaves through the newly applied compost. (The orange peel is part of my cat deterrent strategy!)   This winter I’m trialing growing leafy plants (kale, chard, oriental greens) and fennel seedlings under bubble wrap. The adjacent south facing stone wall is an additional heat sink to the recycled farm plastic waste raised beds. (My raised beds are from the brilliant British Recycled Plastic in Hebden Bridge) Wildlife Garden The baby trees and hardy perennial herbage ground cover plants on the North facing small slope ‘edge’ between the urban meadow and busy main road, are thriving after some autumn rain. This strip has been well mulched with wood chip and leaves for the past two winters and the soil fertility, water storage ability and depth has really improved. I gave several young trees struggling with the drought conditions of the summer a big water in August, but about 90% of the trees have managed without supplementary watering. I intend to add another layer of locally obtained wood chip mulch on top of this autumn’s leaves over the winter.   I’ve been improving and expanding the diverse areas of wildlife (mainly insect) habitat, including leaving about 10% of my urban meadow uncut. Last winter the uncut cow parsley flowers became the home of many ladybirds over the cold months.  Its been great to see how many of the perennial wild flower and grasses seedling plugs I planted directly into the urban meadow in the early spring have established themselves, despite the very dry conditions over the summer. I planted the plugs into small areas of bare earth I had created by killing areas of regular lawn grass with wood chip mulch. ‘My Garden’ zine I’ve created a zine about my garden, you can buy it from my shop right here
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