Insights from Alan about his forest garden
Background
Alan has had his allotment since the year 2000 and has gradually converted it into a forest garden system. He describes it as a mostly perennial ecosystem of edible plants. He started off with some small experiments, but found the more he did, the more he liked it. The forest garden now covers most of his plot. He has a background in forestry, so understands how forest systems work. One of Alan’s favourite aspects of the system is the whole year round productivity which covers the “hungry gap”. This is due to complimentary mix of annuals and perennials.
Produce
In terms of the more conventional allotment produce, Alan grows potatoes, kale, lettuce, celery and parsnips amongst other things. However, he isn’t very conventional with some of these either. The parsnips are landraces which are self seeded from leaving a couple of plants in the ground every year, while the kales and celeries are his own creation.
Alan has spent years crossing varieties in a mission to find the sweet spot between the maintenance and environmental benefits of perennials, with the productive benefits of annual flowering plants. He selects his kales based on large leaves, tenderness and interesting colours, and celeries based on production and large stems. Beyond this he has a great deal of diversity amongst his forest garden plants with literally 100s of forage crops including Dittander, a pepper grass that tastes like wasabi.
Soil and allotment maintenance
Alan’s plot is largely no-dig, but he has a dug nursery section and some random patches for annuals like potatoes and beans. He takes care not to plant annuals in the same place every year, but doesn’t have a distinct strategy. Soil inputs include any types of organic matter that come up. This includes clippings, leaves, food compost and fire ash, but he doesn’t actively go out and get extras. The compost bins are in the middle of beds so any nutrient leaks are taken up by nearby plants.
The main cycling system is the plants themselves, with most parts returning to the ground. As the predominance of perennials means there is minimal disturbance to the soil, the mycorrhizal-bacterial relationships maintain intact, so hold the fertility well. Alan refers to this a a low-input, high-output system. Any woody biomass is used for access pathways for weeding and harvesting. Over time this gets broken down and trodden into the ground and a new pathway is made somewhere else.
Alan explained that the high level of biodiversity is achieved through most of the plants being able to go through their natural lifecycles. The seeds can take of themselves while the flowering attracts pollinators, which in turn attract birds. I asked if the high levels of biodiversity attracted more pests than a conventional system. Alan believes that it may be possible in the beginning when the system is very young, but natural predators soon move into the ecosystem to resolve the problem. Even the slugs and snails tend to stick within a few niche habitats where he can easily find them and relocate them to the compost bins to assist with the breakdown. Although the soil analysis did not directly include any count of earth worms or insects in the soil, it was impossible not to notice the visible abundance of life in the forest garden compared to other growing soils.
One of the few problems Alan seems to have is that some plants grow too well. Like Colette, he has plants which were deliberately introduced for their properties, but sought to dominate their patch. There are a few things he wouldn’t have introduced if he’d known they would be so vigorous. He’s now restricted plants such as his Alexanders to contained pots, while he continues his elimination attempts in the rest of the plot.
Tips for new growers in North East Scotland
As Alan now has over 20 years experience in forest gardening in NE Scotland, he has written a book about it and holds workshops throughout the year to help spread the knowledge in a practical way. Alan recommends the K. Cox & C. Beaton book on vegetables for Scotland and growing a mix of annual and perennial plants as they compliment each other’s growing season. Easy-grow plants for the area include potatoes, peas, kale, broad beans, leaf beet and parsnips. Allowing parsnips to seed enables the seeds to naturally get the cold treatment they need over the winter. He advises that the key is to start small and build up. Like the natural structure of forests in Scotland, the aim is for a simpler structure with more focus on the ground layer than might be found in England. He also advocates experimentation; try a few varieties to see what works best for your garden.
Soil properties on Alan’s plot at Bedford Rd
(Error bars show standard deviation from the mean.)
litre of soil. (Error bars show standard deviation from the mean.)
The measure mg/L (milligrams per litre) gives the same figures when converted to g/m3 (grams per meter cubed). Note that soil properties may be highly variable within a short distance and figures given are not representative of the whole allotment site.
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