Dynamic Accumulators

Having been reading around quite a bit, the plan for the site is gradually taking form.

The big stuff, field trees etc I'll not do anything about until next winter. By then, I'll have a map of exactly what I want to plant where and I can actually do it in the dormant season, but there's no reason why some of the small plantings can't happen pretty much right away, or at least when it's warm enough that I don't freeze my bits off trying to plant.

The far end of the current garden area is "fallow". There's an area of about 80 meters by 20 that was once a bed used for growing dahlias but which has just gone weedy over the last two years. The first part of the job is to cover/mulch over the whole area to kill off the weeds. I'm really regretting all those old carpets I burned.

Still, I'm knee deep in old cardboard boxes. They will do nicely as a mulch. I'll do a ground cover with those. They will kill the weeds and then rot away in due course.

The far end of that plot I'm going to turn over to comfrey and other dynamic accumulators. These are plants that will "mine" nutrients from deep levels within the sub-soil, bringing them up into their own tissues. The plant can then be harvested, and in the case of comfrey, put straight down as mulch, without even the need for composting. The nutrients obtained this way then beneift the other plants that are so "manured".

It's an area of about 40m by 20m and should keep me in green manure for some time to come.

The near end of the plot, and the part mainly visible from the house, is going to be a semi-formal herb garden. By semi formal I mean that the pathways will be laid out in bricks in some formal pattern, but the plants in the gaps between can do the "squeeze in and cover the soil routine". I can plant them stright through the cardboard and make it all look a bit more aesthetic with the comfrey manure on top of the cardboard

The bricks themselves I can scavenge from some junk heaps I found around the back of one of the old buildings, although I will probably have to find more bricks with the size of the area to cover. I think I can set them right on top of the cardboard and let them settle. Later on they may need levelling, but I'll tackle that at the time.