Page 32 - ALG Issue 4 2023

hot topic
Sustainable Gardening on the Allotment
Sustainable gardening is the concept of using gardening practices that cause minimal harm to the earth and
its inhabitants while attempting to positively enhance it. NAS Horticultural Adviser David Allison gives us practical actions we can take to embrace sustainability on our allotments:
SAVE WATER
• Capture rainwater in butts, for example from roof run off instead
of using mains water. With meteorologists telling us that globally we are going to experience hotter drier summers and wetter milder winters, this is going to become more important as we move forward. Water is needed to sustain all life on earth, not just our vegetable crops. With
an increasing population and drier summers, this will become a vital issue in the future.
• Investigate ground cover mulch systems to reduce evaporation - organic based if possible, not black plastic sheeting.
COMPOST
• Make your own compost.
• When buying commercial compost, choose low or peat-free alternatives. A recent study at Stockbridge House Research Centre at Cawood near Selby, compared peat-based composts and peat free ones
for container grown plants over
a number of crops. Trialling 15 different branded products, the
best performers by far were those grown in peat free composts, but so were the worst, i.e. very variable. The peat-based ones in the middle were all fairly similar in their performance. There is much work to be done, but with the Government proposed ban on peat-based composts from 2025 for the amateur market, and 2030
for the trade, we won’t have any alternative. By not digging up peat bogs, we are also helping with carbon capture, and preserving SSI’s (sites of special scientific interest).
CARBON FOOTPRINT AND CARBON CAPTURE
• This is a hot topic at the moment and is worthy of an article in its own right. By reducing food miles, we are promoting sustainability.
Why buy pencil beans from Keyna when they’re so easy to grow at home. If you have to buy vegetables to supplement what you grow, buy locally grown produce and those that are in season, and have not been bombarded with chemical preservatives to keep them looking fresh on the supermarket shelves.
IMPROVE SOIL HEALTH
• Improve your soil to make it resilient to extreme weather events, e.g. flooding/drought.
• Practise “no dig” gardening. Charles Dowding has written an excellent article on this topic in the summer issue (issue 3 of 2023) of this magazine. Apart from preserving good bacteria and soil fungi to help break down organic matter in the soil, by not disturbing the soil we are helping with carbon capture. This may seem a small insignificant act when compared to what is needed globally to reduce the effect of climate change, but every little helps, and the cumulative effect could be significant.
• Practise crop rotation, big focus on soil health.
• Use green manures, especially if you are not able to make sufficient garden compost to keep the soil healthy
and supplied with plenty of organic matter. By sowing clovers, vetches, some grasses, mustards etc following a summer crop, and chopping up digging in before winter sets in, this allows time for the plant material to break down before sowing/planting again in Spring. Without getting too technical, Caliente Mustard (caliente means hot in Spanish) can have the effect of helping to control the spread of some soil borne diseases, i.e. white onion root rot, as by breaking up the plant material this releases a gas that prevents the spores spreading in the soil so over a period of time helps to reduce the incidence of the disease.
Regular
weeding to ensure that the plant foods contained in the soil are taken up by plants that will feed us, not weeds
RECYCLE AND REUSE
• Try to avoid the use of one-off plastics.
• Buy plants sold in recyclable pots/ containers.
• Re-use or recycle larger items such as tools and furniture.
OTHER SUSTAINABLE TIPS
• Use electric power tools rather than petrol.
• Target based irrigation and pesticide application.
• Use organic fertilisers, fungicides, pesticides, and herbicides derived naturally from renewable plant and animal resources.
• Create an area for native plants to attract pollinators and predators.
• Grow plants bred for their adaptability, stress tolerance and disease- and insect-resistance/ tolerance, save your own seeds.
• Regular weeding to ensure that the plant foods contained in the soil are taken up by plants that will feed us, not weeds. It has been said that a weed is just a plant growing in the wrong place, but by removing plants that we don’t want in our cultivated area, we give those plants that we are trying to grow a better chance of reaching maturity.
David Allison, Horticultural Advisor.
32 Allotment and Leisure Gardener