Edible Landscape Flashcards
What are edible plants?
herbs, vegetables, and fruit. However, it could be a
whole range of other plants that you may take for granted in your beds and borders.
For example, Tagetes (the marigold), Calendula (the pot marigold), Tropaeolum (the
nasturtium).
What ways can you garden?
Allotment
Potager
Community Orchards
Guerilla Gardening
City Farms
Forest Gardening and Permaculture
Small space: containers and accessible edibles.
Amongst ornamental plants
What is a potager?
French kitchen garden or potager, gardeners have intermingled vegetables, fruits, flowers, and herbs since medieval times
What is the traditional method of gardening?
double digging every year or every few years; turning over that soil; incorporating
lots of organic matter to enrich the fertility; then separating out the area into zones
according to vegetable families; and having permanent areas for your fruit plants and other
vegetable plants.
You might go down the “no dig” option on the same plot. This involves more thought
about soil fertility, less disturbance of soil organisms and destruction of the structure,
employing a process where you use sheet bed mulching and organic matter to improve
soil fertility.
However, you may still set it out in a very traditional way with beds and borders,
regimentally laid out on the plot.
What are the principle growing methods?
Traditional
Organic
biodynamic
What is double digging?
- double digging involves
digging to one spit’s depth (a
spit is the depth of a spade) - turning this into the trench
and forking one spit deep - well rotted organic matter is
usually incorporated into the
lower spit to improve the soil
What is the no dig system?
The idea is to build up the topsoil by adding layers of organic matter to the surface of the soil
* Green manure crops are used to keep the ground covered when not growing crops or permanent plants, thus protecting the
surface from capping and erosion
* The organic matter increases the worm population and their activity improves the soil structure
* The mulch is added to each autumn, and crops are planted through this
* When harvested they will be simply pulled out or cut off rather than dug out
What are the benefits of no dig system?
- avoids damage to soil structure that may occur as a
result of continual cultivation - It is not a revolutionary idea as most permanent borders are only dug once prior to being planted, and they generally exhibit
good soil structure if regularly mulched - It will take time for the soil to improve when a no-dig system is introduced, difficult soils such as clay and sandy soils will take longer
- If a soil is very compacted it may be necessary to double dig prior to implementing this system
How to grow edibles in limited space
consider using pots,
tubs, window boxes, hanging baskets
Use boundaries of garden.
Dwarf trees in pots
Examples of plants in limited spaces
e little gem lettuce, or a ‘Tumbling Tom’ tomato in a hanging basket, or strawberries (Fragaria × ananassa ‘Cambridge Favourite’).
For tree fruit, the pot needs to be around 60x60 centimetres.
Cox’s Orange Apple on a dwarfing rootstock,
which only gets to around about a 1.5 metres in height. This is a concise, small and
manageable display to look after.
Recommendations for plants in the boundaries
Edible hedging:
Corylus avellana for hazel nuts
Rosa spp., for hips to produce syrup
Recommendations for plants in the boundaries
Edible hedging:
Corylus avellana for hazel nuts
Rosa spp., for hips to produce syrup
Community Orchards
person gaining numerous funds to support them in capturing a whole range of plants that could grow.
Usually, the plants are selected because they are native to the area or are heritage types
Rivers Orchard,
Sawbridgeworth,
Hertfordshire
What is a city farm
Approved by city to take over an area for community gardening.
What is guerilla gardening
a grassroots movement that
uses gardening as a form of protest, and as a means of community building
