Visit Dirk and Pauline December 2019

On 1 December 2019 the Food Garden Group visited Dirk and Pauline's garden at Howden.  This was the last food garden visit before Christmas, and people did not need to RSVP, so a large crowd turned up.  This might also have been because the forecast was for a rare day of calm not-to-cold weather. Showers held off until the visit ended.  It all made this a perfect food garden experience.

In the photo Dirk (next to the pole on the left) and Pauline (next to the pole on the right) welcomed us and explained how they added a productive food garden to the ornamental garden that was there when they bought the property five years ago.

It is a lovely large ornamental garden (photo below), almost like a park. Well done, Dirk and Pauline, for improving on such a beautiful garden they don't need to water this part of the garden very much. It is because it is at the bottom of a slope and water seeps downhill to the garden!

When our group visited this garden four years ago there were two food-garden enclosures.  Now there are four!  The photo below shows the largest one.  It houses fruit trees, berries, vegetables and chooks.  The chooks are kept separate from the produce.

Dirk and Pauline used steel-reinforced fabric netting for all four cages and are very happy with it. It comes from a company called Haverford. On the Haverford-website you will find the netting shown  in the photo below. You can get it in various sizes, as well as by the metre. Order it online, and it will arrive via courier.

Below is a photo of one of the other enclosures, also covered with the Haverford netting.  In addition to the netting, there is a layer of fine wire mesh covering the bottom metre of all cage walls.  The mesh continues underground and was bent outwards, away from the structure, so wildlife can not dig into the enclosure.  

Another very good reason for having the metal wire at the bottom is that it would be very easy to damage the netting with a mower or whipper snipper.  The metal mesh prevents this.

The photo below, in one of the enclosures, shows Dirk and Pauline's nice and simple way of supporting tomatoes: concrete reinforcing mesh.  There were many crops looking very healthy: garlic, lettuce, peas, carrots, various types of beans, a long list. And 'yes', Dirk and Pauline rotate their crops!

Inside the largest enclosure Dirk showed us curled-up leaves at the end of cherry tree branches.  Inside the curled leaves were black aphids. They are trying to get rid of the aphids by putting in the cherry tree small boxes with Lacewing eggs (photo below). Lacewing larvae love aphids and they hope this will take care of the problem.

Dirk and Pauline got the Lacewings eggs and the small boxes from a company called Bugs for Bugs. On the Bugs for Bugs web site you can click on What’s your pest and then find out which predator is available. For a tub of 500 Lacewing eggs they paid $22. Lacewings like warmth, so it is best to put them out when the weather has warmed up a bit.  Dirk & Pauline will let us know whether these Lacewings do the job!

Four years ago Dirk and Pauline tried a predator called Trichogramma pretiosum (a parasitic small wasp) against coddling moth. They come as eggs on sheets, from which they hatch a few days after you receive them. If you buy between one and three sheets (each sheet has 60.000 wasp eggs!) you pay $68.20 per sheet. That is not cheap, but Dirk & Pauline have not had any coddling moth since, so biological pest control can really work!  Their apple trees are a long distance away from apple and pear trees on neighbouring properties. The chances of new contaminations are smaller than in suburbia where neighbouring untreated trees would be nearby.

Dirk and Pauline want to make it clear that they are not promoting this company or its products.  What they did may, or may not, work in your garden, depending on your circumstances, the weather and so on. It did work well for them, and they prefer the idea of biological pest control rather than chemicals or elaborate manual methods. 

Dirk and Pauline's newest enclosure is not 'in full production' yet, but it contained some interesting things, first and foremost, a mother hen with chicks. Here is a bit more info about these chooks: the mother hen is a cross between a Silver-laced Wyandotte rooster and a Huon Blue hen. The babies are pure bred Faverolles. Faverolles are a French breed, meant to be good table birds, although they are so sweet natured that many do not ever make it to the table. Dirk and Pauline bought eight fertile eggs from a breeder near Dromedary, put them under their broody hen, and got six babies.

In that same enclosure I spotted some foliage that I did not recognise (see photo below).  The plants are called skirret.  Originally from China, skirret was brought to Europe in Roman times, and was popular in Tudor England. Carrots and parsnips have made skirret a forgotten vegetable, but it is really worthwhile growing!

The photo below shows a skirret plant out of the ground (Harry Potter fans may see the resemblance to Mandrakes - no, the plants don't scream when you pull them out).  Skirret is easiest propagated by dividing fully grown plants.  Dirk and Pauline bought skirret seedlings at Lindy Campbell's Island Herbs in Snug. If you would like to know more about skirret, there is an interesting article about skirret here and another very enthusiastic article here.

In this newest enclosure Dirk and Pauline also finally found space to start another project: grapes. Pauline explained that they grew these plants from twigs they got from Tara during a food garden visit to her property at Richmond in 2012.

Next to each young plant Dirk and Pauline put into practice another great idea: a terracotta tube with a wooden lid. Pauline explained that they were worried about tree roots of nearby trees taking a lot of moisture from the ground.  They fill the tubes with water once a week, and it gradually soaks into the surrounding soil.  

Pauline explained that they found the terracotta tubes at The Train in Margate.  The second-hand shop there had a pile of them (another place that might have them is Uptons, Max commented). One problem: they did not have a bottom.  Without a bottom the water disappears in ten minutes. With a bottom (that closes off that end of the tube completely) the terracotta is just moist on the outside and slowly releases the moisture to the surrounding soil. Each tube is filled once a week with about one litre of water.

Pauline gave each tube a bottom with Jovi Air dry clay purchased at Spotlight. The finished product is called an Olla (pronounced Oya). If you would like to know more about Ollas, have a look at a very good article here.

Further away from the house Dirk and Pauline have a very spacious, very impressive, composting area  build from old pallets.  Wonderful compost is produced here in great quantities (see photo above), with horse and alpaca manure from nearby properties a major component. Other additions are charred wood from branches Dirk burns.  Lately Dirk has added shredded branches without burning to see how that works out.

All in all there was a lot to see and learn, and it is clear that Dirk and Pauline are very energetically and enthusiastically setting up a very productive food garden.

The visitors also had done a great job: morning tea was a treat.  A number of people were asked to come forward with recipes!  

Thank you, everyone, for making this Food Garden Group visit a wonderful occasion.  

Many thanks to our hosts, Dirk and Pauline, for allowing us to see your inspiring property!