Garden With Ernest

Holistic gardening is a way of growing plants and food that benefits both the gardener and the environment. We are trying to balance our needs with the needs of the natural world.

I am a holistic gardener, and I have created a low impact food garden. And you can too, you don’t need a lot of space, time or money, to do this. By observing and inquiring, you can acquire all the knowledge you need as your garden grows.

Gardening using an holistic approach

There is nothing complicated about holistic gardening

As soon as the weather started to warm up some weeds pushed their way through the mulch, couch grass, nettles and docks and the odd dandelion. I just pulled them up and placed them on top of the hay mulch so they would dry out and wouldn’t regrow. 

Three months later and all the veg I planted have done well and are still doing well.

The garden is productive

I have just harvested the last of my broad beans. So today I chopped and dropped the plants and left the roots in the soil. The stems and leaves will act as more green mulch. By keeping the ground continuously covered the soil will stay healthy and alive full of beneficial bacteria and microorganisms. 

Broad beans, like peas, are nitrogen fixing plants. This means they have nitrogen nodules attached to their roots. So when the roots rot down they will release the nitrogen into the soil which will feed other plants.

Earlier in the spring the board beans were infested with black fly and as is normal for me, I did nothing. They looked messy but I can live with that.

Ladybirds soon appeared, and in a week or two they had completely cleared up the black fly.

The ladybirds were still on the plants today. There were some adults and a few pupating larvae. I carefully cut up the bean plants by hand, taking care not to damage the ladybirds. So I haven’t removed the ladybirds from their home and they can take refuge in the hollow board bean stems until they are ready to move on.

This means there is now a healthy population of ladybirds in my vegetable garden so they will be on hand, to quickly deal with the other aphids. 

And I’m hoping some ladybirds will even over winter in the broad bean stems. Or perhaps they will chose my home-made bamboo fence, as both these make great natural bug homes for all kinds of insects. 

Polyculture and holistic gardening

This is a polyculture garden so it has a lot of different things growing in it. 

The list now includes: Tuscany kale, Broad beans, French beans, Runner beans, Lettuce, Chard, Nasturtium, Mizuna and Mustard greens. All of these have been grown from seeds I saved from last year’s garden.

I also have a few perennial vegetables that I have added: Rhubarb, Strawberries, Alpine strawberries, Asparagus and Perennial onions. All of these have been propagated from plants I already had. 

I have also planted some courgettes and squash. All parts of the courgette and squash plants are edible so if I have planted too many I can eat some of the flowers and young leaves too.

I include weeds, wild plants and self-seeding plants

There are some self-seeded plants which have just turned up, and some of those I’ve chosen to keep as they are useful. Wild clover is a great ground cover plant, good for pollinating insects and another, nitrogen fixing plant. I use it as a cut and drop mulch plant. 

Wild Plantain: I’m quite happy for some of that to remain. It’s another native plant that is edible and can again be chopped and dropped as a green mulch. 

Some Pink lambs quarters have just appeared and wild Lambs quarters, both of which can be eaten, cooked or raw. And if these get out of hand I can chop and drop them, to add to my green mulch which is feeding and protecting the soil.

Lemon balm is another plant that just throws itself around my garden. It can easily get out of control, but again, it’s another plant I can utilise for chop and drop. 

A few Hardy field geraniums crept into the vegetable garden too; these are welcome to stay as long as they don’t get out of hand. 

Edible flowers

I planted mini sunflowers, grown from seed. The  bumblebees love them and this year I’m going to try eating some of the flower heads, as apparently they are edible too.

A daylily has just appeared and planted itself in the vegetable patch. I’m quite happy for that to stay. The flowers are edible and this is another useful plant for attracting beneficial pollinating insects

Gardening holistically with unusual plants

There are a few unusual plants in there too: Caucasian spinach which is a hardy, perennial climbing plant. It’s good to eat in spring when there aren’t many other vegetables.

Each year I try to grow something a little different and one of my experiments this year is mung beans. I’ve grown these from seeds that I bought for sprouting. 

The benefits of gardening holistically

So I have taken nothing away from this vegetable patch except the vegetables that I have harvested. No plant material has been wasted. 

I have added fertility with the hay mulch and now with the green mulches, they are feeding the soil that feeds my plants. 

Weeding has been simple and easy, I just pull out any unwanted weeds when I am harvesting, or adding new plants.

Most of the vegetables I have grown have been free, from seeds that I collected last year. And the strawberry plants have been grown from runners from another part of my garden. So it has been a very low cost, low impact garden. 

Also worth mentioning, I will be saving seeds from this patch this year. A lot of the plants, which includes: Sunflower, Squash, Kale, Peas, Perennial onion, Lettuce and Mizuna, can be used for seed sprouting and microgreens, which I grow and eat in Winter.

Some plants I will leave standing, to self seed, which will be food for seed eating birds. The Surviving seedlings will keep the soil covered, I will chop and drop the seedlings, when I need to.  

It has been hot and dry here for a few months and I have only watered new plants when I added them and very occasionally afterwards.  So I have not wasted water or time watering.

I have never dug the soil so I have not released carbon into the atmosphere or harmed any of the mini beasts that live in it. 

Holistic gardening is Sustainable

I hope the biodiversity in my garden has benefited from my holistic approach. And will continue to benefit as I add more types of plants and I am benefiting from eating a healthy and varied diet, fresh from my garden. 

So this what I would call a low maintenance, low impact, sustainable gardening, this is holistic gardening.