It’s our annual open day at the no dig market garden Homeacres on Sunday September 1st, where over £22,000 of veg is grown in only 1/4 acre of no dig beds. Here are some photos of the abundant plot, showing the beauty of a productive edible garden.

Homeacres as the sun rises, 28th August

The Open Day is from 11 – 4:30. I will be there with my children and some friends,  chatting with visitors and selling our books.

Parking is in a field a few minutes’ walk down the lane. Please don’t park in the lane itself: there are working farms and stables and large vehicles need access. Children and dogs on leads very welcome. It is a working garden so parents do keep an eye on your little ones – there are uneven surfaces, sticks, and all the kinds of hazards one would expect from a market garden. It isn’t a good place to run around, but there is an adjacent green lane.

Visitors with less mobility, you can be dropped off at the garden rather than using the field car park. Do get in touch if you need closer parking. The garden is almost entirely accessible by wheelchair but the compost paths between the beds aren’t wide enough – you will be able to see everything though. The house loo is accessible for those who can walk a few steps – the house really is very small – and the village pub loo nearby has level disabled access.

A photographic tour of the garden, mostly taken last week!

Homeacres is 3/4 acre of garden including the driveway and small house. There are some concrete paths left over from when the garden was a lot larger in the 1960s (it then included the field behind) and was run as a dahlia nursery, including many glass houses. During that first winter, deciding where the polytunnel and greenhouse should go, we had to jab the ground with a metal pole to detect concrete underneath some of the grassy areas.

Homeacres after the weeds were cut down

Beds made on top of weedy pasture

The whole site was knee high and above with weeds including bindweed, couch, creeping buttercup, thistles, nettles, dandelions and clover. The weeds are still present in the grass areas. They may look like a regular lawn but even regularly mowed, on close inspection they are richly diverse with all kinds of “weeds”, providing useful greens for the compost heap, flowers for insects and seeds for foraging birds. When the dandelions and clovers are in seed, flocks of finches come to feed. Bees forage from early spring until late autumn.

1/4 of an acre is cropped intensively and naturally producing vegetables year round for home and for sale locally. Most are sold within 5 miles in Bruton, which is where I live.

This is one of the most regularly featured views of the garden, taken across the main growing area towards the house. To obtain this viewpoint I had to stand on a step ladder, not quite at the top as I get vertigo.

Late August/early September is such an interesting time in the garden. Summer crops are incredibly productive, salads are lush, squashes ripening and winter crops –  brassicas, parsnips, leeks – are growing sturdily. August sowings (see this blog) are planted out when ready and it is almost time for the main sowing for winter harvests, around September 11-13.

Hope you enjoy the tour. I have captioned the photos to explain what is happening in them.

A box of seasonal vegetables and fruit

The main garden beds

No dig/Dig experiments – some of the few beds with wooden sides – greenhouse behind

Kale in foreground, chicories behind and dwarf French beans to the left

Cavolo Nero kale

Harvesting at Homeacres

The other side of the greenhouse

Radicchio

kale

Harvesting at Homeacres

View from rear of main bed to the compost bays

celeriac with beans in the back ground

side view from compost bays

Beans on left, Brussels sprouts on right

patty pan squash

enviromesh to protect young plants from flea beetle, butterflies and rabbits

Dwarf French Beans

The Greenhouse

tomatoes in the polytunnel

Early Moonbeam watermelon

Watermelon and salad

marigolds, companion plants to deter whitefly

okra

sweet peppers

watering cans and module trays

inside the greenhouse

propagating bench

seedlings

greenhouse aubergines

sweet peppers

The Polytunnel

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Compost bays and compost heaps

compost bays

three different kinds of compost

growing veg on the heaps

compost bay

storage area with pallets waiting to be used

onions drying, shredder ready to be used

plants growing in the piles of brought in compost – this will be spread in the autumn

happy squash growing next to compost

different kinds of compost including manure and wood chip

compost bay

view across compost

topsoil from building the cabin, polythene to keep weeds off, squash growing through

Beds behind the compost bays, perennial beds

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Fruit trees

apple trees

plum tree alongside the drive

plum beside the little metal shed

old apple trees and the wild area, close to the main beds

apple trees

looking towards the fruit trees and compost loo

Packing shed and small garden

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Flowers including the Homeacres Rose

This was a spindly thing growing up against a fence that we removed when Charles moved here. It was put safely in a pot and when Charles created his first flower border, was planted and bloomed into a gorgeous rose!

Homeacres rose

Homeacres rose