Hello from Aberdeenshire

Just wondering if there are any other off-grid or tiny house Permies in Norh East Scotland.

Hello Michai and welcome to permies!
Is that your tiny house? I love the look of a round house! Can you tell us more about it?
I don't think I've noticed any posts from that area of the UK, although we have a couple from England and Wales that post occasionally. Off grid often means off internet too

edit - oh nice onions too!

Welcome to Permies.

Nancy Reading wrote:Hello Michai and welcome to permies!
Is that your tiny house? I love the look of a round house! Can you tell us more about it?
I don't think I've noticed any posts from that area of the UK, although we have a couple from England and Wales that post occasionally. Off grid often means off internet too

edit - oh nice onions too!

Hello Nancy,

The yurt is our design based on panelised structure and  Mongolian yurt. Holds kitchen/living area on open space. It is enough for our needs as we also have separate shower and composting toilet. We started small fruit tree orchard four years ago to which we keep adding every year. There are two small greenhouses and some raised beds, annuals mainly but some perennials among them coming back every spring. We have chickens and quails, thinking about getting ducks this year.

Your gardening journal looks impressive, a lot is going on! It must be satisfying to see the progress every year.
Are you also looking forward to spring?



     

John F Dean wrote:Welcome to Permies.

Hello John :)

Michal Gosia wrote:Your gardening journal looks impressive, a lot is going on! It must be satisfying to see the progress every year.
Are you also looking forward to spring?

Thank you - I planted quite a few trees in the tree field this spring, but I don't think that I have many more to go....It does give me great pleasure to look back on how far we have come! I think spring may have come slightly early this year, we already seem to be getting a nice settled spell, which doesn't usually happen till the end of the month I'm trying not to get too excited though!
I'm not sure I could manage in a tiny house - I would miss my books too much, and Skye is wet too often. Dry space undercover is precious! I'm always very impressed with people who do though!

I found growing annuals so difficult here that I gave up after a couple of years - just planting in my polytunnel and concentrating more on perennials. I have only reverted back to annuals in the last few years since I got converted to landrace gardening which gave me hope again! Mind you, potatoes do well here.
What perennials do you find most useful? I have some awesome kale that is bidding to take over the world, although it does seem to have been knocked back a bit this winter it is coming back strongly now. I really like scorzonera as a green vegetable, and Hablitzia is pretty useful from now till September. Erythronium is worth growing (nice flavour and so pretty) but I often forget to dig it up. I'm experimenting with japanese mountain vegetables, but mostly find them too bitter, so still need to get the cooking technique right for those to be a staple.

Do you keep the quail for their eggs? Are they in an aviary?

We had some crazy time lately, but getting back on our feet now. Spring is in full swing here too. We have been adding some apple trees and a few pears to the orchard. They are already liking their spots:) Also sow some seeds in trays in a greenhouse, but the temperatures are very unpredictable and swing from near freezing to scorching, so it's difficult to monitor.

The round house is a temporary shelter, but our only one at the moment. It is surprising how much you can fit in a tiny space, including books (and we love them too)!  We used to live in a big house, but now, after trying a tiny house with a big garden, cannot imagine going back.

We haven't experimented with many perennials yet, but the Jerusalem artichoke and wild rocket lettuce return every year and even spread. Rhubarb, mint, chives, thyme too, which is great, because they are our favourites! We would hope to have more berries and such. So far currants (all sort) are doing the best, but we have no luck with gooseberries (strangely enough) or blueberries.

This years project is planting as many trees as possible round the edges, preferably chestnuts and such. What trees are you planting? Any ideas for fast growing, hardy ones for wind breakers? Also could you tell us more about landrace gardening?

As for quails yes, we keep them for eggs (they just started laying again after winter:)) Tried in a nice, bigger enclosure on ground level with wide ground mesh protection against predators, but unfortunately rats found their ways after a year or so. So now they are in outdoor cages, which is not ideal but at least safe. We keep a small families of one male to three-five females per cage.

Yes spring is a bit manic with everything happening at once! Good luck with the fruit trees - what pears did you get? I haven't got any pear cultivars yet, but I planted some wild pear to hopefully graft onto.
The smaller the greenhouse the bigger the swings in temperature. It is difficult to manage - increasing ventilation as early in the morning as you can on sunny days, would be my first advice.
I found blueberries need fairly aerated soil and sunshine. My first bushes just faded away but once I planted them on minihugels they've been good. I have high hopes of a reasonable crop this year. Well it looks like plenty of flowers anyhow - we'll see if the birds and the mice leave me any fruit! Raspberries are usually pretty easy in Scotland too - just let them find their happy place and don't let nettles form the ground layer!

As regards windbreak trees, my first advice would be to get as local tree stock as possible. Commercially available trees are either unspecified, or grown for forestry projects, so will not necessarily grow as well in your location as a locally adapted tree. I have found alder and hawthorne relatively quick and rewarding. Elder has been slower to establish, but is very tough when it gets a bit bigger and is also useful for flowers and fruit. The chestnuts I got didn't like Skye at all, but I have strong salt laden winds off the sea, so many of my trees suffered from dieback until there was more shelter- even tougher shrubs like Hazel (which would be a better bet if you want nuts I suspect). Saying that, several of my chestnuts are still alive - although at a maximum of 12 feet or so after 15 years - I'm not expecting good harvests! I also quite value my spruce and pine for the shelter they provide. If you have the space they can be very effective at giving shelter, often seedlings are easy to harvest from plantations as they seed into the paths where they will be mown down as weeds.

Landrace gardening I feel rather evangelical about, although it is early days for me. I'll point you at a couple of threads to read and you'll get lots of answers there. The basic idea is that open pollinated heirloom plants are better than F1 hybrids, since you can save true to type seeds from them, landrace seeds are better than open pollinated heirlooms as you don't have to worry so much about cross pollinating (in fact it is actively encouraged!) and you will get a diverse mix of plants that adapt to your own growing style and location. If one seed does poorly one year then another seed will do better to make up.
https://permies.com/t/31939/Landrace-Gardening
https://permies.com/t/54028/purity-seed-realized-Seedy-Saturday

and free seeds for starting your own land races: https://permies.com/t/240023/catch-free-seeds There is a UK arm to the 'going to seed' organisation and you may be close enough to the far North seed savers to take part in their swaps too.