Jean Lippett

May I suggest that you have a toilet that's accessible from outside when wearing mud-splattered boots? And a huge sink / shower pan / floor drain / wet area for sluicing down filthy dogs / those boots / garden tools?
We have a similar sized property and have built just that adjacent to the garage area and that's one of the most useful areas for keeping muck out of the house. Of course it's possible that you don't have mud like we do in SW England, near Glastonbury

I use one of these kinds of plum stoner. They're pretty easy to buy in Europe, but didn't appear on amazon.com.

I don't know if we have different plum diseases in Britain, but the basic advice given here is to only prune May to July to prevent silverleaf fungal disease from attacking the tree and killing it. At that time the sap will gum over and seal the surface from spore penetration, though its also always recommended to paint any wounds and cut surfaces as soon as they occur.

Plums are usually propagated by budding rather than grafting, I believe, probably again to prevent cut surfaces getting infected.

Matt Smith wrote: It's a shame to have to do this... the tubes will cost me as much as the tree they're protecting, but it's a necessity, methinks.

Now, I think you're confusing cost with value . . . if your protected trees live for 75 years and give you, who knows, say 50lb of fruit a season for 60 of those years, then the cost of the treetubes is the same as a single bucketful of those fruits.

Mike Woodhouse wrote:
. . . . Have you ever used one Jean?



Cheers

O'Mike

No, I'm really new to this site and my only knowledge of hugelkultur comes from a dozen hours of reading here. I'm the kind of person who might, though, when I've learned more. My growing is on my private land though, so I'm interested that you aren't having more disapproval from your gardening neighbours as my concept of the social life of an British allotment setup is that its a pretty conservative community. Maybe that's an out of date concept, though and also maybe you're especially convincing with your enthusiasm.

I was just wondering, what's the response of the other allotmenteers to your plots? Especially thinking how they'll react when you plant it up with what they'll consider to be weeds.

Hello, just found this site this year. so lots to catch up on. I'm in SW England with two 1 acre orchards, one of which shows up on 200 year old maps and is traditionally planted with apples, plums, quinces and pears, and a newer one which is more layered in the planting. I started that with a successful bid for 100 heritage apple trees at a closing down sale and have added peaches, apricots, gages, mulberries, pears, vines and more. Last year, bush fruit were added and now I'm going to plant strawberries and low ground cover plants.

My business is producing high quality photographic colour prints, and our new orchard has been planted with colour and pattern in mind, so that it will look stunning as well as tasting and smelling great. Martin Crawford, on the agroforestry course I attended, suggesting calling new projects 'underplanted orchards' when dealing with local planning authorities as something they'd understand better than permaculture or agroforestry and it so happens that's exactly what my beautiful piece of land is.

We also grow lots of vegetables and keep bees and chickens

And publications and courses, too. The plant list is exceptional but only a limited supply so sells out almost as soon as the list is released.

The best UK permaculture seed supplier, I reckon, is Martin Crawford at the Agroforestry Trust http://www.agroforestry.co.uk/seedorders.html