Rural Spain

The Spanish landscape offers a rich and diverse natural habitats which the population view with much pride. They enjoy the wild rugged places for recreational activities and like to see arable land in full production.

Protected natural areas of Spain now amount to 28% of the land (6.3 million hectares) with 42% of the population living within those reserves. The marine ecosystems of the Mediterranean are less protected and the authorities are trying to bring coastal bio-diversity schemes up to the standards of neighbouring countries. A budget of €1,000,000 p.a is allocated to bio-diversity conservationism.

If you are contemplating a holiday this year try rural Spain it is a land full of delights. Every village in the country will be celebrating a fiesta or two, giving the artisans a chance to showcase their handicrafts and traditional food.

Tour Spain

Comfortable with the comfrey

Our comfrey plants were sourced from eBay and arrived as five rather uninspiring small black coloured pieces of the sellers plant division. After a few weeks they have generated five young plants which give us hope for the future of our composting process which is in need of leafy nitrogenous material. The first year we will concentrate on building the plants up both in scale and in number.  In subsequent years comfrey will play an important role in the garden as we do battle with our poor aluvian soil. 

The snails and slugs seem to have nibbled at this specimen though not too much damage is visible in the photograph, considering the thousands of snails resident on our plot. The little though frequent rain we have had in recent weeks means that the birds are rather enjoying the spring with ample food supplies. Thrushes have helped out with the snail control as is evident by the empty shells we are finding. As far as is possible we like to rely on natural solutions it is just a case of finding the right balance.