Free online Permaculture Design Course

FREE PERMACULTURE DESIGN COURSE
Complete Online Self-Paced Program
Learn from World-Class Instructors

Complete 72+ Hour Permaculture Design Certificate Course Covers:

• Natural building construction
• Pattern observation and site analysis
• Renewable energy and appropriate technology
• Reading the land and natural cycles
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• Soil regeneration and land restoration
• Passive and active solar design
• Food forests, trees, and garden design
• Greywater considerations and system design
• Business and financial permaculture
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Course Instructor: Larry Korn (translator of Fukuoka's book One Straw Revolution) and other world-class teachers.

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.

Henry Doubleday Research Association

    

The Henry Doubleday Research Association (HDRA) began in 1954 as a result of the inspiration and initiative of one man, Lawrence Hills.

 

As an horticulturalist he had a keen interest in organic growing, but he earned his living as a freelance journalist writing forThe Observer, Punch and The Countryman. Whilst researching a book called Russian Comfrey, he discovered that the plant grown widely in Britain today was introduced in the nineteenth century by a Quaker smallholder named Henry Doubleday

     

 When Doubleday came across comfrey he was so intrigued by its possibilities as a useful crop that he devoted the rest of his life to popularising it. Hills took up his crusade and before long requests were coming from far and wide for plants and additional information.

Eventually Hills was able to raise £300 to rent an acre of land at Bocking, near Braintree in Essex, and he began to experiment with comfrey. By 1958 the enterprise had reached a point where it had to become official or be dropped altogether So he decided to set up a charitable research association to study the uses of comfrey and - more significantly - to improve ways of growing plants organically. He named the association after his pioneering Victorian mentor.

Membership application

Gardening in Spain too!

Gardening in Spain

Up to date practical advice by Clodagh and Dick Handscombe active gardeners and gardening authors living in Spain for 20 years.





I stumbled across this site whilst researching using comfrey to aid garden fertility, not only is the site useful but well written and presented. I will be a regular visitor to Gardening in Spain.
Make sure to read the about us page and the short stroll they took across Spain