Tuesday, February 07th, 2012 | Author: Ric

Our main project for 2012 is to get our Art Courses up and running. This will soon involve buying some decent video equipment, as at the mpoment we are relying on just a laptop and a Nokia N95!!

Visit downlandgraphics.co.uk and let us know what you think of our first attempts

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Friday, October 21st, 2011 | Author: Ric

As well as our various ongoing art projects, Averil and I are keen permaculture gardeners. Over the last year or so we have been reclaiming and landscaping our small Gloucestershire garden.

Using sheet mulching and sustainable gardening methods, our idea is that through experimenting we will learn what works and what doesn’t.  This blog will keep you up to date with how it goes, and also it will give us a reference to look back over…

This is a photo of Averil picking grapes from our vine in October 2011.

 

 


 

 

 

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Wednesday, June 01st, 2011 | Author: Ric

The poly is starting to get established now. We have a wealth of fruit and vegetables coming on, and the Three Sisters experiment appears to be working. People say that in this country it can only thrive in a polytunnel, and it certainly seems to be working in ours…

Courgettes and Tricolour corn…

 

Aubergines (Money-Maker) starting out…

 

 

 

 

 

 

Three sisters experiment seems to be working

Wednesday, June 01st, 2011 | Author: Ric

The little olive tree appeared to have died in the front garden, so we transplanted it (or ripped it out of the ground as is Cressida’s preferred technique!).

Anyway, it seems to have rallied, and is now basking in 85 degrees, and starting to throw off shoots from ground level.  It thinks that its in a grove in Skopelos now hee hee…see the little shoots starting to form? It was only put in to the tunnel a month ago…

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Thursday, May 26th, 2011 | Author: Ric

friends of the bees

 

We have recently been reading ‘The Barefoot Beekeeper’ and as a result have shelved our plans with the national hive, and instead we are building Top Bar hives. These are a completely different way of beekeeping, as Phil Chandler explains on his website, involving allowing bees to decide how they want to run their lives, rather than imposing Victorian methods of Langstroth and associates.

 

This is another version of the TBH which is the one I am concentrating on building now!

 

 

 

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