Using perennials in CSA’s and market gardens was held online in the depths of winter when we were dreaming of the growing year ahead. Mandy Barber of Incredible Vegetables and Ryan Sandford-Blackburn of Earthed Up! got together to explore and present the potential of perennials. We looked at the benefits, which species may make sense, perennials for seed crops, integration into an annual layout and use at the edges. The webinar is designed to leave you with an idea of how you could add delicious perennial crops to your design, reducing inputs and increasing climate resilience.
Mandy Barber is one of the team of two who set up and manages Incredible Vegetables, an experimental vegetable growing project, nursery and research space dedicated to useful perennial edibles and future food crops. The polyculture space includes a biodiverse mixture of perennials, self sowing annuals and plants for pollinators. Over the last ten years it has evolved into a significant botanical reserve of important perennial food crops, protecting them for the future, many of which we will all need to rely on in years to come. They undertake small plant breeding projects, for example with a Hopniss (Apios americana) trial currently underway. They now have a second site at Baddaford Farm, a few miles from our main site where we raise our nursery plants and produce our seeds. The research they are doing is absolutely essential. Mixed plantings of perennial crops and woody shrubs not only safeguard and enrich soil ecosystems, but help to draw down and store carbon from the atmosphere, a vital function to help combat climate change.
Ryan Sandford-Blackburn is a founding member of Earthed Up! Edible and useful plants nursery, a workers co-operative based in Belper, Derbyshire. Ryan produces plants and grows gardens, as well as teaching permaculture design and forest gardening. He worked at the Permaculture Association for 8 years where he discovered many amazing people and projects across the network.
ABOUT THE WEBINAR PROGRAMME This webinar is a partnership between the CSA Network UK, the Seed Sovereignty Programme run by the Gaia Foundation, and the Organic Growers Alliance. It forms part of a webinar series funded by Farming the Future. The webinar programme focuses on practical teaching and farmer-to-farmer knowledge exchanges from farmers and growers from around the UK. The series is designed to increase knowledge exchange and learning on both the politics and practice of agroecology, seed sovereignty and food sovereignty. If you would like to be involved in running a webinar, a theme or practice you would would like to know more about, or have a specific topic you would like to present on please get in touch with us at hello@organicgrowersalliance.co.uk. JOIN US! If you aren’t part of any of the organisations running this programme but would like to sign as a member up please check us out at: Seed Sovereignty Programme (for growers interested in saving and producing seed) www.seedsovereignty.info Organic Growers Alliance: (for market gardens and vegetable farms)www.organicgrowersalliance.co.uk CSA Network UK: (For community supported agriculture schemes) www.communitysupportedagriculture.org.uk