The art of downshifting – finding freedom with the simple life

An old tyre protects a self-seeded sapling

Many of the trees in our garden are self-seeded saplings we’ve allowed to grow. We reckon we’ve added as many as 250 trees this way, some of which are now very large.

The problem comes when a seedling appears in areas of grass that we normally mow. If the grass grows too long before the first cut of the year, there’s a danger we won’t see the seedling and it gets cut down. We’ve tried to avoid this by marking seedlings with sticks. But even then, because we don’t have the time to trim around each seedling, and given that it’s difficult to mow very close, the seedling still gets swamped by a clump of grass.

Over the years, we’ve made very effective use of what the French call ‘toile de paillage’ (literally, straw cloth) – permeable plastic sheeting that suppresses growth while allowing water to penetrate. But it’s expensive. And when used in areas that we mow, there’s always a danger of clipping the plastic sheet, winding up with long threads wrapped around the drive shaft of the mower blades. This can cause a surprising amount of damage to the mower.

The plastic sheeting also needs to be held down by something. You can buy expensive spikes for this purpose – we used to have some plastic ones, but they’re all broken now. And with our rock-infested land, they rarely work well.

We’ve tried using rocks – we have plenty of those – or even faced granite stones from the long-demolished buildings that once stood on our land. But hitting them with the mower is no fun either.

One alternative is old carpet, if it consists only of natural fibres. This doesn’t need pinning down, but it presents the same mowing dangers as the plastic, so we use it only in areas well away from those we mow.

This year, we’re taking a recycling approach. I cut circles of the permeable plastic from an old sheet of the stuff we had lying around. These are held down by old tyres. These are easily seen – and thus avoided – when mowing. And if the mower does hit them, it’ll simply nudge them out of the way.

They’re not permanent features around the saplings: they’re needed only until the young trees are high enough to be clear of the grass.

As an alternative to the plastic sheet, we may also try using actual straw inside the tyres – we have an endless supply of this as we have friends who need to dispose of it when they muck-out their donkey enclosures.

End result: free trees that will grow faster because of this (free) protection.

Mmn. I have a feeling I did something wrong here…

As so often when I try something new, the first attempt is a dismal failure. My bokashi compost is a load of old skank.

I was so excited when I bought these things – two ‘family size’ bokashi bins that were so clean and neat and – I fondly thought – would save me the endless slog to the compost heap and back in my leaky Uggs (note to self  – next time put the compost heap closer to the house).

I dutifully layered my household scraps with my bokashi starter, and drained off the liquid to use as drain cleaner, but being me, managed to fill both bins (two month’s capacity) in a week. This is what happens when you decide to make 40 jars of apple compote.

Still, so far so good. The fermenting compost smelled very nice (since it was mostly apples) and the liquid actually looked quite a lot like cider. Come to think of it, it practically IS cider.

Anyway. The only problem was, it didn’t seem to be breaking down. And now, after leaving it for three months, it’s become perfectly apparent that it isn’t. I tipped out both composters just now, and all that’s in there is a compressed brick of kitchen paper and food scraps, looking pretty much as it did when it went in. Nothing like the pictures of what it’s supposed to.

Oh la. Back to the drawing board with this one. Doubtless I didn’t use enough bokashi or something…