EP225- The Joys and Insights of Food Forest Gardening with Danielle Gallacher.

In this weeks episode John chats with Danielle Gallacher "Danni In The Wild" all about creating a forest garden and her new book "The Forager's Almanac".

Embark on a transformative journey through the verdant realms of food forest gardening with Danielle Gallacher. Author of "The Forager's Almanac" and a fervent forager, Danielle offers a treasure trove of knowledge and personal anecdotes on how she cultivated a food forest that thrives in harmony with local woodlands. Together, we unravel the sustainable impacts of food forests and the joy of replacing the ordinary with an edible oasis.

Weaving through the intricacies of Danielle's enchanted garden, our conversation blossoms with discussions about the diverse benefits of food forest layers, from towering fruit trees to dynamic soil-enriching plants. Discover the serendipity of coexisting with wildlife, fostering a biodiverse environment that naturally manages pests and enriches the soul. Danielle's approach to combining traditional vegetable beds and water features illustrates a masterful balance between productivity and ecological sanctuary, stirring the imagination for your own gardening exploits.

Sip on the wisdom of nettle tea, as Danielle brews insights on its health-boosting properties, and unearth the secrets of mushroom foraging within the leafy confines of a food forest. Our episode culminates in a reflection on the role of play in gardening, where Danielle shares her unique blend of skateboarding and horticulture, inspiring listeners to infuse their own passions into the green canvas of their gardens. Tune in for an invigorating discussion that plants seeds of inspiration and beckons you to cultivate a connection with the natural world.

You can order Danielle's new book here

Or contact Danielle here
https://www.instagram.com/danniinthewild?igsh=czZwcmU4dW4zMjlh

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Until next week  
Happy gardening  
John  

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:11

How's it going, everybody, and welcome to episode 225 of Master my Garden podcast. Now, this week's episode is a very interesting one. We're going, I suppose, slightly off topic to our normal conversations, and I'm joined this week by Danielle Gelliker and she, she's a forager, but she's also a professional skateboard coach and her new book is after coming out, called the Forager's Almanac, and that's a calendar of what you can forage throughout the year. But we're going to center the episode predominantly on creating a food forest and food forests as well, as they're starting to become more popular. They were, they were very popular.

Speaker 1: 0:52

You know, a hundred years ago everybody would have had a forest like garden, and now there's a sort of a move back towards that and creating a more natural garden that provides for for you and your family. So we're going to we're going to centre the episode on that, but I have a feeling this conversation could go in lots of different directions. We could even talk about skateboarding, which I know nothing about, but it's a very interesting topic as well. So, danielle, you're very welcome to Master my Garden podcast.

Speaker 2: 1:18

Thank you so much for having me, john Stoked, to be here.

Speaker 1: 1:22

Yeah, so, as I say, we could go lots of different directions with this. Yeah, so it's, uh, as I said, we could go lots of different directions with this. Um, there's, there's loads of interesting things. I suppose you're where I would have come across. You was on your instagram page, which is danny in the wild, and you. You talk a huge amount about foraging, a lot about fungi, mycorrhizal fungi and and other mushrooms. You talk about foraging and now you've created a book all based on that. Your allotment itself is very much you know food forest like.

Speaker 2: 1:52

So tell us a little bit about your allotment, about where all this interest comes from, and we'll start the conversation from there so my I've had my allotment now for um, I got it in the summer of June 2017, so I guess we're coming up to six or seven years, is it, of having it?

Speaker 2: 2:10

But, um, I there's a few reasons why I got an allotment. The main reason for me was because I was running out of space in my house, in my garden, for all of my plants. I was just living in a tiny little, you know, patio sort of garden, I was growing in pots and I was running out of room. So that was, um, that was a big. That was a big reason why I chose to move out of my space and just just to start having a little bit more growing space to experiment with. But the the reason that I chose to have my allotment the way it is, you know, kind of like a forest garden or at least inspired by that sort of um planting process, was just because I really wanted my own little patch of woodland and.

Speaker 2: 2:53

I love being outside in the woods and I love studying. I love studying small parts of the woodland, the same parts of the woodland throughout the year, so I love returning to these same spots and seeing how these plants are growing and progressing and how the dynamics have changed between all of the plants and the ecosystems all throughout the year, and that's what I really, really enjoy doing. So to have a garden and my own little pocket. I just call it my own little corner of the forest because it's actually my site is actually right on the border of the woodland, so we I can hear the stream of the woodlands like right near my allotment and it's just right there. So I just call it my own little pocket of forest and I just love how it seems to blend in with the forest itself. You know I can go out the gate and, yes, there's a couple of less tulips outside in the forest. But I mean, other than that, the planting scheme I do try to keep fairly reminiscent of of what you'd maybe see outside in the woodlands.

Speaker 1: 3:56

Yeah, so natural. And it's interesting to just say that that you like going back to the same spot at different times of the year and seeing what is is coming up, because I suppose you know traditional gardening and we talk a lot on the podcast about growing your own food and so on. That's a different type of a system in that we're looking for this to produce and sort of be a giver all year round, whereas when you're working in a forest food type system, you're allowing things to happen a little bit more naturally. So there's the we're trying to get as much as we can from a space in one and in the other you're allowing it to happen sort of naturally by design to a certain extent, but, um, but certainly more naturally yeah, so I do.

Speaker 2: 4:40

I do design it so, um, a traditional food forest have have layers, and I kind of substitute the traditional layers that you would get in a food forest for you know, sort of edible, edible types yeah so you'd swap out lots of your bushes for kind of fruit bushes and plant them strategically, but let it all sort of flow into a more natural state than the traditional kind of manicured garden would be yeah, and so someone's starting from scratch and looking to create a food forest.

Speaker 1: 5:08

I know last year I had kieran from johnstown castle on and he has an area that was. You know he was looking back on old history books and this area was a food forest and he's trying to restore that now to to a food forest and he's starting with an initial layer of fruit trees and and nut trees. So maybe just tell us about the process of how you I know, because you're on the edge of the forest, you probably have had a certain amount there already, but what's, what was your process for for starting and how would you recommend someone gets get starting at their own food forest?

Speaker 2: 5:40

so for me personally, um, my allotment that I took over was a very overgrown site so it did have um high story trees there, the upper story canopy trees, so it had things like a huge, massive bird cherry, um a really really big ash tree and a big elder tree and I kind of use those as my upper canopy layers. Um, so obviously the elder provides me lots of fruit and and flowers and stuff in the spring.

Speaker 2: 6:08

The cherries I actually leave for the birds and it's a really good, um, it's a really good tree that just keeps them away from my apple blossom of a spring because they're up there just eating all of the uh the cherry quite nice and, um, I think, with, with with my garden being so close, there was, like you said, lots of the trees were already there, so it was a case of really designing around the garden and I, just I, I looked at the space and I didn't work it for a year because I was just visiting it every day and just seeing where everything was going, where the light was falling, where all the pockets of shade was hitting and you know where the pools of water were gathering after a rain, and just really taking notice of that space and then planting it accordingly.

Speaker 2: 6:50

So, with the food forests, with the way I do it, I don't try to force any plants into a particular spot just because they look quite nice there or the colour scheme goes, you know.

Speaker 2: 7:00

It really is about how that plant will function in that space and whether it will um be a companion to the other things growing in that area. So I guess, um, if somebody was wanted to start completely from scratch, and you had maybe just like a field to start with, I guess the first thing you would do is be to plant, like you say, your fruit and your nut trees and get those upper canopy trees um sorted and then you can maybe concentrate on your lower canopy things, like the elder and um, yeah, just just really start with the bare bones, I think, and then you can start growing all of your lower canopy stuff and your understory plants and your ground cover and, yeah, it's a it's definitely not a garden that you can build overnight, but if you are wanting to spend a bit more time and yeah, I don't know, I think I feel like it's a bit more of a holistic, intimate process than maybe just gardening seasonally, you know, yeah it's probably something that evolves.

Speaker 2: 7:55

It's an evolution over over maybe 10, 15 years or and whilst I have a vague plan, every year something comes up and it's a bit different, you know. So you really are working with the land and you're working with year, something comes up and it's a bit different, you know. So you really are working with the land and you're working with what's popping up, and it's a very natural kind of process and you're not really in charge of it, you know, you're just kind of kind of weaving it around.

Speaker 2: 8:17

Yeah, that's it, yeah, and that's what I love about it, because it's not your garden, you know it's. It's our garden.

Speaker 1: 8:22

We're just kind of looking after it for that little bit of time guardians yeah, yeah, that's it yeah yeah, so so starting off with your, with your layers that you already had there, and you're moving down there, your canopy layers of fruit and nut and you're I know you're foraging a lot, so you're using a lot of natural plants, but I'm sure you've added your own plants there. You said you were watching for the different spaces and the light and what, what areas. You know there was a pool of water in after rain, so you're choosing plants to go in there. So what's your? Your, your next layers down, taking us down to ground cover, what? What are those type plants and what are you?

Speaker 2: 9:00

so I would have. So my upper canopy is my fruit trees and then my lower canopy is more. It's still fruit trees but you know, like my dwarf stock fruit trees, and then I've got my understory plants. So with that I grow a lot of. With my understory I do let a lot of plants just grow naturally.

Speaker 2: 9:17

So my understory is made up of quite a few things like jack-by-the-hedge or comfrey or things like that that are growing wild and they are popping up. But I'm also moving them from parts of my spot to put them under my fruit trees. Like, for example, comfrey has got a super deep tap root and it can draw out nutrients all the way from right underneath the soil that the tree roots can't access. So by letting your comfrey grow underneath all of your fruit trees you can chop off all of the leaves and leave it on the soil and it's an accumulator plant. So it's going to be leaving lots of nutrients and minerals on top of your soil that your tree can then use. So I like these accumulator plants like comfrey and things like that for my understory. And then obviously I replace my shrubs that might be brambles and things like that with more productive ones like raspberries or gooseberries or blackcurrants and things like that. So it's just about taking those little aspects and seeing what you see and then deciding what maybe the edible versions could be for those plants.

Speaker 1: 10:22

Yeah and say in terms of traditional vegetables, then are you adding traditional vegetables through the forest?

Speaker 2: 10:28

for sure. Yes, I have um, I have beds within my forest as well. So I think I have maybe about about six, six really large beds within my um food forest and they're kind of like dotted around. Nothing's really in straight lines or anything kind of just up to wherever yeah but I grow like normal veg, like lots of it, so I grow pretty much everything you know carrots and potatoes and chard and brassicas and sweet corn, and I just usually eat the sweet corn, but I try every year anyway.

Speaker 1: 10:58

Yeah and that that was gonna. It was gonna come on to that like pests and disease within, within a food forest and I've no experience of this because I don't grow in a food forest way anywhere within the garden yet um, but I would imagine that pests and disease are probably less troublesome in a food forest situation. Now, I'm not saying that you won't have. You won't have any, but you'll definitely have less. So so say, for example, things like slugs and snails what's happening there?

Speaker 2: 11:30

it's a. It's an interesting one because I have four ponds in my allotment, so my I I love ponds, um, the more the better for me. So I've got four in my allotment and since adding since adding, like after the first pond, I didn't really notice too much of a difference. But after adding the second and third pond, I really noticed how drastically, like, the slugs and snail population went down. And I think that is just the animals that are coming to visit the pond, but you do really notice it. But I mean things like the bigger mammals.

Speaker 2: 12:03

I feel like they might be a bit more of a problem, to be honest, in my garden because, um, I don't really use very much netting or anything like that. Um, I do net some of my berries, you know, the week before they sort of come to ripen, but other than that I don't really net because I like how the birds come to pick the caterpillars off of the brassicales and stuff like that. You know, if you've got net, sometimes you're actually providing a layer where the wildlife can't come in and sort that out for you.

Speaker 2: 12:27

You know yeah so I don't really like to use too much netting in my allotment or anything, so sometimes I can get vast amounts of crops that could just maybe be vanished over a day. I've had sweet corn get ravaged by badgers in the night and and, but at the same time, um the joy of seeing these animals in my allotment, vast like what outweighs the one time of the year where one crop might get savaged, you know it's yeah, yeah that's.

Speaker 2: 12:57

It's such a big thing for me to have these animals in my allotment and to be able to see them up close, and that, for me, is why I grow a garden. Like my garden isn't grown for me to harvest food from. Like I'm growing it for the spades, um, for the animals to come in, for me to watch them, for me to get enjoyment. That way. The food is awesome. It's a great byproduct and we love to eat that when we get home. But it's not the main reason why I grow a garden, which, um, when you have a vegetable patch, people think, oh, that's a bit weird, you're not bothered about getting that, but the harvest is great. But for me, it's the act of doing it and growing it and watching it grow is what I get the most enjoyment out from.

Speaker 1: 13:33

Yeah, and there is a certain level of gardening in that way, or creating your forest in that way. It takes the pressure off it. Oh for sure, in a way, because if you, if you're growing it, and it's all about the, the production, it's all about getting x amount out of the, the square meter, then it puts pressure on it. And if anything goes wrong which inevitably it does you know, things happen every year, something happens and it puts pressure on the space, and it can be, it can be frustrating, whereas you're coming at it from a different angle. You're what you harvest is important, but it's not the primary and I think that's that's quite a it's quite a nice way of looking at it it's just a visit for me.

Speaker 2: 14:20

I just love being there and listening to the birds and and watching everything at the minute. I've got robins nesting in my greenhouse and that for me right now is the biggest joy. The pricking out seedlings has gone out the window. I'm just there watching the birds at the minute interesting.

Speaker 1: 14:37

You say that because there's one. There's one nesting in in my polytunnel at the moment which is yeah, the robin, yeah, yeah how many have they got? Uh, I don't know, and they're, they're in pots, but um, they're, they're going in under under the, under the propagation bench and they're just in pots. In there I can hear them, but I I haven't gone in route yet, because it was mine.

Speaker 2: 14:57

Mine are in under the table in a pot, but I'm quite lucky because my greenhouse has got a huge broken panel, like right there, so I can just like pop my head through and have a little look.

Speaker 1: 15:07

Yeah, yeah, now they're, they're, they're, they're watching it very carefully. So I was here pretty much all day yesterday and they never left. They just kept watching all the time and keeping an eye on me. So I'm not sure how many is in there, but looking forward to seeing them coming out. It's interesting you say about the badger coming and taking your sweet corn and other mammals. So we keep hens here and we've had a couple of pretty bad instances with with hen, which with the fox, but at the same time he comes around every night and we're sort of befriending them in a way and at the same time he has taken he has taken our hens. So it's a bit of a. It's a bit of a tricky one at the moment because I do love looking at him, but at the same time I know he has the potential to be chickens, yeah yeah, it's.

Speaker 1: 15:59

It's a tricky one. You're big into. You talk about fungi a lot and mycorrhizal a lot, and obviously foraging is the topic of your new book, so maybe tell us a little bit how, how you got into that and you know how important that is for you. You have huge knowledge. Just looking at you online. You have, you have a huge depth of knowledge into it. So you're obviously at this for a long time or are interested in this for a long time. So maybe tell us a little bit about the, the story and we've spoke about foraging before. I've had a couple of very good herbalists on before and and it's a really interesting topic, so but your depth of knowledge seems to be seems to be really big in it.

Speaker 2: 16:37

So thank you. I've been, um, it's something that I've been interested in all my life and I never really know how much detail to go into the story, because I got into magic mushrooms when I was quite young, so that was like my first kind of. I guess that's why I wanted to go out and look for them. I think that was what I was looking for. But on that way it was like there's so many cool things about mushrooms. You know, I was finding green ones and blue ones and ones that kind of like just went to nothing after a day and I just thought the whole world was so fascinating that it just really sparked my interest to want to learn more, and I think that is really just where, I don't know, the the passion came from, I think, just to learn a little bit more.

Speaker 2: 17:18

And I was an artist. Well, I was an uh, I studied art at university. I studied printmaking and illustration, so that was kind of like my biggest subject was taking fungi home and drawing them and and just understanding all of the different parts, and I just got really obsessed with, with, with mushrooms, and then that led me on to learning more about different types of plants and and the ethnobotanical um ways that they were being used as well across across england but um across the ages as well, like we don't use plants the same way as what we were using plants 100 years ago, and that, to me, is so fascinating. It's, it's just. I think that knowledge has been lost, and it's not knowledge that I ever had as a child either. I mean, my parents didn't know anything about it and I wasn't brought up in that kind of way. I was brought up in a cancer state and we didn't really have access to anything like that. But I think it's just. I think when you spark your interest in something, it can really get the ball rolling, can't it?

Speaker 2: 18:14

And you just end up falling down rabbit holes into different kind of uh, into different kind of tunnels. Yeah, and it's. It's a. It's really cool just learning about how plants can heal us, how they can just do lots of different things. I just think that's so, so, incredibly exciting. I just want to learn more and, yeah, it's like it's.

Speaker 1: 18:34

It's obviously it's a massively important thing for people to to know, on your right, like I live in the countryside have lived in the countryside all my life but at the same time, that knowledge isn't there, even lose the value that it had over time. And you know, as we, as we move on now, I guess people are trying to heal the planet. They're talking about, you know, improving biodiversity and all those things, but without having the, the knowledge of what actually it can do for us. It's like having, it's like having a, a goal, but without really understanding why.

Speaker 2: 19:22

Yeah, yeah, yeah, and that's why it's so important to get people interested in the natural world, because when you're interested about something, you appreciate it. When you appreciate it, you respect it, and when you respect it, you want to look after it, and I feel like that is I think that is something we've massively lost as a society and as a culture is just to be so disconnected from the natural world that people don't respect it or even think about. Maybe it's not, it's not, maybe respect is the wrong word, but it's just not thought about. You know, it's a lot of the time it's just not thought about. And I think if people, if more people, were maybe to have this kind of connection with the natural world, I really think that the world would be a better place for it, because people would just be more inclined to want to look after it.

Speaker 1: 20:07

You know yeah, it's, it's probably. It's probably. I suppose it's the natural world, or a forest becomes an object, rather, as you know, singular object, as opposed to becoming this constantly moving, constantly evolving, constantly changing. People don't. People don't know that, like people don't know that if you go, you know you mentioned the, the mushroom that was there today and gone tomorrow, or you know the one that latches onto a piece of timber, that falls off a tree and decomposes it over time. They don't understand all of that, and I think that level of understanding would lead to a better understanding of what it is that you're trying to protect or what it is that you're trying to create. So it's probably an understanding piece as well.

Speaker 2: 20:53

Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 1: 20:55

And in terms of medicine, do you, are you using plants medicinally all the time?

Speaker 2: 21:01

yeah, it's just part of. It's just part of your lifestyle yeah.

Speaker 2: 21:05

So, um, I I don't feel like I go out foraging every day, I'm just going for walks, and that that is just what I do when I'm out and about. You know, and I feel like a lot of the time, plant medicine finds you as well, which is it's so crazy the amount of times where I've had something wrong or like an ailment or, you know, a complaint, and then the next walk, that is the first plant that I will see or find, and you know I'll do a little bit research about it and then realize or, if I'm drawn to a plant, I'll go and do a bit research and then realize that actually it's got this and this and this that can help me in my life right now. You know, and I just always think it's crazy how plant medicine does seem to find you at the right time whether that's a conscious thing, that you're looking out for it or what, but I don't know.

Speaker 2: 21:49

It's weird how it happens. But, um, yeah, I use tinctures and salves and and infused waters and teas and things like that all the time okay, and what's your say? Go to your go-to regular herbal tea probably just a nettle tea, probably just yeah. At the allotment I just have nettle tea. Quite a lot of blackberry leaf teas is quite nice yeah, the reason I asked that was I've.

Speaker 1: 22:14

I've people on. I've had somebody who is a herbalist, who practices herbal medicine day to day. I've had somebody who is similar to yourself, has written books on it but isn't actively practicing herbal medicine and you're the third person now. But everybody, when I mentioned the go-to, it's always nettle tea, always, always nettle tea. It's so good. Yeah, it's really good. I think, as well it go to, it's always nettle tea, always, always, nettle tea.

Speaker 2: 22:36

It's so good, it's? Yeah, it's really. I think as well it's because it's everywhere. You know, if you don't need to look anywhere, it's just. Nettles are always there, aren't they?

Speaker 1: 22:46

yeah, and it was described as nature's multivitamin. Is that how you would describe it, or what do you feel the benefits benefits specifically over there well, I honestly I just really like the flavor.

Speaker 2: 22:57

It's got like quite a fresh sort of like this grassy sort of flavor, but I really like the flavor of nettles, um, but it's like you say, it's probably the most nutrient, dense wild food that we, that we have by weight. It's it's it's just absolutely packed full of vitamins and minerals and it's just really good for you. And a really interesting thing is actually what I want to try with nettles that I haven't tried yet, because packed full of vitamins and minerals and it's just really good for you. And a really interesting thing is actually what I want to try with nettles that I haven't tried yet, because I've just been a bit of a wimp is I've had, I've had a sore hand now for maybe about 18 months and I don't remember how I hurt it. It just it just started hurting one day and I've had physiotherapy, I've had acupuncture. I've tried lots of different things, but my my next thing on my list is to try stinging nettle therapy so.

Speaker 2: 23:39

I sting my hand for stinging nettles because it will help to um direct the blood flow and the energy to that part of your body and it can help to heal it. And that is what is said about nettles. And I haven't tried it yet because I've just been a wimp and because people, lots of people, say and you'll get these storages and they'll, they'll be like um, oh, I can just grab nettles, whatever you know, it becomes almost like an ego thing to be able to pick nettles without getting stung yeah.

Speaker 2: 24:03

I'm. I've been gardening for god knows how long. I've been foraging for 20 years. Every time I get stung, I still get stung. You know I'm not immune to being stung by nettles, so I wear gloves when I pick them. You know I have no ego. Where I feel like I need to do this on camera, I'll wear gloves. Um, so I'm actually quite afraid of getting stung by nettles. As a governor, it happens to me all the time. It doesn't get any better. But I've heard that is really, really real, and I've read in so many books that that is such a good way of helping to heal a specific part of your body. So I think that is what I might try this summer. I'm just trying to work myself up to it because I don't fancy just stinging myself on puff, to be honest.

Speaker 1: 24:44

Yeah, it's work, brian. I've heard and I don't know if there's accuracy in that that the stinging nettle early in the year if you suffer with things like hay fever, if you can get yourself stung early in the year. You suffer with things like hay fever if you can. If you can get yourself stung early in the year, it adds histamine to your system and what it does.

Speaker 2: 25:02

Yeah, so it does. It's, the little hairs are actually little needles and they are releasing histamine into you. So, um, that is said to be quite a good cure for hay fever, and my my partner suffers quite badly from hay fever, but I can't get him to do that either.

Speaker 1: 25:17

The new book. I know you've been working on it for a while. How has that process been and tell us about the book then? I know it's pre-order at the moment but it'll be available for full release, I think, in September, so maybe tell us about that.

Speaker 2: 25:36

Yeah, so I have been working on the book since March last year, um, so it's like a almost a full year in making, not quite a full year. I had to, um, I had to go through some of my archives to find some of the photos that I didn't manage to get the months from, but it was really lovely just to be able to spend that time to write it and it's um. It's covering 12 months and what plants and fungi that you can find within each month, and it's got some recipes scattered throughout it, some wild crafting recipes and just lots of ideas and ways that you can use these plants in your everyday life. So I'm really looking forward to it. It's out on the 26th of September yeah, and it's so.

Speaker 1: 26:15

It's taking you through month by month of what you might find you know as your foraging within that month.

Speaker 2: 26:21

That's it you can kind of open it up in March.

Speaker 1: 26:23

If you're in March and then kind of you know, see eight to ten plants, that that you will be able to find quite commonly in March yeah, and presume you've your pictures that well, because I think that's the biggest fear with foraging, isn't it that people are well, this looks pretty, but will it kill me or will it taste nice?

Speaker 2: 26:42

yeah and um. So when I was commissioned to to write the book and the first idea was they wanted it to be illustrated. You know, like with drawings and I, as much as I think they're beautiful, I'm an illustrator, I I love um illustrating and as much as I think they're beautiful I'm an illustrator, I love illustrating and as much as I think they're beautiful, um, you need photos, I think. If I'm looking for a book. I want to see photos of these plants and these mushrooms, because art is subjective, isn't it?

Speaker 1: 27:09

yeah, yeah, it can't be there can't be any gray area.

Speaker 1: 27:11

It has to be. Yeah, it has to be. As you see it, as you're on your walks, so you, you're always posting up different, different colored mushrooms and they seem to be so regular. And, as I say, I live in the countryside here and there is some forest area nearby, but I never seem to see the, the level of variety that that you seem to find. So I'm guessing that the that the forest you have there is, you know, it's, it's, it's hundreds of years old, it's, there's, there's something about it anyway, because I'm not seeing that same level around here where I am um, I don't know.

Speaker 2: 27:53

I think you can find cool things wherever you are if you're close enough. Um, I remember when I was younger, and so I'm on about amethyst deceiver, which is a little purple mushroom. I've posted about it a few times so you might know it, um, but I remember when I was younger and I opened up a book and I saw this purple mushroom. I was like I want to find that, I want to find this purple mushroom, and I thought it would take me ages to find it. I went out into the woods and I found it on my first, on that day, that first walk, looking for it. Because I was looking for it, because I knew what it looked like, and I was looking for it, you know, um, and I'd been on that walk hundreds of times and I'd never seen that purple mushroom before. But the one day that I knew it was, I knew, I knew that it existed and I'd never seen that purple mushroom before.

Speaker 2: 28:37

But the one day that I knew it was, I knew, I knew that it existed and I knew what it was like and I looked for it and I found it and that when I did that I was like, oh my, I can find anything. And it just really sparked a thing where I was like, wow, if I just learn what it looks like, if I become familiar with it, if I have like a mental image of this thing, I can go and find it. And I remember that's what I did when I was younger and I learned about magic mushrooms. I just studied what the shape was, the little, you know, the little house. It was like this image was burnt into my brain. It was like I would see these mushrooms sleeping, you know. It was like this image was burnt into my brain and it's like then I could go out into the field, I could just spot these mushrooms, because it was like I had a little marker in my head that I don't know it's weird, like little goggles, that kind of like zone you in on.

Speaker 2: 29:23

GPS yeah, almost it's like a. It's like you have like mushroom scents after a while and you can kind of zone in on things. It's really odd. It's like that I don't know a weird connection so it's probably.

Speaker 1: 29:37

It's probably an intuition as to this is where it's likely to be and as opposed to your walk on the trail yeah.

Speaker 2: 29:44

So you do obviously learn about where its habitat likes to grow. You know, I wouldn't be looking for a specific mushroom in a place where it obviously didn't grow, you kind of. What I like to do is I like to, if I'm in an area and I'm going to be in that area for a week or so, if I've gone to a new place, I'll just learn a little bit about the woods and I'll learn a little bit about the ecology. I'll go on to google and I'll learn a little bit about, um, the soil, acidity or what the soil, what's happening in the soil, and that will then direct me into what mushrooms might be growing or what plants might be growing in that area brilliant.

Speaker 1: 30:15

And to go back to the food forest again within, within your own allotment, do you, do you bring in fungi so you know where people now can drill the logs and pop in the dowels and all that? Do you do anything like that, or is it very much natural, or what?

Speaker 2: 30:34

no, I do bring them in as well. So, um, I encourage it. I encourage mushrooms to grow naturally. Um, obviously it's such a wild pick, you don't know what you're going to get.

Speaker 2: 30:45

Yeah, I've been really lucky that I've had wild oyster mushrooms grow and lots of really really cool, cool edible mushrooms and medicinal mushrooms growing that I haven't planted, which has been awesome, and that's because I encourage it by wood chip. So I use around three to four tons of wood chip in my lotment every single year and I do that in spring and usually just just before I put everything to bed in the winter. I give it like a really good layer and that obviously helps breaks down and um, and provides a lot of food for mushrooms to grow. But I also inoculate things like um logs. I've done that before. I haven't had too much success in inoculating logs, to be honest.

Speaker 2: 31:23

But um, I grow lots of mushrooms, um, like soprobic mushrooms, which are mushrooms that break down organic matter so they don't need a tree host to survive.

Speaker 2: 31:33

Basically they can be grown in leaf litter or wood chip or things like that. So, um, like wine cap mushrooms is quite um a regular one that I grow in my pathway, so all of my paths are lined with wine cap um substrate and you can buy kits online and then you can literally just like chuck them down, layer some wood chip on top, make sure it's kept watering and then in about six or seven months you'll have mushrooms growing on your paths. And I just think it's really cool because you're adding that extra layer of edible food to your garden and it's like these paths probably wouldn't be used for anything else and and obviously if you're trampling in the middle of the past, it's not going to fruit, but you'll get them all grown at the sides, you know, right next to your beds, and you just have all of these vegetable beds lined with mushrooms. And it's just really cool because you're not doing anything else in that space otherwise yeah, you're losing it.

Speaker 1: 32:23

You're losing it. It's not, not at all productive. So, on the on the wood chip, then, are you? It's just the paths you're lining. Are you lining your beds as well, or?

Speaker 2: 32:31

I just line my paths. But once episode at the end of the year, once that wood chip quite broken down, I'll then transfer it onto some of my beds, so usually around my fruit trees or something like that, just as mulch. I never really add fresh wood chip onto my beds, but when it's about a year old and really starting to break down it basically becomes like hummus, like soil anyway.

Speaker 2: 32:53

So, then I'll pour that onto my beds. Then it's free compost as well. So you kind of get in your mushrooms, your wood chips, your nice neat paths, then you also get in your compost for your vegetable beds and it's mushroom compost. So it's like super powered, really, really nutritious.

Speaker 1: 33:09

Yeah, for sure. You're probably the only person I've ever seen with an allotment with a skateboard ramp on it. It's a brilliant feature And's it's a reflection of what you do in your day job, which is really interesting as well not at all garden related, but it's very interesting, yeah just tell us a bit about that um, so my skate ramp.

Speaker 2: 33:28

Actually, I built that in lockdown 2020 because all of the skate parks closed and there wasn't anywhere for me to go and skate, so you wasn't allowed to, obviously, to go to the public skate parks outdoors and all the indoor ones were closed. And skateboarding's been my life for like 20 years. It's what I do. Um, I do it as a job I'm a skateboard coach but, um, it's also a massive hobby for me. Like I know, everybody has sports as hobbies, but I feel like when you're a skateboarder, it really takes over quite a lot of aspects of your life.

Speaker 2: 33:57

But, yes, I bought lots of wood and me and my friends built a. Really it's quite small. It's about two foot high, about 10 foot wide and 20 foot long, so it's like a nice little patch right at the back. But it's just awesome just to have that space, because, as I was getting older, I was really deciding whether I wanted to go skateboarding for the day or whether I wanted to do some gardening or chill in my garden and like yeah, exactly, and it's like I haven't got to choose now and it's just.

Speaker 2: 34:26

It's just great to be able to bring that element of play into the allotment as well, because that that is what I have an allotment for. It is just to feel like a big kid. You know why do you have a garden? Like it's when you're a kid, you go in the garden to play, don't you? When, when you grow up, I feel like you lose that. You have these jobs, you have these tasks that you have to do in the garden, but actually sometimes you just need to play. Sometimes you just need to sit in the soil and play with the dirt or play with the worms, or you know, I've got my skate ramp that I can just go and retreat to and it's just having this element of fun and play and and just a relaxing.

Speaker 2: 35:01

You know, I think that really brings quite a lot of energy back into the garden, because I don't get overwhelmed. People ask me how I can. My allotment's quite large. It's 640 square meters. I've actually got two um together. People ask me how I do it on my own without getting overwhelmed, but I feel like I have all these places in my allotment that I can go to. It doesn't get overwhelming, because if I do get overwhelmed by one spot, then I can just piss off and go to the other spot and do that, and it there's so many different things I can do that it's just a fun place to be at. You know, I like to spend my time there.

Speaker 1: 35:35

Yeah, it's, you have a nice, a nice way of looking at things, I guess and again, I've spoken about it on the podcast before in a different context, but it's the same thing where modern, modern gardening definitely puts people under pressure and makes them feel I suppose they can get frustrated number one with, as you said, with the endless list of jobs that need to be done and they're not getting done, or only some of them are getting done, and there's a frustration that builds with that. And then there's obviously you're looking on Instagram and you're seeing somebody else has their tomatoes, are two months ahead of yours, or?

Speaker 1: 36:13

they always are yeah, they always always got that one person yeah, and then you have, you know, perennial borders that look way better than yours or yours are full of weed.

Speaker 2: 36:24

And it adds frustration.

Speaker 1: 36:26

It adds pressure that, as you said, that really was never what having a garden was about, and I think that's something like, as I say, we spoke about it a couple of times on the podcast before and it is something that definitely is building and people are getting frustrated with their gardens and it, and it shouldn't be. You know they, they are at the stage they're at and I guess the natural, the more natural approach that you take anyway, probably leans to, you know, being able to move from one area to the other and not worry so much about it. So there's probably a lesson there for for anyone that is gardening to be less worried about it and try and enjoy it and soak it up a little bit more I think I'm lucky where my site is, to be honest, because all of our allotments are hedged in.

Speaker 2: 37:14

So my my site is the second oldest and largest in europe. It's got over 400 plots on it and they've all got hedges. I feel like if maybe that allotment site was a lot more open, I might have felt when I started not now but when I started I might have felt that maybe a bit self-conscious, that other people could see my plot, see I was maybe not doing it wrong you know, I've had the chance to be able to experiment with no eyes on me and I think that's been quite I.

Speaker 2: 37:38

When I started my allotment I didn't have Instagram for a couple of years or anything, but I feel like maybe that might have given me a little bit of um, uh, competition to look at. You know, not competition, but like a standard that I wasn't reaching. But I didn't have that. I was just going in kind of blind, like I'd only really seen forests that were pretty messy anyway, and to me it was. There wasn't really any pressure, but I could totally understand how maybe if you were in an open allotment site with all of the old guys looking in at your allotment or whatever, you might might feel a bit more of a sense of pressure.

Speaker 1: 38:12

I do feel like I'm quite lucky where my site is yeah, for sure, and and it looks, it looks, it looks like a piece of heaven actually, to be honest with you, um, like I can imagine sitting there on a on a nice summer day or even, you know, a spring day or an autumn day where you have a bit of frost and I I imagine there is a lovely feel there. It looks that way. So, um, yeah, it looks like a special place the, the book. Maybe tell people where they can find the book and where they can find you. You're obviously on instagram, that's where you do a lot of the and I know you're on youtube as well. So maybe tell people all about where they can find you, where they can get the book, and I put the link in the show notes, anyway yeah, so, um, my book is available on amazon and waterstones.

Speaker 2: 38:54

Um, I will give you the link so you can put that in your description, um. But you can also find me on instagram, at danny in the wild, and youtube as well. At danny in the wild, the youtube is quite um, I do monthly garden tours of my forest garden so you can kind of see what it's looking like over each month, and I do lots of monthly foraging videos as well so you can find out what's growing near you each month yeah, it's been, uh, really interesting.

Speaker 1: 39:21

As I say, I love looking at your your instagram page. Lots of interesting and different stuff on a on a regular basis there. So congratulations with the new book. I'm sure it'll be a huge success when it eventually hits the shelves. And it's been a really interesting chat and thank you very much for coming on.

Speaker 2: 39:37

Master, my garden podcast thanks for having me, john, it's been awesome so that's been this week's episode.

Speaker 1: 39:42

A huge thanks to daniel for coming on. A really interesting chat and some great lessons there. Actually, you know we we were going to start off talking about creating a food forest and we, you know we went into that in reasonable detail. But some really good lessons there as well. Around you know not letting the garden be so much pressure on you and try to enjoy it a little bit more. So really interesting chat. The link to the book is in the show notes and it's available and on the shelves in September. So that's been this week's episode. Thanks for listening and until the next time, happy gardening you.