Master My Garden Podcast
Master My Garden podcast with John Jones. The gardening podcast that helps you master your own garden. With new episodes weekly packed full of gardening tips, how to garden guides, interviews with gardening experts on many gardening topics and just about anything that will help you in your garden whether you are a new or a seasoned gardener. I hope you enjoy.John
Master My Garden Podcast
EP295- Shane Hatton Chats About Bosco’s Garden, Permaculture, Food Forests & More. Permaculture in Practice: The Story of Bosco's Garden
Ever wondered how to create a garden that works with nature rather than against it? In this captivating conversation, filmmaker and permaculture practitioner Shane Hatton shares the remarkable evolution of Bosco's Garden in County Kilkenny – a living laboratory where permaculture principles have created a thriving ecosystem.
Shane's journey began simply with a polytunnel and a raised bed in 2012, experiencing the typical failures and successes of a beginning gardener. The watershed moment came in 2020 when he dug his first wildlife pond, setting off a chain reaction that transformed both his garden and his approach to growing. What started as conventional growing with potato drills shifted dramatically when Shane discovered no-dig gardening methods, layering cardboard, compost, and woodchip to create beds that required less water while yielding better harvests.
The heart of this episode explores how permaculture's core ethics – earth care, people care, and fair share – guide every decision in the garden. Shane explains the zone system (organizing plants based on how frequently they need attention) and the principle that every element should serve multiple functions. The results speak for themselves: hedgehogs now naturally control slugs, birds manage caterpillars on brassicas, and the garden has achieved a remarkable ecological balance without chemical interventions.
Particularly fascinating is Shane's shift away from commercial market gardening toward a more perennial food forest approach. His experiences highlight an essential truth: sometimes the best gardening action is patience and trust in natural systems. When caterpillars recently decimated his Brussels sprouts, resisting the urge to intervene allowed blue tits to discover and eliminate the problem completely within days.
Beyond his own garden, Shane now documents other remarkable permaculture and regenerative projects across Ireland through his YouTube channel. These videos offer viewers unprecedented access to some of the country's most innovative growing spaces and the passionate people behind them.
Whether you're curious about permaculture, interested in no-dig gardening, or simply want to create a more harmonious growing space, this episode offers practical wisdom from someone who has walked the path from conventional growing to regenerative abundance. Subscribe to the Master My Garden podcast for more conversations that will transform your relationship with your garden.
You can check out Shane's channel here:
https://www.youtube.com/@BoscosGarden
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Until next week
Happy gardening
John
How's it going, everybody, and welcome to episode 295 of the Master my Garden podcast. Now, this week's episode is one I'm looking forward to. There's probably going to be several different threads of conversation here, and I'm delighted to be joined this week by Shane Hatton. Now, shane is the creator of a garden called Bosco's Garden in County Kilkenny, and the garden itself has a brilliant story. It's a permaculture food forest garden growing veg, and he follows principles of permaculture. Has been studying permaculture for 15 years, as you guys know who've been listening for a long time. Permaculture is a topic that we've kind of covered on and off in bits and pieces of top of episodes, but not in depth as such. So we'll chat about permaculture a little bit today, specifically about, you know, shane's own garden, which is called Bosco's garden, and it's going to be very interesting. As I said, it could be lots of different treads and avenues. We go down here, but, shane, you're very, very welcome to Master my Garden podcast.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, lovely to have you. As I say, we've only recently connected, but I've spent quite a few hours over the last week or two on your YouTube channel and I suppose it'll come as no surprise to people who have or will go on to follow your channel that you're also a filmmaker, because the quality of the video and the editing is superb. But the main channel is called Bosco's Garden and it's a YouTube channel. You have roughly 12,000 subscribers. It's telling the story of Bosco's Garden on a day-to-day basis and also now over the coming months, rolling out a series of longer videos on other gardens that sort of follow regenerative or permaculture principles. So it's a really, really interesting channel. As I say, I spent several hours there over the last week or two. Um, but tell us about the garden first. You know where did this start, you know what's the, the story behind it and and so on so the garden?
Speaker 2:uh, it started as a polytunnel in my parents garden, which we're on just three quarters of an acre. Here is what we started with, and a raised bed back in around 2012. My brother and I and we got by for a few years. We grew a few nice bits, we had more failures than we had successes, and we just learned how to do like little things. You know, sometimes I bought plants from the garden center and just planted them in, and you know, and this is your very first kind of yeah, this is learning growing, yeah, yeah yeah yeah was in.
Speaker 2:We were interested in, you know, sustainability and growing our own food and growing healthy food at home, fresh.
Speaker 2:And yeah, just over the years I learned, learned a little bit here and there, year after year and it was kind of half, you know, a bit, half half our status yeah, yeah doing other stuff, uh, and then in 2020 we had you know what happened in 2020 and I had a had the opportunity to put in a pond that I wanted to make for years. I wanted to attract frogs and hedgehogs and I knew that water would be a way to do that and they'd eat slugs, and I had a basic understanding of permaculture and you know ecosystems and the balance of of things, and I dug that pond and we just kind of went from there. We started growing vegetables. We had just gotten, uh, an acre beside my granddad had left to my parents and that was just an empty field that had just been fenced off. We'd put, put two donkeys two rescue donkeys in there the year before, built a little shed for them and we started growing.
Speaker 1:We started the first year doing big drills of spuds, cabbage, carrots, parsnips, beetroot yeah, and was there an idea Like were you going to think that you were going to sell these, or was this all for your own consumption, or what was the no, no, no intention of selling it at that stage.
Speaker 2:We were, we borrowed the plow off the neighbor he had like an old plow that was sitting in a ditch. We pulled the bram, pulled it out of a load of brambles and got it working again. The drill plow, you know the ones, they have the tubes and you just put them drop the plate on the tube.
Speaker 1:I I often sat on the back of one of them.
Speaker 2:It's actually very it's very therapeutic yeah, it's nice. Yeah, it's great, it's quite comfy. Yeah, you put a little cushion on the seat, you're great.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah um cushion though I think from memory it was a bit of straw or a bit of hay was on our seat. But uh, it's very therapeutic. Going up, going up, and just you're just dropping the potatoes in.
Speaker 2:Um yeah, brilliant yeah, uh and yeah. Then the next year I I started getting. I tried no day gardening years and years before. Uh, based off of what they were doing in australia, the permaculture guys over there, and they they were using straw like just putting straw bedding down on top of a bed to suppress weeds, and but I tried that in ireland and I just got slugs slug city. Yeah, I think I put out some.
Speaker 1:Some cabbage transplants came back the next day and where are they gone like yeah yeah, that's incredible because I've I'm actually doing a talk this week on no dig gardening and, uh, yeah, some of the early, some of the early sort of, if you went back 20 years ago, there was people trying this here and in the uk and using straw and stuff like that, and it's basically a haven for slugs is right and it causes a lot of a lot of issues.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, so, uh, then in that winter I kind of found charles doubting for the first time and I just binged everything that charles doubting made and I bought, I think, three or four of his books, yeah, over the course of two years, and planned everything out. And in 2021 I started no dig gardening with wood chip and compost and cardboard to suppress the weeds uh, just laying down cardboard, then compost on top of the cardboard and then wood chip on the paths, and I had more success than I could have dreamed of. It was just amazing. And that started to reinvigorate the soil as well after we had drilled it up.
Speaker 1:And you know, yeah, when you started on on that first year with the, with the plow that you'd taken out of the ditch, or the, the potato seeder that you'd taken out of the ditch, or the, the potato seeder that you're taking out of the ditch, so obviously the ground was tilled up and all the rest of it, you probably had very good success in that first year, I would imagine.
Speaker 2:Anyway, yeah, it was good it was. Uh, it was very dry that year. I remember 2020, we had a very dry spring and like you.
Speaker 2:just you'd water the drills and it'd evaporate by the time you got to the end of the drill, like so the amount of watering that had to be done. So there was a lot less watering when there was that ground cover of compost, yeah, and also a drill. Like you know, it's kind of funny. We we grow in drills in Ireland in summer, but we tend to have droughts in Ireland in summer, like so like all the water is sitting down. If you're growing in the winter maybe, like you kind of want your water in the trenches, but in the summer you want your water, you have to stay on. So we've we've a fascination with having raised beds and drills and raising crops up in ireland, whereas you know in the summer, you're better have them.
Speaker 1:You're kind of looking for water yeah, I think that's a, that's definitely a, it's a I suppose it's it's tradition that has been sort of incorporated from agriculture essentially, um, it's like a lot of traditions, crop rotation, all these things have been sort of shifted in into a smaller scale from agriculture and they don't, as you said, they don't necessarily translate properly into gardening. And definitely drills is one that, with the odd exception, there's no real need for them. And definitely when it comes to the what you said about moisture ground beds with with compost or organic matter of some sort, really perform much better in dry periods. So, yeah, that's our fascination. I guess it has translated across from agriculture, but it's not necessarily the right way to be growing. So from there then you started into no Dig and immediately found success.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and just pushed it further, started growing. We planted our food forest at the beginning of 2021, in March, and we just got fruit trees. My wife and I we got fruit trees and nut trees and various natives and just mixed them all together down one row down the north side of the field and started putting in micro food forests at the edges of my annual beds. Yeah, just to have to attract beneficial insects, predators and pollinators. So plants like calendula and borage cornflowers, letting stuff like parsley stuff that's in the umbilical cord in the carrot family go to flower, to attract things like soldier beetles, which are great predators against aphids uh, that sort of thing. And then to have a production there as well. I've black currants and gooseberries and a few blueberry bushes and a pair or a yeah pear trees and apple trees and cherry trees. So you're having a super year this year with fruit, I guess yeah, it's just an incredible year.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's just. Uh, I work in a native tree nursery as well and just collecting hawthorn and like it's just dripping off the trees this year. It's incredible. They say it's the sign of a cold winter to come.
Speaker 1:We'll test that hypothesis as it occurs you always hear these theories and then sometimes they're yeah, who knows, we'll see. But I've never seen a year where everything just has fruit. Wise, particularly, has just performed so brilliantly, and with no late frosts, obviously, so that that was a huge help, but it's yeah, there was no wind in spring, it was just such a mild spring, I think yeah, yeah, really, really, really a perfect spring.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for sure. Um, so the garden as it is today, so you have the food forest and the no dig beds are sort of separate, or at one end of it, is it, and, or what way is that in terms of? So at the moment I expand.
Speaker 2:I expanded from where it was, uh I I, over the course of the three years that we were doing the market garden I quadrupled the growing space and I made kind of 20 beds, 25 meter long beds, 75 centimeters wide, so standard market garden beds, but shorter Most market garden beds are usually could be up to 30 meters. I went for five meter beds and broke them up with kind of borders of micro food forests which were acting as insect detractor highways pretty much, and then I put a pond in the center.
Speaker 2:Yeah, corridors, yeah, corridors, that's the word. I put a pond in the center. I have three ponds. I put three ponds in over the course of three years one plastic, one with no liner and one with bentonite clay oh yeah and uh one, and it's bentonite clay.
Speaker 1:Is that natural in your area?
Speaker 2:no well, it was bought in it's volcanic clay yeah uh, I think, uh it's. I'm not sure where it's, where it comes from, to be honest there is.
Speaker 1:There is some within, be honest, within Ireland there are certain areas. It's not bentonite clay, then, obviously, but there's certain clays in Ireland that will work. Blue clay yeah, kind of not sure what the name of it is, but it's kind of a blue like a putty type clay and it's supposed to be very good for ponds. But no, I thought that's what you were talking about.
Speaker 2:Yeah, if you can find that when you're digging a pond, you've hit, hit pretty much, yeah, for sure but yeah, my ponds are all very small like, so I wouldn't have gotten anywhere near that. I kind of got down to the subsoil and took a little bit more out or about. I went down about a meter and I'd say it's about, with all the you know falling into it, it's about half a metre at this stage. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And just as a matter of interest, because I covered the creation of a wildlife pond only a couple of weeks ago, but just out of curiosity. So, prior to putting in the ponds, was there frogs in your garden that you're aware of?
Speaker 2:No, and still no frogs, unfortunately.
Speaker 1:Still no frogs.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what my problem is with my ponds is I have the diving water beetle.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Which is a native water beetle, and it eats the tadpoles.
Speaker 1:Oh, no, yeah, so that's why.
Speaker 2:They're ugly fellas. Yeah, they're big, big lads, and the larvae are even uglier. Yeah, the larvae are like. You know that long like and they're just this big shrimp, and then they kind of they turn into this like roundy lad with kind of pincers and swimming swimming.
Speaker 1:I'm not familiar with it, I'm not familiar with him, but so, aside from frogs, then how long did it take, say, to get insect life? We?
Speaker 2:have. The bees use it for water, the birds use it as a bath and for water. We have dragonflies. There's two dragonflies that are constantly around one of my ponds. I have two red dragonflies and they're constantly going at it. You have a perch in the middle of it. That's just an old cardoon stalk. That's after falling into it and I left it there. That perch is their favourite spot. There's kind of a territorial fight over that perch between the dragonflies.
Speaker 2:And with hedgehogs. If I go around the garden in the dark, I have to bring a torch in case I kick a hedgehogs, like if I go around the garden in the dark, I have to bring a torch in case I kick a hedgehog like yeah, which? Yeah, there used to be a few, but now I'd say there's like they're territorial as well. So I'd say we're at max capacity for hedgehogs right which are great slug eaters as well.
Speaker 2:So and I have no slugs no slugs at all this year, like it's just the balance has really came into. It's a lot wilder this year as well because we stopped doing the market garden. I went, my wife and I went, to Taiwan at the end of 2023 and we're there for a year, so we shut down the market garden at that stage and it's gone a lot more wild And'm just kind of it's more of a food forest, it's more what I my original intention to have a perennial garden with small annual fields, if you will like small fields within a perennial space, a perennial food forest and are you still?
Speaker 1:are you still practicing in these little spaces? You're still practicing. No dig, then, or not?
Speaker 2:yeah, yeah, no, dig uh, compost, cardboard, express weeds and wood chip pots. I think that's. That's the best way. If we're, you know, for our well-known, our commercial annuals that you know we've, we're well used to growing like carrots and peas and cabbage stuff that needs a little bit of care and attention. That doesn't need to be competing with grass. You need to have a little bit of care and attention to those to get good success with them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and especially to get establishment. That's the big thing, I suppose. So talk us through then. What is it with them? Yeah, and especially to get establishment, that's the big thing, I suppose. So talk us through then. What is? We might just talk then in a little while about how somebody would go about adding because you're studying permaculture for 15 years as well and you've studied it in, you've studied it in a few places, I suppose you've gone to a couple of courses you told me. So there's going to be different principles, but we might chat about that in a minute. But within this food forest now, you mentioned nut trees, so I presume you have hazelnut and the different fruit trees. So tell us all about all of that. And then maybe perennials have you perennial vegetables in there, all the kind of crops that you're growing at the moment from this food forest, within this food forest.
Speaker 2:Yeah, now the food forest, I kind of crops that are grown at the moment from this, from this food first, within this food first, yeah, um, now the food, for I kind of uh, I ignored it for a few years. I was more focused on the market garden for a few years, so I got the trees in and the trees are well established and I'm now putting in more of a herb layer, so, like in a food forest, it's different from an orchard, so, yeah, in that it tries to replicate a natural forest where there isn't just a line of trees with grass in between. It's canopy trees, dwarf trees, shrubs, climbing layers, herbaceous layers, root layers, and I think I'm probably missing one or two uh, and I think I'm probably missing one or two.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but it is it. It's essentially mimicking a natural forest in the, in the various layers, so yeah and it's.
Speaker 2:It's chop and drop so you have. It's not all just productive trees, you need some nitrogen fixing trees. So in ireland great ones are alder, which is a nitrogen fixing tree. It's not in the legume family, so people probably are aware of legumes and how they fix nitrogen using atmospheric nitrogen, converting it with the mycorrhizal fungi. So alder does that as well. Then there's another shrub called Eliagnus, which is great, and then clovers on the herbaceous layer and these nitrogen fixing plants and non-nitrogen fixing plants like comfrey, which has a long tap root which goes down and can go up to 10 meters on the ground apparently, which is crazy 10 meters is crazy.
Speaker 2:yeah, I've heard of it being deep, but I've never heard of it being 10 meters on the ground apparently, which is crazy. 10 meters is crazy, yeah, yeah, I've heard.
Speaker 1:I've heard it being deep, but I've never heard of it being 10 meters, but well, it could be 10 feet.
Speaker 2:I could be remembering that wrong. It's a long way it's long anyway it goes down a good bit anyway and pulls up you know all those micronutrients in the subsoil and you chop and drop that. So you chop it, leave the roots in the ground and put it down as a mulch, as a rough mulch, under your productive plants yeah and they grow back, and that's your fertilizer so in terms of in terms of fruiting trees, then you have apple, plum, cherry.
Speaker 1:I think you mentioned pear um medlar's?
Speaker 2:uh, we've. I just got some japanese wine berries and berries in the shrubs, shrub layer with raspberries and, uh, boysenberries which are a thornless blackberry pretty much, berries which are a thornless blackberry pretty much. Uh, the blueberries don't do so well in kilkenny or alkaline soil here. So yeah, but I've a few. I've gotten a few. It works, but it's not. You know, I wouldn't be selling them right yeah, you have to.
Speaker 1:You have to probably add pine, pine needles around the base or something. Yeah, yeah and perennial. Have you perennial veg at all?
Speaker 2:perennial veg. Uh, so like there's good king henry, which is a perennial spinach, but yeah, a lot of like there's. There's so many things that people say are edible, and you know. Then you go and like are? You know it's hard to beat nice spinach, you know nice cabbage, nice red cabbage, nice brussel sprouts.
Speaker 2:You know, these tended vegetables that we've procured over the years and we've bred over the years to be fit for human consumption. And yeah, like nettles are good, nettles are one thing I'll give the wild, wild eaters. Yeah, yeah, they're good, yeah, brilliant um in terms of but there are plenty, though there are like there there's lots of.
Speaker 2:If you're stuck, there's lots of things to be eating uh there's lots of things, lots of things you could put in your food forest for if things go awry, if the you know, if the food systems break down or if the you know, yeah, you have lots of it I.
Speaker 1:I understand exactly what you're saying in terms of perennial veg. I've tasted perennial spinach before. Yeah, it's not the same as an annual fresh spinach at all, definitely not. I suppose some the perennial kale I haven't tasted, I do often wonder does that be the same? If you think of something that's constantly growing in the ground, you're not going to get that. Well, in my opinion, you're not going to get that real fresh.
Speaker 2:You get the young shoots maybe.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that's it, yeah, but no, it is good to have those things I personally don't have. There's not many great suppliers or good suppliers of perennial vegetables in ireland. Anyway, and out of interest, I was looking for them a couple years ago and I'm finding it hard to find anybody that was grown. I'm just some great growers and great nurseries of them in the uk but they can't send plants over here.
Speaker 2:But a bit of a shout out to gardens for lifeie yes, yeah, yeah, he does Jerusalem Artichoke.
Speaker 1:He does a good few cuttings of those type things. Yeah, so I have I have come across Martin before and yeah, he does definitely some of the ones that I'd be interested in. The Walking, walking Onions is another one that I would.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I have those as well. Again, I haven. Walking onions is another one that I was. Yeah, I have those as well. Yeah, again, I haven't actually bothered to try them. Try, I've just let them get established, but I've always had good onions. You know, I like my I have nice shallots there that, like I grew from seed and I saved the seed from last year and there wasn't a lot of work in it. But if there's one year that I forget to grow the, shallots, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And how do how do like? Are they farming a decent sized onion or what?
Speaker 2:Oh no, they're very small. Like they're only. Like there's some that are bigger than others. Maybe you could kind of propagate those bigger ones if you wanted. And you might like the same with garlic. Like, if you get a big garlic clove, you can grow that into a nice big bulb next year. And the bigger the clove, the bigger the bulb. So maybe you could keep like. That's how all the domesticated varieties came about. They were all original. They were all wild plants originally, but we just kept on breeding them further. Less seeds and more meat in the tomatoes.
Speaker 1:Maybe for me the kale one could be interesting, because I don't love kale. We don't consume huge amounts of it, so to be sowing it kind of a couple of times a year for the limited amount.
Speaker 2:If you're making a risotto, get kale, olive oil, parmesan, parmigiano-reggiano and walnuts and saute all that with butter, butter. Then put in the kale, your garlic as well, parmigiano-reggiano and walnuts, and just saute that and just have it with your risotto. It's gorgeous. Sounds good, that's my favorite way, yeah, plenty of oil.
Speaker 1:You need plenty of butter and plenty of cheese. Well, we shouldn't be talking about food at the end of the day, because we might have to cut short here and I'll have to head for the kitchen. But no, that that sounds brilliant, but no, kale is one that I don't love. But I could imagine that perennial kale would be ideal, because at least then, whenever you would take the fancies for for to be there as opposed to, I have seed and I find that I don't sow it very often because I don't know, I just don't love it.
Speaker 2:So but that does sound.
Speaker 1:It's lovely to hear recipes that are especially especially for things like kale, or courgettes is another one. Everyone has gluts of courgettes. I've heard some good, good recipes over the last year that are different to anything I've heard before. So, yeah, it's good to hear some sort of different angles on them to try and make them taste a little bit better. I guess let's talk about the principles of permaculture. If somebody wants to start practicing and I know there's sort of different people and different principles and different ideologies in within permaculture, but just even the basics of of permaculture if somebody wants to start implement, implementing more, you know, permaculture principles within their own gardens, give us some of the basics. As you see it, and you've studied a couple of different courses and you follow one main methodology.
Speaker 2:Now I guess yeah, I mean permaculture. It was first coined by bill mollison, who was an australian, tasmanian man, and david holmgren, who was his student, and that's that's the permaculture that I follow. That's, in my opinion, what permaculture is, and it's been co-opted a little bit at times on the internet, but it's all based off of the Permaculture Design Manual by Bill Mollison, which is somewhere behind me there. Behind me there and the principles. There's three main principles of people care, earth care and fair share. And those are the three main objectives, the ethics of permaculture so you're not putting down harmful chemicals into the soil, because that would be, you know, against the earth care ethic, and you're not exploiting anyone, because that would be against the people care ethic. And the return of surplus or fair share is the return of the resources to the ground.
Speaker 2:There's no waste in permaculture. Everything is recycled in a way. If I have animals, there's no waste product from them. Dung is seen as obviously a resource. Everything is seen as a resource. If everything is seen as a resource. If you have everything is composted. You try and maintain a cyclical system, but the main thing that people I find forget about permaculture is it is a design system at its core. It's a design system and it's so. You are observing your, your site and you are creating a design. That is the most efficient way to do what you want to do. So you think about your client or yourself, who you're designing the site for. Say, it's a family of four. You want to grow enough vegetables for that family of four and grow them in a way that they are able to maintain the work so that it's sustainable for their you know, for their lifestyle, if they're working full-time.
Speaker 2:If they're all working full-time they're not going to be able to be growing all their all their own vegetables. But you, you know you do as much as you can with with that, um. So you're working on a system of zones. So closest the house is zone zero. Then zone one is your kitchen garden, your herb garden, which is where you visit every single day and you want to get your your herbs, like so you can just run out. You say you need your rosemary or your parsley. That's where it is. You can just run out of the kitchen. In time.
Speaker 2:And, yeah, I spend most of my time when I'm cooking. I spend running around the garden. I spent half of it at the actual, at the cooker. So running around the garden and bringing back stuff and cutting it up, uh. So then as you go out further, you have your zone two, which is maybe where you keep your chickens. Uh, you're visiting that maybe once a day or, you know, just to shut in the chickens, uh. Then your zone three is a bit further away. You're visiting that maybe once every three days and that's where you keep your vegetables that you need watered, more perennial things. Then, zone four, you might keep larger crops like apple trees, that only fruit once a year, that you only need to really visit.
Speaker 2:A couple of times in the year A couple of times, yeah, yeah, and maybe do a bit of pruning and harvesting and that sort of thing. And then your zone five, which is practically wild. So that's where, as Jeff Lawton says, that's the great teacher, where you go and observe how nature is working.
Speaker 1:So even this is good now, because that's the first time somebody has explained those zones. So your zero is right directly around the house. One is your everyday use herb garden type uh tree. I think you said was your, your likes, your chickens or whatever. Uh, yeah, four vegetable garden, five fruit garden, was it? And then six was wild. I probably have to skip in the zone there, but yeah, five in total yeah five is the last one yeah, and like that depends on on the.
Speaker 2:You know your lifestyle as well, like how often you're visiting that part of the garden or how often you intend to visit that part of the garden. Yeah, if you know, if you're only there in at your place and you're working off site during the day, it might be different. You might be living in an apartment and you only have a zone one you know you might be just a balcony.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's different. So you're like you're not talking about a design system there as such, you're talking about growing in a certain way within a balcony or whatever the case may be. Other principles and correct me if I'm wrong in terms of permaculture, is that every plant going in can't just have a singular function or it's not just for aesthetic. There's typically two to three functions per plant, so correct me if I'm wrong on that, but like you mentioned earlier on the alder tree, that's going to set nitrogen. It's also going to be useful in a wet area. It'll help to to balance out a wet area. It'll be obviously a haven for certain types of biodiversity. Um, am I correct in saying that that each plant needs to have multifunctions?
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, shading other trees. A chicken doesn't just give eggs, it also gives manure. It can give feathers, if you want. It can give meat. It can be good for children. It could be good for children. You know, it could be, that could be. It could be an educational site and they could be doing something like that. They could be petting chickens and it could be. So everything is in terms of function and everything is stacked on top of each other and everything is working off of each other, like in nature, because there's no such thing as a standalone thing in nature, that there's no such thing as a standalone thing in nature that everything's doing multiple things.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So just to sort of think about your garden, bosco's garden, and now you have the food forest, but you're also practicing no dig, where you're putting down your cardboard and layering your compost on top. As you know for Charles Dowding's well, it's not his teachings, but it's the one that has become famous because of Very popularised, yeah, very popularised, yeah for sure. So in a scenario like that, all of the compost, I guess, has to be produced on site, ideally to follow, if you're going to stick within the permaculture model, while practising no dig, I guess.
Speaker 2:At the moment, our donkeys are producing all of our compost While I was doing the market garden, so I was exporting stuff from the garden I was selling at a farm shop on site and I was so in my like was leaving the site, so I had to be bringing in energy to replace that. In a sense, I was bringing in spent mushroom compost to make those garden beds and I'm actually I'm rethinking the amount of compost that I'm going to use in the future, like I've just after visiting Tongi Tongi in Dunmore Country School. Yeah, and he's doing great work there. He doesn't put any compost. All his annual beds are chop and drop, like in a food forest, so I'm very, very inspired by what he's doing there. So I would like to be using less compost and more chop and drop Now that the garden has actually found the balance as well, and I had very few slugs this year.
Speaker 2:I've got lots of hedgehogs, lots of things to be eating the slugs, and I've got an aerobic soil. That's a big thing about slugs. So when you're doing no dig, you have aerobic soil and slugs are attracted to anaerobic, the smell of anaerobic activity. They're attracted to decaying leaves. It's anaerobic, and that's why beer traps work for slugs because they smell that anaerobic fermentation and that attracts them and they go into the beer trap. So when you've aerobic soil, that's living soil, you should have a balance of slugs. You want some slugs, you want some of everything. You want some of all pathogens. You want a balance of everything. So you want some aphids, but you also want ladybirds and soldier beetles that are going to eat them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you can't have one without the other. It is a balance.
Speaker 2:You want some weeds? Weeds are just Martin in Gardens for Life. He said it was weeds. He tells his son that weeds are just plants that we have enough of.
Speaker 1:It's a good way of putting it, just to go back on that one for a second. So slugs and you're right, they do thrive in, they don't thrive in an OD garden. How? And I'm familiar with Tanguy's chop and drop and it works brilliantly. I practice it. I have beds that I'm putting garlic into in a couple of weeks, beds that I'm putting garlic into in a couple of weeks, and I put a layer of fresh grass clippings on that the other day to allow it to break down over the next six weeks before or eight weeks before I put in the garlic. Very thin layer, very thin layer of that. But in relation to slugs, are they not attracted to that fresh matter, breaking down, decaying matter, breaking down there?
Speaker 1:Yeah, but there are less of them, yeah, less of them, so it's a balanced thing.
Speaker 2:And I'm mainly focusing on growing for ourselves now, so I'm less worried about if there's a few holes in my spinach. I was very, very precise when I was growing veg for you know, growing for other people and for restaurants, especially where they really care about how it looks, and I wasn't. I wasn't too bad, like I gave. I had wonky carrots, you know we we always had wonky baby carrots and we're proud of them because they were sweet as hell, they were just gorgeous.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's interesting, all right, because they were sweet as hell, they were just gorgeous. Um, yeah, it's interesting, all right, that is that. That is the difference, I suppose, when you're, when you're growing just for yourself, now it's uh, it's less, less important what, what they look like at the end before they, before they get cooped or are consumed. I suppose it's less important. So you've complete, you've completely finished the market garden part now, so you don't sell anything anymore no, just growing for ourselves, and a few of the neighbours give a few bits away we might do an honesty box in the future.
Speaker 2:it's a lot of work. It was a great experience to do the market garden and do the restaurants and like we had a Friday shop. We set up a Friday shop here in a tent and people were coming and it was great meeting everyone and it was a great place to get top quality vegetables. But yes, it was a lot of work and my main passion is filmmaking, I think, and I think I learned from that and it made me a better filmmaker. It kind of gave me direction as a filmmaker of where I want to go and what I want to make films about and that's what I've been doing over the past while is making films about other people growing, because that's, I think, that's my, my main thing, my main skill that I have to give to the world is probably more valuable, like there's plenty of people who are growing stuff but there's very few people who know about growing stuff and who can make films.
Speaker 2:So that's what I want to do and share how all this works, because I was blown away by that's why I wanted to do it is just to see if it worked. You know, I didn't put soap on my aubergines when I had green fly, like some people put soap, but the soap actually kills the ladybird larvae. Yeah, so, like your most natural organic soap made by tibetan monks still is still going to kill the ladybird larvae. So you just let the ladybird or let the green fly do their thing, just let them come. And it's very. It's still going to kill the ladybird larvae. So you just let the ladybird or let the greenfly do their thing, just let them come.
Speaker 1:It's very much a trust thing when you're doing that and that is the challenge is to have that trust. Kind of a good example here over the last couple of weeks is I have the bed of Brussels sprouts, you know, coming along a little bit too quickly, actually for Christmas, but they're there and the aim was to have them for Christmas. And about three weeks ago I went out and they were absolutely walking out the gate with caterpillars and I purposely have a wildflower meadow gate with caterpillars and I purposely have a wildflower meadow and one of the aims of that was attracting I've loads of birds in the garden anyway but, um, it was to bring more in and blue tits particularly for for caterpillars. But I was looking at these brussel sprouts and they were really, really struggling. I've never seen so many caterpillars on it. Um, and I was looking at them and said, right, I'll leave it a day or two. Two days later there was less leaves on it and it was getting worrying three days later. And then I said, right, I'm gonna have to do something.
Speaker 1:And I went out the next day, which is about a week after the first time I saw them. They were after decimating the plants at that point. But when I went out there was none left and now the plants are growing along fine. So the blue tits had obviously found them after a day or two and just basically wiped them out. So there's none there now and the Brussels sprouts are growing perfectly again.
Speaker 1:But it's a real trust thing, because the natural instinct when you see that, when you see that and when you see that damage being done to something that you've put a little bit of effort into and put a bit of time into, you're watching them, you're tending to them and then there's something there taking it and you're going to say like the natural response is to do something, to take an action to get rid of it. But if you're able to just stick it and have that small little bit of trust, it does balance out yeah, yeah, it comes with experience, I think, and yeah yeah, for sure, for sure, yeah, because it does work out like their stuff is very resilient yeah, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1:as I said, the sprouts are going to perfect, but they're going to be ready a little bit early, but other than that, they'll be great. I'd always keep a net over my brassicas though, yeah, I have in the past, but for the last couple of years, since the wildflower meadow has really taken, has really come on.
Speaker 2:I haven't yeah, I've gotten away with it. Purple sprout and broccoli I got away with it before. They were absolutely obliterated in the summer, and then, when february came around, I can't eat purple sprout and broccoli.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah yeah, no, it is, it's a trust thing. Um, you mentioned filmmaking, and that kind of leads us on to the next thing. I know you're you're busy and have been busy over the last few months and you've been doing some work. I won't ask you to name all 10, but you've been basically doing, uh, recording videos on some of the best sort of permaculture stroke regenerative gardens across ireland and and featuring some you know, some brilliant gardening personalities, some, some of which have been on the podcast. You mentioned klaus leitenberger, obviously, tanga you have mentioned a couple of times there, done moremore Country School. He's been on before, but tell us about that project. I know you've one or two, maybe two, released at this stage and there's 10 in the series in total. So tell us about the idea of that and what's to come. Is there anything kind of any standout ones? They're all good, I'm sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, every single one that I visited. I was very impressed and there was everyone had something original to contribute to it and we started with oran crowe in roscommon and that video is already up and he has done a course that I did as well with jeffton the online permaculture design course. Jeff Lawton was Bill Mollison's student and they co-taught together for many years and he's focusing or in pro. He's focusing mostly on his earthworks and real what I would call proper permaculture. He's catching his water on contour, so the contour lines that are running through his land. He's catching them on swales and running them into dams and then trying to slow down the water from the top of his site to the lowest point of his site and trying to catch all that water and put them into productive plants and trees.
Speaker 2:And then we've done two regenerative farms a sheep and cattle one, which is up already with Fintan White here in Kilkenny and Fjorvia Farm in Portleash Portleash, yeah, yeah, brendan Gwynin, who's a brilliant guy. He has pigs, he has a forest there he bought a few years ago and he has pigs in it and he has cattle there and chickens and he's just working in the woods with animals and giving giving animals the best life and I got some steaks off from some ribeye steaks and they were just incredible, real dark, marbling in them.
Speaker 2:they were gorgeous brilliant yeah, best, best, best of the best there. And claire sladenberger, who's just got a place up in mayo. They're starting at school up there. And it's just, who's just got a place up in Mayo? They're starting a school up there and it's just incredible. He's after built a walled garden from red brick, it's all red brick inside and it's just incredible, with this beautiful greenhouse, glass greenhouse, and Klaus is just a world of knowledge. And Tongi as well in Dunmore Country School. What a great place.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Already mentioned them. Yeah, and Organic Gardens up in Donegal. It's brilliant. They run courses up there on permaculture. Really nice guys, joanne and Milo, up there. Oh yeah, oh yes, there on permaculture uh, really nice guys, joanne and milo up there.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, oh yes, yeah, familiar, familiar with joanne actually now, did you? Now did you mention? You mentioned that earlier on, but I didn't. I didn't make the connection. Yeah, so that's brilliant, yeah, um, so all of these, all of these, they're videos anything from half an hour up to 45 minutes long I think most of them and you're looking at the gardens, talking to the owners, talking about their principles and how they do things within the garden. It's an amazing series. So it's on your YouTube channel, which is Bosco's Garden. So tell us about all, about where people can find that.
Speaker 2:Yep, Go to YouTube. Put in Bosco's Garden.
Speaker 1:Subscribe. There you have 12,000.
Speaker 2:Be sure to subscribe, yeah.
Speaker 1:You get all the new ones.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, we're going to be putting up one every month over the next year, and we'll hopefully have more to contribute after that as well, with a few other spots in mind to go to next summer, especially the season's just winding down here. So you have to kind of do strike while the iron's hot, during the summer, and get as many done as we can, and then edit them throughout the summer, throughout the winter yeah, yeah, um, what?
Speaker 1:what's the for the sort of future for bosco's garden itself, not the youtube channel, the garden itself. What's the?
Speaker 2:so the garden will become a perennial garden, uh growing, with annual annual gardens within it. I'm going to split it up into I've.
Speaker 2:I'm so inspired I've after visited all these places now in august 10th place, all these ideas and I've just my mind is just, I have to have to go back to the design room and yeah, but it'll be much more of a perennial space. I was thinking in terms of a commercial garden before as a market garden. I had four blocks, much, much inspired by jean martin fortier in quebec those guys like the market gardeners, richard perkins and the like, doing market gardening and it's a it's a commercial thing, but I was trying to incorporate permaculture as part of that. The, you know, like jean martin fortier, still uses like organic pesticides and fertilizers rather than chemical fertilizers, which is what organics does. Commercial organics is just, it's conventional agriculture using herbal plant-based fertilizers and pesticides.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and they are market gardeners as well, so it's a different thing. They're producing to sell products, so you know it's. Or to sell produce it's a different thing're they're producing to to sell products, so you know it's, it's uh. Or to sell produce it's. It's a different thing, I suppose. So yeah, yeah so now you're, you're, you're going to develop that and turn more into, onto the perennial side using. You're going to be moving away, I guess, a little bit from the Charles Dowding style approach.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there will be parts of it, and I think that's what permaculture is. I think that's the main point of permaculture. It incorporates all of these like regenerative farming and holistic management, holistic mob grazing for animals, no-dig gardening, aquaculture all of these are just parts of permaculture and that's like it's one good way of describing permaculture. It's like a wardrobe with all these. You know, things like engineering and renewable energies and all sorts of eco-building. All of these are just things in the wardrobe of permaculture that can be put into a design, that can be implemented in a design.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for sure. It's been a really interesting chat. Nice to hear the story of the garden, I guess, and to hear your principles and and it's it's interesting. You know how you have a set of principles, or principles of permaculture that you follow, and it's interesting to hear you know, when you're talking to these gardeners around ireland, that there's different ideas now that you're going to take and and incorporate, uh, incorporating into your garden, considering I think you said you started in 2012, was it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, originally.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you hadn't grown much up until that. It really looks like a brilliant, brilliant garden to have come that far in that space of time. So, yeah, really well done on that. In terms of in terms of the youtube channel it's as I say, I dived into it last week there's some you could, you could spend a lot of time in there. There's some brilliant videos and, uh, there'll be more, more going up over the next while. So bosco's garden definitely check out that. So, shane, has been been a really, really interesting chat and thank you very much for coming on. Master, my Garden podcast.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me, Cheers John.
Speaker 1:So that's been this week's episode. Huge thanks to Shane for coming on. Definitely check out the YouTube channel and the guys are also on Instagram as well. So just check out Bosco's Garden. There's some, as I said, those videos, story of the Garden, those long form videos about these brilliant gardens around ireland. As I said, the likes of klaus has been on before uh on the podcast before tanguy, and to see the on the video versions and to hear their stories and you know what they're doing is is really worthwhile. So check out bosco's garden on youtube. Very, very, very good channel to check out for anyone that's interested in permaculture and just in general in terms of gardening. There's some, some brilliant tips and, I suppose, stories. There's brilliant stories there of of how different people are gardening and growing across the country. So that's been this week's episode. Thanks for listening and until the next time. Happy gardening.