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             The Gardener Guy of Tulsa, Oklahoma

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Working with Others

I worked for Rosie and Nigel Burgess, who grow vegetables and fruits for sale locally, and to feed themselves. In addition to about an acre of veggies, they have chickens, and about 35 sheep. Growing vegetables on Mull is not easy: the wind blows constantly, the climate is cool and often rainy, and the soil is thin and generally needs improvement. On the other hand, the climate is tempered by the Gulf Stream, so the temperature rarely goes much below freezing, and their growing season is much longer than ours.

Rosie and Nigel have planted hedges to break the prevailing winds. Their acre of vegetables is in a hollow, and wind gusts through it. They grow a hedge plant of the genus Escallonia, a South American plant that wouldn't survive our New England winters. It is a very vigorous leafy evergreen. Being evergreen is important there, as they grow cabbages, broccoli and brussel spouts all winter. Their hedges run to 15 or 20 feet tall, and 8-10 feet thick. Old fashioned suckering lilacs make good summer windbreaks here if planted four feet apart and given 10 years or so. Other hedge plants we might use to break the wind? Forsythia and hemlock. The hemlocks, of course, will get huge, but can be kept short with annual shearing in July.

The farm has two "poyltunnels", or unheated greenhouses built with metal hoop-shaped ribs covered with a single layer of plastic sheeting. In theirs they grow tomatoes and peppers, as the temperatures outdoors in the Hebrides never are hot enough for those plants to produce well outside. The greenhouses also stop the wind dead in its tracks.

Because of the frequent rains it's tough to dry out crops like onions and garlic adequately for storage after harvesting. One of my tasks as a WWOOFer was to harvest the onions, "pretty them up" for sale, and dry them. The motto of the farm could be one that I found on wooden rulers sold at the Billings Farm Museum in Woodstock, Vermont: "Use it up, "Wear it out, Make it do, Or Do Without". So I made do what we had: a set of old bunk beds that had been stored in the barn. In the polytunnel I set up the frames with their flat springs, and laid out the onions to dry on the springs. Worked like a charm - onion "beds" for drying. The onions dried in about 3 weeks.

Most farmers and gardeners in the Hebrides use seaweed to build their soil, harvesting it when it washes up on the beach after winter storms. I visited another island, Erraid, where Robert Louis Stevenson set "Kidnapped". The Findhorn Foundation has an organic farm on Erraid which is also part of the WWOOF program. Paul Johnson, a long-time farmer there, told me he covers all his raised beds with about a foot of seaweed in the winter. In the spring he just pulls aside enough to make room for transplants. He said seaweed leaches useful minerals to the soil, and is broken down slowly, adding organic matter and keeping out weeds.

The farm I worked on had just two American gardening books in their library: my book, "Notes from the Garden", and Maine farmer Eliot Coleman's, "The Four Season Harvest". Among other things, Coleman invents tools that are then fabricated for Johnny's Select Seeds of Maine (www.johnnyseeds.com or (877) 564-6697). One of Coleman's favorites is the broadfork. Coleman's broadforks are about 20-24 inches across, with long tines that can aerate the soil without disturbing its structure or mixing the layers of soil.

Nigel Burgess, a jack of all trades, made a broadfork by welding two ordinary garden forks together and replacing the handles with longer ones. I used Nigel's version and liked it. It allowed me to loosen the soil using the weight of the tool, and my body weight instead of my arms and back. I used it to loosen the soil prior to weeding the onion beds after harvesting, making the job much easier. I may have to get one of my own.

If you want to be a WWOOFer, joining the organization costs 15 pounds (about $25) a year. Their website,www.wwoof.org, will give you all the details. Be forewarned, however, that WWOOFing is not for everyone: accommodations are basic and the work can be exhausting. For me, it was not only a chance for an inexpensive overseas experience: I also learned new gardening tricks and made some great friends. I just wish I could harvest some seaweed in Cornish Flat!

Henry Homeyer is the VT/NH associate editor of "People, Places and Plants" magazine. Write him at gardening.guy@valley.net or P.O. Box 364, Cornish Flat, N.H. 03746.