Growing our own food
One of the most important things that we wanted to achieve on the Unicorn Foundation is a relatively modest thing that many people can do - we wanted to grow our own food wherever possible. As well as meaning we know exactly what has gone into our food - so no artificial flavours, colourings or nasty pesticides - it vastly reduces the carbon footprint of our meals because produce does not need to be shipped around the world.
Our wormery
Central to all of our food-growing activities are our great friends, the tiger worms. These hungry wrigglers break down a lot of our waste, turning it into rich nutrients that we can then use to fertilise our soil on a number of different projects. To find out more about our wormery, visit the wormery case study page.
Our polytunnel
Our polytunnel is home to some gorgeous exotic treats - like our kiwi vines, Romeo and Juliet (so named because you need a male and female plant to grow fruit, and our star-crossed lovers have grown towards each other to do just that).
We have also grown honeydew melon, a wide variety of berries, herbs aplenty, and some more 'earthy' staples such as beetroot, runner beans, peas and tomatoes. Our polytunnel makes for fabulous growing conditions, aided by our wormery to fertilise the soil. The only problem is resisting the temptation to eat what we grow before we managed to get it into the house and onto the plate...
Our crop planting
We have also planted potatoes, onions, garlic, cabbage and kale, raspberries, strawberries, blueberries and more in the fields near to our farmhouse, and all of them have flourished delightfully. It enables us to be self sufficient, even when it comes to staples such as onions (we estimate we get through about a thousand a year). Contrary to popular belief, you not need acres and acres of land to grow that much food, and most of our growing space would comfortably fit into a reasonably sized garden.
We use symbiotic planting to make sure that we eliminate the need for any pesticides. By attracting the right kind of insects to protect our plants, we can keep the insects that would eat them away. For example, by planting nasturtiums we attract hoverflies. Hoverflies eat greenfly, so we don't have to worry about greenfly on our crops - we simply provide something to entice nature's own security guards instead!
Our Orchard
In our orchard, we grow apples, pears, plums and cherries - even a few varieties of nuts can be found in there too. However, because our soil is so rich, we suffer from another problem - weeds like nutrients just as much as the things we want to grow! However, we have come up with a rather innovative solution to the problem of keeping weeds away from the roots of our trees without using pesticides and such like.
We buy fleeces from local sheep farmers after shearing. Ordinarily, these are sold to the carpet industry for very little money and shipped all over the world to be treated and turned into carpets. We have placed them round the base of the trees in our orchard as they allow enough air and moisture through to let the tree grow, but keep it clear from weeds. So far, it looks as if the experiment has succeeded and our trees are cropping at fabulous rates. Now most of our trees are established, we are going to plant another lower level of soft fruit under them to maximise our cropping ability in the orchard space. This autumn we have two more "swales" prepared for planting with a selection of old Irish heritage varieties of apples and pear trees. Fruit salad, anyone?