Potatoes and permaculture

Felt kind of smug seeing the output yesterday from my volunteer Norland potato - which yielded three or four jumbo spuds - and all of them, from first inspection, wireworm-free, which is most exciting, since this was the main place in my garden that seemed to have them. Also dug up a Yukon Gold that I'd already harvested from, so only little ones from there and could have been left a while longer if I'd looked carefully at the base. Oh well. I got an ice cream pail full anyway.



And the tomatoes continue to ripen; my big beauties have now been identified as Black Krim rather than the previously supposed Costoluto Fiorentino.



Even the slugs like them, alas, so some of the riper ones end up with little slug bites. But I'm going to be canning them over the next few weeks so hope to stay on top of them.

Someone from my neighbourhood gardening/food security group sent this great link to an Introduction to Permaculture, by its father, the Australian naturalist Bill Mollison. In his intro, written in 1981, he observes

The real systems that are beginning to fail are the soils, forests, the atmosphere, and nutrient cycles. It is we who are responsible for that. We haven’t evolved anywhere in the west (and I doubt very much elsewhere except in tribal areas) any sustainable systems in agriculture or forestry.

Too bad he's still right. Given the failure of will on the part of our governments, we can only make our own backyard food systems as sustainable as possible, buy only (as far as possible) from farmers who do likewise, and hope that a wave of consumer concern - voting with our minds and our wallets - brings positive change.