Chop and drop is a way to create good soil in your garden for growing vegetables. In our vegetable garden I use green manure to chop and drop. It is less work than making compost and when applied right, it can bring the same results.   Masanobu Fukuoka’s way The way I use chop and …

This blog teaches you two ways of making compost. It gives a detailed description of how to make quick and slow compost.  What you need, how much you need and what type of construction you need.   What you basically need to make a compost heap is three types of organic material: brown material, green …

Using chickens in an orchard as Medfly pest control is an very effective way to get rid of the flies in an organic orchard. Chickens are very useful animals. They provide you with very nutritious eggs without a big effort and chicken meat is also good to eat. Apart from that you can also use …

Did you know you can prepare your vegetable garden with chickens? Chickens can help you in your garden and orchard in many ways. We use them as our little helpers. One of the things we use chickens for is to prepare the vegetable garden.   A month before we start  the garden, we fence in …

Garden layout We live about 6 km from the town of Monchique , which is a pittoresk town in the hinterlands of the Algarve. In the town there are many terraces where people keep their vegetable gardens, mostly from people who live in town. Our friends Anna and Carlos, who live in town decided to share  …

Every year in January and February we walk the goats over our terraced orchard. Yes! Right though our orchard. Clearing land with goats and having fruittrees at the same time is very possible. We have about 80 fruittrees on our terraced land. In summer the trees are irrigated and nothing much grows under the trees. …