Hello all!
Today I will tell you about the other beautiful garden of Venets which we visited during our stay in Todorovo. In the beginning of the garden we saw a big pond which collects the rain water of the property. You can see it in the photo below. Catherine explained to me that the black material that she used for the pond was a special UV resistant pond liner that is long lasting compared to the previous one that she used which was not meant for ponds so it was torn. The water from the pond is used for the trees but mostly for the berries because they need more water. Next to the pond there is a building used for storing materials (the wool that she use for mulch, green manure) which Catherine dreams of using it as an event space one day since the view is amazing.
The property contains roads of trees and roads of berries. For the first time I saw wool being used as a mulch material. Catherine said that there is plenty of left over wool from the area so that is a great way of reusing it. As you can see in the photo below there should be space between the tree and the wool in order for the tree not to rot. The wool keeps moist underneath. There are plenty of perennial herbs- lemon balm, turkish rocket. There is also redcurrant, white currant and black currant. There is a small pond next to them where all the rain water goes through a small canal that they digged. Next to the trees as a fertilizer they planted lots of comfrey. There are apple trees, plum, cherry, quince. All of the trees have finished flowering before we got there. I was impressed by the fact that Catherine put lard (pig fat) on a lot of trees in order to feed the birds and attract them. Because of the birds they don’t have an aphid problem. They don’t spray the trees and there is almost no disease on them. The garden has hazelnuts as well. Also, japanese quince. And I was so surprised to see that there was asparagus which Catherine told me that needs three years before harvesting. They planted garlic as well and covered it with acorn mulch. There was no weeds because of it, the structure of the soil was really nice from the acorn.
I was so inspired by the strength, persistence and hope in Catherine. She is one of the change makers in Bulgaria and I would love to meet more people like her. I could see how much work and effort she puts in these magical gardens and she keeps going although it is really really hard to have organic farm business in Bulgaria. I hope that I can go to her gardens in the future again in order to see the progress. Thank you for reading about my journey. Next time I will tell you about our adventure in Chernelka eco-trail.
See you next week,
Polin
