Organic, Farming

Whether you’re planning to grow your own food or just want a few extra vegetables around your table, a garden is an excellent way to connect with nature.

One of the best ways to boost soil fertility and discourage pests is to rotate crops. This involves moving members of the same crop family to different areas every year.

Ten years ago I found myself filming in a sleepy suburb of Chang Mai, northern Thailand, making a television series on the world’s most expensive ingredients. My interviewee was a fascinating barista, barely out of his teens, who was winning international awards for just how amazing his coffee was. He revealed to me through a translator that he had learned all he knew from watching YouTube videos, without understanding the dialogue, simply from following the hand actions. My mind was blown.

A decade on, the enormous power of social media as an educational force is more widely recognised, but surprisingly still not so much in horticulture. So here are my favourite accounts from across the world that have taught me things I could never otherwise have learned.

The first thing that might be surprising about so many of the educational accounts is their sheer level of aesthetic gloss. The short films made by @bonsai_china show not just the entire process of creating living works of art from the least promising stumps of dug-up trees, but even how he makes naturalistic pots for them by carving porous rocks that lie around in the countryside near his home. Learning bonsai techniques is virtually impossible from the static images or confusing text descriptions in books, but these videos explain it perfectly, and in a way that transports you to the rural landscape where the art was first invented. Magical.

Over in Brazil, @genesisecossistemas is creating vast natural swimming pools, with crystal-clear water and huge shoals of koi that really caused me to do a double-take. The technical mastery involved in creating pools as clear as coral reefs using only natural means is astounding on its own, but add in fish which are notorious for muddying the best-maintained systems, and it’s bordering on the miraculous. I love how the account details not just the glossy end result, but the entire process from muddy construction site to Monet perfection, complete with voyeuristic views of some of the fanciest houses I’ve ever seen.

Much closer to home, social media has allowed me to learn things from amazing horticulturists who live just a couple of miles away. My buddy @londonorchids is growing tropical orchids from cool, high-altitude forests outdoors in his east London garden.

These are species that are too frost-tender to grow outside in most temperate gardens, but wilt in the heat of the lowland tropics, so require a really niche climate that is evenly cool throughout the year. This, amazingly, turns out to be just the kind of climate that is found in central London. If I hadn’t forced him via direct message to invite me round for tea to see it for myself, I wouldn’t have believed it.

Follow James on Twitter @Botanygeek

Source: theguardian.com