First of all, thanks to all those who showed up on Saturday in the Green Room in the Body and Soul area at Electric Picnic! I thought the talk went well with plenty of interaction and discussion and the reaction was very positive. The tent was packed and I had a some very interesting follow on conversations afterwards. I think even some of those that had been dragged semi-willingly (!) out of their cosy tents seemed to get involved and have a good time.

Having succumbed to the standard festival phone battery difficulties, I had no camera to take photos at the talk. I did however manage to grab some photos of the permaculture display which was in the vicinity of the green room. I’ve included some photos I took below.

First is the Green Room which had a pretty cool grass-clod-on-a-stick display outside:

In the permaculture area, there was a tyre-based potato barrel. Note how you can pile up the tyres as you go similar to a technique I described before:

There was also what they called a “herb spiral” consisting of old tins arranged in a vertical spiral to maximize space usage. It was pretty impressive and in practice they used a lot more than just herbs:

They also had a star-shaped bed of vegetables. There were brassicas (kale etc.):

…potatoes:

…alliums (onion-type things to you and me!):

…and here is the whole star:

There was also a compost heap on display. It was actually quite effective in showing passers-by the variety of things that can go into compost. I immediately regretted throwing my banana peel in a standard rubbish bin earlier that morning:

There were also chard and beetroot:

…and some tomato and basil plants. I don’t know how realistic is is to have these growing outside in Ireland but the point was to demonstrate companion planting. If memory serves I think they also suggested that the tomatoes would taste better grown in the vicinity of basil. I remain sceptical!

And lastly, here is a bed of mixed herbs:

All in all, a great demonstration accompanied by clear and useful information on placards. Hopefully it has people thinking about how easy it is to grow food themselves and the variety of options available to them. Did anyone else stumble upon this display?