We are used to seeing potted fruit trees available very early in the season. As soon as the first autumn rains arrive, often from October onwards, they can already be planted. But as winter approaches, another option becomes available: bare-root fruit trees. Although less familiar to many gardeners, they have one important advantage: their root
Since the winter of 2020, we’ve been planting trees at the Quinta Santa Catarina. Initially with the idea of feeding ourselves. In 2022, due to the fact that we couldn’t find the trees we were looking for in this region to create an edible and medicinal forest garden, and wanting to offer a useful service
At school, we learnt about the water cycle, from evaporation of the oceans to rain through clouds, slowed down by mountains and forests.What is less well known is that this big cycle actually accounts for less than half of the redistribution of water.There is a much lesser-known secret water cycle that is responsible for most
We came from Wallonia in Belgium, where the soil is heavy from the clay and the sky is grey, a region where everything is green all year round. We were surrounded by forests, with the exception of urbanisation, which stretches and stretches its concrete flow.Travelling through Portugal, we fell in love with this quiet rural
The concept of a tiny forest comes from the Japanese biologist Akira Miyawaki, whose aim was to quickly recreate a natural forest in order to regenerate devastated areas.Through the principles of soil preparation and improvement, through very dense planting (min. 3 trees and shrubs/m2) of varied indigenous species (min. 30 species) in different layers, from
