From the archive
1 Oct 2026
The slate was the worst of it. The Centre for Alternative Technology sits in a disused quarry above Machynlleth, so rebuilding the beds in its two polytunnels meant barrowing in load after load of compost made from the site's own food waste and leaf mould, then sieving the slate shards back out. Charlie Whale arrived last winter as one of four residential volunteers, joining a gardens team that had gone some time without winter help. The tunnels have since given grapes, squashes, cucumbers, borlotti beans and chard by the barrowload.
The bigger job was Roger's Field. Alongside staff gardeners Nick and Veronica, the volunteers brought the field and the Whole Home Allotment back into cultivation, including two more polytunnels, a restoration that Charlie says plainly would not have happened without CAT students turning up to volunteer weekends and putting in, in her words, mammoth efforts. The produce now goes into the site's kitchens and onto the plates of visitors, students and the volunteers themselves.
Not everything was digging. Under Nick's guidance the group learned to work coppiced hazel and willow from the site's own woodlands into hurdles, baskets, plant supports and towering pea-stick fences, though patience for the finer weaving reportedly thinned as Friday afternoons wore on. Charlie has resolved that her money will never again go on bamboo canes. Twice every week, whatever else was happening, someone processed the site's food waste through the composting systems, the unglamorous rotation that keeps the whole loop closed.
Before they left, the outgoing crew put in a twelve-metre asparagus trench and thirty globe artichoke plants, crops that take years to come into bearing. They also saved seed from this year's tomatoes and other crops so the next intake starts with something in hand. Neither the trench nor the seed jars will do much for the people who prepared them. That, as much as the harvest, is what a year here is for.
Save tomato seed before the season ends: squeeze the seed and juice into a jar, leave it to ferment for two or three days until the mould forms, rinse clean and dry on a saucer. One envelope per variety, labelled with the year, and next spring's seed order costs nothing.
Centre for Alternative Technology · Read the source