Western Islanders Use Organic Land Management

After a fortnight’s neglect in spring the Hebridean landscape becomes a meadow, especially in the Uist Islands. The grass itself remains short, in contrast to mainland turf. But the real joy is a glory of early summer colour beneath the feet. Patches of yellows, creams, pinks, purples and blues surpass the most magnificent of magic carpets in their gentle subtlety, and through them all are daisies like dinnerplates.

As elsewhere the daisies here confirm the arrival of spring, say mid-April, although occasionally the whole season slips up to three weeks behind. The first thing you notice is that certain fields or strips take on a strange greyish-pink hue. Investigation confirms that only a very small shoe would be needed to cover the requisite nursery-rhyme dozen daisyheads to announce the turn of the season.

Seaweed and Shale Sand

Only certain fields; much depends on how they have been managed. The immemorial method of enriching the land here is by the application of seaweed. This is allowed to stand in heaps to be rained on for six weeks. By trial and error crofters long ago discovered what science now confirms, that the seaweed is chemically at its most productive after just this time, and that it is generous not only in potash and phosphorous but also in its wide range of minerals and trace elements.

There is something ‘cleansing’ about it too. Few farmers here spend half their meagre fortune on additives, weed-killers and insecticides, in marked contrast to their counterparts elsewhere. Science is giving a progressively confident thumbs up to biological control, much to the satisfaction of the Islanders confident of their own wisdom.

Identifying Soil Condition by the Plants Which Grow

“Tether my horse to the nearest thistle,” demanded the blind man, on the hunt for good land to buy.

“Right away, sir,” his servant replied, without moving more than a few feet.

“Now tie the pack-mule to the nearest nettle,” added the master. Ten minutes later he shouted, “Have you done it yet?”

From far away a voice complained, “There are no nettles hereabouts!”

“Then we’d better be on our way.”

A familiar old story. But in one small Uist garden the two species co-exist happily, along with thirty two wild flowers. Somebody has counted them. These include all five of the ‘illegal’ weeds, two docks, two thistles and ragwort, though the specimens are hardly threatening. Nobody dare start on the grasses. This is typical of gardens throughout the islands.

Blacklands and Whitelands

There are two types of land here. Along the western shores (and also for a mile or two beneath the encroaching seas, or so the locals insist) lie the whitelands or machair. This is a heavenly meadowland on shale sand enriched over the years by the seaweed and with plenty of muck to provide the missing nitrogen. Inland the blacklands rise towards the hills, peat-based, rutted by fuel diggings but still capable of some fertility if the heather is burned to give potash and a few cartloads of the seaweed are brought up. A load of shale sand provides the lime needed to counteract its extreme acidity.

There are some fields as mainlanders know them but more common are strips of cultivation farmed with a loose rotation of cereals, roots and grass for hay and cattle grazing. It is intriguing to find crops of rye and beremeal (the old two-awned barley) flourishing among the rest. Each crop removes a different selection of nutrients from the soil and it is the residue which determines what will flourish by way of wild plants. Any farmer can tell you the needs of his ground by the weeds which grow in it.

Wild Flowers or Weeds?

Is the tiny forgetmenot an escapee or the genuine water variety? Did the clovers, trefoil, chickweed and buttercup arrive with muck from the army stables, along with the speedwells and plantains, possibly brought in among mainland hay? The flag irises found all over the islands flourish in bogs, along with horsetails and bog cotton spears. A local doctor did a survey of mosses and lichens during her stay in the Uists and identified over five hundred varieties.

Folklore claims that heartsease grows where there was once a battle. It is everywhere, but there is no sign of its comforter, lady’s mantle, just a few leaves of feverfew, and the Scottish sea lovage. Along the roadside, however, there are stands of bedstraw, ragged robins and self heal. And what about the stunning little orchids? It is easy to become convinced that there are three varieties in the lawn, maybe even a precious rarity. What with capricious weather, or the scarcity of energy and willingness, they provide a heaven sent excuse for leaving the grass alone. Not that it matters over here. It is the weeds which are the glory.