Take a wander with me

I hurt my foot pretty bad and couldn't get out to do much in the garden for a couple of weeks.  I've had a hard time getting back to work.  It's not my foot.  I'm weary.  I'm tired of working outside for hours a day.  I realized today that it's because I'm not actually gardening, or doing the things I enjoy in the garden.  All I'm doing is laying down carboard and wood chips.  For hours.  Every day.  This morning I decided to do what I love best and take a slow wander through my garden, just enjoying the green life.  Come with me on my walk and I'll show you a few of my favorite spots.

Potatoes growing quickly

I planted three patches of potatoes this year, but this one is my favorite!  It's round, surrounded by an interesting wood border and interspersed among the potato plants is scarlet clover.  It's my favorite because it is the biggest and most lush, even though it was planted the latest of all three.  Last Spring I had a black tarp layed down to put soil on as I built grow boxes and it sat there for a year.  When I pulled the tarp back this Spring the soil was moist, dark brown and rich, full of mycelium and just crumbled in my hand.  It was amazing soil and the potatoes are enjoying it so much!

This is one of my yarrow patches, it grows along the bottom edge of my strawberry and asparagus guild berm.  I love the soft, feathery leaves and the tiny white flowers.  It makes me happy every time I walk past.  There is another patch around my apple tree, and another near the potatoes I just showed you.  

Yarrow

I have another favorite spot, two actually, wait...who can pick a favorite?  I love my patch of sunchokes growing.  I feel so pleased every time I see them, knowing they will help feed my family. I've never had them before so I am also feeling excited to try a new food.

I love my two strawberry and asparagus guilds.   I can't wait for fresh strawberries next spring.  Everyone in my family loves asparagus so I hope they, too, will take off like wildfire.  One of my few surviving rhubarb plants also lives in the guild.  Have you ever sautéed rhubarb?  It adds a lovely tart flavor to a savory dish.  You should try it.

Ok, now for my very favorite, my grape tunnel.  It's full of grapes, and even though it's only on it's second  year the grapes have really taken off.  I have tons of grapes growing this year and half of the tunnel is completely covered!  I'll plant some more this fall, some nice big, purple ones my neighbor has.  Next spring we also want to plant grass underneath so we can lay in the green tunnel on the cool grass.  Can you imagine how wonderful it will be?  I think this is my favorite place to walk because I feel completely surrounding by wonderful growing plants.

Morning sunlight filtering through my grape tunnel

Some of my other favorite are the sound of my chickens clucking along, eating grubs and bugs and making fresh food for us.  I love my catnip and watching my fat black cat lounge next to it, so self satisfied, as if he owns the whole world.  I love t
he morning sun touching my trees for the first time.  I can almost feel everything waking up and stretching to reach for the first rays, it's magical.  What are your favorite spots in your garden?

Neat and orderly...or not

Amongst the natural look I'm going for I also want a few neat and orderly areas. Areas where the lettuce grows in rows (because I forget what I plant) and the flowers are in a flower bed. I dreamed of creating this flower bed here for years, and I finally just got started on it. I've been putting it off because I am feeling a bit overwhelmed. You know the feeling when you've got a huge project that you need to do and you just don't know where to start? I'm feeling that a lot. Sometimes it's easy to look at a spot and I just see what it needs to be, I see the guild that I need to create, or I have ideas of what I want, but other times I look at this huge space that I'm trying to create in and I am finding it quite overwhelming. I just don't know where to start.

To help myself figure out what I need to do I sat down and I brainstormed with my husband. We talked about how last year we were really putting in the foundation of the permaculture by digging the swales and building the berms. We spent the entire summer doing that and we just barely finished before it started to rain and snow in the fall and then we moved into winter. This year I thought would be the year for planting, but I forgot what a pain the weeds are. So the more we talked about it the more we decided that the berms and the swales were the foundation of our permaculture garden, but the next step really needed to be to just lay down cardboard and wood chip over everything to cut back on the weeds. The two little guilds that I created a couple of weeks ago are so overrun with weeds already that I can hardly tell what I planted there, and I've weeded twice! So our new plan is to just lay down cardboard and wood chip over everything, and then next year after the wood chips have had a little bit of time to start breaking down and biodegrading and creating some soil that is when I will begin to build guilds and garden beds.

My plan there is to put the chickens in a spot as early as possible and have them get all of the weeds and the weed seeds and all of the bugs and everything that they can and then I will put down a big pile of healthy soil over the top of the wood chips and then I will plant in that. Honestly at this point I don't know if it's going to work. I feel like every time I've got a plan it doesn't go according to plan. If gardening is an experiment, permaculture is an even bigger experiment. I really want this to work though, I am determined to learn what I need to and get it figured out so that it does work. I just might have to change my plans every couple of months.

Flowers!

Scarlet clover

I love flowers!  They fill me with joy and bring sunshine to my soul.  There are few things I love more than watching bees on flowers.  If I could, I would fill my whole yard with flowers, but they produce very little food and as much as I love beauty, I am painfully practical.  It's a good thing that flowers are both beautiful and practical.  Since flowers attract pollinators and pollinators help food to grow it's a fantastic idea to have flowers growing all over your yard and even amongst your food crops.  Whether you are a traditional gardener, or have a food forest or permaculture, flowers will help increase your food production and beautify your yard.

Yarrow

Bees come out when the air temperature starts to hit about 50.  They are one of the first insects I see every year in my yard and they are on the look out for two things, food and water.  We have a little dish full of rocks (so they don't drown) and water that we set out for the bees as soon as we see the first one.  It's common for us to go outside on a Spring afternoon to find a dozen bees drinking from our little bee dish.  I wish I could give them food as easily as I give them water.  My permaculture yard is still just a baby, we are only in our 2nd year.  I have started to plant flowers, but I don't have nearly as many as I, or the bees, would like. I am working on it.

I have two focuses for my flowers, everything else is a bonus.  I want flowers to be blooming in Spring, Summer, and Fall so there is a food source for the bees all the time.  I also want to have all of my flowers be perennial or reliable self seeders so I don't have to replant them every year.  Last fall I planted scarlet clover as a nitrogen fixer and the bees just loved them in the Spring!  They also made great jelly...and then I killed them.  Don't worry, I will replant and this time they will survive because I learned my lesson.  I haven't noticed that the bees particularly like the yarrow that grows voluntarily in my yard, but I love it.  I do have heavenly smelling roses and I planted two salvia bushes last fall, as well as a triple blooming lilac bush.  The salvia are fall blooming only so I decided to buy a couple more that are summer blooming.  I have them by my grapes to try and entice more pollinators, although they seemed to do a pretty good job this year.  Black-eyed Susan's are growing in pots to plant strategically so I can take advantage of their long roots to help prevent erosion on my berms.

Wild sunflower

For now though it is too hot to plant anything outside.  It would take so much water to keep seeds moist long enough to sprout and get big enough to survive a hot day and it's nearing 100 around here with little shade to help with the harsh weather.   I am starting flowers in pots and moving them outside when they are big enough to handle the heat.  But don't be surprised if you see me outside every day this fall planting bulbs and flowers to feed the bees next year.

Propagating and sharing cuttings

Gardening can get expensive, am I right?  Think of the average garden plot and multiply that by...you know what?  Too much math.  Lets just say my garden in nearly .25 acre.  I needed to learn to propagate by myself instead of buying everything from the local nursery, even if it is my happy place.  So I set out to figure it out.  I started with grapes.  I had no idea what I was doing, but as my good friend told me "Plants want to grow. They will, if you give them a chance."  I planted 10 grape cuttings, two survived.  Just two.  Like I said, I had no idea what I was doing.  The next time I tired it, I planted three and all three survived!  I was like a kid on Christmas morning, seeing those new leaves open up.  Next, I learned how to take one large comfrey plant and break its giant root into 5 pieces so I could have more than one plant.  When my raspberries had been in the ground for a couple of years I dug up a few canes and moved them to make new raspberry beds.  The first time I planted 6 canes and only one survived.  The second time, after I had learned, I planted five and three survived. When a branch from my favorite rose bush was broken off with a new bud I thought I would try rooting it.  I succeeded!
 Learning to propagate and graft is a really great skill to help you with permaculturing.  If you have been following along you know how much I LOVE comfrey!  The kind I have will grow big and bushy, but it won't spread unless you disturb it's roots.  They are easy to propagate because you can dig it up, break of a root chunk with a leaf or two and grow an entire plant.  

Don't think this hasn't come with failures.  Of the five rhubarb plants I planted only one has survived.  Two were from the store, and three from friends who shared.  I learned that rhubarb really likes shade and planting thee in the sun was a BAD idea.  The other one was devoured by the dreaded earwig.

My next goal is to learn to graft.  I have a cherry tree, an apricot, two plum, three peach of different varieties, two apple of different varieties, and two pairs that have 5 varieties grafted in.  Those pears got me to thinking that if all my trees were grafted with different varieties then I could have more peaches, on less trees.  Here's another way you can save some money.  My neighbor has a different variety of cherry then I do, if I asked for one of her branches I could graft in onto my cherry tree and have two kind of cherries.  It's also a great way to extend the harvest since different varieties mature at different times.

So, before you start to feel overwhelmed with the cost of gardening, look around you. Can you find a wild rose growing in the woods that you can dig up and take home?  Does your friend have a comfrey plant you can share?  Does your neighbor have grapes?

A return to nature's balance

 

Meet Sobbie, Fire Cluck, and Goldilocks, three of our nine chickens.  They are happily feasting on the earwig nests we uncovered while weeding to prepare an area this morning.  I didn't know when I started laying down wood chips en mass that they would provide the perfect environment for my worst enemy in the garden, earwigs.  Ok, that's the bad news, now are you ready for the good news?  Nature has a plan.  What I accidentally messed up, by adding tons of wood chips to my yard all at once, nature will balance out.  I know this for a fact because I have experienced it already, before permaculture was even a thought in my mind.

When we moved to a house of our own five years ago I knew I did not want to spray for bugs.  Not only would killing the bad bugs kill the good ones, but I didn't want my family to ingest those chemicals or run around barefoot on them, even more frightening were the stories I had heard of pets and children dying from the improper application of pesticides.  It wasn't risk I wanted to take.  It took some convincing, but I talked my husband into no more spraying, for weeds or bugs.  The first year we had massive destruction by aphids, earwigs, and flea beetles.  I told myself it would take a few years to even out, it would get better.  I lost a couple potato plants, but I could deal with that.  My plum tree and rose bush were NOT happy with the aphids.  I tried "natural" alternatives like glue boards (killed a bird with that one) neem oil to make the leaves taste nasty (it made the aphids taste nasty and the lady bugs flew away in search of tastier meals) or diatomaceous Earth (it also killed the good guys)  It really seemed like the best option was to wait, so I did.  

Predators are always slower to appear then pests, but they will come if there is food for them.  I watched with joy as I found more and more lady bugs, even lady bug eggs, I saw countless prey mantises, centipedes, spiders (I think they were the first to appear)  It was lovely to watch my yard come alive and become a refuge for all sorts of bugs.  I still lose a plant here and there, but for the most part the predators come in to take care of the pest problems.  

I have two tips, first of all CHICKENS!  I cannot say enough about chickens.  They will eat pretty much every pest around, they gobble them up like candy. Chickens can break a pest cycle in a matter of days.  They also eat weeds and seeds.  Be careful because they will also eat the plants you want, I am using a chicken tractor to move them around, but also keep them away from my baby plants.  Seriously though, chickens are super heroes in the garden.  They take weeds and pests and turn them into eggs and fertilizer.

My other tip is that if you choose to remove pests leave some to attract the predators.  Early in the spring I used a hose to spray aphids off of my two trees and rose bush. That got rid of a bunch to help the plant, but left some too.  As soon as I saw the first lady bug I left them to do their work.  I have seen very few aphids since the lady bugs moved into the neighborhood.  If you have a caterpillar problem, pick some off, but leave some for the birds.  They WILL come.  Nature is all about balance, you just have to be patient.  Sorry about that bit.

Guilds

 

My brand new baby guild.

Guilds are my focus right now.  This is a baby guild, it will look vastly different in a year or so.  A guild is a group of plants that all work together to create a healthy, natural environment.  Remember that with permaculture we are trying to mimic nature and create an environment that is as self sustaining as possible.

Ok, so if we are mimicking nature there are some things we need to keep in mind.   The forest doesn't have a single tree, then 20 feet away another tree with nothing in between.  We need a ground cover on the bottom.  Just like wood chips, a ground cover helps to protect and enhance the soil, providing shade and keeping it cool so the soil stays moist longer.  Some ground covers pull double duty by protecting the soil, but also helping deter pests (creeping thyme) or by adding nitrogen (micro clover).  These suppressor plants also discourage weeds from growing. In a guild, and in permaculture really you want to pick plants that fill more than one function, at least 2, but hopefully 3 or more.  At the end I'll list some of my favorite plants to use.

More mature guild.

So, the first function is the ground cover, the second function is nitrogen fixing plants, these can be trees, bushes, small plants, flowers, or ground cover.  The purpose, of course, it to help your plants and soil be healthy, they act like living fertilizer.  Here's a pro tip, if you plant pretty scarlet clover, don't mow it down to the ground to get another crop of flowers, you will just kill it.  Ask me how I know.  Just dead head the flowers to encourage more blooms, drop it at the base of the plant and it will add nitrogen as it decomposes.  Whatever you choose to plant, it will only add to the healthy of your soil and plants if you cot off bit and drop them, that way the dropped bits are decomposing and adding nitrogen, but the roots underneath that die off also add nitrogen.

Now for one of my favorite functions, attractors.  These are flowering plants that attracts pollinators like bees and butterflies.  They add to the beauty of your garden and many also deter unwanted pests, or add nitrogen to the soil. More bees visiting flowers means more bees pollinating your fruit blossoms and that means more fruit.  Make sure to plant a few different kinds so there is always something in bloom.  You don't need something in bloom all the time around ALL of your trees but a smattering all over the yard will make sure there is always a food source and the bees will love it.

Now that we have talked about attracting friends, how do we deter...not friends?  That's where deterrent plants come in.  They smell strong and confuse or bother pesty bugs.  Think marigold in the garden, but all over.  Herbs are great for this because the strong smell can cover up the smell of your yummy fruit tree and confuse icky pests like coddle moths and aphids.

Mulchers are next.  These are plants that grow profusely and you can chop off parts to use as mulch without killing the plant.  Comfrey is probably my favorite because of it's cell regenerative properties.  The kind I have grows quickly and large, it's tripled in size in the last month, but isn't spreading.  It gets big without taking over.  Mulchers, because they often have large leaves also help shade the soil and add another drip line.

Last but not least, accumulators.  I call them miners because they pull nutrients up from deep in the soil and when they die or leaves fall off those nutrients go back into the top layer for all of the other plants.  The big deep roots also help to aerate the soil, break up compacted soil, and make title tunnels for water to travel down.  

Here is a chart I found immensely helpful, along with a link to the site I found it on.  I love the easy to read chart.  I have used this chart as a reference in the four guilds I have already made and in planning the next ones.

Real quick, here is a list of my favorite guild plants and why I love them:

• Creeping thyme-I love the smell and the flowers are so pretty.  It also spreads fast so it covers up that soil in no time.  I also would like to add creeping mint, but I haven't tested it.  I want to put it near my house where the smell will chase away hornets since I'm afraid of hornets.  Jerks!
• Hairy vetch- it grows crazy fast which is great because I just want to cut it down to add nitrogen to the soil.  It grows fast and i love the little purple flowers.
• Comfrey-as I said, it grows fast so you can chop and drop the leaves, but the cell regeneration is UNREAL.  We used it twice, once for stitches and once when my husband sliced the tip of his finger off with a mandolin slicer. ><  I feel like they both healed twice as fast using a comfrey leaf poultice.  I'll never be without it again!
• Black Eyed Susan's-this pretty flower has DEEP roots.  I love them because my berms have steep sides, I'm not entirely sure I made them right and I need something to help prevent erosion. These are the flowers for that.

I could go on, really.  Ask anyone in my family, I am pretty obsessed with plants.  What's not to love!?

Wood chips

 

        I wanted to talk about woodchips.  You might have noticed that we have a lot of woodchips going down in our yard.  My neighbor pointed out that it won't stop the weeds, how right he was, but that wasn't our intent.  Woodchips help discourage weed seeds from germinating, but they definitely don't stop weeds, for that you need a layer of cardboard underneath.  So why the woodchips?  Wood chips help to protect the soil.  Soil that is exposed to the sun dies, all the tiny microbes that help soil to be healthy get killed off by the radiation from the sun, that's one reason plants are so eager to grow and cover the soil, they want to protect it.  Wood chips shade the soil and protect it from the sun and also help stop erosion from water because they force the water to move more slowly across the surface of the ground.  Wood chips also help to moderate the temperature of the soil, cooling it in summer and warming it in winter.  As the wood chips break down they add nutrients to the soil and help it hold water better.  As you can see, wood chips have a lot of benefits, but I wanted to talk about my favorite one, water conservation!

        I live in a desert, not only that, but my yard has basically no shade.  I do have a few small trees in the back, but they aren't big enough to really shade anything.  My front yard faces full west and in the summer it get HOT!  It gets so hot, I thought growing anything in the front would be nearly impossible.  It turns out I was right.  It's so hot that plants wilt and die very quickly.  If I want them to stay alive I have to water pretty much every day, not ideal for a desert state in the middle of pretty severe drought.  When I noticed that my beds with a thick wood chip mulching only needed to be watered once a week I added wood chips to the top of my front garden beds.  I was skeptical that it would help that much in the front, but I figured it would help at least a little.  Monday I watered nice and deep, did a quick weeding job with my kids and we piled on the wood chips.  Here we are at Friday and I pulled back the wood chips to see...the top of the soil was still wet.  I was pleasantly surprised.  To illustrate the difference, this is the bed that I had to water every day and it was still dry an inch down!

        So what are the draw backs to wood chips?  First of all, as they break down they pull nitrogen from the soil, that's not good for plants.  However, there's an easy fix.  If you look at this picture just above us there are potatoes and clover side by side in that bed.  The clover helps to add nitrogen back into the soil as it grows, it's one of the nitrogen fixing plants.  A few other options are peas, beans, vetch, soy beans, or lupine.  I know there are more, those are just the ones I am using right now.  One way to add nitrogen is to plant a fall cover crop of soy beans, they can help protect the soil as they add nitrogen.  I like soy beans because if I plant them in the fall they don't have a chance to grow all the way before they are killed off by frost and then I use a pitch fork to turn over the soil and the plant decomposes all winter long.

        The only other draw back to wood chips that I can see is that they might make it harder for plants to self seed.  I am testing that right now and will add a post when it figure it out.  They also require you to water more deeply to reach the soil, but that is helped by leaving a little gap around each plant and, honestly, considering that I water just once a week instead of every day I'm still saving time, water, and money. SO worth it!