It's finally Spring in Utah! This has been a crazy winter and a crazy Spring. We got so much snow over the winter that some areas are flooding. Reservoirs are filling up quickly though and that's very good news. We are also having a very wet Spring with a lot of rain. I have not had to water anything more than 2-3 times, even direct sow seeds that need to stay moist. The wood chips are doing their duty! As you can see they are not completely keeping out the weeds, especially where we forgot to overlap, like this nice line here. You can see how the carboard and wood chips have helped immensely though, otherwise my whole property would look like that line. Yikes! In addition to discouraging weeds the wood chips are also holding in the moisture and have already begun to make a difference in the soil. It's darker and breaks apart easier than ever! I have pulled up mallow and dandelion and gotten all of the roots. The wood chips are fantastic!
We have finally finished planning our plan. Maybe it was crazy to start without a plan, but it was starting that allowed us to create a plan. The way I figure it, we are in year three of five in our permaculture plan.
Year one was digging swales and creating berms. If I could go back the only thing I would change about that year is wedding and planting those berms ASAP. They haven't eroded, but the ones I DID plant don't have nearly as many weeds as the ones that were left bare for two years. That being said, I'm not sure I understood enough about guilds and what I wanted to be able to plant them well yet.Year two was laying down cardboard and woodchips. We got two pallets of cardboard at the local super market. By pallet I mean hundreds of pounds of boxes bound together with metal ties. They had to lift it onto our trailer with a forklift. It was a gamble because many of the boxes weren't the best and some were tiny candy bar boxes good for very little, but it gave us enough to finish almost our entire yard. The cardboard has helped immediately to keep down the weeds. I know it isn't a perfect solution, nor is it permanent, but I think it will do until things are growing well.
So here we are in year three. This is the fun year. The year I get to go hog wild and buy more plants than I ever thought I would and then plant them! This is the year of designing and planting. Just today I went out and bought enough plants to almost entirely finish all of the guilds, berms, and planting beds in the front yard. I wanted to start there because it's smaller than the back and so that people driving by can stop asking what the crazy wood chip people are doing. We bought a trailer full of good soil that we are putting right on top of the wood chips in a thick layer to create planting beds and provide good soil for what we plant. That way the cardboard will still help to keep down the weeds and the wood chips will help to provide water as they soak it up, kind of like a hügelkultur. As they break down they will help create great soil underneath as well. In each guild and bed I am making sure to have a nitrogen fixer, a ground cover, a smelly herb to keep away bugs, a miner to bring up nutrients from deep below, and a Spring, Summer, and Fall bloomer for the bees. I'm not super creative with designing so I've enlisted the help of some fellow plant addicts to help design and pick plants. I want to make plant markers for everything so that when I give people tours and walk throughs they can identify plants, like you would at a botanical garden. I always love those little signs.
Year four is going to be our water year. We will be setting up our grey water system, planting a marshy area to help filter the water, digging a creek, two ponds, and creating a small waterfall. I am very excited for that next year, but there are still some problems we need to figure out. I am just so stinking excited for the marsh, creek, waterfall and ponds! I am going to need a couple of tiny bridges and I want a bench right by the waterfall. That waterfall will be tiny, but if I can make it happen it will also be a bit of magic in my little corner of heaven.
Year five will be watching everything grow, filling in gaps or fixing problems, paving paths with stones and groundcover, and making signs, painted rocks, and other little touches to make our garden magical. I might make a few signs for the front yard this year. I really want to make it look nice.
Tuesday I am having some fellow permies over to help plant the front yard, so stay tuned for an update!
