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food forest

The Dream Takes Form

1 Apr 2013

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Sometimes the path of least resistance wins. I have been fretting over buying compost ever since I realized that the compost we produced over the winter was completely insufficient. How much did I need? Where should I buy it? What kind should I buy? How would I get it? How can I do it was cheaply as possible? I was fretting out loud to my husband after my plant-buying spree on Saturday and as usual, he cut through all of my fretting and said “Delivery means more time for planting. Just do it!”. So I called the only compost company open on Saturdays and had them deliver 4 cubic yards of compost that very afternoon.

before

The next step was deciding finally where the beds were going to go in the food forest. The original plan on paper was a series of raised oval beds around each fruit tree, but that never felt right when I was walking around. So the next morning I raided a neighbor’s pile of sticks set out for the trash and just started laying out paths and beds with hefty sticks as borders. Then I raked the mulch out of the centers of the new beds and piled it up against the edges to hold in the compost. I ran out of sticks after laying out one long bed against the front curving edge and adding a new border to the oval bed around the persimmon tree, and decided that was sufficient work for one day.

newbeds1

Then the boys and some of their friends got to digging. They filled wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow with compost and dumped it into the new beds while I raked it into place. I can’t believe how fast this part went! In less than an hour we filled all of the new beds in the food forest, plus one raised bed in the back. Then since rain is in the forecast for the rest of the week, I started planting immediately:

Seeds: cosmos, dahlias, she gan/blackberry lily, ashwagandha

Starts: half of the eggplants and tomatillos. I’ve never grown these before, so not sure what the optimal planting-out size is. If these survive, I’ll plant out the rest. If they croak, I can let the reserved starts get bigger and try again.

Still to plant: jolokia peppers, madder, han lien cao, dang shen, she chuang zi, jiao gu lan, jie geng, thai roselles, and butter beans and milkweed in all the corners.

newbeds2

Despite my fears of running out of compost halfway, at least half of that giant pile of compost is left… plenty to finish a bed running the length of the food forest area. Hopefully we can get some more of the bed done this coming weekend!

By: Andi Houston Category: Garden Updates, Permaculture Projects Tags: , , ,

Not Enough Horsesh*t

8 Mar 2013

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When we moved into this house garden, the front yard was basically a giant sandpit covered in nicely mown weeds. I was thrilled at the overall lack of grass (there was a funny conversation when we met with the landlady- she offered to sod the front yard and I said “NO!” and then had to explain) but there were several spots with no vegetation that had broken down into sugar sand. Ever since then I’ve been building soil by bringing in as much organic matter as possible.

And it’s still not enough. We are composting every speck of vegetable kitchen waste we can. I keep pizza boxes, which can’t be put in the recycling, and use them for sheet mulching. I drive 45 minutes each way every other month and bring home hundreds of pounds of fresh horse manure in feed bags for sheet mulching and to add to the compost bin. Last weekend I started the next stage in the food forest: planting herbs (pollinator attracting, medicine, food), legumes (nitrogen fixing, food) and vegetables (food, organic matter for compost) around the fruit trees. I had a big compost bin almost halfway full of good black compost.

DSC_1319

This is how far all of my compost went. That’s four wheelbarrow loads of finished compost, raked into a rough rectangle about 4″ deep, around one tree. One. Tree.

The plan was to add beds like this around each of the seven big fruit trees.

I started planting anyway. I planted dragontongue beans and seminole pumpkins in the ends and then covered loosely with straw. The seedlings are already up. I’ll be adding Rosa Bianca eggplants and tomatillos (seedlings in pots are already 2″ tall) and some Chinese herbs and native flowers to the long sides.

seedlings 030813

When we get back from vacation I’ll have to look at the plan again. I’ll probably have to buy finished compost from somewhere and have it delivered. Good-bye garden budget. Plus bring in about double the horse manure I’ve been buying, or find a closer/more regular source of manure to get more composting for use this summer. I feel the lack of a pickup truck quite acutely at times like these.

By: Andi Houston Category: Garden Updates, Permaculture Projects Tags: , , ,

There’s a Fungus Among Us

12 Dec 2012

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One of the assertions in Edible Forest Gardens by Dave Jacke is the difference between the soil in a forest and the soil in a field is the amount of fungus. Fields have more bacteria in the soil since bacteria are better at breaking down tender green plant matter. Fungus is more prolific in forest soil, since many fungi are decomposers that can break down the lignin and cellulose in wood and leaf litter. So one of my soil-building projects is to introduce as many kinds of fungus into the new food forest soil as possible.

Introducing fungi is easy- just add rotten logs! I’ve been scouting my neighborhood and random roadsides for big punky logs and using them as edging. The food forest right now is some fruit trees planted into very deep rough chipped mulch. Introducing the fungus right up against the mulch speeds the breakdown of the chipped mulch into soil, in addition to building the soil under the mulch.

And it’s already working! Here are some mushrooms that just popped up over the weekend. These are mushrooms I’ve never seen before in my yard, so I’m hoping these are new varieties I’ve introduced.

Eventually I want to grow edible mushrooms, so this experiment is fulfilling several stacked functions:

Showing me where conditions are best for growing mushrooms
Inoculating the soil with new fungi thereby increasing soil biodiversity
Inoculating the mulch with new fungi thereby hastening the breakdown into soil
Providing attractive edging of my various beds for free
Providing overwintering habitat for insects, spiders, and reptiles

I’m going to continue adding logs for the rest of the winter all over the yard. My kids think I’m crazy but I hope they finally believe that all of this work is worth it when we are harvesting our first peaches and plums.

By: Andi Houston Category: Garden Updates, Permaculture Projects Tags: , ,

Final Trees are Planted!

27 Nov 2012

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Saturday was my first solo market manager shift at the Alachua County Farmer’s Market. Thankfully it was a slow day and everything went smoothly. When I was walking around chatting with the vendors, I realized that the only fruit tree guy there that day just happened to have all three of the trees I needed to complete my tree layer in my front yard mini food forest.

And they were on sale.

Needless to say, I headed home that day sharing the front seat with the canopies of three baby fruit trees: two kinds of Florida plum trees and one Fuyu persimmon.

Sunday afternoon we put them in the ground. This time instead of planting the trees in a pit of mushroom compost I mixed the compost with the soil from the hole. Hopefully this will give the roots a growth boost and keep them from just going round and round in the compost. I’ll be watering every day for the next few weeks at least, it’s so dry here.

I finally started Edible Forest Gardens. What if they said I was doing it all wrong? Well, so far… I’m doing okay. And the most intelligent thing I can do right now is to stop. Stop planting, stop buying plants. Just sit back, observe, read, study, and plan for spring. Winter is for pulling in and pondering.

So here’s what my little food forest looks like now.

I really want to measure each one and mark them on a doorway somewhere.

By: Andi Houston Category: Garden Updates, Permaculture Projects Tags: , ,

More fruit trees!

7 Nov 2012

6 Comments

Planting trees is a bit daunting. It’s a long-term commitment with a real chance of failure and a slow rate of return.

How do I know if I’m doing it right? What if I change my mind? What if the tree is in the wrong place? What if it grow too big for this space? Am I planting too close to the house? Too close to the other trees?

Huh. Kinda like parenting.

I’ve been staring at this patch of sheet-mulched ground sketching out guilds, plans, and planting diagrams to use the available space, sun, and water to the greatest efficiency. Then I happened on great deals for two feijoa trees and two pomegranate bushes. After a month of dithering and watching them slowly wither in their too-small pots, I finally just screwed my courage to the sticking-place over the weekend and put the damn things in the ground.

Each hole was cut through the mulch and cardboard to the earth below, filled with half a bag of mushroom compost, and then the trees planted in the compost. Then each tree was watered in thoroughly, gently shaking the trunk to make sure there were no air pockets. And now, looking at it all together like this, the trees are following a rough spiral shape, which is one of the planting shapes recommended in permaculture books.

I can’t wait to see what this is going to look like a year from now.

And of course, what comes in at the library the day after I put these trees in the ground? Edible Forest Gardens by Dave Jacke and Eric Toensmeier. Volumes one and two! I haven’t even opened them yet, for fear of finding out that I’m doing it all wrong. But I still have guilds to build between the trees, and three plum trees and a persimmon to complete the spiral.

By: Andi Houston Category: Garden Updates, Permaculture Projects Tags: , , , ,

Underplanting in the Food Forest

23 Jul 2012

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It’s difficult to envision my 4 spindly peach trees as a mighty Food Forest, but I know I’ll have a good start on it by the fall. I thought I was just going to sheet mulch the ground around the fruit trees but it will be years before there’s anything like a tree canopy. That’s a whole lot of sunlight, waiting to be harvested.

Then I came across this article on successful underplanting. So inspired! Even though her focus is on purely ornamental plants, it’s the idea of planting aesthetically-pleasing groups that appeals to me so much. Herbs and bee-attractors and perennial vegetables can be aesthetically pleasing, too. How about a combination of comfrey, thyme, and spanish needles? That would stack a bunch of pollinator-attractors under the trees, the comfrey pulls nutrients from deep in the soil, and the thyme is edible. There are so many choices! I eventually want a “cottage garden” feel- funky, artistic, colorful, even riotous… but not unkempt.

Ever since the one of the gardeners on the Grow Gainesville group suggested perennial peanut as a groundcover under the peach trees, I’ve really been paying attention to the “weeds” already growing in my yard. Now I’m thinking about saving and actively dividing and planting the low-growing weeds that seem to do well in my yard, like spotted spurge, dollarweed, dichondra, creeping beggarweed, and Florida pusley. They’re free, no mowing required, I think they’re all natives, and quite a few attract native bees.  Wherever I dig up the taller invasive weeds that I hate, like the damn nut sedges and the dog fennel, I plant a chunk of perennial peanut. Then I have groundcover that’s pollinator-friendly, diverse, needs little water after becoming established, and only needs to be mowed 2-3 times a year.

The next trees to be added hopefully will be the persimmons, I think.

By: Andi Houston Category: Garden Updates, Permaculture Projects Tags: , , ,