What's Happening with the Permaculture Orchard

Getting an orchard started in the woods has been a challenge. This was done a tree at a time as we added only one or two fruit trees each year. For each tree, it took a grubhoe to break through the thin but impenetrable layer of forest floor. Next, a hole was dug, another slow process as roots and rocks had to be contended with. Backfill took a large amount of compost. Each tree typically loved its new place while the roots enjoyed the amended soil. And then, after the first year each one of the trees stopped growing.

Looking down the slope from the grapevines: the fruit trees blend in with all of the other foliage.

So, forest floor between the trees was broken up with a grubhoe, and roots and rocks pried out. Again, lots of compost was worked into the infertile soil. Since, composted manure has been added each year. Using some of the ideas of permaculture, a variety of plants have been put in. 

Bee Balm is looking good.

Different plants are supposed to act as dynamic accumulators, provide mulching materials, or attract beneficial insects. The variety chosen for the area includes shrubs, edible perennials, ground covers, and flowering plants. Click here for a post on the orchard in 2012.

Murphy inspects the orchard from the berm of the swale.

Several years ago I made a swale, click here to read the post. It is now a pathway and a convenient place to toss branches and twigs fallen from nearby trees. Whether it functions as a permaculture swale, retaining moisture from rain and snow melt and gradually releasing it into the soil is anybody’s guess. We can only hope that this happens because it is too far to lug water to the orchard. The trees have to make do with moisture from rain or snow melt.

The pile of rocks from making the swale is now a stone wall.

Happy to say, the orchard is looking better this year. The plants under and around the trees are growing beautifully. No longer stunted, they are now growing to their normal heights. The fruit trees have new growth and their leaves look healthier.

Red clover and catnip look healthy.

Gardening is a process. This year I'm working along the edges of the orchard to try and get some flowers started. More process… there's lots of rocks in the way! 

Comfrey is tall and flowering.

It is a challenge to start fruit trees in the woods. You might think they'd be right at home where other trees grow, but that is not the case. It appears that fruit trees are as fussy as garden vegetables. It took years to get those to grow too. Maybe one of these years we will pick fruit in our orchard. We are looking forward to that! -jmm

The Tea Garden

What a pleasure it is, all through the growing season, to go outdoors and gather a leaf of this and a flower of that to brew into a steaming cup of herbal tea. Through winter, it’s nice to have a stash of the same herbs dried and ready to steep.

Because I had been gathering tea parts from multiple places, eventually I thought to move the herbs all into one place. After preparing a new area with dirt and compost, and lining the edges with rocks, I gathered the plants and tucked them in.

Too early to be flowering, this rose has blue-green leaves.

Already at the back of the tea garden was an Alba Alba, an antique rose that in flower is wonderfully aromatic. It’s long arching canes bow gracefully over the tea plants. It’s not out of place since its petals and hips often end up in cups of tea.

It has occurred to me that the tea garden follows some of the concepts of permaculture. One of them is that it is not monocultural. Plants that are suitable for tea may include a wide variety of types. Another idea is that of incorporating plants of varying heights, all the way from ground hugging mint to a nearby tall maple tree. And finally, the plants are types that, in flower, attract bees and other beneficial insects. Every yard needs a tea garden!

Here are some of the plants in the tea garden.

Peppermint, Mentha x piperita. Central to the garden, mint has a place in every cup of tea. It is allowed to spread through and around the other plants. A sprawling plant, its stems grow roots where they touch dirt.

German chamomile, Matricaria chamomilla. Has feathery leaves. Use the button-like flowers, which have a subtle apple-like scent, for tea.

Catnip, Nepeta cataria. Easy to grow and its bushy habit, that becomes more sprawling than bushy after the neighborhood cat finds it, results in a plentiful supply of leaves.

Lemon balm, Melissa officinalis. A lemony scented leafy plant that grows like a bushy shrub about two feet tall. Looks similar to catnip, but has slightly shiny leaves.

Bee Balm, Monarda didyma. Use both the leaves and the flowers for tea. 

Stinging nettle, Urtica dioica. Looks similar to both catnip and lemon balm, but grows taller than either. You can tell the difference by its spinier leaves. Wear gloves when picking it.

Anise hyssop, Agastache foeniculum. Has a flavor similar to licorice or anise. Grows about three feet tall, like a leafy shrub.

Red clover, trifolium pratense. Use the blossoms.

Wild strawberry, Fragaria vesca. Use the leaves.

Catnip, lemon balm, stinging nettle, bee balm and anise hyssop are of the mint family, characterized by square stems, leaves growing on opposite sides of the stems, and flower heads consisting of multitudes of tiny flowers. All of these have similar leaves and growth habits. Volatile oils in their leaves and stems are the source of their aromas and flavors.

Some of these plants have medicinal uses, and you should do a little research to find out what they are. Be careful to NOT use just any plant for tea. Pennyroyal, for instance, is a herb with a strong mint-like scent but comes with warnings of severe health problems, and even death if ingested, and the oil of this plant can be deadly even if used externally. If in doubt about a plant, google it!

To brew a cup of tea pour boiling hot water over the picked leaves or flowers. You can crumple them first to help release the oils if you like. Experiment with mixtures of plant types and with quantities. Allow to steep for about five minutes, then remove the herbs and enjoy your tea. -jmm

It’s so... well, convenient! An Update on the Salad Garden

In fall of 2011, I posted about starting up a new salad garden. Click here for the post, and here for a 2012 update. Our salad greens were being picked from different garden areas and you had to wander around a lot to get from one to another. My thinking for the new garden was to get all or most of the salad veggies into one place to make it more convenient to go out and pick a salad. Kind of like a supermarket aisle entirely devoted to salad, except ours would have lots more variety and cost a lot less.  

I made the salad garden in the shape of a keyhole; that is, a three sided garden bed with a central pathway. It could be called a horseshoe garden if the pathway were a more rounded shape. The idea of a keyhole garden derives from permaculture. It makes better use of a garden-able area than rows; maximizing plant-growing space while minimizing pathways.

For a salad garden a keyhole seemed like a perfect shape. You can walk into it with your picking basket and pick your salad greens along one side of the path, and wander out while doing the same along the other side. This little trip should theoretically fill your basket with lettuces, greens, green onions and whatever else is growing at the time for your daily salad.   

Before making the garden, I had visualized it, mentally walking in and picking. I do this with all of my new garden areas. Visualizing, for me is a lot easier than drawing a plan on paper; a little map showing the shape of the garden bed and where to put each of the plants. A paper plan almost never pans out in reality. There are always changes. Visualizing lets me rethink things on the fly, and is a system that works. It’s only afterwards that I draw a diagram of what I did. See our earlier post on keeping a notebook. The notebook helps to keep track of what was planted and where.

The Salad Garden as viewed from the back

The salad garden that I visualized, and then shoveled and raked into existence is working very well. It’s pretty much like I had imagined it. You can walk in and pick chives, lettuce, and arugula along one side. At the far end, yank out a perennial onion and snatch some lovage leaves. On your way out, snip some pieces of upland cress, nab some nasturtium leaves and, if you like, pull up a singular clove of wild garlic. There’s also Giant Red Mustard (great stuff!), and some self-seeded cilantro is starting up. 

So many flavors all in one place!. We gather a salad every day, and this garden makes it easy and a real pleasure. It is functional, handy, and convenient. We do love a good salad, and now it’s so easy to pick! -jmm

Stinging Nettle and the Keyhole Garden

If you’ve ever grabbed a weed to pull it up and for your efforts got a handful of nasty stinging sensations, you may have met up with nettle, urtica dioica. This experience was my first intro to this plant. That was many years ago, and since moving from the farmhouse to here in the woods, there hasn’t been any. None rode along with the menagerie of plants I carted in. It might not have survived anyway. Nettle needs really good soil.

The Fedco catalog offers nettle seeds, and last year I bought a packet. You might be wondering why anyone would plant a stinging weed. I seeded it partly to have more weed variety than the plantain and dandelion which established themselves in disturbed soil back when the house was built.

Another reason is that it is thought to be, in terms of permaculture, a nutrient accumulator. This is a plant that draws nutrients from the soil bringing them to the surface. After the plants die down in fall the leaves can be left in place to provide mulch. Or they can be hauled off to the compost pile. Either way, the nutrients recycle.

Nettle is full of stingy little hairs

I planted the nettle seeds at one end of the first of our two keyhole gardens, click here for the first post on the keyhole garden, and here for the following year. The nettle got off to a slow start. The garden was built on top of a generous layer of pine boughs. They had not yet broken down, and none of the numerous varieties of plants I had stuck into the garden were thriving. It is said of nettle that you can tell how good your soil is by how well it grows. I kept adding compost, manure, and dirt to the keyhole as I'd done all along.

Last fall I pulled up the patch, roots and all, and contributed it to the compost pile. Like comfrey and horseradish, root bits left in the ground become new plants. A whole new crop emerged this spring.

And this year, things have changed in the keyhole garden. For the first time I can dig into the soil without the shovel being deflected by a layer of pine boughs. There are blackened bits remaining, but for the most part they have dissolved. My small nettle patch shows signs of robust growth, as do other perennials in the keyhole.

Nettle is a herb with many uses. In a future post I’ll fill you in on some of the fabulous things that this plant is known for. Meanwhile, you might consider putting nettle seeds on your shopping list. -jmm

My Experience with Hugelkultur

One of our many interests is that of permaculture. There are many ideas all lumped together under this topic, and one of them is hugelkulture. This is a German word meaning “mound culture”. Hugelkulture consists of  building a raised garden bed on top of branches or other woody matter. A google search turned up the idea of using logs, whether green or rotted.

I started one of these beds about 13 years ago, entirely unaware of anything called “hugelkulture”. Our land is forested, and that has meant finding uses for branches and logs as we expand the garden and open up areas for pasture.

The builders of this house left a pile of logs alongside of an embankment. It was quite the log pile, stacked up against a slope and extending two to three feet above ground level. I had no use for the logs.

The area seemed like a great place to put a perennials garden, but moving heavy logs was more than I wanted to do. So I thought maybe I would toss some dirt onto them, and then stick some plants into it. It seemed like a way to disguise the logs and start a garden bed at the same time.

This log is much smaller than it was

It took a lot of dirt. With grubhoe and shovel I excavated an embankment producing wheelbarrow loads of stony sand. Load after load was tossed onto the logs. I worked in some compost, and planted a few perennials. They did not grow very well.

Over the years I’ve had to continually add more dirt. Apparently the dirt sinks down into spaces between the logs. Holes would suddenly appear. I kept adding more dirt. Wheelbarrow loads of it. I had to take out the plants and then replant them afterward.

After about ten years the logs started to rot. I’d walk on the pile and things seemed squishy. Areas again started to sink. Holes reappeared. I tossed on dirt, added manure or compost, and re-situated plants. Around this time the plants were starting to look a little healthier.

Now, after 13 years the log pile garden has shrunk considerably. The plants are doing very well. I’ve even put my favorite shrub there, a Japanese quince. This year the quince is flowering for the first time since it was moved here 13 years ago.

The logs are still there. A couple of them show above the dirt in spite of all the dirt and compost that were piled on. The logs appear to have shrunk and their surfaces are rotting. I expect the pile will continue to shrink.

Gardening on rotting logs is said to take advantage of the ability of rotting wood to retain moisture and release it gradually to the roots of the plants. One might take note that mulch does the same thing. What is interesting is to observe over the years how wood incorporates into the ground. What I’ve seen with rotting logs in the woods is they dissolve down to almost nothing. If you thought you were getting a raised bed out of your soil covered logs, it’ll be a shrinking one.

I’m not discounting the hugelkulture concept. I actually think it’s a wonderful idea. Certainly, in an ashes to ashes kind of way, it is a part of the permaculture philosophy. There is a little bit of work involved, but in the end it seems like a fine way to use up old logs. -jmm

Forest to Farm, and Permaculture: What's Happening in the Orchard?

Our orchard is only a handful of trees, one of many ways that it is different from larger commercial ones. We are homesteaders, not farmers, and our goals are less about production than simply being able to grow some healthy trees that will eventually bear fruit. Since we are operating on a very small scale, we have the freedom to experiment with some permaculture ideas. Click here for an earlier post on this. 

A fruit tree and companion plants

A swale is one of many ideas of permaculture, and last year I dug one, click here for the post. The fill has settled in; branches, rotting logs, leaves, and raked-up forest litter, and the swale now serves as a pathway. Beneath the surface, decaying organic matter absorbs water from heavy rains and winter snowfall. The moisture then leaches gradually into the soil to benefit the fruit trees.

Last year I planted some aromatics and bee-attracting plants; lemon balm, lemon catnip, feverfew, anise hyssop, bee balm, and some comfrey and daffodils. In the berm (raised edge) of the swale I planted yarrow.

This year, I’ve added two shrubs; a highbush cranberry, and a red twig dogwood. These, along with the aromatics are intended to encourage birds, butterflies, and beneficial insects. Biodiversity is a concept of permaculture that is largely unknown in commercial orchards.

A new Red Twig Dogwood shrub

The shrubs create a new canopy layer. Canopy layers are a permaculture idea about mimicking the different heights of plants in the forest. The flowers, the shrubs, and the fruit trees create three distinct layers of vegetation due to the differing heights of the plants. The sixty foot tall oak tree in the center of the orchard is a fourth canopy layer.

The orchard was fitted into an area in the woods, and there are signs that the soil is trying to revert back to forest. Ferns are doing their best to take over, and much of the ground is becoming unworkable after all of my hard work with a grub hoe. It’s a struggle to get the forest to back off. The forest and cultivation appear to be two wildly different habitats.

The comfrey is flowering

To help condition the soil I tossed out sorghum and Canadian field pea seeds, which I had done last year also. This year I also seeded some Dutch white clover, and some going-to-seed dandelions. And planted some clumps of day lilies. I added a few food plants: chives, perennial onions, some asparagus, and some turnip seeds. Which of these will thrive is a guess.

Lime is essential for converting the acidic forest floor into an environment that is sweeter and more friendly to cultivated plants, and has been liberally applied, as well as wheel barrow loads of organic cow manure.

There’s lots going on there. Who would have thought that forest to farm is such a tough proposition? More on this as things progress... -jmm

The Salad Garden is Coming up Chives

Last fall I wrote about starting a new garden. This is a permaculture-inspired keyhole garden designed for picking ingredients for salads.

Chives and Upland Cress

It’s coming up chives. And perennial onions, lovage, and upland cress. And some cilantro. Around the edges some giant red mustard are starting up. Perennials and reseeding annuals will anchor this garden. Things we won’t have to plant every year.

Gil has put in seeds for lettuces, arugula, epazote, cilantro, and root parsley, increasing the diversity.

Cilantro and Chives

I'm thinking of moving some ramps in too. Ramps are wild garlic. Years ago I planted a garlic clove from the supermarket. It grew, but as a spindly, single tiny bulb, not cloves. The plant went to seed and more bulbs grew, and the clump spread a little more every year. I was told it was no good as garlic. I ignored both the advice and the clump. Now, I find in places like Bon Appetite magazine recipes calling for ramps. Isn’t that funny. So I think I will move some into the salad garden.

The little keyhole garden makes me happy. Not just that it is bordered on two sides by roses and peonies, but also that I like to walk into it. And then out of it on the same pathway. It will be fun to pick salads here this summer. What a clever idea it is. Really quite the place already. It’s growing on me. -jmm

Making a Swale

The ditch after I dug it out

Let’s get the question out of the way first. Maybe you are wondering, what is a swale? To answer this most simply: a swale is a mulch filled ditch. And now you are probably wondering, what on earth for? 

There’s some good reasons for having a swale. Where rain is scarce or erratic providing lots of water in part of a year but little or none in others, or in microclimates such as parts of a yard that are notably dry, a swale can help mitigate these conditions. In a heavy rainfall, water washes across the ground. Some will be absorbed by the soil, but in one hot, sunny day all or most of the moisture evaporates leaving the soil dry. Rushing water also can also carry away topsoil and valuable nutrients. 

A swale catches large amounts of water from spring snow melts and heavy rains. The compostable materials that fill the swale absorb the water like a sponge. Over weeks, and even months, the absorbed moisture gradually releases into the surrounding ground. Nearby plant roots then have a slow, steady supply of moisture. 

The usual and expected pile of rocks

A swale is  considered a useful strategy for the practice of permaculture. I first found out about them in Toby Hemenway’s excellent book, Gaia’s Garden. I was impressed to read that swales and additional water-holding strategies have turned small areas of desert into lush, green year round gardens. 

After reading about them I was curious to find out whether swales could be useful here. The only way to find out would be to actually construct one. So i made two. The first was made last fall above the blueberry patch. The patch is on a low slope and the blueberry bushes have always seemed a little bit too dry. I made this swale about 12 feet long. 

The newer one is shown in the photos, and was made this summer. It is at least twice as long and runs across the top of the fruit orchard. The orchard is on a hillside with a much steeper  slope than the blueberry patch and growing in sand and rocks and no soil, the trees at the top of the slope seemed to be drying out too much between rains. This area is out of reach of a hose, so a swale sounded like a good solution.  

Filling in with organic matter

Using a grubhoe and a shovel I made the ditch for this swale about a foot and a half deep by about two feet wide. In the design of a swale the downhill side of the ditch should be built up higher than ground level. This raised edge is called a berm. 

After admiring my new pile of stones (I’m sure a good use will be found for them), I got busy filling in the swale. Since we are in a forest there were plenty of materials all around. I started by dragging rotted logs and dropping them into the bottom of the ditch. Rotted logs are heavy being full of moisture already, and so I’m guessing they will be an ideal swale filler. These were followed by wheelbarrow loads of raked up leaves, dead branches, and other forest litter.

Figuring that the materials will pack down over time, I stacked them higher than ground level. To get them to pack sooner, I walked back and forth on it a few times. As a final touch i seeded the berm with leftover garden seeds. -jmm

Keyhole Garden

...whats happening with it now

Last fall i wrote about starting a keyhole garden. The term, keyhole, refers to the garden's shape- it's designed to maximize growing space while minimizing pathway. Specifically, a continuous three sided bed wraps around a central pathway. More growing space means you can grow more plants, and less path translates into easier maintenance.

Last fall's post gave step by step instructions for creating sheet mulch. The sheet mulch becomes a growing medium for plants. This is a way of starting a garden bed on top of sod, or sand and rocks as we have here. No digging, no tilling. We've done this many times to make our raised beds.

Anyway, I ended the post with no idea of what to plant there. And since, I've thought about it. In a series of three posts: Perennial, Vegetable, Forest gardens I noted a few differences about these three different areas. For me, it stands out that the annual veggie garden is really unsustainable. I want things to be simpler- gardening is not my only passion! Wouldn't it be great to grow food plants in a way that is simpler, less fussy, easier to maintain? Like, say, the perennial flower garden which, here, anyway, seems to thrive on total neglect. And so, an idea hit me: the keyhole will be a perennial food garden.

Well, this was either revelation or inspiration, not sure which. Or maybe both. So off I went with a shovel and a bucket digging up pieces of food perennials that we already have- chives, perennial onions, lovage, and rhubarb. I'm not putting asparagus in this garden because the layers of mulch may not be deep enough.

This is one side of the keyhole- as you can see there's not much happening here yet. 

And, I'm putting in some reseeding annuals to scatter themselves in and around the perennials. I figure that if a plant is hardy enough to be there from one year to the next, then it qualifies for this garden. On that note, I scrounged for whatever is coming up and found upland cress, giant red mustard, claytonia, mache. Turnip, rhutabaga, kale, and parsnips are some more options I may add later.

The keyhole from the stone wall in the back of it. 

And, finally, I planted seeds for Good King Henry, perennial kale, and New Zealand spinach-  plants that are suggested for permaculture. These are new to us, and we'll keep you posted on what transpires with them.

The plants and seeds were stuck in with no particular plan. I'm very sure that plants will be arranged and rearranged until it all gets right. And that is a big difference from the veggie garden- those nice neat rows do not fit this space. -jmm

Forest

...The Forest is Not a Garden

In two previous posts I talked about some differences that I've observed between two types of garden- a perennial flower garden, and the mostly-annual vegetable garden. One type of garden is food for the soul, and the other provides actual food. 

Another place where plants grow is the forest. The forest seems to be nature's idea of a garden. It is an entire ecosystem consisting of trees of varying heights, shrubbery, bramble, ferns, fungi, etc, all supporting a whole gamut of wildlife. It is a complex and intricate place.

I found in the book, Gaia's Garden, (by the way this book is stuffed with you-gotta-read-it info, and I'll blog about it another time), the author talks about "features of natural landscapes" , meaning forests, as having "deep soil that is rich in nutrients and organic matter."  But this is not the case in our forest here. 

"Deep rich soil" does not exist in these woods. The "topsoil" is not soil at all, but is instead a blackened layer about an inch or two thick topped with fallen leaves, and intermixed with rotting logs in places. This layer lies atop sand and rocks. The trees seem to be rooted into veins of sand that keep underground rocks from bumping into each other. In some places, ledge forces roots to run along the surface of the rock making a tree liable to fall over in a strong wind. 

The forest thrives regardless of what it is rooted into. Its mostly perennial plants are uniquely suited to the climate. It is persistent- forest will eventually take over a neglected yard or field. 

The forest is more like the perennial flower garden than the mostly-annual vegetable one as described in my two earlier posts. But there are still major differences. The flower garden does not have the continuous forest floor- if you dig out a plant you are not struggling with a mat of intermingling roots. Compost can be made in the flower garden. In the forest compost takes on the texture of dry airy fluff, and myriads of tiny roots begin to pin it down and then it becomes indistinguishable from forest floor. I know this from having tried it.

The forest bears no resemblance to the mostly-annual veggie garden. And planting veggie seeds in the woods, I can tell you for a fact does not work. There's no mixing of the two types of "garden". Even fruit trees do not thrive in forest areas without completely hacking up the ground, adjusting ph, and adding soil amendments. This I can tell you for a fact also.  

The forest has continuity, and the annual veggie garden does not. The individual rows of vegetables do not appear to mesh- one row is isolated from another, and many plants are not hardy enough to continue from one year to the next. We do not till, but many gardeners do, completely disrupting the soil life, further shaking things up from one year to the next.

So, why this comparison between our perennial flower garden, the mostly-annual veggie garden, and the forest? The answer is simple. It's about observation. It's about what can be learned by slowing down just a bit to think about those things we might notice in our own spaces, if we do in fact slow down and take note. And then we may come to notice how one area of a yard may be different from another. 

Observation is a first step in adopting and using the principles of permaculture. And permaculture is all about creating a healthy, sustainable, food-providing environment.

It is interesting to think about how different types of gardens are distinct from one another, how they function differently, and how the forest does not resemble a garden. Have you thought about how "gardening" may be functionally different from one area to another in your own yard? 

The keyhole garden we started last fall is one of our forays into experimenting with permaculture. Next I'll fill you in on what is happening with that. -jmm

The Keyhole Garden

The Permaculture Series - exploring the concepts of sustainability: gardening that takes care of itself with less work and better productivity, one topic at at time.

One of permaculture’s many ideas is the “keyhole” garden, referring to the shape of it. One could instead call it “U” or horseshoe-shaped. A keyhole garden consists of a central pathway surrounded on three sides by garden beds. The shape is intended to maximize growing area while minimizing pathways.

We decided to try this idea. Our chosen space is about a 13 x 14 foot rectangle. We first took out some surfacing tree roots, and the movable rocks. The rocks are now a small stone wall behind the area, building up the back of it that had been a downhill slope. This leveled the area and will help to keep rainwater there. Rain is our source of water for this. It is out of reach of the hose. And, too, another concept of permaculture (there are many!) is of finding ways to retain and use rainwater, and we'll get to that in a future post.

After preparing the space we then figured out on which side the path should enter and how wide to make the path (wide enough, we decided, to turn a wheelbarrow around). The next step was to create garden-able soil by layering compostable materials. Our other garden areas were also started with compost instead of digging. The materials are built upward from ground level instead of digging downward (there’s too many rocks here to dig). This works beautifully- our plants have done very well in it.

We began with forest land for our keyhole garden, but if you have lawn instead, the same idea works just as well. We’re giving the layering process below in case you’d like to try it too.

We're not sure yet exactly what we want to plant. We want to try some of the plants touted by permaculturalists. These include Good King Henry, fennel, perennial kale, seakale, and other edible perennials. We'll think about this through the winter as we go through seed and plant catalogs. The "perma" part of permaculture means permanent, indicating the use of perennial or reseeding annuals that are hardy in our climate.

Here is how to assemble the layers, and I should say there’s no need to be a perfectionist about it. If you’re starting with lawn, cut the grass as short as you can get it.

1. Spread any soil amendments that are needed to improve your garden soil. Here, we need lime to convert forestland, and we like to add alfalfa pellets (this is sold as bunny food at the farm supply).

2. Top the amendments with a sprinkling of manure.

3. Next is a crucial layer: newspapers and/or cardboard. Use the black and white newspaper pages, not the shiny ads. Layer them 1 - 2” thick and overlap the edges. If you are shading out lawn be sure to make the layer thick to prevent any sunlight getting through. This layer and the ones beneath it will attract worms which will eat through the papers and cardboard. Worm manure is excellent for your plants.

4. Now add about a foot of mulch material. This is an important layer that will break down into a hefty amount of compost. We are using pine boughs from some pine trees we just had taken down, and some raked leaves. Scrounge for what you need for this layer- trimmings from shrubbery, grass clippings, raked leaves and so on, or go to the farm supply and get bales of straw (not hay which can reseed the area with grass).

5. Top it off with a layer of compost. You can sprinkle on some dirt also if you have some handy.

The layers will break down into compost. The keyhole garden will not require tilling or digging. The ground beneath the layers will loosen and become enriched by compost and worm activity (if you have sod it will rot and loosen up). Although we are told you can go ahead and put plants into this right away (plant them with compost surrounding the roots), we prefer to let ours age over the winter. In spring we’ll let you know what we’ve decided to plant in it. -jmm

A Day at Common Ground Fair

Common Ground Tees

 

The Common Ground Fair in Unity, Maine is put on annually by MOFGA, "Maine Organic Farmer's and Gardener's Association." It's a 2-1/2 hour drive for us, a ways off the highway, and into the countryside of mid-Maine. The drive for us is well worth it and we try to get there every year. Most of the topics we are interested in are represented: gardening, fiber arts, homesteading, livestock, timber harvesting (the low impact variety), and green technology. There is a farmer's market with organic produce, candles, chutneys, herbs. American Indian culture has a huge tent, and there are arts and crafts booths galore. Fedco Seeds always has an apple display of heirlooms grown in Maine, one of my favorite things to look at. The fair goes for three days but we make it a day trip and take in all we can. One day is not enough to take in a few lectures AND see all the exhibits, so we always save some stuff for next year. 

This year we attended talks on Permaculture, “Poop de Jour,” and Keeping Chickens. 

Permaculture lecture

Permaculture was an excellent lecture that covered lots of territory (as I blogged earlier, permaculture has lots of topics), and the speaker happened upon a topic we have been wondering about- how to terrace our orchard. We now have a better idea of how to create swales and pathways, and to introduce a herbaceous layer on this hillside area. We’ll blog our orchard activities as we get this project going.

“Poop de Jour” sold us once and for all time on human-ure. We’d been pondering that rather magnificent conglomeration of underground architecture commonly called a septic system, and coming up with a lot of reasons to not have one. We’ll be blogging our “green” house ideas as they materialize (a project that is a few years in front of us yet).

The lecture on chickens didn’t really apply to us so we left early. We’ve been putting our research more towards ducks anyway.

Here are some photo highlights of the fair:

A drumming circle

The political action tent

Plowing with horses

Timber framing demo

Tomato hoop tent, marigolds and chard

The fleece tent

Parade: "We all Live in the Garden"

We did our shopping on the way out buying cabbages for sauerkraut (we'll blog sauerkraut making next), a pair of stainless steel wine glasses (good for traveling), admiring many fabulous-looking cucurbit varieties (squashes and pumpkins), marveling at the twelve different varieties of garlic at one booth, and sampling some wonderful chutneys at another. And now we're looking forward to next year's fair... -jmm