Backyard Project: Working in Different Garden Beds

The cherry tree has fruit. 

My sister says to remove all the beginnings of the fruit forming on trees in their first year. I did as she said, except I left one on each tree. The birds soon found this cherry.

I threw a pile of tangled embroidery threads under the cherry tree for the birds to use in their nest building. But I think I need to cut them up into more manageable lengths.

I planted more culinary ground-cover plants for the path in the Gravel Bed garden.

The soil in this garden bed that I worked on a month ago has progressed enough to plant a cover crop.

I dug up the daylilies (Hemerocallis) growing up the driveway. With the nearby cedar tree now shading them out and the deer continually grazing on them they were struggling.

I dug a hole, filled it with water, and added a treat of crushed comfrey leaves before planting the divided up day lilies.

I cut them right back and left the cuttings around the plants to break down into the soil.

I added a thick layer of matured shredded prunings as  a mulch to keep the weeds at bay and the water in the soil.

These lilies with their extensive root system will do a good job holding the soil at the bottom of the slope. They will be in reach for me to pluck the edible flowers for a salad. The hummingbirds love to visit them too.

I was reluctant to add this extra row of pavers to make the dining area on the upper patio more useable. It meant greatly reducing the size of the garden bed nearest to the kitchen. But in the end, I agreed it was needed.

I filled the remaining gap with a compost soil mix then planted everbearing strawberries and chives dug up from other beds and supplemented with a few more from a nursery. I covered the soil with sawdust made when Sammy cut rounds of logs to make the gardener's path.

Strawberries and chives make good companions helping each other to grow well and to stay healthy. 

In the meantime, Ron put a new soil mix into these 2 planters and planted 2 different tomatoes, one determinate, and one indeterminate, one called Beefsteak and the other called 'Sweet 100.' They will like this warm sunny spot. With the concrete and stone walls holding in the heat they should do well if we can keep the water up to them.

Lots of little tasks completed in different beds will all come together at some stage to start looking like we are making progress in implementing 'The Plan'.

Backyard Project: Progress in Zone 3 - The Fruit Hedge

Earlier in the spring we made a start on establishing a fruit hedge as the beginning edge of Zone 3 in the Backyard Project.

The soil was so compacted because it had been the materials storage site during the construction of my studio.

A raised bed in the lasagne style was built up on top of the compacted soil - green then brown. The layers still weren't broken down enough when Sammy brought the trees for the hedge so he planted them in their positions but left them in their pots. 

It was an awkward shape to water without watering the bare ground inside the 'U' shape at the same time so we decided to use it as a place to make more soil.

We marked out a path with untreated boards left over from the studio construction to smother any grass that might be tempted to grow. In the middle of the 'U' we built up layers of paper, cardboard, coffee grounds, grass clippings (until the mower broke down), and shredded prunings in alternating layers with a good watering between each layer.

We had Douglas-fir chips left over from making garden paths so we put the rest on top of the wooden board path which will provide fungus for the nearby soil but we can easily pick it up again if we want to make another path in the garden.

We put a border between the path and hedge soil bed using hucked logs from the last 2 trees that had to be cut down. Hucking - a forester's term for cutting logs into manageable lengths - makes them small enough for me to carry in my wheelbarrow from the forest to this bed and I can lift and maneuver them in place.

By this stage, we decided the layers in the hedge bed had decomposed enough (the soil temperature had dropped below cooking level) to take the trees out of their pots and put them in the soil.

Fig trees alternating with 2 feijoa/pineapple guava trees.

I gave them a light prune and a deep watering.

Now they can get down to growing while they spread their roots.

This is the beginning of Zone 3. I haven't designed any more of this zone because I am focusing on implementing my plan for Zones 1 and 2. It is always such a temptation to keep developing new areas before the bulk of the work is done in the zones closer to the house. We want to work on manageable chunks, getting the beds to the stage where they look after themselves before moving further out. Otherwise, it might all become overwhelming.

Backyard Project: Soil Building Continues

These are a few of my favourite tools that I haul around to work on building up soil in different beds. Not shown are my trusty wheelbarrow - a birthday gift from Ron, and my pruning shears that I always wear on my hip when gardening.

I have planted 4 different types of potatoes to add biomass to the soil. Any potatoes we harvest will be a bonus. 

A deep layer of straw covers the soil. Drip irrigation hoses have been laid around the beds to help with the watering until the irrigation contractor can come and install an irrigation system.

This fooled me. At first, I thought it was a drip hose out of place. Then it moved.

Once I realised what it was I was pleased to see her. She and her snakelets were residents before the backyard project began and I was concerned the recent rock bed construction had chased her away.

We are getting used to each other. She doesn't slither away as quickly anymore and will often just stay put and smell me with her flickering tongue while I work. She appears to have made a new home deep down between the new rocks.

Snakes are a sign of a healthy garden. They eat slugs, frogs, and insects and leave the plants alone. 

I am experimenting with mounding up different materials around the potato stems. When the light is blocked out new potatoes are encouraged to grow out of the stem. Soil is usually mounded up but there is not much extra so I am trying to find other materials on hand that will do the trick.

I am beginning to understand that gardening success is a combination of active observation and experimentation.

Rough and Loose, Green then Brown - Two Gardening Mantras

An ant nest found under a mulch of coffee sacks. The ants were forced to move their colony because I was ready to work on the soil in this bed.

While attending the Organic MasterGardener course Ron and I learnt two very important mantras that continue to guide me as I work at building up the soil in all of the garden beds.

Coffee sacks and a woolen blanket have protected this soil bed until I had time to work on it.

The mulch is removed. The ants are moving out.

A deep watering of  the soil to encourage the soil organisms to get active.

The first mantra is 'Green then Brown'

To make compost whether insitu ontop of the soil or in a trench, or in a compost bin the materials need to be layered by alternating different types.

First the green. I harvested most of the comfrey now the flowers have finished and they are no longer visited much by the bees. It is high in minerals the tap root has brought up from deep in the soil and also high in nitrogen. Comfrey is the 'green' and was the first layer put on the soil.

Next I added shredded branches that are high in carbon as the 'brown' layer. 

The 3rd layer was coffee grounds that are high in nitrogen, a 'green' layer. Technically the grounds I pick up from coffee shops are also high in carbon because there are lots of paper products such as filters and paper cups in the bags. 

So the mantra goes, 'Green then Brown, Green then Brown' which translates to 'nitrogen-rich' then 'carbon-rich' then 'carbon-rich' and so on, until you run out of materials.

Time for the 'chicken scratch' while repeating the 2nd mantra, 'Rough and Loose, Rough and Loose.'

I make like a chicken, lightly mixing the layers together while leaving the surface uneven and light. I avoid standing on the soil as much as possible. This method creates the ideal conditions for supporting soil organism activity.

After a deep watering and the addition of  a final top mulch layer, the bed is ready to hand over to the soil organisms to do their job of making a rich friable soil. 

I ran out of time so put the coffee sacks, blanket and cardboard back in place but will replace it with shredded plant material as soon as I can.

'Green then Brown' - 'Rough and Loose'

Blackberries, Irises, Horsetails and Teasels in Walter's Gorge

 The lawn mower is broken. The grass alongside the road is getting long. The blackberry is getting out of control.

I spent a couple of hours cutting back the blackberry that was reaching into Walter's Gorge threatening to cover the beautiful flowers growing there. Himalayan blackberry (Rubus armeniacus) is classed as an invasive species here in BC and it does invade at our place.

Japanese Water Iris (Iris ensata)

Two years ago after Ron and I had cleared the blackberry jungle out of the seasonal stream that flows into the pond, it sat bare until my sister and brother-in-law came to stay. Sister Donnel, who knows a lot about plants (as does my other sister Megan Rae) looked at the site and pronounced "Japanese water irises and ferns." Brother-in-law Walter did the back breaking work digging up and transferring large ferns to the sides of the stream.

We, plus our mother (a phenomenal gardener) went shopping/hunting for the exotic sounding plant and found 2 varieties.

This is the second year of flowers and they get larger each year. They are obviously very happy with the conditions - soil continually moist to flooded depending on the season, acidic soil/water - runoff from the forest up the hill, shade.

I'll have to ask my sister when I should divide the plants up to keep the flowers large.

Horsetail (Equisetum arvense) - behind the iris - has also flourished. The seeds of this ancient plant were waiting deep in the soil for the right conditions. 

It is a most unusual plant as well as being one of the oldest on the planet. During the Carboniferous dinosaur age, horsetail grew a hundred feet tall. The Romans called it "hair of the earth." 

The hollow stems with 'bad-hair-day' fronds are 30 plus percent silica and a valuable source of the mineral for other plants. Steeping the plant in a barrel of water for a few days produces a rich mineral tea for other plants. 

Horsetail is said to be the best product for cleaning pewter and for polishing wood and glass without scratching. That is the silica at work. I have yet to try it. It all goes in compost and teas and hasn't made it inside the house.

With blackberry on the right, irises and horsetail in the middle, the teasel has grown up on the left side of the bank.

Teasel (Dipsacus fullonum syn. D sylvestris)

This magnificent plant grows to 10 feet tall. It is fascinating to look at its parts in detail.

The leaves cup the rainwater and hold interesting collections of things. I have been trying to catch with my camera a frog bathing in the water. This teasel bath has been known since ancient times as the bath of Venus and said to be good for warts among many other things. 

The most well known and commercially valuable part of the plant is the dead flower head. I'll tell you all about that once I have some pictures of the flower to show you.

With all of these interesting plants to observe it is no wonder I get lost for a few hours while out in the garden.

Permaculture Plants - Comfrey, the Queen of Plants

Comfrey (Symphytum x uplandicum)

I have planted lots of comfrey in the garden for many reasons. Perhaps the most important one is that it fulfills one of the three ecological gardening principles - succession. Except for the Cut Flower bed, all of the beds in the Backyard Project were new with bare soil. By using comfrey as a first coloniser/pioneer plant it helps prepare the soil for other plants, soil organisms and insects. It starts a progression of life.

Comfrey is an insectary plant in that the flowers attract bees to the garden. Slugs devour the leaves while they work to break down organic matter in the soil. The slugs are a food magnet for birds, frogs, snakes and many other creatures needed in a garden.

I put my shoe beside a leaf to show you how big the comfrey leaves are getting. The plant has a long soil-busting taproot capable of bringing lots of minerals up to the surface. As the soft decaying leaves quickly decompose these minerals are released and made accessible to other plants.

The large leaves cover the soil holding in moisture while providing a cool home for the slugs and many other soil critters.

This is the 'mother bed' under a big leaf maple but it is not working to plan. It is dry under the tree, is not irrigated and the hose doesn't reach this far so I don't expect them to thrive over the summer.

The plants that are thriving and have grown the biggest leaves are in locations that correspond with the sunniest places I found when I did the 'Sun/Shade' analysis map.

Here is the comfrey growing along the bottom edge of the Leaf hugelkultur bed. The leaves are small and the plants are reaching towards the sunny south. But they are still doing a good job building up the soil by making mulch.

Whenever I plant plants I don't need to put a compost soil in the hole first. My sister showed me how to pick a few comfrey leaves, crunch them up and put them in the bottom of the hole before putting the plant on top. It is a mineral boost for the new plant.

I make up a herb tea for the plants by putting comfrey, nettle and horsetail in a big tub of water and leaving it until it has decayed. The plants and soil love this tonic.

I harvest the comfrey three times over the spring and summer laying it on the soil as fertiliser. At the end of August, I leave the plant to grow leaves to protect itself over the winter. 

I haven't even touched on the medicinal or culinary uses of comfrey - I'll save that for another post.

Comfrey well deserves its title 'Queen of Plants' in the permaculture garden.

The happy result of what I thought was a mistake.

A few years ago I planted some irises near the edge of the pond. During the winter rains, the pond water level rose and covered the irises. I thought that was the end of them because they would rot. But no, each spring they grow back out of the pond mud and put on a magnificent show.

Backyard Project - Planting More Trees

Sammy, the owner of Pacific Ecoscapes , is asking me where I want the tree planted in the Gravel Bed Garden.

It is the focal point of the bed so its position is important. I have been holding off from planting more in this bed until I can what the tree looks like. 

We discuss where it could go and settle on its location.

Sammy has to scrape back the gravel, cut a hole in the filter cloth, and dig out the soil below before settling in the tree.

Strawberry Tree/Koumaria/Koumara/Pacific Madrone/Madrona (Arbutus unedo)

We considered many different trees before settling on the Strawberry Tree. It needed to suit the site - sunny, hot, dry thin well-drained soil. It needed to be multi-functional to fit with the permaculture philosophy - edible fruit for birds and me, lots of summer biomass (falling leaves) to act as mulch on surrounding beds over the hot months, falling fruit to feed the soil, a high resting place for birds and a shady spot underneath for me, tannin-rich bark for me to use as a fabric dye. All of these functions made it the winner. Design-wise it is a smaller version of the larger nearby Arbutus (Arbutus mensiesii).

It is an evergreen but like its cousin the Arbutus, it drops half its leaves over the summer. The guava-nectarine tasting fruit takes a year to ripen so the tree has ripe fruit and the next season's flowers both at the same time over late autumn into winter giving birds food into the cold months.

Sammy brought the feijoa/pineapple guava trees for the hedge. I have been growing in pots fig cuttings collected during a Gaia Organic Master Gardener pruning lesson. The soil in the new bed is not yet ready to plant in so Sammy left the plants in their pots and placed them within the hedge area. It is good to be able to better visualise what the hedge will look like.

Fig - Dessert King 

This has proven to be the best cultivar for our climate. Our summers support a plentiful very sweet brebus crop but there are not enough frost-free days to mature the 2nd crop.

Feijoa/Pineapple Guava (Feijoa sellowiana)

This yummy fruit bearing small tree will make up most of the hedge. The green fruit ripens and falls in the autumn. It has soft spiky scarlet flowers which will give the hedge a punch of colour.

Sammy brought and laid some top soil for the 2 meadow beds in front of the studio.

He also planted a native apple tree out the front by the letter box.

So lots of new planting that I now have to keep watered while we wait for the irrigation system to be installed.