Backyard Project: Winter Activities While Waiting for Warmer Days

The last of the flowers bloomed through late fall.

A pleasant surprise was to see the Russian Tea plant flowering in the cooler late fall weather.

We  kept squirrel-busy cutting and storing firewood a few steps away from the fireplace.

The off-cut, untreated, paint-free construction wood had been cut to fit the fire box. We stacked it in a satisfying pile under the propagation table. With plenty of firewood, we looked forward to the cold weather and sitting in front of a fire.

This winter we had a number of significant snowfalls, something that doesn't happen every year.

The cherry tree while still in full leaf and under the Douglas-fir canopy was sheltered from an early snowfall.

The exposed young medlar tree couldn't cope with the wet snow weight. It and the other fruit trees had to be staked.

We took several trips out to Vancouver Island's west coast to enjoy the wild weather.

And now the soil is stirring and the new growth has started.

It feels like it has been a short winter and the garden is enticing me outside more often these days.

Garden Update: When Life Started to Stir From the Soil

Back towards the end of March life started to stir and appear from the soil.

First were the spring bulbs in the Cut Flower bed.

The first to show was the hyacinths with lots of iris leaf growth.

The meadow plants started to put on new growth and the comfrey (left) appeared after being dug under when the irrigation system was put in.

I got the eagerly anticipated call from Verna at Fruit Trees and More that my order was in. I went straight away and picked up an Italian plum and many different shrubs and berry bushes.

I also did a thorough search of one of my favourite nurseries Le Coteau Nursery and found many of the trees and shrubs on my list.

At this stage of planting the beds, I am making the big decision about which tree will anchor the ecosystem in each bed. Next, I look for the compatible shrub layer. However, I was sidetracked by the beautiful condition of these hostas at Le Conteau Nursery and bought a collection for the new bed between the cedar fence and the hugelkultur beds. They settled in straight away and put on new growth within a few weeks.

The locals thought the Hostas looked delicious too but nibbled only a few of the lower leaves.

I had said to Sammy I wanted to plant native Dogwood shrubs. One day he brought around some sticks and pushed them into the ground. Already their lovely red stems are a feature in the bed.

While continuing to build up and protect the soil with a mulch layer, I was focused more on planting while the rains continued.

New Work: Responding to Trees with Stitch

This work began with a cloth that was buried in the soil beside a Douglas-fir tree. Before the cloth began to decay I dug it up.

It was now my turn to respond to the cloth. 

I liked the bits of leaves stuck to the cloth so stitched over some of them to hold them in place.

Now it was the tree's turn to respond. 

When the cloth was dry I stretched it on a hoop and waited for a windy day. When that day arrived I raced out and tied a little paintbrush to the end of a branch. I dipped the brush into a bottle of ink then held the hooped cloth up to the brush. While the wind blew the branch around the ink-filled brush drew on the cloth - a wind drawing.

Now it was my turn to respond again.

It was time for me to add more stitch to respond to the tree's wind drawing.

The cloth needed a backing to support the stitching I had in mind.

I selected a bedsheet stained during its time wrapped around the trunk of the tree.

I found another unstained bedsheet to give a firmer cloth to stitch into.

I trialled different bedsheets to get enough contrast between the 3 cloths. Even though the colours are soft and subtle, contrast between the different cloths is still needed. 

I used my camera to take black and white photographs to check the value contrast between the different sheets before I settled on this combination.

I wanted to show the little branchlets that break off the Douglas-fir tree during a wind storm.

I went though my large bin of 'white' thread to find just the right ones.

I went outside to find one of these branchlets and made lots of drawings of it until my hands knew the angle at which the needles came out of the branch.

Next, I stitched some samples, trialling different stitch combinations. I settled on a made-up version of couching though no doubt someone somewhere has invented this stitch before. I call it a long-armed couching stitch.

Now I have to settle down and stitch every day to make sure I keep the rhythm going and keep remembering my intention with this work.

Backyard Project - Moisture - Mulch - Mulberry

Ron calibrating the moisture meter.

When the rains stopped late June and our dry season began we had to start hand watering all of the new beds. The irrigation system in the backyard had been destroyed by all of the construction and earthworks. The irrigation company we wanted to use was booked up for months ahead but they couldn't start anyway until the next phase of construction was underway. We were a bit tardy on getting that next phase of construction going. I was busy focusing on keeping the new soil beds alive with soil building activity.

After a month or so of me leaping out of bed before 7, every third day, to go and hand water all of the new beds for a couple of hours and coming inside with my PJs wet through Ron got into planning mode and set up a temporary irrigation system. It involved multiple timers, different types of hoses and a range of sprinklers.

In some places, the perfect spot for full coverage by the sprinkler was to set it in the middle of a path. Priorities. It took Ron several weeks of shifting sprinklers, gauging water pressure, testing soil moisture with the water meter and fine tuning the timers before the system could run with less attention.

I have drawn up a moisture level plan for each garden bed with different amounts of soil moisture  related to the number of hours of sunshine and the type of plants to be planted in each bed. The moisture requiremnets are different in each area which added to the complexity of setting up a manual irrigation system.

As some garden beds filled with plant growth the watering needed to be adjusted and all of the newly planted trees continued to need regular watering of a couple of months. We continued to monitor the system over the whole summer.

This year the rains started again with a sprinkle on August 28th and the irrigation system has been turned to manual. I still need small amounts of water now I am into to fall planting.

We are very pleased we got through the summer without any loss of life and now have beds full of deep rich soil. 

Davey Tree Truck full of freshly shredded tree prunings.

Ron made contact with a local Davy Tree company owner who lives near our place. When he has a truck load of good quality shredded trees and prunings he arranges for his truck to swing by our place and dump the load. It is convenient and a cost saving for them and a load of gold for our garden. A win-win situation.

We were finishing off the second mulch pile when the Davy truck came by with a third load this summer.

I must say I am fascinated watching the details of how vehicles work.

This driver displayed impressive driving skills when he backed his large truck in under a tree to dump the load exactly where I wanted it.

Here he is at Control Central with safety vest and ear protectors on. Stabilising legs go down, the cherry-picker hoist is raised, the back door is opened, the tray is raised, the load slides out - all with accompanying different warning signals.

And there it is. I am going to ask Sammy to bring around another load of spent hops from a local brewery to mix into this pile to get it activated and to speed up the breakdown process. 

And... I found a very healthy mulberry tree for the Leaf hugelkultur bed - more details about the tree choice later.

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 - 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.

Kaipara Coast Sculpture Gardens Exhibition 2016, New Zealand

While in New Zealand recently we visited the Kaipara Coast Sculpture Gardens to see the 2016 exhibition.

This was one of my favourites.

After walking along the hydrangea avenue one sees at the end Janette Cevin's 'Hydrangeas'.

Large-scale hydrangea paintings with their glossy highly decorative metal surfaces covered in acrylic and resin are larger than life and draw the viewer in.

Audrey Boyle's 'Kareao (Supplejack)' is made of steel to mimic nature.

Jane and Mario Downes 'Taraxacum Forest' is also made of steel and mimics nature in an overblown scale.

Marlyne Jackson's 'Beneath the Willow Tree'

Reminiscent of yarn bombing, Marlyne works to express the struggles of recent immigrants...

...making a new life for themselves.

Margaret Johnston's 'Sleep Out' is like a miniature Janet Morton installation...

...until one gets up close to it. 

Margaret remembers childhood summers spent sleeping in a pup tent in the back yard and playing beside the sea. She feels sad about how these activities are now polluted by the huge amount of dumped waste from the telecommunications industries. She knit the tent from this waste.

"What are we doing to our land?"