Mine is a 25 year old horticulturist. She constantly brings home plants from her job that are injured or the clients don't want them anymore. I say, what's the difference with leaves? LOL i know not to pick up grass clippings because people use chemicals on grass but very few in our area spray their trees as most are over 100 feet tall. I live in a bit of a forest though it's funny, it's called the Maplewood but all the trees are oak!
What I find such a joy is the experimentation in the garden. You can try it and see if it works and if not, there is always next year! I have had many volunteers sprout and thrive in my old wood chip pile before I spread it all out. We have Oak predominantly and while it is a strong milled wood, it breaks down extremely fast in natural conditions.
Very cool! If you are going for food value I would just let them grow and have smaller fruits, but you could also prune one plant for a fewer, larger fruits so you can have the best of both worlds.
I have to laugh, my hugelkultur has it's first volunteer sprouting and I just made it! It's a pumpkin I threw in the compost a few years ago. LOL strong little bugger!
I have to laugh Lila. I started picking up leaf bags for the project a few months ago and my daughter was mortified. LOL I said why waste good biomass???
Thanks for the input on the strawberries Ben. I have tiny wild strawberries I got from my mother in law's land in New Hampshire. I am on Long Island New York which is probably similar in climate to your NorCal area. Been up to Eureka a few years ago and other than the Red Woods we have a lot of similar flora.
Glad I could inspire you Lila! It feels really good to build in the garden with things people would otherwise throw away. Good luck!
Thanks Ann, I have been very motivated. The wood was an eyesore and my husband wanted to get rid of it, but didn't want to pay the price. I finally just said, I'll take care of it. I was too far gone in the process when he realized what I meant.
He loves the benefits of the garden, but not the work. LOL no big deal. I love both!
Thanks Ben, I never thought of strawberries. Do you use a specific variety? Ever blooming perhaps? Would appreciate any information. I have a ton of edge area where they could hang down.
That looks absolutely amazing Cindy! Thank you so much for posting photos! I also planned to plant the tomatoes on the western edge. It's almost like planning the layout of a city. Blessing your garden patch and thanks again.
Been a while since I posted, been super busy with life and work and finally last fall started getting back into the garden in a big way. I made a buried wood raised hugel bed which I will post later but my main focus this early spring has been a behemoth Hugelkultur mound.
We had a 130 year old 100 foot tall red oak that died in our side yard. The previous owner had put cinder blocks around it and mounded up dirt to try and level a significant dip in our hollow. I dug out 6 rows from around the tree, going down over six feet but there was even another row that I could not get to. These people even put tennis balls around the tree that were perfectly flat from all the growth. I was so sad to see it go but we had to cut it down.
We got a good deal to cut it down but they wanted another 2 grand to cart it off. The sections were over 2.5 or 3 feet across and ten feet long each. They fell in a kind of V shape with a bunch of large sections in the middle, so I could not dig and roll to bury them or narrow the space. After two years on the ground they were covered in lichen and mycelial growth so I decided I would try and bury it all and build a big bed over it.
I don't have photos of all the stages but I did it all myself, a 5 foot 4 58 year old lady. LOL pretty proud of myself! As the sections were pretty far apart and very tall, I was unable to cover it with soil all the way down to the ground at this point, so I covered the logs themselves with dirt then built up the walls with oak leaf mould and thick branches to make an edge to the bed. Eventually, I will build these edges out in a terrace formation and fill in with soil, but for now I already have a lot on my hands.
I seeded the whole thing with dwarf white clover because the bed is so wide, I wont be able to weed regularly. I have very good compost that I used to mix with our sandy local soil and some clay to make a good topsoil. The soil level on top is at least 3 inches deep all over. Under that is a thick layer of grass and moss cuttings and below that are copious amounts of oak leaves and then small branches, dirt/soil then the big logs. I watered it generously as I built it, making sure to soak it down at each level.
So, my question is this: The bed is over ten feet wide on one end and only 2 feet wide at the other. It is almost 30 feet long (maybe more, I didn't take an accurate measurement) and about 4.5 feet at it's highest point, but it has a lot of hillocks and valleys because of the shape of the logs and brush I used. The bottom faces south west and the top faces north east exactly, measured by a compass. It gets good light even in the summer with full sun on one side in the morning and full sun on the other side in the afternoon.
I want to ask for assistance in a planting chart. I have the following seeds already set with cold weather plants already hardening off. The warmer plants I can plant a bit later, but I need help related to where. It have been VERY cold here in zone 7a with limited rain, but we just had two good days of gentle rain, aka the best kind!
Kale
Broccoli
Mustard Greens
Brussel Sprouts
Beets
Yellow Onions
Gold Potatoes
Peanuts
Red Chard
Giant Green Chard
Bush Beans
Pickling Cukes
Market More Cukes
Red Cabbage
Early Green Cabbage
Kabosh Squash
Butternut Squash
Winter Squash
Pumpkin
Zuccini
Yellow Squash
Watermelon
Cantalope
Dill
Roma Tomatoes
Cherry Tomatoes
Beefsteak Tomatoes
Heirloom Red Corn
I didn't overplant seeds so with the vining plants I only have 2-3 of each kind. I planned on placing posts and trellis on the north side for the tomatoes and cucumbers and then planting things that will be long to develop like cabbages on the next level up with vining plants on the top that can trail down to the south east side as far as they want. The entire piece of land is probably 1/8 acre that hasn't been taken care of since Hurricane Sandy so I covered the whole thing with card board and leaves and will bring in wood chips to make paths and finally beds as well, but right now this is a whole lot of bed!
I do know, based on the building materials that eventually the center will fall in and I will have two more narrow beds covering all the tree trunks. I also know I need to cover the ends of the tree trunks that are sticking out to have more effective decomposition, but at this point I ran out of building materials and used up my entire compost pile and leaf mold pile, so that will have to wait for next year.
Thanks so much for any help you can offer! I really appreciate it and am so excited to get back into the garden!
I just put in a huge brush hugel and planted in two pumpkin plants that grew from seeds I pulled out of my parrot's food. My Quaker loves them. Going to follow some of these awesome tips and definitely follow them next year. I already have a bunch of male flowers on them, but going to do the leader pinning as you said Deb so the two plants spread away from each other. We shall see how it goes!
If you have some natural shade from any trees that could help tremendously. Laying a hugel on contour or slightly downhill on a slope that you have graded so the area is flatter will also help it to hold moisture. Placing it on top of a slope in direct sunlight will mean you will need to water it a ton. The coconut husks should be rather good mulch to keep in the moisture as well.
You could also run it east west instead and make it wider instead of longer so that some plants got morning sun and some got evening sun. I would plant the more drought tolerant, tough stuff on the evening sun side and the more tender stuff on the morning sun side. Most of my hugels are based on brush and are pretty wide as opposed to being long and straight like a cigar.
Make sure you have plenty of wood at the base to hold in moisture, and if you use brush on top of that--get on top of the pile and stamp it down. The less air pockets in the pile, the more moisture it will hold. Lots of compost and top soil if you have it and then mulch over the top of that. I have a very sunny side yard, though I am in NY so the temperature factors are not the same except in August.
As a student of biology I always have a good giggle at the idea that there is a "lack of scientific research" on a subject.
First, most modern research is ONLY undertaken if there is good funding. Where does that funding generally come from? Who does the research serve.
Second, if there is a commercial product that "contradicts" a free, non-patent applicable option, there will be plenty of research supporting the veracity of the commercial product and very little or no research into the free unpatented option. This is purposeful. No funding will be provided for grants to those who want to look into the opposition of a commercial product.
Why would there be no research into dynamic accumulators? Well, their use would threaten the interests of the modern fertilizer industry.
So, no funding goes to that research.
Grants and scholarships same thing. At our local horticulture school there is plenty of merit money from Scotts for horticulture students--they just have to be majoring in turf management....
Do dynamic accumulators work? Yes they do, because the biome web of soil works. As stated above--if you put a decaying item on the soil--it will be recycled. If your soil is full of life and mycorhrizae it will recycle the nutrients to the plants. Thats how the web of soil and plants works.
Great list--love that most of the weeds in my garden that are chop and dropped are on that list and full of nutrients...but as a wild forager, I already knew they were.
Peanuts are notoriously heavy feeders if you want really good harvests. While using it as a biomass cover crop may be appealing, to get good nuts, it needs a lot of nitrogen. Will be interested to see your end results on this one--after all, there is often a lot of difference between permaculture results and what commercial farmers say.
It's funny, I have a ton of hydrangeas and they all do well in my Oak based forest soil, except for the Oak leaf hydrangea. I had one and it eventually died. I guess it doesn't like soil that is as acid as mind. They are beautiful though!
It is definitely a learn as you go experience with permaculture, and this group is a fountain of knowledge.
Sounds to me like most of the plants you have are what is called a "heavy feeder," and this generally means that folks would fertilize them. Since most permaculture folks want to use what is on-site--aka in their yard, they generally use a top dressing (a shovel full in a ring around) of compost.
IF you do not have compost, but have weeds, clip them down and sprinkle those in a ring around your veggies. If you also have spent coffee grounds or day old coffee, you can pour that over the top of the "chop and drop" weeds and if you have some mulch or old leaves, put those over the top of that to help conserve water. Water all that to keep the mulch in place and you should be good to go. Remember not to use new wood chip mulch directly on soil as it sucks up the nitrogen that annual plants need to grow.
This is my process, and others may have different information for you, so I would sit tight and see if other great folks respond.
Giant ragweed is indeed edible and as a wild forager we looked for it in the fall, not for the leaves, but for the seeds, which are indeed useful not only for oil but as a flour/wheat substitute. There is more protein in ragweed and the flour is much more nutritious. Some folks have even experimented with growing fields of it to replace their wheat, but the harvesting is much more difficult I would think.
I can't answer your question about fiber crafts, but it would be interesting to see if it is possible. Good luck!
What a wonderful discussion, not because I have used identifiable biodynamic preparations, but because, as Redhawk shared, I too am connected to our blessed mother Sophia-Gaia deeply and as I tend the garden, I can feel her energy. It has been scientifically measured that the earth emits negative ions, and when we connect with bare feet and hands to the ground, it balances the body, which spends far too much time separated from these ions--think rubber soled shoes.
As a student of biology, it also strikes me when folks "discover" that getting dirty improves the immune system. In fact there is even a healing method that involves eating earth. Getting our hands in the dirt and in contact with the earth's biome also improves mood. Without micro organisms we couldn't digest most foods!
I also love to tinker in the compost. I create brews from food scraps, coffee filters, dynamic accumulators and compost activators and put them into the big compost pile and dang it spikes the process. Not only that. It spikes the insect activity, which spikes the bird activity. In fact, the other day, I couldn't dig in the pile because a family of wrens was indignant that I would disturb their dinner of crawlies with a compost run!
One thing, being on a plot with 20 mature oaks-very old and over 100 feet tall each, I am very interested in the mychorizha relationship. I had one tree that was struggling and so I bedded its base with oak leaf mulch and sprinkled on some sterile soil that was innoculated with these fungal colonies. It took a few months to establish, but now the tree is thriving! Other trees already have the perfect balance as there are wild flowers like wintergreen and ghost pipe that will ONLY grow where the tree roots are that have the perfect fungal conditions. You can't even transplant these wild flowers or grow them from seed. They will only sprout in exactly the perfect place....and that is such a joy...and a sign that all is in balance in my space of love!
I am considering a round of compost tea to spray in my side yard that I am reclaiming after Hurricane Sandy damage--but I must first rid it of invasives and poison ivy--slow process, but on it goes...
Warning....do NOT use commercial bird seed as food stuff. They spray it intensely with chemicals to kill bugs inside the seed and prevent mold so they can store it longer. Please do not eat those sunflower sprouts. As a parrot parent I learned all folks feeding wild bird seed to parrots and how it significantly shortens their lives. I didn't see this post until today or I would have warned you ahead of time.
I spent years growing greens easy as pie--buckwheat and sunflower--you can get a very reasonable supply of human food grade seeds at most health food stores. I know you are in the UK, so the suppliers may be different, but I would seek out human grade seeds for this project.
Good luck with your projects--things seem to be coming along quite well!
Some centipedes exude a poison when bothered and lemurs will grab one and shake it up and then lick it. This gets them high for a few hours, so be very careful with the bugs you crush on your body.
I mix up a bunch of bug off every year. Olive oil then add in lavender, citronella, lemon grass and peppermint essential oil.
Works like a charm, but the turpentine is probably cheaper!
We didn't even have a pond or a pool when some wild mallards decided to nest on our property when we were kids. There was a wet gully and I guess they decided that was enough water.
Mom and dad came back EVERY year. Even our hunting cats could not scare them away.
Do not feed them if they come next year--As soon as they come to visit you can search for the nest before the mother lays and remove it--after a few tries they generally leave for friendlier spots, or they will lay and not brood the eggs.
Good luck with the duck off and the motion sprinklers--no experience with them, but wild ducks tend to come back to where they had a successful brood.
Raspberry and Elderflower Schrub....old fashioned good healthy stuff! My friend makes it all the time. She has a great recipe on her wild foraging blog Hunger and Thirst. Goooooogle it!
A very simple and effective ant bait that I use inside the home and out if needed is as follows:
Get a few old plastic containers with lids on them-punch a few holes low and all around--
Get some cheapo peanut butter and cheapo grape or strawberry jelly.
Put about 1/4 cup of each into a bowl.
Mix in about 2-3 teaspoons of boric acid if you have it--or a bit more of the 20 mule borax powder--mix VERY well.
Put the mixture into the traps in separate piles--I usually put some wet paper towel underneath the bait in the container to keep it moist.
Take a small amount of the bait and smear a bit by the entrance holes in the container. Pop on the top.
Then watch for the ant trails. Find an active trail where they are going back and forth and put the bait traps RIGHT in the trail.
Ants, depending on the species, cannot eat with their mouth parts. Those pincers are for holding things and their actual mouths are extremely small. The bring food back to the colony and feed a slave colony of other insects that provide them with sugary nectar, which is their sustenance. The queen though, she can eat--and they bring her food directly--and if the queen dies, so does the whole colony.
All the best--and yes, the coffee ground thing works well too--just not inside the house!
I am lucky, I actually transplanted in only one sex of nettle plant into my garden, so all I have to deal with is the original roots of the plant and no seedlings, but most folks have both.
Nettle is such good medicine, so keep some of it--be careful when cutting it down, use good gloves, I usually use rubber gloves because of the stings. Keep a small patch if you want to use it for a chop and drop fertilizer or spring collected medicine. Never use nettles for medicine or food if it is in flower as this is extremely hard on the kidneys.
Black plastic over it for a few months should kill it--especially if you spade around it to break up the roots or they will just run out from under the plastic.
The only time I ever visibly saw a deer tick on me was after walking through a meadow. Good thing you checked yourself. I didn't 25 years ago and had Lyme during a pregnancy. I live on Long Island and no one knew what it was back then, but I live healthily to tell the tale.
Once you bury the wood, ticks wont be a bother. Best of luck!
Wow what a brave soul with the spider bites! Yep, activated charcoal helps tremendously!
My favorite gloves are Sears Craftsman men's mechanics gloves. Leather front, web backed with wrist velcro straps. Wash easily and I find them much more pliable than the usual leather garden gloves--plus I like the wrist closure and they are cheap compared to the usual garden glove fare.
I clip it to the ground whenever I see it. I don't pull it--breaking the roots causes new growth----this way I starve out the carbs in the roots and eventually it dies. Works well and playing garden assassin is FUN!
I have 20 full grown oaks on site, so I am never out of leaf mold. I used to think it was a pain in the butt, but now I know better!
I like the idea of using old natural fiber sheets! What a brilliant idea! If you are near a place that uses large sacks of grain, see if they still use burlap. Most places that roast their own coffee beans generally have these big burlap bags and if you ask nicely, they make great foundations for paths or sheet mulch.
I consider Dock a happy friend in the garden. It has a very deep tap root and thus harvests minerals and brings them to the surface, so chop and drop is a perfect use for them, and since they are very high energy, they can be cut back a lot. I always cut back the flower heads so they don't spread too prolifically.
A quick and sure remedy for stinging nettle, and generally they grow together. If you get a sting, simply grab a leaf, chew it up and put the paste on the sting and the irritation will quickly fade. Can also be used for bug bites and poison ivy. The high tannin content also makes it appropriate for bruising.
I have built many a hugel type thingie on my property which slopes considerably, almost like a bowl with a steep edge going up. If I didn't create these "thingies" then the water would pool against that edge. Thought about just digging down and going for broke with a pond, but being in the woods, we are already plagued with biting flies and mosquitoes, so laying hugels on contour works great to slow the flow. Since we have a ton of mature Oaks, some 20 of them, digging swales was out of the question anyway. This works great.
When I plant anything I create one of these on the downhill slope to catch runoff and keep the water for the various trees and plants in place. It doesn't work as well as a swale with a big water lense or anything but it definitely helps.
Some folks really get all weird and think that intuition is "whoo whoo," but the truth is we all have it. The more we use it, the stronger it gets.
When you speak about your innards, your gut, you are actually referring to the solar plexus and this is the center of our power, where our energy field and our innate body connects. Whenever I am presented with a forked road decision, I get quiet, look at the situation and unfold it in my mind as far as I can see. The direction that brings the most relaxation in the body, the most excitement, the most "opening" or thrill in that area of the gut, right below the xiphoid process (bottom of the breast bone) is the decision that best fits in with my path.
I have worked this way for many years and it has rarely failed me, if I get my intellect out of the way. LOL the brain is a brilliant analytical tool, but the intuition knows what it knows too. After so much practice now, I can generally just observe the choices and immediately know which is the right path. Of course, both paths are valid, just one will unfold with more ease and grace and be more ME than the other.
So, I guess I am very friendly and intimate with the great potato!
Big hugs sweetheart and blessings on both your body, your family and your beautiful land.
Not sure if this will help, but my sister gives to a charity called Trees for the Future. I know Africa is a huge place with a diversity of ecosystems but this NGO works to create food forests and support women in various areas of the continent. Maybe they will have a section with suggestions for your part of Kenya or maybe they have an extension by you?
I have to giggle. Just the other day I "found" a wild rose seedling that came up a year after I planted it without cold stratification. The season did it for me. I just transplanted it.
Since you live in a relatively warm climate, I would do as you said, divide the seeds and plant half of them and see what happens. If they don't grow, you will have some time to decide how to cold stratify them. You might even put them in the post to a friend who could do it for you and then mail them back to you?
Grass under young trees is extremely stressful to them. Pull out the grass completely, especially the roots and then mulch over the area so no weeds or grass regrows in the area.
If the holes were random and there was no yellowing I would say it was a caterpillar, such as tiger swallowtail or a sphinx moth, but since you are in Austria, I do not know the insects that are hosted on Prunus species.
Overall the trees look rather healthy, so keeping up with growth, reducing stress etc may allow you to simply prune off the area that are effected and spray with a herbal retardant.
You wont get any this year of course, but allow the stalks to grow and next year they will branch out and you will get berries. I always cut the canes just in time so the tips do not touch the ground and root or they will take over the whole area.
That is definitely mullien. So good for ear aches--save the yellow flowers and stuff them in some good olive oil. Store in a dark place, shake the jar every so often for 6 weeks. Strain...and store in a dark dropper bottle. When an ear ache comes on, warm the bottle in some water and then drop a few drops in the ear and lay on opposite side--sweet relief!
Mullien extract is also awesome to break up mucous for the sinus, bronchitis and even pneumonia. I know a gal who treated a bad case of walking pneumonia only with mullien extract (tincture) and when she started she was bringing up what she called pudding....cleared it right up. I always have tincture on hand! In fact, my bottle is low-I had a plant last year, but alas it is only a biennial, so seed saving is a must.
If you don't mind using black plastic then solarizing works very well and is relatively effortless.
Get thick black plastic used for tarps, NOT landscaping stuff. You want a barrier that will not let water through. Place the tarp over the planting area you wish to reclaim and place bricks or stones around the edges so that it doesn't fly away in a good blow. You may want to mow the plants down to the ground first so they have limited growth, which will already stress them out. Since mint spreads via runners, make sure to place a big enough tarp to cover the edge about a foot or two past where the mint is now active.
Leave the tarp in place for 6 weeks. In direct sunlight and in the absence of any water, the black plastic heats up the ground significantly and kills the plants and generally all weed seeds in the soil. After you are done, simply compost over the area, or mulch deeply and plant whatever else you want there.