Ludi's Projects 2019

Reducing the Ashe Juniper population, making new trails, and erosion control brush berms.

We're at the transition between the "Dead of Summer" and the new cool season growing period.  The Cedar Elms are blooming and some Summer-dormant things are beginning to come out of dormancy.  I'm cleaning up the Kitchen Garden to plant cool-season vegetables and to review what did well and what failed.

Starting with the failures:

Strawberries - they hated it right away and died soon after.  Soil not right, probably.

Bambara Ground Nuts - same thing, instant hate, near-instant death.

Crosnes - never did much, soil probably too alkaline.

Eggplant - seeds sprouted but seedlings died or got eaten instantly.

Choko/Mirliton - grew well initially then failed as it got very hot.  Probably in too much sun on the West-facing side of the garden.  Next year I will try them on the East-facing side.

Bell Pepper - not worth growing, they don't produce well here.


There were some notable successes:

Tatume Squash - grew fabulously and produced like mad, more than we could eat.  We shared a lot of them.  We still have over a dozen mature fruit to eat later.

Sweet Potato - I planted these as a ground cover and they did great.  We ate them throughout the season as greens and it looks like we will get some roots as well.

Red Russian Kale - produced well for months, went dormant in the heat of Summer and is now coming back for new harvests.

Sweet Banana Pepper - grew and produced heavily.  Next year I will try to grow them from seed instead of from store plants.

Moringa - my new favorite plant.  I have three growing in the Kitchen Garden and have planted sticks of three more which I hope will root and grow.  I hope to get all these trees through the cold season but not counting on it.  In any case they grow so fast I won't mind replanting from seed next year if I have to.


Some challenges:

Gilbert Fritz Landrace Tomatoes - grew well direct-seeded and produced lots of fruit but got badly attacked by sucking insects.  Soil probably not optimum.

Bearded Iris - I planted a lot of these throughout the Kitchen Garden but the soil there is sometimes too moist for them so some rotted.  I'm moving the survivors to the Food Forest where the soil stays drier.

Apple - I successfully grafted my one surviving Apple tree but it has not grown much at all.  Just not happy.  I think I will give up on Apples.

Moringa is producing pods.  I'm not sure when to harvest them.

Working on a new trail and brush berm

Brush berm along the edge of the old quarry

very cool =)

+ 1 for double fence, totally a great idea. and yeah it makes it much harder to jump, deer are intimidated by it, they can jump high but not wide and high.

one great idea i have heard people doing to stack functions with the double fence- is to run chickens in between the inner fence and outer fence....with a little house somewhere inside there.

in this way they can have the run of the whole circle, right back to their little house, they make use of the space between the fences and most excellent - eat a lot of insects surrounding your garden. as the insects try to get into your juicy edibles in the garden...the chickens can eat them before they get there!

leila hamaya wrote:
one great idea i have heard people doing to stack functions with the double fence- is to run chickens in between the inner fence and outer fence....with a little house somewhere inside there.

Yes, I like that design idea also - and yet another improvement might be to have a dog run outside the chicken run, if the dog is not a chicken-chaser (for instance, our dog is - or used to be when she was younger - a squirrel and deer chaser, but never bothered a chicken.).  No varmints could get to the chickens or the garden.

Tyler Ludens wrote:Bees at the birdbath, with Izzie photo-bombing

I love Izzie!

Completed about 700 feet of brush berm along the top of the quarry and adjacent hillside.

Anole and native Morning Glories on rainwater tank

Multiple brush berms on contour on a slope previously infested by Cedar. Cedar (Ashe Juniper) is a native that behaves like an invasive exotic now that the ecosystem it was adapted to (prairie) has been destroyed.  It is a human-caused problem that humans must repair or likely the land will turn to desert.  I'm finally doing work which I should have done ten or twenty years ago but did not have the tools - good loppers and a chainsaw - or the time and energy.

The problem is the solution:  Too many Cedars become berms on an eroding slope.

Planted a Mulberry, two Persimmons, and three Pineapple Guavas in the Food Forest.

Cleared this mass of regrowth Cedar to reveal a Hackberry, Texas Persimmons, and Possumhaws:

Looks like you have been busy! Is the persimmon fruiting?

The Texas Persimmons are winding down their fruiting season.  It was a very productive year for them.  We never eat many of them, because they are small and seedy, but the wild critters love them.

Tyler, In your OP picture it looks like all the trees are cedar. How do you decide which to cut and which to leave?

I'm using hand tools (small chainsaw and loppers) and cutting each tree individually, so it is pretty easy to keep track of what I'm cutting.  I didn't know there were so many other trees in there until I cut out a lot of the Cedars, because they were completely overgrown and would have eventually been shaded out by such dense growth.  I piled the cut Cedar around to protect the other trees from the deer.  Even though we have hordes of deer, I still keep finding baby native fruit and other trees trying to make it in the Cedar desert.  I have optimistic ideas of what it may eventually look like, reforested with a diversity of trees, in five to ten years.

Lots of trail work this week.  I'm finding some interesting little bits of topography.

Fossil imprints found on the trail:

In the Kitchen Garden, Moringa dripping with pods:

Thread about my big new project:  https://permies.com/t/128295/permaculture-projects/Urban-permaculture-project-San-Antonio

Did you learn when to collect the Moringa seeds?
I moved my big, potted tree in the greenhouse last week, but didn't coppice it like usual because it made seeds this year and the pods are still green (plus it has a lot of new, smaller pods it just started making).
This is the first time it actually produced seeds from the flowers, so I have no idea when I am supposed to collect them, lol.

Sadly the pods froze before the seeds matured.  Today I cut the trees down to stumps and I will bundle them up in burlap and cover with buckets to try to get them through the winter.  The one tree in the food forest I will leave and see if it survives with no covering.

Stump of the largest Moringa in the Kitchen Garden

Lemons are ripening!

9. Redesign front yard Replaced with front yard project at my dad's house in town.

Tyler Ludens wrote:Stump of the largest Moringa in the Kitchen Garden

How old was that one?

Planted as a seed on April 3 of this year.  This variety:  https://www.rareseeds.com/catalog/product/view/id/1317/s/moringa-dwarf/  

That is amazing growth. Wow

This guy did not want to hold still for his photo.

I was able to combine two projects and complete them together:

3. Another Pollinator Habitat  
9. Redesign front yard

New large pollinator habitat in the front yard where some oaks had died.  This area was always a sort of no-man's land and now come Spring it should be filled with native flowers for bees, butterflies, and birds.

Love what you're doing.  And love the thread idea.  I need to get around to starting my own.  Good self-motivation to keep way too many projects on track.

Love your work this year.  my work this year hasn't been as extensive as you have made on your land.  I think about all I have done this year on my own is collection of many brush piles through out my land that I had landscapers move in.  Finished working on my 150 foot swale finally. Other then that have been working more at the jail this year due to many people quitting and me and a few other having to fill in the empty shift work.  most of the stuff I planted this year the rabbits made quick meals of so needing to work on the 350 ft fence around the area I want my garden to keep them from eating it up next year but pounding out the post take a good while through the caliche.  Love what you have done.

Thank you, James.  I have the advantage of only working for $ on the weekends, so the week is mostly free to work on the place.  This will probably change soon so I'm working as hard as I can when at home.  

Wrap-up of this year's projects:

1. More brush-damming https://permies.com/t/51421/Creek-repair-brush-dams [completed]

2. More rock-damming https://permies.com/t/53556/Creek-repair-rock-dams [completed]

3. Another Pollinator Habitat  https://permies.com/t/94376/permaculture-projects/Pollinator-Habitat-Project [completed]

4. Finish fencing the cemetery  https://permies.com/t/87862/ungarbage/Green-Family-Cemetery [completed]

5. Clean and replant frog pond [completed]

6. Plant native tree seeds [completed - planted Osage Orange, Mexican Buckeye, Texas Mountain Laurel]

7. Extend house area perimeter fence [completed]

8. Grow as much food as I can in kitchen garden [completed - grew more than we could eat of several things - Summer Squash, Kale, Arugula, various Onions, Moringa]

9. Redesign front yard  [completed]

10. Learn to graft [completed- successful Apple grafts]


Over all, a very productive busy year!

Am always amazed at how much you get done in a single year, Tyler!  And love your year by year post format - like a virtual diary. Bet is it fun to look back over the years to see how you have progressed.

Thank you, Artie.  I feel like it is only in the past few years that I am really accomplishing anything.  It helps that I am only employed part time these days.

Tyler Ludens wrote:Taro in a half barrel:

Are the rocks heat accumulators/thermal mass?