For about two years, I've been toying with what this thread should look like. I have threads where I post about specific projects like
foraging or
building a henhouse. And other people have 'pictures of my garden' threads that I enjoy seeing. So I know there's a place for this kind of thing, but I'm even still not quite sure what I'm going to put here.
We bought 20 acres in the woods of northern Minnesota in February of 2020. We arranged for some professional remodeling while we lived in town and drove up here every weekend to move stuff into the garage and work on the house and yard. We finally moved in in October and sold our other house shortly after. If you include that year that we didn't live here, this is my sixth year learning to garden here. Most of my property is on glacial till. It's about 50 feet deep where the house is and in one back corner it gives way to peat bog, so there must be a gradual raising of the bedrock but I don't have well-reports every 100 feet, so I have to guess about it.
I live on Blackberry Lane and wild blackberry is a significant weed here wherever there's sun that gets through the canopy. I've been sort of informally calling this place Blackberry Acres.
Everything grows very slowly here. I suppose it's because water vanishes instantly into the ground (seriously, I've never had a puddle) and takes nutrients with it. Trees are slow, slow, slow -- spending 2-3 years on underground growth (I think) before they start to produce seriously above ground. I don't know what things will look like fifteen years out, but I have reason to believe once they get going, they go just fine. My annuals hate this place. The most obvious avenue to success is to grow in a layer of compost on top of the sandy soil/turf. I don't love the contents of the only bulk compost option I have, so I've been experimenting with dragging organic matter out of the woods and various mulches. I get some produce, but I'm glad to have a day-job so we don't go hungry.
I'm going to just drop a big wop of images that I've capture in the last three weeks here to get this started. (TIL: there's a 30-picture limit per post!)
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