Hi all,
Here is an 8 minute video of our school garden in Leysin, Switzerland. It focuses on the terracing and other landscaping that we have done so far.
We try to take a permaculture approach and this video shows the first two years of our attempts at the following:
-terracing to capture soil and water
-hugelkultur
-companion planting
-composting
-seed saving
Long-term, we would like to put in some large terraces along the upper parts of the garden, which are currently sunny but unused due to the steepness, and plant more perennials.
Woody perennials that we have planted so far include: elderberry, alder, raspberry, black currant, sea buckthorn, blueberry, & comfrey (Bocking 14). We would like to do apples, hearty kiwi and more, but we need better terraces and more fruit-tree knowledge first.
Almost all of the raised beds are hugel beds, and contain a fair amount of wood material down below the soil. We dug most of our beds deeper than we needed to - often 2 feet or more below the eventual soil surface - with the hope of capturing more water and deepening the active soil horizons.
I have more questions than I can count, but for starters, I think we were a little too aggressive in terms of companion planting in many cases, especially in the lower beds, where the six square raised beds are. It might be that next year we move a little bit away from this, but we will continue to companion plant and engage in crop rotation. We have mono-cropped garlic in certain beds, but we definitely rotate if we do this to discourage white rot and other garlic ailments.
I'd love to hear your thoughts and suggestions.
Cheers,
Hugh
