Disclaimer: I love woods and planted most of my acres to woodland (future fuel supply...)
There are lots of saleable edibles that one can grow in a woodland, particularly one with lots of edges, I'm thinking fiddlenecks and ramps for example. Many berries like or prefer a bit of shade from hot summers. Valuable medicinal herbs like shady, leafmould rich woodland floors (American ginseng), Fungi as others have said.
Chickens are naturally woodland birds and 'forest eggs' can go for a premium in some areas due to animal welfare values. Pigs too in mature woodland (!)
Ben Law makes a living and grows a small garden in his woodland in the UK - mainly through charcoal sales, but also has various nut trees: sweet chestnut and hazel. He also makes a lot of woodcraft products from the interesting bendy bits of wood that are not good for timber. If you do end up buying the property I recommend his 'woodland way' book, and there is an America based making money from woods book too, maybe Coppice Agroforestry? although I haven't read that one.
Without more information about the woodland it is difficult to be specific, but there always has to be an element of 'cutting ones cloth to suit your purse' or some such.
I've never been able to put my heart into a house that didn't feel like home to me, so I can't recommend buying somewhere you don't want to live unless you see it as a development opportunity to sell on again when the time/price is right.
Hmm, I must check on my yucca - I think it overwintered OK but I don't remember spotting it recently. Hopefully it is doing OK on my drivebank still....
I'd forgotten yucca was good for fibre Amanda, so thank you for starting this thread. I had read that the flowers make a good edible vegetable (perennial veg yay!) and they seem to grow OK here on Skye despite the strong salt winds, so that's my main reason for trying the plant.
THanks William! At the moment lack of water is not an issue for me....
William James wrote:Other issue is that you will never get rid of them so choose your space wisely and if they self-seed watch out they will grow everywhere. Even the root-propagation, Bocking14 or whatever, will regrow elsewhere.
Hmm, yes I'm thinking of making a 'comfrey circle' like a banana circle, but maybe putting it on the outskirts of the garden might be wiser than the centre. In the middle would look great, but would limit planting options in future without quite bit of work. I was thinking if I got a nice big pot with holes around the outside I could plant the whole circle in one. It would have to be a very big pot though, maybe I'll have another think
First things - progress on the dog resistant fence:
It's basically done except for the gates. I used nice straight poles stuck in at about a foot spacing, and then wove thinner bits of willow, hazel and whatever I had handy to make a bit of a barrier. It doesn't need to keep wildlife out, and probably won't stop a determined dog, but ought to be good enough for my purpose.
completed dog fence
I'm intending to plant a hedge outside this in early spring to replace it in time, act as a pollinator refuge and wildlife resource, and maybe additional harvest of food and mulch. To clear the ground a bit in preparation I'm going to move scrappy twiggy bits from my coppicing to a windrow just outside the new fence. I've already tidied up some hedge prunings that were where my future hobbit forge is going, although I used those to reinforce the fence a bit.
The last bit of bed I ended up planting rye grain. I had grown this for the first time last year in my simple farming growing area and it did really well! This year it is late going in, and the plan is to stop it seeding this year (it is probably too late in the year anyhow) see how it overwinters and let it go to seed next year. Theoretically it should get a bigger harvest that way and I'll see how well it protects the soil over the winter too. So far it is growing pretty well.
I've now mulched all the potatoes with hay cut from my trackways down the hill. I haven't earthed them up, so we'll see whether I get many green ones.
mulched potatoes
However things aren't growing so well The broad beans started well, but are very short and the leaves are yellowing with dead blotches. The mooli radish went straight to seed (I suspect it would have been better after misummer) the other root crops are tiny still. It's a little early to tell how well the peas and runner beans will do.....
I think the potato/manure experience should have been a warning to me that the soil wasn't as good as I'd thought. The dark colouration, that I took to be a sign of organic matter from the animals overwintering quarters, is probably just residual peat in the soil. It has just not been ploughed quite so much as the larger gently sloped area down below the escarpment, so more of the peat is left in the soil. 200 yards above me on the hill it is basically peat heath and bog, so I ought to have known really!
all planted and growing
I want assess how acidic the soil is, as I feel that could be probably a significant part of the soil problem; more acid soils 'lock up' the nutrients and make them less accessable to the plants. Then I need to come up with a plan of remediation. I feel it will involve boichar, seaweed and bracken in fairly large amounts. I'm reluctant to buy in lime, my soil down the hill has improved drastically without it, but I may try some crushed cooked bones as well. One thing I have noticed in my polytunnel (just next to this area) as well as in parts of this garden are little flakes of rust, like an archaeological find rusted away (I'll see if I can take a photo). I've worked out that they must be a soil horizon of some kind due to the constant inundations and rather suggest a lack of drainage. As it has been broken up and mixed in as a result of the earthworks for the tunnel, I'm assuming that this will not still occur. We've not had a super dry summer, but not as wet as it can get, and I haven't noticed standing water as yet. I'll keep an eye on it over the winter and see if I think additional drainage will help. Increasing the heights of the beds is a simple option, as they are just a little higher than the paths at the moment.
If I don't chop my comfrey it grows huge, flowers and flops over....and then grows again from the centre! I was hoping to get some harvest of mulch from the comfrey, but you're right - cutting back will reduce the barrier effect, although I'm less worried about seed germination than buttercups and silverweed carrying on growing. It will take a year or so for the comfrey to get established, but I'm thinking I may try this in the centre of my new kitchen garden and see how it works
Christopher Weeks wrote:I wonder if you could just plant one of those, wait for the topple and then pile the center up with your dead weeds and mulch and whatever, causing the comfrey to colonize outward and allow the cavity at the center. Though that wouldn't have the earthworks element on display in Nancy's diagram.
You could get a ring if you had a well established plant and tried to dig it out (ask me how I know!) That would also give you a central depression!
I'm not sure which comfrey variant I have but I'm certain it is one of the sterile ones - it does tend to regrow from bits of root left behind though.
Ac Baker wrote:Is there a list of climate zones with suggested staple perennial plants somewhere?
Good point! We did start making a list of potential Backyard food Pump plants and their characteristics here If you have any more thoughts on additions reply to that thread. These are not just perennials, but a few self seeding annuals and biannuals too which people have found going feral in their growing area.
I'm not sure we have a single list of general perennial vegetables, although there is the whole perennial vegetables forum with some pretty good threads. I suggest pfaf.org perhaps?
I've accidently made a terrarium!
I was using this lovely bottle to collect bits of crockery I had dug up (just because...) It was just stuck on the windowsil and this happened! The fern seem quite happy
A graduate scientist turned automotive engineer, currently running a small shop and growing plants on Skye: turning a sheep field into a food forest.
The broad beans started well, but are very short and the leaves are yellowing with dead blotches. The mooli radish went straight to seed (I suspect it would have been better after misummer) the other root crops are tiny still. It's a little early to tell how well the peas and runner beans will do.....
