Barbara Simoes

You are most welcome.  It's funny how, no matter what it's called, all of the various methods of gardening are agreeing on so much.  No. 1 is really about building up the soil and not having neat rows of single crops or leaving soil uncovered.  Diversity  is key.  I was attracted to permaculture because it's almost "once and done" gardening.  Trees and shrubs and perennials make up the garden.  The only part I was leery about was that most would be fruit and I was worried about so much sugar, but I guess that is not a worry.  I've been feasting on asparagus for about a week or two and today I had a haul of wine cap mushrooms...much more to come! Once it starts, I'll be pulling out buckets of fruit through December...if the medlars and persimmons produce this year. Tomorrow, I'll have to go out and grab some rhubarb for the freezer.  Maybe I'll even make another batch of wine with it. The idea is to plant in layers, from ground covers up to trees, understory and overstory if so desired. Anyway, I was hoping that you wouldn't find the above posts 'bossy' but instead instructive, so I appreciated your note!

It sounds like you might be renting and that your landlord didn't give you too much land to work with...maybe he was afraid you'd lose interest and the garden would end up as a pile of weeds; prove him wrong!  If you are renting, you wouldn't want to invest in the cost of trees, let alone the time it takes for them to come to fruition.  I wish you all the best on your new-found passion!

Here are a few more pictures showing the idea of edging.  The driveway and sidewalk are exceptional for this!  I interplanted many flowering plants to entice insect life, and because so many people walk their dogs along here, I needed it to be pretty.  It is on a state highway, so I wanted them to also help act as a filter and if dogs pee on the flowers, that's fine; they act as a buffer from the Regent serviceberries and asparagus and strawberries (which have really filled in and I no longer need to apply mulch or woodchips. The garden is south-facing, so when I talked about layers, I planted trees on the northern edges and have shrubs in front and around them.

My dad had built a sieve using 1/2" hardware cloth that I still use.  It is literally an antique; I'm almost 65 and he probably built it some 30 years before I was born!  The only thing I use it for is my compost.  I set it atop my wheelbarrow and shovel out the compost from the bottom.  Anything that doesn't fit through goes back on top of the pile.  What comes through the screening is absolutely lovely to use.  

As far as your situation, I would say that you don't really need to go any deeper than you already have.  Most annuals don't have very deep roots, and perennials will find their way around what's there.  My advice would be to build up.  Mulch up leaves in the fall and add.  Add grass clippings.  Keep augmenting the soil that's there with available plant material. Mulch with wood chips.  If you think about it, when you harvest food from a garden, you're taking out a great deal of mass.  That needs to be replaced.  My front garden used to be much lower.  By regularly adding plant matter, the level has risen a bit while the quality has improved dramatically.  Before it was just sand; now it's deep, dark soil.  The one exception to this is that you will want to remove any dropped fruit so as to not carry over diseases, unwanted fungus or insect larvae.

The latest research says to not till.  There is a lot of life in good soil, and by tilling it, you're disrupting the micro ecosystem that helps plants thrive. Good old cardboard boxes without labels and tape will also help by keeping in moisture and acting as a weed barrier. (I've read that you want to soak it so that water will be able to penetrate it.)  When you till, you're bringing up fresh weed seeds.  rather than pulling up plants in the fall, some even suggest to leave the roots of plants in the soil to break down, in other words, you'd cut them off at soil level.

In permaculture, you'll hear the term, "Chop and drop" which basically means that you cut down plants at soil level and leave the material right there.  When I harvest rhubarb, for example, I cut off the leaf part and lay it down where I think extra mulch would be helpful. It eventually will break down and feed the soil, but meanwhile it's acting like a mulch and preventing unwanted plants from growing there.

The best advice I can offer is to not have exposed soil.  Some sort of groundcover plant and planting in layers will help with this.  I use strawberries out front, but I also have sweet woodruff among many other plants.  Wood chips are a wonder and can be gotten from local arborists who are eager to get rid of them (usually for free.) They are great for pathways or for putting around plants.  Another thing to be aware of is to edge your garden.  You can spade out and down about four inches or so, so that nothing will cross into your garden bed like crabgrass.  Personally, I edge most of my beds with hosta because it's well-behaved, densely rooted so little can get by, and it's once and done.  It also makes it easy to mow any lawn.  

I wrote more than I thought I would.  I hope you find it helpful.  You can research any of the afore-mentioned ideas: no-till, chop and drop, permaculture groundcovers, etc.  Good luck on your new adventure!  I've included a picture of the front garden just as I started it.  You'll see the hosta and the mulch.  I'll try to add another picture of it more recently after.

About forty years ago, I put in a pool and then enclosed it with a chain link fence.  I find chain link not very attractive, but it's all that was available at the time.  In order to cover it up, I planted concord grapes both on the south-west and south-east sides.  They have been giving me so many grapes each year since; I love them.  Below, and the around the entire perimeter of the fence, I planted daylilies in order to add color and keep grass, etc. from growing and needing tending.  It has worked beautifully all of this time, and there is nothing tougher than a daylily!  The greenery  is maybe knee-high, but the flower stalk will grow higher and sometimes mingle in amongst the grapes.  It is really quite lovely!

I'd have to say snowdrops!  After a very long and dark winter, they pop up  in February, emerging through ice and snow.  The idea of renewal keeps me going until  everything has thawed out. I have some tiny vases and I'll go out and pick some and bring them in.  They smell like apple blossoms and last a remarkably long time.  They bridge the time until mini iris and crocus and the whole parade of bulbs and flowers begin in earnest.  I feel most grateful to them and they seem to self-seed around the property.

I never really do any prep work except to wash the apples and maybe cut them in half.  I then put them in a very large pot with a little water to start and simmer them until soft.  I then ladle them into my Squeezo, and crank away.  The apple sauce comes down the chute into a large bowl that I placed there while the seeds, peels and other debris (stems?) come out the other, where I have a very little bowl.  It's a lovely job for a chilly fall day because it fills the house with the wonderful scent of apples and the humidity helps to warm the place.  

My mom used the Squeezo mainly for tomatoes, but I never seem to have enough to make tomato sauce, so apples and pears it is.  It's the kind of tool I only get out a few times a year, but is so well worth it when I do. I always think it's going to be worse than it is to clean...many little pieces and parts!

My steam juicer is another cooking implement that I love; it takes up a bit of room, but for Concord grape juice, it can't be beat, and as more and more fruits are maturing and starting to bear fruit, I have no doubt that I'll be pulling both out more often. I've heard that juice is the way to go with Cornelian cherries.  I have two plants out back, and this year they both bloomed.  I don't think that they will produce any fruit, or if they do, I think I'll be lucky to get maybe ten cherries.

This past year, I got a decent dehydrator with twelve shelves. I still have the round plug and play one that has no temperature setting, and I'll probably have it going too, when the fruit really is coming in.  I plan to make some apple rings once the apples start coming in earnest. Right now, I use it for making yogurt!  Hopefully, the mulberries will crank out some berries this year; I'd love to try to dry them.  I also ordered some goji berry plants.  I've heard that they can taste like rotten tomatoes when fresh, but I've gotten them dried at the local co-op and love them, so that's the plan with those.

Thank you, Thank you, Thank you!  I'm so excited to have won...that almost never happens.  I am most grateful to both Ethan S. and this site.  I get so much out of it almost every day.  Please know that you're appreciated!

I totally get it.  I am in awe of some of the things you're growing!  I thought pistachios were quite small (They max out by25- 30' and are only 15-30' wide...although they do require a male and a female), that's why I was surprised.  I read somewhere on this site that someone in Utah was growing pistachios, and I think he said he was in zone 5 like I am...that's when I wanted to find out about them.  But, Utah zone 5 and Vermont zone 5 are lightyears apart.  We are not nearly as dry as they are, nor as sunny. What you grow sounds very exotic to me!  Coffee and bananas...wow! You also grow stuff that we can grow in the frigid Northeast.  I'm feeling plant envy!

Welcome Ethan.  I looked up your town and it's a two + hour drive from where I am in Vermont.  Do you have a shop where people can buy your product?  

A number of years ago I'd watched a segment on TV about (I believe) a Scottish farmer who started using wool in his garden and how many benefits he discovered from it.  All of his neighbors started using wool in their gardens with wonderful results after seeing how well it was working.  That's as far as I ever went with it, being I have no real access to sheep's wool. His was used more in a mat form which acted as a mulch and weed barrier. It repelled bad bugs...there were a lot of positives and I know I am missing many that were listed, but to be fair, this was well over ten years ago!

Then, a few weeks ago, I was reading about hair sheep, more specifically, Katahdin sheep who don't need to be sheared, but instead lose their coats every spring. It sounded like an elegant solution! I was thinking that I might want to raise one or two...I only have an acre, and it's in a small village that has a highway going through the middle.  The problem is that I know that they'd become pets and I could never have them killed for food. I was intrigued by the idea that they would help keep the lawn sheared and their "byproducts" would help to fertilize the gardens.  I wasn't sure about whether they would stick to the grass or also eat my gardens and that is as far as I went with it.

I will definitely want to find out more about your product. I always appreciate resourcefulness!

Ulla, I'm surprised that I didn't see pistachios or avocados. Is there a reason why you don't grow them? Are the palms date palms? If I had the climate, these would be on the top of my list! If I ever win Powerball, I'd get some land where it's warm and grow all the things I can't grow in Vermont...Right now, there is half an inch of snow on the ground...Ughh.  

Ulla Bisgaard wrote:While we don’t have as much room as you do, we do have a food forest plus a raised bed garden. The food forest is 3300 square feet, where I am growing mediterranean and sub, tropical fruits and vegetables.
In the food forest I have a wide variety of trees, shrubs and ground cover. The top layer is a pecan tree, cashew tree, prickly pear and palm trees, some being bananas. Eventually my Barbados cherry will also get up there. The middle layer is plum trees, guava, lemons, elderberries,  tangerines and peaches.