Yard progress

Thanks, Jodi, for the reminder.  I've been wanting to share what I've been doing in my yard, but I'm usually out in it and not inside at the computer.

I have to start by saying that while I've done a large amount of work myself, every single person in my family has helped out.  Special thanks to Elijah who seamlessly moved from his Fenner project to this one and to Joseph who was a major contributor to the hugel mounds.

I'm attempting to put some of my new permaculture knowledge to use here.  Maybe I should have waited until I made a plan for my whole yard instead of doing it piece meal like I am now.  On the other hand, Fall is the best time to build new beds that I will want to use in the Spring.

Our very first move was to cut down a couple of nice trees.  This is the stump of our flowering plum which was a lovely purple-leaved tree.  However, we are going to be planting native trees and plants where ever we aren't growing vegetables and fruits, so this had to come down.

This is a garden bed that never produced very well.  The plants I tried to grow didn't thrive.  If I grew from seed, they were small and spindly and this wasn't a function of not enough light.  I am using a technique called sheet mulching here where you lay down cardboard or newspaper and they layer organic materials on top.  The organic materials break down into soil while the cardboard underneath keeps the weed seeds from seeing the light of day.  Native flowers will be planted here next Spring.

Here are four, almost five, of the plots where we will be planting a small orchard.  The mulch marks the spot.  In the coming months, I'll be buying expensive bags of organic materials to add to the soil under the mulch to prepare the ground for planting.

Along the fence is a mounded bed.  I dug about 15 inches down from the level ground.  Then I placed lots of wood and brush inside the hole.  Finally, I covered it with soil and organic material with mulch as the top layer.  This is going to be a bed for Honey Berries.  On the far left, I've used sheet mulching to prepare the ground for a Red Cedar tree.

If you look closely, you can see these mounds.  These will be for blueberries.  I gave my pine tree a hair cut to get needles and branches to put inside these mounds.  I've added more needles which I collected at a location outside our yard and sulphur.  I'm trying to get acidic soil here in which blueberries will thrive.  I'm growing Crimson Clover on this mound to keep the mound form eroding.

These are my two hugel kultur mounds.  Hugel Kultur has been a practice in Germany for centuries.  It's the practice of burying wood under soil for increased water retention and nutrients.  The one on the right is the one we built first.  It contains our two trees we cut down as well as five pine trees that Joseph cut down several years ago.  This mound has sprouted some oats or wheat (not sure what kind of straw we have here) as well as some clover which act to keep the mound from eroding hopefully.

This is my small bed of Comfrey.  This is a special Russian Comfrey that grows sterile flowers.  Comfrey is known to come in and take over anyway, so any help we can get to keep it from spreading will be good.  Comfrey has many excellent properties.  First, it mines minerals from deep in the earth, bringing them to the surface for use by other plants.  The leaves are excellent in compost, compost tea or comfrey tea.  These teas can be used as folliar sprays for garden plants.  This is just a nursery bed.  These plants will be spread throughout the yard in the Spring.

This hole is the beginning of a swale, which is an area to catch and hold water.  It turns out that our yard slants down toward the east and also toward the north. I'm building this swale to keep the water that falls on our yard, in our yard.  I'm also building it because Nathan wants to grow various water loving plants.

This is the beginning of another sheet mulching.  I'll be continuing this all along the fence we share with our neighbor.  This "flower" bed has gone quite wild over the years and I'm going to use it as an area to grow woodland native ephemeral plants.

Here is the one and only gourd plant that grew larger than three inches.  This one is still too small to use for the intended purpose: bird houses.  Maybe next year we'll get them in the ground earlier and have more luck.

Finally, my two cute trick-or-treaters.  Sariah went as "Sariah-the-scientist" because I neglected to get the materials for her to make the hummingbird costume she wanted to make (again, maybe next year).  Brigham went as a security camera.  He got lots of nice comments.

When his birthday rolls around, he's planning for security camera cupcakes.  Good luck to me on that one! :)