Forest Garden: Winter 2013 Musings, Reflections, Intuition, and Goals

In February of 2012, I wanted to take a permaculture design course (PDC). There was one near my home that was affordable; however, at the last minute, despite finagling and scraping on my part to go, I had a very uncertain feeling. By this point, I was learning to pay attention to my uneasy feelings as a sign that something was not right for me. I listened and did not go. I am not sure why I had this feeling, however, I started paying more attention to the permaculture world as a result of not going, and I did discover some things that were disquieting.

Two months later, I had a chance to visit the farm of the PDC teacher; he needed help planting because he was behind in the growing season due to the demands of the PDC. I volunteered to assist him and was invited to come join him and others in a large-scale project. I was excited; this was a dream come true to finally see permaculture in action. If we got along then I would be accepted as a summer intern. He seemed to be an authority and a leader in the permaculture industry; this time would be fun. Unfortunately, it was not fun. I got to see a side of permaculture that I did not think existed; a side that shows its exclusionary, exclusive nature.

Needless to say, I realized that my exploration of permaculture had to be an internal journey where I learned to recognize and listen to my intuition rather than relying on some authority to show me the correct way. Do not get me wrong, I still want to take a PDC; however, I will do so to expand my knowledge not to fix my desire to dabble. I realized there was nothing wrong with me and my method. I desired to help the world; the world needed many different solutions because of the diversity of people on this planet. I realized that these authorities tried to pander a one-size-fits-all solution by putting everything into a neat, tidy, pigeonholed box. I still want to see how someone actually does forest gardening according to observation, planning, and proper plant placement; however, I only want to see what else is possible. I love my little forest garden and how we evolve together.

Today was a wonderfully warm, sunny winter day. I had not visited my little forest garden in a month or so; but I went today. Our winters are weird here; we are often in the lower 30’s in the day and overcast; but we have very little to no snow. Around mid-December we did have a few inches that stuck around for a few days; that was nice. But alas, it melted :( and we were back to gloomy days with no snow to look at. This winter has been milder than previous winters. My comfrey plants were green until December, and one plant still has a small portion of one leaf that is green. My strawberry plants are still green. Parts of the chicory and marigold plants are still green too. Of course, the grasses are still green in places; but they usually are. The odd thing is that there is some new growth: grasses and I believe some of my wildflower seeds are sprouting. For some reason, the huggle trenches are covered in green grass. I wonder if that area is warmer. I did hear somewhere that decomposition does happen in the winter and if that is the case then that explains the warmth. I suppose I could get scientific and measure the soil temp, but that will probably never happen.

Perhaps the thing I missed the most was the wonderful, peaceful, and focused feeling I have in my garden. The time I spent back there today helped jumpstart my creative visioning of the space; that part was dormant for the winter. This spring, I want to build a playhouse for my daughter. Last year I was concerned about the height of the branches of the purple plum tree that is over her play area. I have not taken a good look at the branches since before the leaves fell off, but today I did. Without the leaves I was able to distinguish the branch patterns and I realized some limbs I could easily remove that would open up the vertical height without sacrificing the coverage of the tree canopy; providing I ask the tree for permission first. I also evaluated the areas I still want to dig hugle-trenches in. Finally, I took a good look at the grasses and weeds that are sprouting and we came to a new understanding.

Last spring, between the time when I did not go to the PDC and when I visited the farm, I had gone to visit my family out of town. I was gone three weeks and when I got back, my garden had turned to a jungle of 18” tall plants. I gave them a haircut, but I did not remove them; I wanted to retain them for soil stability. I did not know what they were. This year, I will not be so hasty to cut them; I will identify them first because obviously they are pioneer plants. This year they are already sprouting and it seems there are even more than there was last year. I also did the same with the grasses; I cut them but left them.

When people saw my garden they thought I was crazy for all the weeds I left growing. I told them the weeds provided many functions. For one, the weeds shaded smaller plants that took longer to get going because the weeds were the first to sprout up. For two, they stabilized the soil and their shade cooled the soil. For three, many of them were dynamic accumulators and provided nutrients to the soil once they were cut down. Remember, my forest garden is on an abandoned organic garden plot that was plowed each year. The soil was loose, dusty, and I am sure it lacked nutrients.  This year, I am determined to identify each and every one of the volunteer herbaceous-layer plants and determine their function.

One area I was always hesitant about were the grasses. I had read many sources that said how bad grasses were because their shallow roots competed with trees. I tried a sheet mulch to get rid of them, but they were persistent. Finally, I gave in because they did help stabilize the damaged soil. This year, I want to get more cover crops going so I can use them as green manure. I also want to plant perennial covers of clover. I hope my comfrey grows big this year. This will be their second growing season; they were still small at the end of 2012 growing season but they were strong and resilient. I also want to plant some daffodil, onion, and garlic bulbs around the trees. I want all these plants to eventually crowd out the grasses. I am not going to pull up the grasses because of the important function they serve, but I want to plant other plants to take their place who can perhaps do a more complete job such as providing nutrients as well as soil stabilization and cooling. This is just my intuition that I do not want to wage war on nature. I know that many “know” permaculture, I might seem incredibly naive, lazy, and whimsical.

I wish to embark on a slight tangent at this moment. This last month my brother in law passed away from cancer. I have my own thoughts on cancer, death, life purpose, and the psychology of physical health, but this post is not the place to go into those philosophies. My brother in law was perhaps one of the most outspoken people about the untidiness and ugliness of my garden. He even went so far as to call all my work fruitless because I was following a pseudo-science. This statement deeply hurt me because he was insulting my baby, my garden, my partner. I do not believe death is meaningless, and despite our differences, I felt his passing gave me a gift. With his passing, this conversation about a pseudo-science came roaring back; emotions, physiological reactions, and everything else involved in that moment. I saw myself standing there and suddenly I was bigger and determined.  I saw myself continuing my forest garden, the learning, and the work. I saw what seemed like a future vision of my garden and my impact on the world by helping the method spread. His gift was to rile me up just enough that I would accept the challenge to educate people that permaculture and forest gardening were real and would help solve world hunger and lack. Thank you, my brother in law, for your amazing gift; you have reignited my courage in myself and this practice. I felt like I was faltering, stumbling, and starting to doubt if there was a point to my dabbling. Because of your wonderful display of doubt and insult, you have contributed to the healing of humanity and its apparent lack. Your love will ensure that more people will also feel the love. Thank you.

I will leave now, with a final thought about trusting myself. Last spring, my new apple tree, a three variety grafted one from Costco, blossomed. One of the branch’s blossoms turned to apples. The spindly, pencil-thick branch sported six baby apples. I was told by several people that I needed to remove those apples because they would break the branch. My husband was the only voice of dissent; he told me to leave them be. He said the tree had its own wisdom and he learned that from watching me follow my intuition in this garden. He said that the tree, in its wisdom, would decide if the apples were too much and it would drop its fruit. I was hesitant because six apples on such a small branch would be a lot of weight; but I let them be. I eagerly watched in trepid anticipation through the summer as the apples got bigger and bigger; the tree only dropped one apple. My husband and I observed a walnut tree branch that was growing into our part of the garden. We knew it was reaching for the peace of our place and wanted to be a part of it. He noted the wooden stilt supports on the branch and how they fooled the tree into thinking it was stronger than it was. We were also given the gift of witnessing a fruit laden branch break despite its wooden supports. It had over extended itself. The apple did not have supports and yet it was not showing any signs of distress. In the late summer, the apples were ready to pick because they slipped off of the tree with a slight twist of our hand. The apples ranged from 1” to 2” in diameter; they were small and not very tasty, but the point for this tree was not to produce tasty fruit but to prove that it could support fruit. I am very thankful for the chance to witness this display of plant wisdom and for my husband convincing me to listen to myself rather than the naysayers.

  

 

Part 3 of 4: Current Year, The Arbor, and Lessons From a Stressed Tree

Through the winter of 2011-12 I did lots of reading and planning. I started understanding a concept called key hole gardening so I restructured my beds to take that shape. I also realized that I needed to hold off on any other plantings and focus intently on building up the health of the soil. I also started learning about making swales; which I am still looking for a good resource on because I am missing something :).

I left to visit my family just prior to this year’s leafing out of the plants; when I came back three weeks later, I was pleasantly surprised. My peach and apple came back, my grapes came back, and my three mystery trees were lush and vibrant. Six of my eight comfrey plants I planted came up too. All of my strawberries made appearances. Even though nearly all of my mail order plants died and my cereal seeds never came up I still felt a great sense of accomplishment that my important plants, important to me that is, all made it through their first year and were happily establishing themselves.

This year, I took a more proactive approach to my weeds rather than the love/hate bipolar relationship I had before. I decided to trim them down as a general ground cover so I would not have bare soil rather than letting them rule until I had enough of them. This  approach of cutting them has been much more effective control than last year where I was trying to hoe them up. It seems my cutting them back is keeping them in check whereas hoeing seemed to encourage them. I am starting to understand a bit of information about succession and thus I have noticed that the variety of my weeds is slowly changing. The first year I had a ton of milkweed. The next year I had milkweed mixed with grasses. This year I have more grass and fewer milkweeds. I also have another weed which I am not sure what it is; but it provided good mulch. Like I said, the weeds are more manageable this year. This could be due to my perception shift of having them work for me rather than trying to have a love/hate bipolar relationship with them. This could also be due to maintenance on my part. It could be due to the land recognizing my intentions. I could be due to succession. It could be due to all of that or none of that, but the weeds are not as much of a problem.

I have made sure that my main plants are well clear of weed invasions that could choke them out. I am not too concerned with the weeds competing with the tree roots because many weeds have deep taproots which go much deeper than the shallow tree roots. I do know that the grasses may be competing, however, so my goal is to eventually have the beds so well mulched and properly planted that they are not a concern. I know they are nature’s attempt to start succession;  however, I want to control the direction of her succession in my garden and perhaps speed it up.

I still irrigate my plants because I have not built any water storage into the soil; like I said I am trying to figure out how to do that. I have noticed, though, that my plants need less irrigation and when I irrigate the water does not run off like it used to. This is not just my imagination. In the areas where I put the leaves this last fall, the water just soaks in; the areas that did not have the leaves the water quickly runs off. So I guess I am doing something right; increasing the soil fertility by giving it dead plant materials is helping increase the soil drainage. From what I understand then, I can deduce that I have probably increased the earth worm population through my mulch which in turn aerated the soil. During the winter I was also regularly adding my extra water kefir grains and their juice; I am not sure if or how that helped, but I was just following my intuition that perhaps they would add to the soil microbial level.

A surprise I was not expecting this year came from my trees: they set fruit. My one year old apple and peach both set fruit and so did my three mystery trees. It was hard for me to determine the identity of these mystery trees because I had the paradigm that they came from the roots of the grove of trees behind my house; it never entered my thought process that they came from the roots of some trees that were on the property. Last summer I finally figured out that they bore a strong resemblance to two trees I never took much notice of; two trees that I thought were both apricots that had been forced to grow under the canopy of a purple tree which I am told is a plum. I was also told that the two trees were different: one was an apricot and the other was a different variety of plum. I was not convinced because the two trees were nearly identical; or so I thought until I got better at observing them. When those trees set fruit this year I had my last piece of evidence to show me they were different and which one was the parent of my trees: they belonged to the green leafed plum tree. Their fruits were smooth and not fuzzy like the apricots (which had fruited before); so I guess they are plums. Their parent or the purple tree they grow under have never set fruit; this year both set a few fruits so this helped me in identifying the mystery trees.

Now that my observation skills have improved, I have set myself to assisting the highly stressed green-leafed plum; I believe it sent out its runners because of the stress. Unlike its partner the apricot, this tree had never reached the light. The apricot fruited because it was in the light; this one never fruited because no sun ever reached it. Whenever it sent out side branches it was immediately pruned. I took it over this year and kept those side branches and pruned out the top ones that were growing up into the purple-leafed plum in their vain attempt to reach some sun. I also tied a particularly long branch I found over to my arbor with the hope that if this branch was in the sun that it would encourage others to follow it too. I did this only four days ago, but I could swear that the tree looks fuller on the side and certain branches seem like they are taking more effort to reach for the sun. Another interesting event is that the apricot has found my arbor and has taken a fancy to it. Now my arbor that was originally for grapes and kiwis will now host apricots and plums growing over the top.

This is an interesting observation for me to illustrate an important concept in the canopy of the forest garden. From what I read, the trees should be placed in such a way that some sunlight is still able to penetrate to the garden floor. The edge of the forest, where it meets a field, is usually the most productive place of the entire forest; the interior of the forest is the least productive. While many plants do quite well in deep shade and many perennials grew up in forests originally, they were always more productive where they received dappled sun. The lesson that this tree showed me was that some sun is still important; I will keep this in mind so I do not plant too densely. I think this may be another reason that I have intuitively held off on getting more plants.

My comfrey are other plants I want to discuss. The comfrey plant that is the biggest is in dappled sun, but high shade. The next biggest one is near that area too. Both of these plants are in my arbor area for the grapes and kiwis. One grape is also growing in this dappled sun but once it grows up a bit it will be in full sun; just the floor is quite shaded. Four other comfrey plants emerged last week; two on each side of my peach, one by the apple, and the fourth in an area I was going to make a bed but later decided against so it is out in the middle of an area with no companions except the grasses. All four are in full sun and they seem to be struggling. Frankly I am surprised that they are still growing and preserving. I did not realize that they needed partial shade to grow so the full sun is probably quite taxing. The ones under the peach and the apple will eventually be shaded but their trees are still very young and quite sparse. I am interested to see what nature will do with these plants; if they will live or die or die back and come back when there is more shade. Next to the comfrey under the peach are some onions growing so this combination is probably greatly helping the fertility of the soil around the peach; I wonder if this will be enough to keep the peach pest free. I heard from Paul Wheaton in his latest podcast at http://www.richsoil.com/permaculture/1777-162-berms-and-cherry-tree-intervention/ that fertile soil, which leads to healthy plants, is enough to keep most pests away. Time will tell I guess. This little interaction along with how the comfreys develop should be interesting to observe. In part four, I wish to espouse some of my goals for this year and I also want to show you some pictures of what my garden currently looks like and a picture of a scale, but not exact, drawing I did showing the dimensions and the placements of my plants.