My new permaculture bed has been planted and is now ready for winter. I planted everything around the beginning of September. There are 3 blueberry plants which were bought in the spring and spent the summer in the old garden and 4 sea buckthorns that have been struggling for two years where they were originally planted.
I also planted a bunch of comfrey as a border to keep the lawn from creeping into the permaculture bed that borders the grass. Comfrey can be pretty invasive but since this garden will never be tilled or dug up, the roots won't get disturbed which is how comfrey spreads all over the place. Comfrey is the most important plant in permaculture gardening, according to what I've read. It's a great border plant and when the leaves get big you slash them and use them as a mulch. Because comfrey is so vigorous, it provides a lot of nutritious matter. It is so nutritious for plants that it can take the place of animal manure, it's an insectary plant, used traditionally for wound and bone healing as well as a skin moisturizer, the vigorous taproots push far into the soil and can break up hardpans and heavy clays, and it's a nitrogen fixer. I planted about 12 plants against the grass so next year I'll let you know how that turns out.
The pond only recovered a little and it looks like the plant growth has stopped now. There's still frogs in it but the water doesn't look very nice and has a grayish murky look. I still have the kitchen sink and bath water going into it. Sure hope the plants will make it through the winter.
I've figured out where next-year's permaculture bed will go. I'll be able to install it earlier than this year's as I have much of the material now. I plan to do a bed every year until the whole backyard is a permaculture haven. Next I'll be figuring out what will be planted out in the spring. Happy gardening!
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Friday, August 27, 2010
The Pond
In the book Gaia's Garden, I read about a pond that recycles gray water and decided I really wanted to try this. My brother and I dug the pond on June 1, 2010, and here's what it looked like when it was first dug. It doesn't look like much, does it!
Next we put the liner in, added some dirt, stones around the edge (these three steps are clear in the next photo) and planted some local water plants, especially cattails which are the most important plant for dealing with gray water. By the way, toilet water is called black water.
After filling it up the rest of the way with water, we waited to see what would transpire with the pond. There's one downspout draining into the pond from the roof of the house, visible above, top left. The gray water that goes into the pond comes from the kitchen sink, the laundry, and the bathtub. The pond got black and stinky and the reason for that was the plants weren't enough to deal with the situation. Stopping the laundry wash water from going into the pond fixed that problem.
All the gray water can be redirected into the septic if need be. There is a pipe hidden in the stones that feeds the gray water into the pond and also an exit drain pipe if the pond gets too full. So far this hasn't happened yet.
Fast forward to August. The pond is thriving and looks better and better. Soon after it's creation (I was surprised how soon!) frogs arrived. I wasn't going to introduce any myself because I didn't know how they'd do in the water. It's obvious they love it and do well as there were around 50 frogs before the pond disaster happened. It was "the thing" to go out to the pond and count frogs. Guess we don't have too much action in our neck of the woods!
You can see how beautiful the pond became in the following photos:
Things were going so well I thought I'd try letting the laundry wash cycle drain into the pond again and see what happened but then the mentioned disaster happened in the form of two visiting dogs that swam in the pond and devastated the plants. I never even thought of it because our dog has never tried to go in. I felt like crying! Look how the pond looks now:
Ugh. It's now four days later and the water is just starting to clear. I've redirected all the laundry into the septic and hopefully the kitchen sink and bath waters still going into the pond will be okay. I can only hope that the cattails will somehow start to come back but now there isn't much time before winter for them to get established. It would be way more complicated to plant new ones with the pond full and with all of the mud that's now in the bottom. I ain't goin' in there without hip waders! Today I transplanted some arrowheads and water lilies and sat beside the pond and counted the frogs. They're coming back into the pond now.
The long-range plan is to have what's called a swale come out of the pond and help water a future garden. In hindsight, I wish I would have made the edge more curvy to have created a more varied shape and more bays.
All in all, the whole gray water recycling pond has worked better than I expected and is a favourite hanging out spot for everyone.
Next we put the liner in, added some dirt, stones around the edge (these three steps are clear in the next photo) and planted some local water plants, especially cattails which are the most important plant for dealing with gray water. By the way, toilet water is called black water.
After filling it up the rest of the way with water, we waited to see what would transpire with the pond. There's one downspout draining into the pond from the roof of the house, visible above, top left. The gray water that goes into the pond comes from the kitchen sink, the laundry, and the bathtub. The pond got black and stinky and the reason for that was the plants weren't enough to deal with the situation. Stopping the laundry wash water from going into the pond fixed that problem.
All the gray water can be redirected into the septic if need be. There is a pipe hidden in the stones that feeds the gray water into the pond and also an exit drain pipe if the pond gets too full. So far this hasn't happened yet.
Fast forward to August. The pond is thriving and looks better and better. Soon after it's creation (I was surprised how soon!) frogs arrived. I wasn't going to introduce any myself because I didn't know how they'd do in the water. It's obvious they love it and do well as there were around 50 frogs before the pond disaster happened. It was "the thing" to go out to the pond and count frogs. Guess we don't have too much action in our neck of the woods!
You can see how beautiful the pond became in the following photos:
Things were going so well I thought I'd try letting the laundry wash cycle drain into the pond again and see what happened but then the mentioned disaster happened in the form of two visiting dogs that swam in the pond and devastated the plants. I never even thought of it because our dog has never tried to go in. I felt like crying! Look how the pond looks now:
Ugh. It's now four days later and the water is just starting to clear. I've redirected all the laundry into the septic and hopefully the kitchen sink and bath waters still going into the pond will be okay. I can only hope that the cattails will somehow start to come back but now there isn't much time before winter for them to get established. It would be way more complicated to plant new ones with the pond full and with all of the mud that's now in the bottom. I ain't goin' in there without hip waders! Today I transplanted some arrowheads and water lilies and sat beside the pond and counted the frogs. They're coming back into the pond now.
The long-range plan is to have what's called a swale come out of the pond and help water a future garden. In hindsight, I wish I would have made the edge more curvy to have created a more varied shape and more bays.
All in all, the whole gray water recycling pond has worked better than I expected and is a favourite hanging out spot for everyone.
Saturday, August 21, 2010
Permaculture garden #1 installed
Yeah, I did it! After collecting materials all spring and summer, I finally combined everything to make my first permaculture bed. After the initial prep was done it took two days of hard work to get the bed done.
The bed measures 10 x 15 feet. All the advice I'd read said to not start too big (not more than 20 x 20 ft) as a lot of material is necessary to set up a permaculture garden. I'm sure glad I took this advice! I installed the garden in the backyard where out current row-by-row, rotter-tilled garden sits. The permaculture bed sits two-thirds in the old garden and one third on the lawn. My mom is skeptical about this working out so she's going to keep working her garden the way she's been and I'll concentrate on permaculture. We'll see how the two compare. My long-range plan is to install a permaculture garden every year until the old garden and most of the back lawn is taken over. By then I'm confident mom will be converted to permaculture.
I used what's called a keyhole design as the path in the center is shaped like a key hole. Here the garden is measured out and I'm building up the end in the lawn to have things level.
In this next photo, you can see the newspapers and manure plus the start of the straw.
Here's what all went into this baby in order of layering:
The newspaper part was a little tricky as once I started spreading them out the wind picked up. Thank goodness I had read to have the hose near by and I sprayed things down every few minutes and this worked perfect to keep the whole thing from blowing away.
Here's what the finished project looks like:
My little permaculture helper, Sugar
Resident garter snake checks out the new scene
Tuza and Jupiter like the new digs
Now all I have to do is plant it! There's only a few things I'm going to put in before winter and when I get that done I'll tell you about it. Next post will be about the gray water pond I put in. Chow for now and happy gardening!
The bed measures 10 x 15 feet. All the advice I'd read said to not start too big (not more than 20 x 20 ft) as a lot of material is necessary to set up a permaculture garden. I'm sure glad I took this advice! I installed the garden in the backyard where out current row-by-row, rotter-tilled garden sits. The permaculture bed sits two-thirds in the old garden and one third on the lawn. My mom is skeptical about this working out so she's going to keep working her garden the way she's been and I'll concentrate on permaculture. We'll see how the two compare. My long-range plan is to install a permaculture garden every year until the old garden and most of the back lawn is taken over. By then I'm confident mom will be converted to permaculture.
I used what's called a keyhole design as the path in the center is shaped like a key hole. Here the garden is measured out and I'm building up the end in the lawn to have things level.
In this next photo, you can see the newspapers and manure plus the start of the straw.
Here's what all went into this baby in order of layering:
- 5 wheelbarrows manure
- a 3-ft-high stack of newspapers spread all over
- 12 wheelbarrows of manure
- 5 and a half bales of straw and hay
- 50 5-gal pails of compost
- 2 bales of straw
- 17 5-gal pails of sawdust for the path
The newspaper part was a little tricky as once I started spreading them out the wind picked up. Thank goodness I had read to have the hose near by and I sprayed things down every few minutes and this worked perfect to keep the whole thing from blowing away.
Here's what the finished project looks like:
My little permaculture helper, Sugar
Resident garter snake checks out the new scene
Tuza and Jupiter like the new digs
Now all I have to do is plant it! There's only a few things I'm going to put in before winter and when I get that done I'll tell you about it. Next post will be about the gray water pond I put in. Chow for now and happy gardening!
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
The how and what of it.
 |
| A lovely permaculture garden |
I ordered three books from Amazon.ca:
- Gaia's Garden by Toby Hemenway, an excellent book and is my garden bible
- The Permaculture Home Garden by Linda Woodrow which although has some great ideas, is more appropriate for a hot climate (she's from Australia)
- The Basics of Permaculture Design by Ross Mars which I found mostly useless for my home garden purposes.
Permaculture is the harmonious integration of design and ecology. I decide I have to try it and this blog will be about my adventures in permaculture from the beginning and will follow it's placement and growth at my home with hopefully not too many disasters. I have no formal gardening training, just a love of good, healthy food and the desire to grow my own so those of you who are of the master gardener realm will have to bear with my simple explanations.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)