Tuesday, May 13, 2014
Baby Digging In
Digging In
It has been a while since we've updated our blog, mainly because we have been hard at work. So many things to tell… lets start where we left off.
Our designer, Erik Blender, was hard at work on our design as well as pruning trees for orchards. It is a busy time of year for tending to newly growing things.
We found someone to deliver compost to our driveway for a good price and on April 11th, we got 7 yards dumped on our driveway. We now had two giant piles of wood chips and a huge pile of compost.
Right after the compost was delivered, I headed out to a plant sale at Glenn Walters Nursery and bought many of the plants that our designer suggested for us to get to use in our fruit tree guilds and other places in the yard. I bought: (5) Gaultheria (wintergreen) a ground cover, (3) hydrangeas, (4) ceanothus for apple tree guilds, (1) weigela to attract pollinators, (5) knickknick a ground cover, a gala apple, winesap apple and summer red apple, plus 2 lemonade blueberries which have pink berries (who knew?). You should have seen me trying to get that all in our van!
On April 15th, thanks to a friend for giving us a head's up, we went to Motz & Son's Wholesale Nursery to buy some bare root fruit trees at amazing prices. $3 per tree. These trees were at the end of shipping season and starting to come out of dormancy. The only trick was that we had to buy them in a bundle if they were tied in a bundle. So, we ended up coming home with 25 fruit trees and heeling them into our compost pile. Now we have a very fruitful driveway. We bought Shinseki and Hosui Asian pears, Red Anjou pears, Stanley Prunes, All-In-One Almond, Chinese Mormon Apricot, a couple cherries, and a couple of ultra-dwarf trees for our rental. Some of them were in bundles of 5 or six, so we have extras!
Our designer, Erik Blender, was hard at work on our design as well as pruning trees for orchards. It is a busy time of year for tending to newly growing things.
We found someone to deliver compost to our driveway for a good price and on April 11th, we got 7 yards dumped on our driveway. We now had two giant piles of wood chips and a huge pile of compost.
On April 15th, thanks to a friend for giving us a head's up, we went to Motz & Son's Wholesale Nursery to buy some bare root fruit trees at amazing prices. $3 per tree. These trees were at the end of shipping season and starting to come out of dormancy. The only trick was that we had to buy them in a bundle if they were tied in a bundle. So, we ended up coming home with 25 fruit trees and heeling them into our compost pile. Now we have a very fruitful driveway. We bought Shinseki and Hosui Asian pears, Red Anjou pears, Stanley Prunes, All-In-One Almond, Chinese Mormon Apricot, a couple cherries, and a couple of ultra-dwarf trees for our rental. Some of them were in bundles of 5 or six, so we have extras!
In the mean time (what time?) we were inoculating our logs and stumps with the mushrooms we had purchased from Fungi Perfecti. We now have a larch stump and pillar inoculated with Chicken of the Woods, we have a birch stump with Maitake, and several logs with Turkey Tail, Shiitake and White Elm Oyster.
On April 23rd, Erik met us to give us the final draft of our design and boy did he deliver! We now own a 45 page document of our entire yard known as Cook Family Edible Landscape Design. Each section of our yard is beautifully detailed with the plants specifically chosen for our space and their companion plants that will help them grow and create essentially their own fertilizer or attract beneficial insects and pollinators or keep away pests.
Now all we have to do is get digging!
Starting on the southeast side of the house, we planted a row of apples and pears. First we dig the holes for the trees and the companion nitrogen-fixing plant. For the apples this was the ceaonathus. Then, we sheet mulch around them to the eventual drip line of the trees (six foot radius). Sheet mulching is laying down well-watered cardboard over the grass and placing a thick layer of compost and then wood chip mulch over the top. This way the grass dies and gets absorbed back into the earth, the cardboard prevents it from growing again until the cardboard breaks down back into the earth. Then, we plant other guild plants like chives, nasturtium, lupin, and comfrey in the compost under the mulch. Bulbs will go around the circles to prevent grasses from moving back in.
Just this weekend we got all the apples and pears in the ground. And, tonight we got the final two mulched.
One of the Asian pears' companion plant is Elaeagnus multiflora known as Goumi berry. This little nitrogen fixing berry bush produces a cherry-sized fruit that is considered delicious. I have never tried one before, so we shall see. But, what a deal! A companion plant that essentially fertilizes the pear tree at the same time as producing beautiful flowers and yummy edible berries! Win-win-win!
The other Asian pear will have Elaeagnus Umbellata, Autumn Olive, which also fixes nitrogen and produces edible berries.
We are getting so excited for our trees and shrubs to grow up! But, we must exercise patience. So, while we wait…. we get chickens! That will have to be the next post :-)
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