My lands

Discussion in 'Members' Systems' started by Rick Larson, Oct 11, 2013.

  1. Rick Larson

    Rick Larson Junior Member

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    All summer long I have been busy implementing Permaculture stimulated ideas. Mostly smalls, like planting a diversity of trees and bushes, making compost, digging swales, and burying logs & laying wood chips to feed the mushrooms. I've started building keyhole beds today, within feet of the kitchen door. There are so many ideas to work on I don't think I have enough life left to try them all! But I just might try.:y:
     
  2. mouseinthehouse

    mouseinthehouse Junior Member

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    Sounds wonderful! Yes, there are always more ideas and work than time available! Being spring here we are incredibly busy and everything is growing or needing planting or attention. But it is a great time of year. I've always got a book full of ideas and dreams I'd like to implement and slowly, slowly a few of them come to fruition and others fall by the wayside - it's all good fun though. :)
     
  3. Rick Larson

    Rick Larson Junior Member

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    A great day of adding to my holdings including a bumper dragging load of flat rocks for keyhole garden beds. Another yard of wood chips to mimic the forest floor for the fruit and nut trees. A few hundred garlic bulbs and a hundred potato onions planted and straw mulched. Two chestnut and two yellow cherry tress planted. And all but a few of the trees having their trunks tubed before the rabbits girdle them (two of them already). A great day to contemplate.
     
  4. Rick Larson

    Rick Larson Junior Member

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    I designed six keyhole connected garden beds and have them nearly finished, the only part left to do is to harvest one eggplant and a number of leaks that are in the way of about ten feet of rock outline. Transplanted a hundred or so spring onions, and was lucky to obtain six chokecherry and one "Pink Lemonade" blueberry plants at 75% clearance from a big box store. All but one planted. The lone unplanted bush is next to a English Walnut sapling I plan to transplant to another property next week, and it will go in its place. That was Saturday night. Today I put up twelve Winter Luxury Pumpkins, cut, seeded, steamed, then stuffed into quart freezer bags, one pumpkin per bag, and froze.
     
  5. Rick Larson

    Rick Larson Junior Member

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    Received a large amount of tree saplings I ordered from this Oikos outfit the other day. Most of the species ordered were in 25 count lots. So I sorted the crème de la crème out and planted those in the yard, the next best tier are now at the edges of the fenced garden for nursing, the rest were driven north and planted on my wild land. The species in 25 count bundles included mulberry, hybrid chestnut, pawpaw, persimmons, crabapple, viburnum, plum. Also received yellow cherry, sweet pignut, and a Siberian apricot.

    The trees in the north wild land were caged to protect them from the mice and rabbits, then piled up brush around to protect them from deer. Took me 9 hours to do 62 saplings.
     
  6. eco4560

    eco4560 New Member

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    Nice work!
     
  7. Rick Larson

    Rick Larson Junior Member

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    Thanks!

    This last weekend, and the few remaining weeks left with unfrozen ground, is mostly being utilized in burying garden and kitchen wastes in strategic locations. The wet/frozen winters always turns this material to soil by next planting season. Even the corn stalks are consumed, with the nutrients recycled. Leaving it above ground can work if straw is layered above, but then we get mice.

    Finished the six connected keyhole garden bed(s) and think I am finished with hauling in wood chips/leaf litter for the year. Next on the list is a small swale up from the Back to Eden/hugelbed, or maybe I'll do some more keyholes. We'll see what I've in the mood for the next nice day out after the tiding up is complete..
     
  8. Rick Larson

    Rick Larson Junior Member

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    Now that I typed that last post, I am going to pile some straw over corn stalks and see what happens. Its been a long time since I did that. :)
     
  9. 9anda1f

    9anda1f Administrator Staff Member

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    Actually, that seems very fast planting to me. Good job!
     
  10. Rick Larson

    Rick Larson Junior Member

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    Thanks.

    I now have more coming. Black Locust. Hackberry. Various Plum. Currant. Wild Sour Cherry. Serviceberry. Gooseberry. Red Mulberry. And more. I received $9600 for hail damage on my truck and it is all going to tree planting systems. :)

    I am on a planting splurge!
     
  11. mischief

    mischief Senior Member

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    Hi splurger,
    You really are making a paradise on earth!
    I used to think we had messed up the planet too badly and were going to suffer to consequences, but since joining this forum and seeing what people like you are doing to put back in place all those lost treasures, I now know we do have a very good chance of changing things for the better.So thank you!
    Having only a quarter acre, I didnt think I could plant very many trees or make much of a difference, but seeing what others are doing gives me a renewed sense of purpose to do the same and I can see where I can fit in afew more.

    One question, why do you put your pumpkins in the freezer?
     
  12. Rick Larson

    Rick Larson Junior Member

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    Steaming and freezing pumpkins is the method I was taught. I have tried drying them, and it works, but we don't seem interested in using them dried. You have another method?
     
  13. eco4560

    eco4560 New Member

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    You'd be surprised mischief - I have 1/3 of an acre and still remember the all-knowing look my landscaper (who has a PDC) gave me when I said -'oh I can't imagine that I'll want more than 10 fruit trees'. I'm over the 50 mark now and still seeing places that you can stick another one!
     
  14. mischief

    mischief Senior Member

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    Hi Rick,
    I just leave them in the sun to dry out a bit then pop them somewhere dry and reasonably warm to store. I dont freeze or cook them, just grab one when needed.
    I guess if you are short of space then cooking, pulping and freezing is a good idea.
    The first time we grew pumpkins, they were just kept on a plank held off the ground by some bricks in the porch. The south end(north to you), is open and they did get abit wet when we had a southerly storm but werent damaged by this.
    Maybe I'm just too lazy, it seems like extra unnecessary work to me when these things already come with their own seal to keep them edible over winter.

    Eco, you have 50 fruit trees? I need to get my act together! I have 25 including the vines.
    I am cutting/coppicing four black wattles this year for firewood though and will have afew more to do next year. They arent huge trees, but I was told to cut when they are fist wide at chest high.
     
  15. eco4560

    eco4560 New Member

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    I still wonder whether I'll regret planting so many when the reach full size and full production, but hey - that's what pruning shears where invented for!
     
  16. Rick Larson

    Rick Larson Junior Member

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    Accomplished another large planting on new swale mounds with energy to spare.

    I grouped together plantings of Wild Red Cherry or Bounty Plums trees with various mixes of currants, gooseberries, and dwarf service berries. One circle I planted all five together - may the best plant win! With these plantings can anyone guess what the soil type and pH is?

    The tough old Birdsfoot nitro-fixing seeds are well established with many plants already on their third set of leaves (two being sufficient to make it through winter). With another week of cool 40-50 degree F temps forecasted, I feel real good! The GL PDC taught to overseed such plantings by four, so it is thick. I have video this trip, so I'll work on posting a story to my account on Permaculture Global and link it here.
     
  17. songbird

    songbird Senior Member

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    birdsfoot trefoil

    is that birdsfoot trefoil? we have a few varieties here (a wild one that doesn't get as tall as the Viking variety) and i enjoy both of them. so many flowers during the summer and good green manure source.

    as for fruit trees, i'm all for learning and have been reading what i can when i can as eventually i would like some, enjoyed Masanobu Fukuoka's books and Sepp Holzer's, both had interesting ideas of how to grow a hardy natural tree.

    i hope all your plantings turn out well! sounds like a wonderful start and in a few years you're gonna be amazed at the variety of wildlife that will be making little piggies of themselves...
     
  18. Rick Larson

    Rick Larson Junior Member

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    Since this property is for fall use, most of these plantings will certainly be enjoyed by the wildlife, which are already quite abundant. And that is ok! However, if I was ever forced to live there, those critters would soon learn who is the boss. Yes, Birdsfoot Trefoil. :) Here is a short story with accompanying video recording of my visit the last few days:

    https://permacultureglobal.com/posts/4301
     
  19. Rick Larson

    Rick Larson Junior Member

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    Wet clay is a soup having nightmare as a mian ingrediant! Had a try at digging out a pond with water and quickly learned clay in water has no body, so that project was placed in indefinite hold, or unless there is a drastic drought that dries it out. Since it is a small wildlife pond, no big deal, as it holds water it is good to go. If it dries out, then we can rework it and add swales. The one modification I had the operator do is to make three fingers to the pond, and now it looks like a dinosaur print. Ha!

    The next project was transferring about 50 yards of composted stumps and weeds up between swales, and will be planted with Birdsfoot and Black Locust next spring. After I think 10 years, the material was a rich brown crumbly consistancy. Just beautiful.

    Tracking back to the main field overlooked by the cabin, but opposite the circle swale, we dozed all the old stumps, small balsam fir & popple, with grasses & weeds into a smiley on contour shaped pile about 35 feet long and 5 feet high& wide. Then dozed the topsoil over it. Dug a swale immediately below with accompanying mound. Leaving the exposed clay below this mound to dry for next year's fish pond project.

    Then we reworked the road to a lower spot on the east side of the hill (actually, a clay mound sticking out of the swamp), following contour. Three elements were built into the road: Scraping the topsoil off leaving a slight downward grade for drainage, leading into a shallow swale that was fashioned into a drainage with 1% grade. Swale leading off down the hill where we left off. This will also serve to keep the road dry. Then we mounded up all the topsoil immediately downhill of the swale for tree planting. Now that looked very worthy! I plan to plant some type of clover/grass mix on the road as it will only be used on rare occasions. Can't wait 'til next year's green up.

    Next we dozed the topsoil off the longest grade, not 100 yards from the cabin. The wet black topsoil mounded up top and left to drain out for future use. On the bottom, and out of the wetland, we dug three 120' long three+ foot wide trenches, then built up four Chinampa-styled mounds, about two armlenghts wide (the operator wasn't very consistant with this one).

    Finally, went buried logs and branches making five hugelbeds about 20' long in the cabin yard.

    Whew. Harder work typing all this out!
     
  20. songbird

    songbird Senior Member

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    having spent a lot of time in the trenches with clay the only way i'd use water to dig in it would be to rinse it off when i'm done. :) i was troweling a mixture of clay/sand from one trench i was digging this past summer and that was faster than shovelling... the trench was in a low area and the ground water table is high enough to keep it wet there. thought i was going to get stuck in there a few times.

    are you planning on moving to the site eventually?
     

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