Our first order of business last week was creating a rough map of the west food forest. Although we have yet to use it directly in designing the forest, it helped familiarize me more spatially with the area. While Alex, Katie and I were working on this, possibly the most memorable part of the week was in progress; Susie and Jen’s jam made of freshly picked rose petals. That night we also enjoyed an array of other edible flowers with greens mostly if not entirely from the garden.
We’ve been helping ourselves to strawberries but the ripening of the raspberries and cherries is right around the corner. The earliest raspberries are often picked by passers-by, but a little more effort is required to prevent the first of the cherries from wasting away. After harvesting exactly 200 grape leaves for making dolmas, I grabbed a three-legged picking ladder and plucked the ripest cherries I could find. That premature harvest was a meager one but there are many more on the way.
When Patricia and I transplanted tomatoes from their outgrown seedling pots into much larger ones you could hear their sighs of relief. We also addressed the four rows of carrots, which, out of three plantings had yielded less than a dozen little sprouts. I spread a thick layer of lime over the bed while Patricia raked it in to add some much needed alkalinity to the soil. After that, a heavy fourth planting of seeds was put in, mixed this time with coco coir. I’m hopeful but I honestly think we’ll have some carrots this time around.
When Patricia and I transplanted tomatoes from their outgrown seedling pots into much larger ones you could hear their sighs of relief. We also addressed the four rows of carrots, which, out of three plantings had yielded less than a dozen little sprouts. I spread a thick layer of lime over the bed while Patricia raked it in to add some much needed alkalinity to the soil. After that, a heavy fourth planting of seeds was put in, mixed this time with coco coir. I’m hopeful but I honestly think we’ll have some carrots this time around.
When the rain brought us inside we began thinking about design of the Huglekultur food forest. I received a much-needed theoretical introduction to food forests and their layers before helping to make an outline of the area and create a list of plants to use. Ultimately we will draw maps of the garden that depict the planting stage, 15 years after planting, and 25 years after planting. Initially this process has been a stretch for me, and it has reinforced the need for a level of botanical knowledge, as well as constant planning, in my mind. Admittedly I found myself a little restless in the change of pace from working to sitting around a table talking. However work without knowledge and knowledge without work are equally fruitless; I’m learning that the more elusive skill of a gardener is in balancing the many closing windows of opportunity with methodically sowing the seeds of the future.
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