planting and planning

The first seeds have been planted inside – tomatoes, peppers, courgettes, squash and cauliflowers – and so I need to start preparing beds for them on the land. The first step is to decide where they should go, and I’m pretty confident I know now where to start digging… There’s a strip of clear land running east-west on the south side of The Old Man. That’s my squash, corn, tomato, pumpkin patch right there! But digging it wasn’t this week’s task…

That tyre was waiting for me, oh yeah, and I decided to finish that job first while I still had strength and enthusiasm. It took about an hour to saw out the second side wall. When I lifted the thing up, releasing clouds of nasty yellow-orange rusty dust, the metal inner ring fell away, and I had my first raised bed frame.

a frame for a bed of herbs

It needs rinsing out, as you can see, but we had such a heavy thunderstorm yesterday that I think nature has probably done that job for me! So, one down, two to go… These beds are going to contain my herb garden, and I’ve been browsing some lovely organic seed catalogues for ideas: Seeds of Change, and Southern Exposure Seed Exchange.

Southern Exposure are based in Virginia, only a little north of my land, so I’m thinking I might go with them, but Seeds of Change is full of useful and interesting information about the plants. Loving reading both these catalogues! And they are usefully breaking apart all my English expectations of what a garden should contain, vegetable or otherwise. I have learnt the hard way that I can’t really grow sweet peas here (sob, my favourite English summer flower), but I can grow peanuts, cotton, amazingly-coloured corn… This is not going to look like my grandad’s allotment!

This week has also seen me take steps on the one hand to encourage wildlife, on the other to keep it at bay. Yes, I did it. I’ve now bought all the components for a deer fence. After costing it all out, I realized I wouldn’t be able to afford to pay someone to do this for me. The raw ingredients alone, bought as cheaply as I could, totally maxed out my deer-defence budget. So, in a day or two’s time, several large, unwieldy packages will start to arrive… The neighbours have been warned! On the wildlife encouragement front, I’ve been struck the last few visits by how little birdsong I hear. It could be something to do with the presence of raptors overhead, but it could also be that there is nothing to attract them to my space. So I’ve installed a bird feeder and filled it full of songbird mix. Let’s see who comes…

the new bird feeder awaiting songbirds...

 

The yellowish-green strip of land running in from the left is part of the area that will contain my veggie beds.

 

 

Preparing my first raised herb bed involved a bit more land clearing too… (I took a soil sample, and tested it later: not very fertile, unfortunately, so it will certainly be raised beds and bought-in topsoil for now). Once I’d finished all of that I was ready to take a break, and walk the woodland. I can’t believe I hadn’t done this before now, but there is something mesmerizing about the homestead area, and, let’s face it, the homestead area needs a lot more work on it right now – probably more than the woodland ever will.

small woodland pool

Several creeks run through my property. Most will run dry in the summer months, to judge from what I saw last September, but this beautiful little pool should be there all year round. It’s embraced by the roots of an old tree, and a mini waterfall feeds it from the creek above. The water isn’t clear, as you can see, so one project will be to assess what is happening here, and clean up as appropriate. Lots of fallen leaves building up in there, but notice the ferns! These are present all along the banking here, which is quite steep in places. Another project suggested itself to me as I fought my way through brambles and small saplings from the homestead site down to the creek: creating a trail to make access easier.

Finally, an update on the daffodils – all with pretty golden heads turned south. Happy St. David’s Day!

daffodils opening to the sun

where to start?

Where do you start, when there’s everything to do? I’ll start with some pictures…

the homestead site

This is the homestead site – about half an acre of relatively clear space. From the little I’ve read about permaculture so far, what I should do first is nothing: just watch and wait to see what happens naturally. But I also know that I’d like to start growing my own veg, and eating it this year. The seeds are already starting to arrive… Lovely corn and beans, squash, zucchini, tomatoes: the three sisters survival pack from seed living. So one task I’d set myself for Sunday was to prepare some raised beds. Not that I’ll grow everything in raised beds, but…

discarded old tires

… I have a number of old tyres lurking around the site. Here are two tractor tyres as I found them – one of them is somehow leaning against a sapling; and there’s a third not visible in this shot. They’re all about 4.5′ in external diameter, and while that’s not huge, it’s good enough for raised bed frames, I reckon.

tyres in a new place

These guys are fairly heavy, so I rolled them only as far as I needed to get them into a sunny, open spot. Here they are, in a triskell arrangement, just in front of the only old building still sporting some kind of roof. (Where it overhangs on the outside, I’ve started a wood pile!) Two of the tyres still have a metal inner ring, which bothered me a bit, until I found a site with great advice on using tyres in your garden. (I *love* the internet!) Next week I’ll cut the sidewalls out of these tyres, and finish clearing the ground inside them. For now, it’s partially cleared with some old grain sacks (again found on site) covering the earth to help prohibit new growth.

I also did a bit more clearing up because I kept noticing more and more old bottles and cans, and – weird! – groups of socks knotted together. What’s that about? I’m also a little worried about one of the oldest trees on the site. It’s a beautiful old tree – I’m attached to it already – but it’s dripping water. I can’t tell what kind of tree it is yet without leaves to help identify it, but it may have insect damage… small holes in the area where it’s dripping. And yes, they look D-shaped, so I’m really worried that it might have some borer beetle infestation.

close up of the dripping tree

There are three or four holes visible here if you look carefully (Click on the picture to see full size, and then you can probably zoom in further). I couldn’t capture the dripping in photos, or even that this section of the tree is damp all the way to the ground. But it is. I’ll keep an eye on this. If anyone has any idea what might be happening, please leave a comment.

lovely old tree

And here’s a pic of the whole tree. The ladder is part of an old hunter’s stand, but makes me think of tree houses!