Food Forest building – Page 8

We bought some fruit trees

But we where not finished with the preparations for planting jet

Beside fruit trees we also bought 50 pcs of Lavender plants (Lavandula angustifolia) and 50 pcs of ivy (Hedera helix). The Lavender is not only decorative; in future I also want to harvest them. Lavender is not only beautiful in a dry bouquet, but we also want to have the essential oil. In the future I hope to make my own soap again and I would need the essential oil for that. The Ivy is ideal for covering the soil lively to prevent it from drying out and prevent erosion. Also we used to wash our clothing with ivy leaves and we want to go back to that again. Now we wash with wash nuts, but the ivy leaves will be free, after the plants settle and grow, and you can’t get it more regional than from your own garden.

Other than that we bought 10 pcs of raspberry bushes. Some raspberry bushes we already have and the kids loved snacking them directly of the bush. We just had so little harvest that I had to see that every child would get one. That problem should be solved now. Currant bushes we also have a few and where loved to snack from. We will plant all the berry bushes we have in our new plant beds, because we will put a fens around them to keep the dogs out. The dogs destroy everything and pee over everything. We have all male dogs.

We bought 15 pcs apple trees, 15 pcs pear trees and 15 pcs plum trees. We had not finished the preparations on time, but we planted fruit trees in the finished plant beds right away. So put aside the straw, make a hole put in the tree and put a part of the soil back. Than we watered, so the soil would run in every corner and space around the roots. Than fill up the soil around the tree completely and put in a post to secure the tree so the wind will not rock the tree. Only thing left is to divide the straw back. My husband had prepared a lot of posts with a point for all the trees.

We could only plant 12 fruit trees, so we planted all the other once close to each other in 2 plant beds to wait for them to be planted on there final spot. We had built some more plant beds and could only fill 2, because we did not have anymore soil. The trees are in these 2 beds. Hopefully we will get new soil delivered soon and we will go on with this topic a different time.

Finally covering the last plant beds with straw

Will the garlic grow this year?

Finally we made it to cover our plant beds with straw. I had 3 byssi helpers and the job was quickly done. Hopefully the garlic I planted did not take damage of the frost without the protection of mulch. The other plants do not necessarily need the protection against the cold, but I like to cover the ground and keep the moisture in the soil this way. This is mainly in the summertime important, because the sun can really burn although we are not in a Mediterranean climate. We will see what the beds do this year.

Cutting back Willow Trees

We did some necessary cutting on our Willow Trees, which turned out to be ill

When we bought our property it has been neglected for 10 years. So the willow trees where very dens and big. Far too big for the type of willow tree and our windy location. So one of the first things we did was to shorten the willow trees. Not all of them but all the dangerous ones first. This was 3 years ago. 2 years later we did the remaining big trees.

Now it is time to start maintaining the willow trees. Normally you cut back every other willow tree and the next year you cut back the other trees. This keeps the habitat for the wildlife available and the willow trees that are not cut back still function as a wind breaker.

Unfortunately our willow trees are not very healthy. We have a lot of problems with the willow borer and even the small branches have holes from them. You normally would cut the trees down by the roots and hope that you can kill the larva of by drowning them with rain water. The branches need to be shredded so the larva in there get killed. The willow borer lays its eggs under need the bark and the larva eat there way up the tree about a meter.

To start a few pictures from before we started cutting down.

All of the smaller branches we cut with a hand tree saw. These branches are too small to cut with a chainsaw. But therefore this was a fun family job. The kids helped with stacking the branches to piles which the tractor could pick up and bring to where they get shredded.

We do not cut the willow trees down at ground level, but we leave a meter or so. This will be the main trunk and all new growth will be cut back every other year to this height. After a number of years this will look like the willow tree has a head with hair. This was very common in this region.

Sometimes you will find some nice things wile working in nature, like this mushroom growing on a willow tree.

We also had a bigger tree to cut down with the chainsaw. These branches we collected and brought away with the tractor and the winch.

Some more smaller willow bushes to cut back.

And piles of branches to bring to the wood chipper.

One of our friends has an organic farm where he produces eggs and he likes to use woodchips in his chicken houses. So the branches where shredded into one of his containers and put to good use. In return we get some manure from him for our garden.

Here we want to take out some willow trees which grew on the concrete. Some soil has been blow on here and the trees grew in that. Now we want to clear the concrete, so we have some more space to move around with the tractor. We have an entrance to our barn here. Also these willow trees are not rooted very well due to the concrete, so they could be blown over very easily.