Food Forest building – Page 35

Update on our in fall moved beds

Not all plants live, but the tulips are beautiful

Last fall we had moved our plant beds, where we grew vegetables in last year, because they where in the way. We had moved the Tiny House to that spot. We moved the beds along side our outer fens and planted some trees, herbs and different other plants in them. We covered one bed with wood shavings and where very late with covering the other beds with straw. In these beds not all is doing well, but the bed with the wood shavings is doing well. If I look carefully I can find some Mint sticking there heads trough. The lovage is already growing well.

Unfortunately the dogs can access these beds. They do not walk trough them, but of course with all male dogs, they have to pi over everything. So the lovage has to move to a new bed inside the fens, since I want to use it for soups. Digging out the lovage I noticed how nice the soil has become and the garlic growing beside the lovage already has a nice stem. For 2 years we had started these beds with poorly rotten manure, but now it has turned into very beautiful deep black soil with earthworms in there. The lovage moved to the larger stone bed inside the fens and around the lovage we covered the soil with woodchips.

In this bed with the wood shavings the oregano is also coming up nicely. I have more oregano out of the reach of the dogs, so this does not have to move. Other than that I found a strawberry sticking its leave out of the shavings and of course the thistles are doing well also.

In one of the straw beds I also had planted wild garlic. This has come up beautifully, so it was easy to dig up and also move to the stone bed inside the fens. The plants did remarkably well being moved. They never even let there leaves hang.

In another bed the buckeye is starting to thrive and the forget Me Not surrounding it is also coming up nicely. Some of the sage and some garlic have survived the winter.

In another bed the tulips are looking beautiful. Here I have pictures of the tulips taken every few days.

Sowing vegetables outside

Under cover of course

For a lot of crops it is time to start sowing, we still get frost at night while during the day the temperature rises to 15°C. The sun is already very powerful and starts warming up the soil. A few years ago we had made something like a very small foil tunnel to sow underneath, but I dedicated a whole plant bed as a seed bed. So the rest of the plant bed gets covered by straw (not to much). Straw isolates nicely and protects the upcoming sprouts from being eaten by the birds.

I started with the plastic cover. I marked the size of the cover and sowed small rows of the following:

Celery root Porthos
Romaine lettuce
Pick lettuce, different kinds (3 rows)

Then I put back the cover. I had a thermometer in the ground under the cover and the ground is there about 12°C.

Then I prepared rows over the entire bed and started sowing. I put a marker with the variety at the start of the row and sowed following:

Red cabbage Rodynda
Wilde Rocket
Sweet peas Heraut
Palm cabbage Nero di Toscana
Onion red Robelja
Onion Rijnsburger 5/ Bajosta
Onion Cuisse de Poulet
Broccoli Calinaro
White cabbage Dottenfelder Dauer
White cabbage Holsteiner Platter
Cauliflower Neckarperle
Swede Wilhelmsburger
Leek Herbstriesen 2/ Hannibal
Kale Lerchenzungen
Oatroot (vegetable oyster)
Oak leaf lettuce Red Salad Bowl

Partly I emptied the entire package on one row. Once the seedlings come up and have there first set of real leafs (not only the seed leaves) the small plants will be transplanted to another bed and planted with the needed spacing. The oatroot, of course, will not be transplanted, but will be thinned out as the plants grow to the spacing they need. The lettuce also stays in this bed, and I will pick these as they grow for baby leaf to make nice salads until they reach the needed spacing. After that I will pick only the outer leaves of the lettuce, so the plant will grow on.

The sweet peas where sown with a useful spacing, so these might stay in this bed. How ever the onions where sown very thickly, so I must be careful when I transplant them. We use a lot of onions, so I wanted to sow many extra (beside the onion sets I already put in the ground). I also want to use the green of these sowed onions in green salads during the spring and summer.

While selecting the varieties I did not pay enough attention to what could already be sown, so I sowed the kale to early. That was to start in Mai, but that is only 2 weeks from now, so I am positive that this won’t be a problem.

I am very excited that finally the growing season is starting again and I am looking forward to finally harvest some lettuce again. It always makes me so happy when everything is starting the turn green again.

Removing a plant bed

The dogs demolish my beautiful plant bed

A few years ago I had made a beautiful plant bed against our barn. Since last year we went from one dog to 5 dogs. The 4 new dogs are young and wild and demolish my plant bed. Now I have removed this plant bed and put the plants in a few other beds where the dogs can’t reach them. The wetter was just perfect to do so, because it was cloudy and it rained now and then.

This is what the plant bed looked like.

To start with I removed all the smaller stones with the help of our kids.

We have found different small animals hiding there. The spiders where quickly hiding some where else, so I did not catch them on camera. The isopod on the picture is well camouflaged.

After that I carefully dough out all of the plants and flower bulbs and brought them to our plant beds whit the fens around it.

I planted some plants around a fruit tree and divided the rest of the plants over the 2 new stone beds.

My husband then helped removing the bigger stones and then removed the compost soil. The stones are on a big pile and serve as a lizard house now and the compost soil is inside the fens with the plant beds waiting to be used again.

Where we removed the bed, we filled in some sand to level this up with the surrounding level.

When this was finished I also dough up some more flower bulbs on another place where the dogs constantly walk over them. The flower bulbs won’t be so pretty anymore this year, but next year these beds will be beautiful. To finish these plant beds I divided some wood chips as mulch.

The small stone bed is now full, but the bigger stone bed still has some space for Tomato, Paprika and Egg plant. All dough I also wanted to sow some herbs here. Will see what I do.