Food Forest building – Page 37

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.

Spring is progressing

Even the insects show themselves again

Since my last post about the spring we had some nice and sunny days, so the crocuses have opened up there flowers to invite the insects. We have found some bees to be very busy with the crocuses. The peony sticks its tips just out of the ground. I just love the flowers of the peony. The strawberry plants are showing some beginning of new growth. I even found one single dandelion. Last year we had a pair of coots nesting in our pond and apparently one coot has already returned. We had found it swimming and eating in our pond and I am very happy it did not fly of when our dogs came closer. Other than that some plants are already showing signs of the coming leaves. Here are some impressions of what I have found on our property.

Levelling the ground after excessive tire damage

Removing a pile of logs made a mess

We cleaned up a pile of our logs. We sawed some of the logs. Some of the logs lay to long and where no good for the sawmill, so these turned into firewood. Other logs where sorted in piles of logs of the same type of wood. Al of this made a huge mess of the ground. To make the ground nice and even again my husband drove over it with our old tractor with a meadow train attached. He did this where the ground was a bit frozen. It works better like that. The end result is better as we had expected. Now the grass can grow back again. We are thinking of planting some fruit trees here.