Tag: Food Forest building

Part 5 in starting for our food forest

Repositioning and planting our plant beds

As you my have noticed on pictures in a previous post we have also repositioned our plant beds aside our fence. The plant beds had to go where they were, because we placed the Tiny House there.

We just put the borders right on the grass and filled them back up again with the soil. We planted some trees we had grown ourselves and also all the perennial plants we had in the beds before. So we have some oak trees, corkscrew willow, oregano, marigold, chamomile, strawberry, sage, peppermint, Jerusalem artichoke, lovage, some bushes and some garlic cloves.

Unfortunately we did not get to it to cover the beds with straw before the frost came. Luckily there also was snow which covered the beds and protected the plants against the frost. Now after the snow has melted again we checked the beds and the garlic, which had already grown, still looks fine. We had enough wood shavings to coved one bed. We want to try this out and see what this does over the year. Is it good protection in winter? How quickly will it decompose? Will the strawberries grow up trough the wood shavings? Etc.

We will give you a follow up on that next year.

To have a direct comparison we will cover the other beds with straw this weekend. Just in time before it will be cold again.

Children’s playground for winter

A place for our Children to play outside despite harsh wind

Our new planted food forest needs a few years to grow before it will give any protection against the harsh winds we have here, so we needed to do something so our children can play outside protected against the worst of the wind.

Straw bales

So we have decided to turn this pile of straw into a sort of protective fencing.

The first corner with straw bales

We chose a spot direct beside the playtent of the children and beside the caravan. This spot is also already some what protected by a large stone building, so we only needed to close 3 sides with the straw bales.

Putting down a straw bale

We used the Tractor with front end loader to put the straw bales in place.

2 sides closed

After closing two sides we brought a few tractor buckets of sand to make a hill in the middle. Our children love to play with sand.

Sand hill and last side closed

After that we closed the last side leaving a small hole where we can walk trough.

We finished this project just in time, because that night we had a snow storm.  The branches standing up are “trees” our oldest planted. He makes his own “food forest”.

Part 4 in starting for our food forest

Planting the first fruit bearing trees

This was a lot of work. We planted the trees with the help of our children, which had a lot of fun, then watered the trees and mulched them with straw. The straw should keep the moisture in the ground and will ad nutrients over time.

We have planted a lot of trees and bushes. The following list is what we have purchased to divide on our over 2 acres property.

Plantings autumn 2021

60 pcs of Sweet Chestnuts

20 pcs of Wild Pears

20 pcs of Hazelnut

40 pcs of Potato Roses

20 pcs of Dog Roses

Sweet Chestnuts

These plants where recommended to us by our local environmental government. Apparently there is not much that would grow on our open, very windy, but also very sunny (the sun burns in summer) property.

Not only did we plant along our fencing, but we also planted a few rows of trees and bushes on different positions across our property. The mean reason for planting so many trees and bushes is to get the wind out of our property. Hopefully these plants will be the start for a better micro-climate on our property. Once these trees have settled and grown we can start thinking about planting more useful plants and trees.

Also we had already purchased fruit trees last year, but we just had not found the right spot for them jet. Now we had decided on a protected spot near our pond and planted our 7 fruit trees

3 pcs of Pear Trees

2 pcs of Apple Trees

A Cherry Tree

A Peaches Tree

Our new windfall meadow

There are already 4 larger apple trees on our property. Last year they were full of apples, so we had apple cider made out of the apples ( we still have some left). This year there were no apples. We hope to have an abundance again next year.

Next thing on our list is to plant the oak trees we have grown from seed our selves. We plan to plant the oak trees along our dead wood hedge.