Tag: Permaculture

The first crocuses are already sticking there heads up

It is so beautiful when nature is awakening again, but spring is still far away for where we live. A few days after I took these pictures we had frost and snow again.

Small creatures from the summer garden #8: Peacock butterfly (Aglais io, Syn.: Inachis io, Nymphalis io)

I even found the caterpillar of this beautiful butterfly on my potato plants

If you look at the Peacock butterfly this way it really is as if it is looking at you.

The side protection of my garden beds rained away

Exposing the edges of the garden beds to the wetter.
Have you noticed the garlic?

I was not very pleased to see the edges of these garden beds exposed. These are the old hill beds, I flattened out and gave enclosures out of straw. The rain and wind took this straw down and away. The other thing I noticed is the grass that is coming trough everywhere. I am not very happy about that either.

So my son helped me and we cleared the edges, put some cardboard down and divided a thick layer of straw over the cardboard to support the edges.

We took the additional straw from the straw bales that stood at the side as a windbreaker. We took these a little apart last fall, but these did not do much of a breakdown, so enough of the straw is still good to use around these beds.

The first bed is done, 2 more to go, but we will do that on another day.

About the wind breaking straw bales, which are more like a straw hill the kids love to play on, the straw is wet and partially black, but not really decomposing yet.

I was hoping to plant in this in the spring, but there is no soil to plant in. Since it is hard to reach with a tractor I am going to loosen the straw bit by bit with a hayfork. This will take some time, since it is heavy, but there is still some time until spring and if the straw has not decomposed enough by then, I will just make a hole and put some soil in to plant in. This amount of straw does not dry out so easily and make for a nice experiment this summer, since the summers generally tend to get dryer every year.