Permaculture – Page 3 – Beautiful Chaos

What happened with my green beans experiment?

I sowed green beans in weeds. Did I have anything to harvest?

Well yes, I was able to pick a few green beans here and there, but the green beans generally weren’t much of a success this year. Here is the link to my first post.

I can not really draw any conclusions out of my experiment, since the weeds did not do well either. The green beans I had sown in the greenhouse and later planted in the garden did a little better, but we did not harvest many green beans at all this year, which is a shame, since the kids love them.

Very late to sow, but in August I had sown some more green beans in another weedy bed and these did very well. I have to say, that the wetter worked in my advantage here, since we had plenty of rain and warmth. Of course I sowed them much too late in the season, but these green beans thrived and we actually where able to harvest a meal of these before the first night frost came.

Green bean plants in a weedy garden bed with a basket with harvested green beans

Well, I guess I have learned not to start in the season to early and I should dedicate enough garden space for the green beans. I tent to start in the spring as soon as the soil starts to warm up a little and I just pack every garden space I have not thinking about the crops that come at a later point. Green beans will definitely be one of my main crops for next year, since green beans coming out of our own garden do taste much better then the ones store bought and we miss them very much as a vegetable for over winter.

Expanding the homestead and harvesting

What’s there to harvest and what animals did we get?

Well, that is just the way life goes. No baby, but back in action doing gardening and expanding our homestead.

My husband and children had finished planting all of de gardens. Some gardens did Ok, others where ratter disappointing. I will be reviewing our different type of garden beds after they have been harvested and prepared for winter.

Harvest

Meanwhile harvest has been somewhat disappointing. The onions where very small and I will not come around to buying onions in winter. I am trying to shorten the time that I will have to buy onions by using onion tops and spring onions as much as I can for as long as they are growing in stead of using the onions we have in storage.

The garlic did well and even had some nice size bulbs compared to last year. What I found so strange is that some of the garlic plants also made a small bulb in the stalk above ground level. I have never seen this before, but apparently some varieties do this instead of making a flower.

2 Garlic plants with nice bulbs and small bulbs higher up in the stalks

I am also saving some seed. The kale, unlike last year, survived the winter and bloomed beautifully. After the seed where done I cut all of the seedpods of and let them dry for a while. Deseeding the pods was a bit unpleasant, because the seedpods where a bit sharp and stung but with gloves on it was ok. We got enough seed to last us a life time.

We also collected seed from mustard, spring onions, lupine, peas, carrots, different grains and different flowers.

Seeds from carrots with some carrot seed heads — **Carrot seeds**

I am also drying some marigold flower leaves to make some calendula salve.

Marigold flower leaves on a paper towel to dry

We finally started to harvest tomatoes, but we are losing the plants to blight again. Surprisingly late since we are having rain for over a month already. Luckily we also have a greenhouse now and there is no blight in there yet. With the first chilli’s turning red in the greenhouse, I made a chilli sauce on tomato base. My husband enjoyed it very much after a few months without chilli sauce.

A harvest basket with tomatoes, chilli’s and a cucumber

2 jars with a home made tomato base chilli sauce — **tomato base chilli sauce**

Other then that we have been eating potatoes from the garden, but the beans have been very disappointing. We are also having some cucumbers from the greenhouse.

My sons Hokkaido pumpkin was the only pumpkin plant to really survive and thrive, so he is very proud of that and checks the crop every day.

An almost finished pumpkin with a small new still flowering pumpkin growing on a bed of straw

I have been trying to harvest some blackberries, but since they are wild growing most of them are hard to reach and will be enjoyed by the birds.

As for our homestead

My husband left to collect sidewalk tiles at a friend’s house. He came home with 2 runner ducks (a couple). I’ve always wanted to have runner ducks to eat the so many slugs we have in the gardens. Apparently they also eat lettuce, so I did not let them in the main garden yet, but they where in our garden 3 with the compost bed with the potatoes. They seemed to find more then enough to eat there. As the type of crops growing will allow, they will be moved trough all of the gardens.

Well, since the runner ducks do not go into there coop we also bought some geese to protect the runner ducks against the fox. After that the potato bed, obviously, was done.

As the coop we build for the runner ducks stayed empty we also bought some meat chickens after which we where gifted some dwarf chickens we put in the coop with them. Well the coop was a bit small for all of these chickens, but after the meat chickens have been butchered the coop is a very comfortable home for the dwarf chickens (they are so cute).

4 dwarf chickens and a dwarf rooster sitting on fence

We got 5 female sheep, lambs from this spring, and we plan on breeding with them. They are still too young though, but next year in the fall we would need a male sheep as well.

We went out for some hare to raise for meat, but now we have one female for breeding and 3 males which are the hare of the kid’s. It is unbelievable how much the kid’s love there hare and care for them and cuddle with them. I have never seen such tame hare before. Well, we can’t possibly butcher these, so it will just take a bit longer before we will eat some hare.

Last but not least my husband gave me some fantails for our anniversary. They don’t really do anything, but are beautiful to look at.

4 gray fantails sitting in front of there coop

To finish up some beautiful pictures

A beautiful bright green grasshopper sitting on a hand — **A beautiful bright green grasshopper**

A little green frog sitting in the grass — **A little frog**

A beautiful pastel yellow sunflower against a bright blue sky — **A pastel yellow coloured sunflower**

Beautiful, compact grown, white borage against a bright blue shy — **White borage**

How is the, from caterpillars invaded, pear tree doing

New growth on the pear tree and flowers, flowers, flowers…

We had a pitiful sight this spring when we found our young pear tree eaten all leafs of by an army of caterpillars. We collected all of the caterpillars and after a few weeks the pear tree recovered. The pear tree grew new leaves and is looking good. It is amazing. Fruit trees make a blast of growth in the spring after which they seem to stand still and invest there energy in flowering and starting there fruit. After the development of the fruit the fruit trees make another blast of growth. Thanks to that the pear tree is looking good and healthy again.