Permaculture obsession
As long as I can
remember, I've hopped from obsession to obsession --- Robin Hood, water
gardening, identifying native plants. This year's obsessions are permaculture
and forest
gardening, topics that will probably take me decades to truly mull
over. In the last year, we have started two forest
gardens around young fruit trees in the yard and a
more traditional forest garden in existing young woods, all of
which are in early stages.
One of the biggest things I've learned about permaculture is that comfrey is
unstoppable. We started off the year with one large, two-year old
plant. All summer, I hacked off pieces and spread them around our
new forest gardens. Now we have dozens of thriving comfrey plants
that don't seem to mind being mown to the ground once a week.
I'm also starting to feel the homestead turn into a closed food
web. Mulching
with grass clippings
has turned our grassy areas into working elements of the forest
garden. Nitrogen flows from chickens to grass to my garden beds,
and I
get pure joy out of seeing my plants thrive. Meanwhile, our
honeybees pollinate garden plants and will eventually feed us
honey. Around and around the permaculture wheel rolls.
| This post is part of our Third Year of Homesteading lunchtime series.
Read all of the entries: |
Or explore more posts by date or by subject.
About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
Want to be notified when new comments are posted on this page? Click on the RSS button after you add a comment to subscribe to the comment feed, or simply check the box beside "email replies to me" while writing your comment.