Food Forest at Restful Trails
My goal for this property is to establish food forests in every corner. I will tell you about food forests and hope that you will be inspired to grow food on your own property.
As my husband and I are getting older now, I'm going on 68 this year and him 70, and he is disabled and I am recovering from 2 major surgeries last year, We are starting to put our smaller garden areas into raised beds near the house, so that they are easier to reach.
The bed above is the second raised bed we put in this area, tied to the first by the arbor. It has several grapevines and kiwi vines as well as thornless blackberry plants and strawberries and a few herbs.
This past fall was the first year that these particular grape vines bore fruit, some of it was as advertised seedless, and some had seeds. Disappointing when you order seedless vines from a reputable company and don't get what you ordered. The following is a photograph of the rest of the raised beds that we built attached to this one.
The tree you see at the left of the raised bed died last year, winterkill, but there is a Giant Breda Medlar on the right end of this particular bed that is healthy and has fruited for the past two years. To the right of the end of this bed is another raised bed with 7 blueberry bushes in it and they are doing well.
The grassy area to the right and also south of the first photo of raised beds are areas where I plan to put more raised beds this year for annual vegetable crops. We generally grow our annual crops around the property here and there, but we need to have an area near the house for them, in the sun, to make them easier for us in our old age.
The above photograph was taken from this deck, you
can barely see the raised beds beyond this pear tree that was flowering last spring. This Ayers Pear tree got so heavy with fruit last fall that the branches were laying on the deck and pushing over the railing, so there will be some railing removal and some pruning due to this pear tree this year. We have several pear trees, apple trees, plum trees, cherry trees, a peach tree, and lots of nut trees. But I'll talk about those in later posts. I hope to inspire you to put fruit trees in your yard, and if your property is too small, or if you are in an apartment, you can always grow a dwarf tree in a container on a balcony or patio. Fruit trees produce more food than any other plant that you can grow, and they don't take as long as you might think to produce food. The tree itself will cost you under 50 dollars and will feed you for 20 to 30 years. Definately the best investment you can put into your property after your home and garage.
The second photo above is one of our self seeded apple trees, we have 3 that seeded themselves. Also that is another grape arbor (we have several) that is totally covered with grapes by mid summer. The self seeded apple trees arrived from apples thrown out or used for deer bait many years ago, there is one on the end of our pond and one in the middle of our rear woods as well. You remember the story of Johnny Appleseed? Well that is what he did, plant apples all over from apple cores he buried, now that is known as gorilla gardening. People planting things in places that are not owned or used by other people, food crops or other things. We also have a lot of apple trees that we planted ourselves, but the self seeded ones are really strong growers. The one in the woods could use a little more light though.
Here's looking at that same grape arbor and apple tree later in the summer, I'm standing just north of our kitchen window taking this photograph last summer. This lawn is on top of our drainfield, and the plants surrounding it are planted on the slope of the drainfield The bird bath marks the cleanout access to the drainfield to make it easy to find.
We had a housefire in July of 2002. This drainfield was built when we moved a new home onto the property after the housefire and put in a new drainfield. So all of this that you see here grew in the past 16 years.
Another view of the same drainfield, looks really weedy, but most of the grasslike plants you see are actually siberian iris, daylillies, ornamental grasses and other plants that were yet to flower when this photo was taken
As we go on with more post later I'll share with you more of the property and what we did and are doing to get to where we are today. Hopefully we will continue to grow together.
No comments:
Post a Comment