Rain Catching
- Animals, Bees, Birding, Chickens, Gardening adventures, Heirloom Plants, Other Insects, Permaculture and Edible Forest Gardening Adventures, Photos, Ponds, Rain Catching, Vegan, Vegetables, Vegetarian
Garden’s One Year Anniversary
Happy Anniversary! One year ago on Feb. 1, 2011, I signed a contract with landscape architect Roger Boddaert (760-728-4297) to create a permaculture garden. For twelve years I’ve had this sloping property that was covered in weeds and worthless Washingtonia palms. Not only do these 2 acres slope down to a barranca, but it was filled in due to catching all the rainwater that runs from the street and properties above. I have to give credit to friend Gary B., who brought up the subject of permaculture in a conversation the year before. I’d heard the term and thought I knew what it was about, but months later when I was researching what to do with my property I remembered him mentioning it, and looked it up. I found what I was looking for. I’ve been an organic gardener for many years, have owned chickens for their eggs, have refused to till the soil so as not to kill microbes, have worked naturally with animals and plants, have created habitat, composted, recycled, collected rainwater… and all of that was permaculture. And so much more. How can one not be attracted to the term Food Forest? Certainly not a foodie and gardener like myself.
What happened on the property starting the week of Feb. 1 for the next six months altered the land so that it is truly two acres of habitat. It is useful, it is natural, and it is beautiful. Roger’s team led by Juan built beautiful walls of urbanite, planted and hauled, worked in scorching sun and frosty mornings and made what was dreamed into reality. An integral part of the garden has been diverting the water from erosion points and into rain catchment basins and natural ponds, and that is where Aart DeVos and Jacob Hatch of Aquascape (760-917-7457) came in. They also installed the irrigation. Dan Barnes did the rough and the precise tractor work (760-731-0985) and I can’t recommend his experience and skill enough. Fain Drilling dug the well (760-522-7419) and the wonderful sheds were built by Quality Sheds of Menifee (http://www.socalsheds.com) .
Along with some volunteer help from Jacob, I am the sole caretaker of the property. I am planning the plant guilds, weeding, improving soil, moving problem plants and trees and, did I mention, weed? Oh yes, then there is weeding. On Saturday May 12th, the garden will be on the Garden Tour of the Association of University Women of Fallbrook, and hopefully many people will be inspired to go organic, to create habitat, conserve water and grow extra food for the Fallbrook Food Pantry. We’ve come a long way, baby!
The following photos are comparisons between the precise location last year at this time, and today.
The property last February. 
The property today. 
Sophie and General loved all the excitement. 
They love the new gardens and pond even more. 
My veggie beds with the old sheds behind. 
My veggie beds with the new sheds and greenhouse behind. 
Where the big sheds were: everything usable was reused. 
New sheds that aren’t a safety hazard, and the greenhouse. 
The lower area with shed debris (lots of mowing area!). 
Hey, there are ponds there now! 
Not much for the neighbors to look at. 
Quite a lot for the neighbors to look at! 
Access to the old oak was hazardous. 
Palm stairs lead past the oak to a birding area. 
Stonefruit were old when I moved in. 
New stonefruit adorn what is now the Bee Garden. 
An erosion area sloping down to the barranca. 
Water won’t flow through here anymore. 
Lots of mowing and palm frond removal. 
Not so anymore. 
Horrible looking debris failed to hold back the embankment. 
Palms were used to stabilize the new paths and camoflage the supports. 
Old unstable stairs led to washout areas. 
New railings, stairs and urbanite retaining walls lead to another viewing area. 
The view from my balcony. Part of the old shed remains. 
Hey, there’s a pond there! You May Also Like
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Rain
Runoff An interesting fact, especially for those of us in low-rain areas: An inch of pH neutral, nutrient-freeing, perfect rain falling on one acre of land is the equivelent of 27,154 gallons of water. Yep. Where does it go? For most people, it runs off into the storm drains and eventually to the ocean where it becomes salty and unusable without treatment. Then a couple of weeks later, on come the sprinklers delivering not-so-good quality expensive domestic water, further locking up the nutrients and killing the microbes in the soil. How can you capture that wonderful resource of natural rainwater? Water barrels are alittle help, but mostly what you need to do is shape your soil to catch the runoff. Swales, deep loam, and strategic planting can quickly take all that water… even the amount that pours off of your roof, and capture it in the soil. The water slowly sinks and moves the way it was going before, but without taking the topsoil with it. As it moves, the plant roots absorb it over a long period of time, along with all the nutrients that pH-neutral rainwater has freed up in the soil. Your landscape will be stunning, your water bill can eventually be reduced to zero, and if you grow food plants, the nutrition level in them will rise. Here is a video from permaculturalist Geoff Lawton with graphics: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFeylOa_S4c.
This is the essence of permaculture. Simple, logical effort to use what we already have to return the soil to the sponge it was before we compacted it. So how large is your plot of land? Nine acres? A back porch with pots? You can still do the math and see how much water you can capture. Look up rainwater harvesting videos on YouTube and see plots of land in the desert that harvest rainwater and are oasises of food, habitat and beauty, without supplemental water. Here is what Lawton has done with ten acres in Jordan: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvmx4lcqQVw. If they can do it on that scale in that poor an area, any homeowner can do it.
- Gardening adventures, Permaculture and Edible Forest Gardening Adventures, Photos, Ponds, Rain Catching
The October Garden
Weeding The weeds took advantage of the warm weather and my absence last week to really get some growing in. I’m pulling each weed by hand, shaking off the dirt (trying not to get showered with it in my eye), and composting them. The greens when layered with brown material (dead clippings, etc.) will cook nicely for use next year. I have a tall wire cage set up in one of the raised beds I haven’t filled yet, so the compost will be made right where it will be used.
Meanwhile the garden grows. Melon vines are dying, but the squash continues on!
Luffa vines grew up the palm trunks, then down again to the ground! With permaculture the idea is to mimic a forest dynamic, with lots of plants helping each other grow by providing elements other plants lack, such as nitrogen, mulch, shade, flowers to attract pollinators, etc. You can fit a lot of plants into a small area.
You can fit a lot of plants in a small space with adequate nutrients and water 
Trouble with citrus The orange tree above is receiving too much irrigation water due to its placement on sloping land and the nearness of water-loving plants. Planning beds with compatible plants providing adequate initial nutrition and water can result in happy masses of plants.
The palm walkway has become a jungle tunnel 
Bamboo and sugarcane 
Bee and butterfly seed mix The pond, now six months old, looks as if it has been on the property for years.
The pond looking natural The melon vines and pumpkins have not only protected the land from the scorching summer sun, but will provide good compost and certainly are decorative as well as sources of food. I always wanted to wait for the Great Pumpkin!
Cinderella pumpkins, with purple cosmos across the dry streambed Sages, mints and butterfly bushes continue to flower, providing much needed pollen sources for bees in this season of dearth.
The entranceway 
Bananas and sage Meanwhile in the vegetable garden many crops have had their day and I’m composting them as I get to them. Some such as the eggplant are still going strong. (See my steamed eggplant recipe! Yum!) .
Another giant eggplant hiding in the strawberries A garden as large as this can be overwhelming, especially in its first year. I’m trying to think in sections. I enjoy working the garden, making it mine and seeing the surprises that show up. My back and hands aren’t as happy, especially the morning after, but… too bad! “Get over it, guys!” I say, then realize I’m talking to my body parts. Alone in my garden, only the plants really care, and they aren’t looking. Or are they?
Sunflower keeping an eye out in all directions -
First Rain
Rainfall on the pond The first week of October and we’re having a day of heavy rain… almost unbelievable. Normally October in San Diego is high fire season. The brush is crisp from months of drought and high temperatures, and then the Santa Ana winds begin: wild dry winds that blow east to west from the deserts, full of static and mad gusts that turn brush fires into firestorms.
My property is a watershed, funneling rainwater from the street through to the streambed in the barranca below, taking all my topsoil and some of the embankment with it. This year I had the beginnings of a permaculture garden installed to remedy this pattern. By deepening the loam and placing berms around plant guilds water is encouraged to pool up and soak in rather than run off. Overflow is channeled through a series of dry ponds which allow water to soak into the ground. From there it is channeled safely down to an overflow into the stream. Today was an early test of what has been worked on since Feb. 1.
The tilling, mulching and berming done by the crew of landscape architect Roger Boddaert proved successful.
Berms hold water back so that it may soak into the loam The soil has a high clay content, which was good news when digging the large pond because it held water without a liner. It is bad news for other areas of the garden where water is pooling up instead of sinking in. I was able to take note of these areas this afternoon so that they could be drained and mulched for more absorption.
Aquascape, the company that installed the series of ponds, is still planting and maintaining the waterways. Jacob came out in the rain and watched it flow, shaping and fortifying as the force of the rain and thus the volume increased.
Jacob helping water flow Water flowed under the fence from the street, but instead of flooding a cement culvert as it used to do, it is channeled down to the ponds.
Street run-off enters under the fence 
Blocked by debris, water floods past the bridge Silt and debris blocked water flow under the bridge, and was eroding the area by the structure called the Nest. I cleared the debris and raked rocks and silt to the weak side, and that fixed the problem temporarily.
Rainwater flowing into the first 'dry' pond Water quickly filled the first dry pond; with the high clay content, water percolates but does it slowly.
'Dry' ponds filling and slowing run-off 
Logs and rocks are ornamental and slow water flow 
Normally dry, the stone crossing is now almost underwater 
The little pond is rapidly filled. As water reached the small pond, which wasn’t intended to permanently hold water but the clay had a different idea, the sides had to be shored up and the overflow diverted.
Water is diverted from the little pond around the big one Extra floodwaters aren’t being diverted into the large pond because we don’t want it filled with silt, and we don’t want it overflowing rapidly and eroding the sides. Instead the water flows through a channel around the large pond, then down to a prescribed place to flow out and over the embankment to the stream below.
Overflow is channelled past the ponds and out to the natural stream below Some areas of heavy erosion had been filled and supported, and as of six this evening they looked wet but not iffy. What a night of heavy rain will do, I’ll have to see in the morning. I am very lucky to have this type of
rain early in the season. It has been heavy enough to cause significant water flow to help shape the watercourse and show weak spots, and the rain will be reduced to showers tomorrow then clear up, so repairs and improvements can be made before true flooding happens later in the year or early in the next.Although much more water is being held on the property, and topsoil is not being lost, it still pains me to see so much rain channeled out to the stream. Rainwater is a neutral Ph, and carries nitrogen (especially when
there is lightning). It is the best possible water for plants, as well as for human consumption and bathing. In side-by-side comparisons with tap water, plants watered with rainwater flourish far beyond the growth of the others. I’m greedy to hold that water onto my property, letting it soak as deeply as possible for tree roots to use far into the year. As the newly planted trees grow, their roots will help hold water and soil. As their leaves drop the mulch levels will raise, aided by compost and mulch that I will be constantly adding, and the soil will become more absorbent farther down. Each rain should have less runoff and more absorption. This rain has shown a great success with the garden, but I know it is only the beginning. - Chickens, Gardening adventures, Heirloom Plants, Permaculture and Edible Forest Gardening Adventures, Photos, Ponds, Rain Catching, Vegetables, Vegetarian
The August Garden
Plants have been enjoying the beautiful weather and the constant irrigation from the well, and the garden is flourishing. So, unfortunately, is the Bermuda grass, but that is another tale. Since I see it everyday I don’t notice the change so much, but when I show someone around I am thrilled all over again with the incredible change that has happened on this property. There are so many birds, insects, reptiles and other animals either already here or scouting it out that I know the project is a success. It is a habitat, not just for me and my family, but for native flora and fauna as well. It wasn’t so long ago that I had a cracked, weedy asphalt driveway, a termite-ridden rickety porch that needed pest control, a house with a stinky deteriorating carpet and old splotchy paint, a tile kitchen counter with the grout gone in between and a cleaning nightmare, and a yard full of snails, weeds and Washingtonia palm trees, with the embankment eroding each rainfall. Over the last four years we’ve survived some pretty intense construction projects (none of which were done on time, no matter what they promised!). My house still has some repairs that need to be done but I no longer am embarrassed to have anyone over. The garden is wonderful to walk in and explore. I’ve taken some photos this evening to show you how things are growing:
Bees enjoying purple coneflowers 
The luffa squash has mighty asperations. 
A luffa squash and bloom. They are edible small and green, but I’ll leave them to dry. 
Five eggs today! Each laying hen participated for the first time! The little girls have grown up. 
The small lower pond and the palm pathway. 
The veggie bed. 
Rushes, fleabane, waterlilies and other plants are growing in nicely around the big pond. The boat is still on loan from Aquascape. 
A pumpkin tree? This apricot isn’t healthy, but the pumpkins sure are. 
These bare areas I’ll fill with plants that will make up guilds, each plant filling a niche to help the others grow. 
The entrance to the bee garden. 
Native vinegar weed loves a place we left untouched, and so do the bees. 
Sugar pumpkins ready a little early for Halloween. 
A feral zucchini, still producing at least one a day. 
Melons, passionfruit, pitcher plant and many others under the back porch we call the Poop Deck. 
Very eager bamboo, sugarcane and hops. 
Olive trees tied to painted PVC pipe to make a hut. 
The ‘Nest’ beyond the dry stream bed. 
A thud and a swish… with no warning the neighbor’s tree fell across the fence. 
A green roof for the entranceway, just beginning to show. 
The watermelons in the vegetable beds were tiny… these monsters are wild. That one grew on the rock on its own. 
Entranceway flower tunnel… with dogs waiting to go inside! -
Midsummer Garden
When I’m in the garden everyday, I find that I forget that only seven months ago, things looked radically different. I’ll post some before and now photos below:
View to pond, before 
View to veg now 
Out to neighbors before 
View to neighbors now 
Entryway before 
Entryway now 
Middle property before 
Middle property now 
Lower yard before 
Lower yard now What a difference six months can make!
- Gardening adventures, Other Insects, Permaculture and Edible Forest Gardening Adventures, Rain Catching, Vegan, Vegetables
Beginning an Edible Forest Garden
Pumpkins by the chickens An edible forest garden is a mode of growing that mimicks the relationships between plants in a forest, while substituting food producing plants for humans. To achieve this, you have to examine what plants grow in forests near you. Here in San Diego County, we have chapparal communities, along with some pine and oak forests in the mountains. I cannot replicate a forest such as found in, say, Olympia, because we have completely different climates, soils, and plant interrelationships. Even for people who live in deserts, you can examine what once was there before the area was a desert, or what plants are in a nearby oasis if you have one. I’d substitute plants for more desirable ones, such as lemonade berry for its cousin poison oak. Plants should provide canopy, groundcover, mulch, nitrogen-fixing, and insect attracting. After these plant guilds mature they will provide fertilizer and moisture for themselves.
However, most of us are far away from this type of gardening, or just don’t want to go that far. Integrating your ornamentals with food plants, though, is not radical anymore and entirely practical. Any nook in your yard can be a place for food producing plants. Too many squash or tomatoes? Take them to a local food pantry.
Melons by a dead lime tree trellis 
A single Cinderella pumpkin vine under an apricot 
Zucchinis make lush bushes 
Watermelons suppressing weeds Tomatoes are a vining plant which will use any upright structure on which to climb.
Can you see the tomato plant? (Its up the palm trunk) Is your produce sprouting in the house? Try planting it instead of composting. Onions make particularly pretty plants with flowers that attract pollinators and hummingbirds. You may collect the seed from them as well. If the produce doesn’t survive, its okay: you’ve just buried compost.
Plant sprouting produce for ornamentals and to gather seed Sweet potatoes are perennial plants that produce swollen rhyzomes rather than swollen roots as other potatoes do. Plant them where you can dig up some of the roots but leave the main plant to thrive for years, depending on your climate. Their leaves are beautiful, and the plants are often sold as ornamentals.
Sweet potatoes have beautiful leaves Herbs in the shrubs, strawberries in the flowers, and melon and squash under the trees all make for a beautiful edible landscape that will provide food, compost, mulch and habitat while you study up for your edible forest garden.
Strawberries with yarrow 
Apple mint attracts pollinators and is good on fruit 
Passionvines are a host plant for Gulf Fritillary butterflies 
Hops are vigorous, tall vines for brewing and sleep pillows 
Grapes will hide a chain link fence - Gardening adventures, Permaculture and Edible Forest Gardening Adventures, Ponds, Rain Catching, Vegetables
Yesterday in the Garden
Yesterday was the solstice, the formal beginning of summer. The longest day of the year. (Only six months to Christmas!) With months of growing season already behind us here in San Diego County, and the threat of drought and fire ahead of us, it is a time to enjoy the bounty that we already have. This is my year for gardening: I have the best vegetable garden I’ve ever had, after years of building raised beds and lining with aviary wire against gophers, improving the soil with compost, and buying organic seeds and fertilizers. I also have incredible freedom in my yard to plant whatever I like, wherever I like (within the constraints of tolerance by the plants). I’ve always had to cluster plants around where I’ve slapped together irrigation on the few stolen weekend hours I could devote to my yard. No more! With the permaculture gardens, the well and the drip irrigation, I am excited about my yard for the first time in the twelve years I’ve lived here. With the incredible job that Roger Boddaert and his team of Juan and Francisco, and also Aquascape’s Aart DeVos with his manager Jacob who has spent thirteen hour days on my property and is back early the next morning, the permaculture project is nearing completion and is spectacular. As a habitat it is succeeding, attracting more wildlife every day. As a food forest it has is off to a good start, with extra going to go to the Fallbrook Food Pantry. As an interesting, decorative garden it is unique and full of surprises. I’ll show you some photos; you can click on any of them to enlarge, but it will open in this window and you’ll have to use the back arrow to return to this page:
Long Scarlet Runner Beans 
Vigorous vines 
Little pickling cucumber 
Towering Quinoa 
Seeds on multiple stems 
Garlic Nearing Harvest Time 
First zucchini harvest 
Through the main entranceway 
Streamside walkway 
Mulched beds with swales 
Tin-roofed bridge 
The Palm Aisle 
My First Yacht 
Yarrow between the stepping stones -
Answers
Drinking the Small Pond Down I really haven’t been avoiding blogging. I’ve tried to do it, but I’ve just been exhausted in the evening, which is my usual writing time, and haven’t stayed awake long enough to finish writing. Obviously we’ve made it back to Fallbrook, pulling in about 9 pm on Saturday. Many things happened during my five days gone. As I am about to frost a Buttermilk Chocolate Ganache Cake (see recipes!) (I occasionally sell baked goods) that will be picked up at 7 am tomorrow, I’ll provide answers to the questions I posed before leaving on my Oregon Or Bust sojourn.
A Full Pond! Yes, the pond was filled! Gloriously full, and with a boat blowing from shore to shore in the breeze! The boat is on loan from Aquascape, who uses it in their work, but put out to float just to show off the pond for my return. Water plants are being transplanted and seeded around the ‘wicking’ areas, and the streambed area for rain is being sculpted. I’m not the only one who enjoys the pond!
If he thinks he can sleep on the couch after this....! The palm trunks are being made into a bridge, which isn’t quite finished yet.
Bridge to Be The cement stairs now have posts for a walk-through arbor.
Gateway to the Garden The gnawed-upon palm stairs are even more gnawed-upon, but there are piles of bunny poo left where the culprits spent plenty of time wearing down their ever-growing teeth! The Bitter Apple didn’t seem to make a difference when I sprayed it on the steps. I’ll need to try garlic next.
Bunny Poo As for my veggie garden, the pumpkin and watermelon have grown at least two feet in a week, and the pickling cucumbers have outgrown the two lengths of support twine that I put up above their heads just before leaving!
Vigorous Cukes I’ve added more and guided them up. All the plants not only survived, but they thrived. I so cannot wait for the taste of my own first of the season tomato!
Happy Vines I still have a question, though. Why is it that a roadside stand in Oregon sells avocados for .35 cents apiece, when back home – in the Avocado Capital of the US – they sell for $1.45 apiece in the grocery store? And they aren’t very nice, either! You can’t grow avos in Oregon, or at least in that wet and cold part of it.
Not all the irrigation has been buried, but a good deal has. The sunflower will not raise it’s head again. The pond is slightly green, but picturesque and natural-looking; I don’t want an unnaturally clear pond. So all in all, a great week!
The First Zucchini... uh-oh! 
A Hidden Broccoli Head -
Water!
Upper pond and the Nest For the last two days we’ve experienced enough rain so that my permaculture adventures could be tested. Two storms, each bringing about half an inch of rain, created enough water for the watershed to begin to flow. Roger Boddaert and his team were busy rototilling urea into the areas which hadn’t yet been planted,
Freshly tilled areas soaked up water and Jacob from Aquascape and Jose were digging trenches for the drip irrigation system. They were very glad of the rain softening up the dirt!
Trenching for Irrigation Everyone was wet. Finally the rain gathered enough strength to flow down the street, under the fence from my wonderful neighbor’s property, and down the rain channel created by Jacob.
Water running in the trenches Some trenching had to be done to divert the water around the new Nest hut.
A diverting occupation Rapidly the upper rain catchment pond filled then overflowed down the rain channel into the second lower catchment pond.
Jose and I awaiting the overflow 
First Pond Filled 
Roger and Jacob ponding The scheme is that overflow from this pond will be channeled around the lower permanent pond and away so as not to overflow the big pond and erode the weakest and lowest end of the property around it.
Overflow water from the upper pond However since we were eager to see the big pond filled, Roger cut a trench from the second rain catchment pond to the big pond.
Overflow filling the second pond Earlier I had been in and out that morning on errands, and had settled in the house with a hot cup of tea and comfortable fuzzy pants on, when I realized that I was wasting water. I have three fifty-gallon rain barrels set around the house, which fill up within minutes and then overflow. Why wasn’t I channeling that water into the big pond? So of course I exchange my slippers for outdoor shoes (at least I did that!), put on a windbreaker with a hood, and go hauling hoses around to connect to the rainbarrels. I’ve had a sprained right wrist for a couple of weeks and pulling hoses was not the best medicine. So of course I did it, with my fuzzy pants wicking up rain and mud and beginning to drag under my feet. That’s me in a nutshell. Loving every minute of it. With three hoses leading down to the pond, all that wonderful roof runoff wouldn’t go to waste.
Connecting hoses to rainbarrels 
The Big Pond already collecting rainwater The big pond had had some water in it, enough for my son and I to put in a few mosquito fish to eat all the mosquito larvae. That water had been evaporating so there wasn’t much more than a large puddle at the bottom. By the time I put the hoses leading from the rain barrels into the pond, it had already been catching a significant amount of rainwater directly. Too bad I hadn’t thought of the hoses much earlier in the storm!
The rainstorm broke up too early for me, but more rain was on the way that night.
Waking up to the sound of rain is one of the nicest experiences for me, mostly because I live in a dry climate, I expect. The rain had set in well overnight, and I could see from my bedroom window a reflection from down below which turned out to be the lower pond!
Morning view from my bedroom! For a minute I thought it had filled up, but then I realized it was about a quarter full, and was impressed and excited about how it would look when completely full of water! The watershed rain was following the trench and going through the ponds, which were still holding water and allowing it to perculate into the soil.
Second pond in the morning The planted and mulched areas, and the areas newly tilled were soaking up water so well that there wasn’t any run-off from it. Of course, the rain was steady and we didn’t have any of those crazy intense rainstorms like we get in the winter, when it feels and sounds as if an enormous endless bucket has been overturned over Fallbrook. Those will be a true test of the system. Until then, I was very fortunate to have had this great rainfall to test the system right when the two major players were on hand. It was exciting.
The Lower Pond after the rains
