- Gardening adventures, Heirloom Plants, Permaculture and Edible Forest Gardening Adventures, Seeds, Vegan, Vegetables, Vegetarian
Watermelon Radish
It looks a little like an alien species! We’ve planted a lot of new varieties this year. Still there are seed packages left unopened! So much fun, though. One veggie that we bought from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds is a beautiful radish called Chinese Red Meat Radish, or Watermelon Radish.
The green/white/pink outer color on the swollen roots is a little disconcerting. I’m not a huge fan of radishes. They grow quickly, help identify rows of slower-growing seeds, and are great for kids to plant. Still neither me nor my tummy really likes the strong radish flavor.
Slicing into them is a little creepy. The Watermelon Radish, however, are large, crisp and sweet on the inside. My daughter cut them into small triangles and stir-fried them. They had a little of the bitter radish flavor, but if you expect that you will be delighted at the taste and color.
These brilliant little wedges don’t hold much heat and are great raw, in stir-fries, or lightly cooked on their own. Younger ones have more of a starburst of red in the center. Older ones grow brilliantly red, set against the green outer skin, as dramatic as a dragonfruit.
The brilliant center color is fantastic. Radishes are cool-weather plants; these I planted late but were shaded by vigorous volunteer currant tomatoes that are taking over the bed!
When planting annuals, plant your favorites but don’t forget to play. There are so many varieties of veggies, herbs and flowers available now, especially heirloom and organic (non-GMO!). Why not try some and share the seed with friends?
- Animals, Bees, Birding, Books, Building and Landscaping, Chickens, Cob, Compost, Composting toilet, Fungus and Mushrooms, Gardening adventures, Heirloom Plants, Hugelkultur, Humor, Living structures, Natives, Natural cleaners, Other Insects, Permaculture and Edible Forest Gardening Adventures, Ponds, Predators, Quail, Rain Catching, Recycling and Repurposing, Reptiles and Amphibians, Seeds, Soil, Water Saving, Worms
Permaculture Lectures At Finch Frolic Garden, June 2014
Tour Finch Frolic Garden! Permaculture Lectures in the Garden!
Learn how to work with nature and save money too
Finch Frolic Garden and Hatch Aquatics will present four fantastic, information-filled lectures in June. Join us at beautiful Finch Frolic Garden in Fallbrook, 4 pm to 6 pm, for refreshments and talks on…
Saturday, June 7: Introduction to Permaculture and Finch Frolic Tour: We’ll take you through the main precepts of permaculture and how it can be applied not only to your garden, but to yourself and your community. Then we’ll tour Finch Frolic Garden and show rain catchments, swales, plant guilds, polyculture, living buildings and so much more.
Saturday, June 14: Your Workers in the Soil and Earthworks: Learn the best methods for storing water in the soil and how to replace all your chemicals with actively aerated compost tea and compost.
Saturday, June 21: Aquaculture: You can have a natural pond – even in a tub! How natural ponds work, which plants clean water and which are good to eat. Even if you don’t want a pond, you’ll learn exciting information about bioremediation and riparian habitat.
Saturday, June 28: Wildlife in your Garden: What are all those bugs and critters and what they are doing in your yard? We’ll discuss how to live with wildlife and the best ways to attract beneficial species.
Your hosts and lecturers will be
Jacob Hatch Owner of Hatch Aquatics. With years of installing and maintaining natural ponds and waterways, and a Permaculture Design Course graduate, Jacob has installed earthworks with some of the biggest names in permaculture.
Miranda Kennedy OSU graduate of Wildlife Conservation and wildlife consultant, Miranda photographs and identifies flora and fauna and maps their roles in backyard ecosystems.
Diane Kennedy Owner of Finch Frolic Garden, lecturer, consultant, Permaculture Design Course graduate, former SDC Senior Park Ranger, Diane educates homeowners on how to save money and the environment while building their dream gardens.
Each class limit is 50 attendees, so please make pre-paid reservations soon before they fill up. Fee for set of four lectures and tour is $45 per person. Single session fee is $20 per person. Contact Diane Kennedy at dianeckennedy@prodigy.net for reservations and directions.
You will not want to miss this fascinating and useful information!
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Urbanite, the New Name for Chunks of Cement
Urbanite stepping stones work beautifully in the garden allowing plants to grow in between. Just as old LPs or records are now called vinyls, so are chunks of a neighbor’s patio called urbanite. I like the term because it makes the mental transition from a waste product – cement chunks – to building material. Put an ‘ite’ at the end, and you can use it. The name urbanite also makes me envision pieces of nature-less cities being used for more natural landscapes. There are spaces around chunks of cement for plants to grow.
Urbanite lasts a long time, too, and it is free. The idea of working with cement chunks doesn’t sound aesthetically pleasing, but done well it always has visitors to Finch Frolic Garden enthusiastic. A pathway and two retaining walls were made of urbanite, and they are all wonderful.
A friend and former co-worker called me a few weeks ago to offer urbanite from a piece of her patio that had to be repoured. It took awhile but I found some help to go pick it up. With a small pickup truck we managed two loads; the pieces were stacked on the patio, but the only way to access them was to drive the pickup below the patio wall. Unfortunately, the ground was at an unnerving angle, and quite sandy so there was little traction. I handed pieces of urbanite over the wall and down to Jacob, who loaded them into the tilted truck. It was quite warm that day so we were well cooked. There was a lot left.
You can see the retaining wall and stairs made from urbanite peeking out from under the plants. Then Jacob arranged for me to borrow an old 2-ton pickup with 4-wheel drive. My daughter and I headed over two days ago during a cloudy morning intending to get the truck very close to the wall. No way. The truck tilted dangerously and began to slide, so I had to park it out on the driveway. Of course the sun came out. We spent three hours taking turns tossing huge chunks of cement over the patio wall, shot-putting the pieces so that they wouldn’t hurt the plants at the base of the wall, and then picking them up (finding some of them that had rolled downhill) and carrying them across the shifty dirt to hoist the pieces up and into the bed of the large truck. We swept rubble into nursery containers and dumped them into the truck as well.
Well cooked and completely exhausted, we made it home with the whole load, the truck tires just a little squished. Now we have urbanite to replace some of the stairs made from palms that are beginning to soften or which have been eaten by bunnies.
Ugh! Unfortunately, we still have to unload the truck.
- Animals, Birding, Chickens, Gardening adventures, Heirloom Plants, Humor, Permaculture and Edible Forest Gardening Adventures, Photos, Ponds, Reptiles and Amphibians
Happy Easter!
Heirloom irises from my good friend Jean are blooming. 
A Western fence lizard suns and guards his territory atop a clary sage leaf. See the flash of blue under his chin to attract the ladies? 
This green calla lily is gorgeous. 
Framed by curly willow from the Withy Bird Hide, two drakes swim in the pond on Easter morning. 
Sweet peas are still blooming. They hold the permaculture precept of everything having three purposes: they are nitrogen fixers, they are edible, and they are gorgeous. 
A fancy drake who showed up this morning. 
The irises surrounding the pond are spectacular right now. Blue, dark blue and yellow flag. 
Baby bunny has been growing out his ears. He’s enjoying a warm dirt bath. 
Mulan has gone broody. Such a large chicken puddles out over the wooden egg she’s trying to hatch. We’re feeding her an oatmeal mixture in a dish because she won’t come down during the day. 
Easter breakfast. Hard boiled eggs, naturally colored by our hens, fresh tangerine juice, our traditional stollen from my mother’s recipe, and Peanut in his chicky robe ready to launch into the food. Peanut doesn’t act his age, of about 40+ years, but has traveled and been photographed extensively in Europe and Ecuador. Its nice that he wakes up for holidays. You May Also Like
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Actively Aerated Compost Tea
Aerator, molasses, a paint strainer full of compost and a bucket of water. There are many teas for the garden. Manure tea is made by steeping… you guessed it… well-aged manure in water for several days. Well-aged is the key. Many years ago I gathered horse manure, made a tea and righteously spread it – and all the Bermuda grass seed that was in it – all over my vegetable garden. I’m still battling the grass. With fresh manure you are also brewing some nasty bacteria with which you really shouldn’t be dealing. Allowing well aged or composted manure to brew for a couple of days will produce a nice nutrient tea for your plants. There are better brews for your effort.
Plain compost tea is when you take samples of good soil and allow them to steep in water for several days and use that. This brew has some microbes and basic nutrients in it and is better than plain water for enhancing your soil and as a foliar spray.
However there is a super brew called actively aerated compost tea. It is very simple and inexpensive to make and it works wonders. There are many recipes for it, depending upon how analytical you want to become. Studying your soil under a microscope and following the advice of Dr. Elaine Ingham will give you the premium tea for your particular soil. Dr. Ingham and Dr. Carole Ann Rollins have many books out on the subject of microorganismsin the soil which are all fascinating and well worth the read; if you ever have the chance to hear Dr. Ingham speak, take it!
I don’t tinker with my tea at this time because I just don’t have the time for it. You may not, either. So this is the basic aerated compost tea recipe that will revitalize your soil:
You will need a 5-gallon bucket, a paint strainer or cheesecloth or an old sock, a fish tank aerator or air bubbler, and one or all of these: organic unsulphered molasses, organic flours, organic corn meal, kelp. I have had excellent luck with TeaLab’s Bubblesnake Compost Tea Brewer. I don’t get anything for the plug, I just found that the kit really works and is easy to buy. I purchased through AmazonSmile.
Fill the bucket with either rainwater or tapwater that has stood for at least a day for the chlorine to have evaporated.
Take the paint strainer or sock and fill it with samples of good soil from around your property. If you don’t have any good soil, then add the best you have and then take good soil from areas as close to your property as possible. If you will be using the tea on bushes and trees, then be sure to take soil from under the same. Woody plants like highly fungal soil. If you will be using the tea for annuals and veggies, then go heavy on fine, well-composted soil that is bacteria-rich. Do the best you can; you can’t go wrong unless you take soil that has been sprayed with chemicals, use treated wood chips, or anaerobic soil (you’ll smell it if you do).
Tie the top of the cloth and put it into the bucket. You may tie twine or something around it so that you can haul it out of the bucket if you’d like. This is important on larger containers, but not so much with the small bucket.
Place the aerator or bubbler in the bucket, making sure the air intake hose is clear, and plug it in.
Add about a half tablespoon of molasses. It is important that the molasses is unsulphered and organic for the same reasons that the water shouldn’t have chlorine in it or the soil any chemicals: those things will hurt the microbes that you will be growing. For growth of other microbes, add about a teaspoon of any or all of the following: organic cornmeal, organic wheat flour, liquid kelp, and if you have it tucked away in your shed, bonemeal and bloodmeal (otherwise don’t buy it specially!). So the more different foods you add, the less of each that you use. Two tablespoons of food is about all you want; don’t have a big glob of it floating in your bucket.
Allow the aerator to do its thing for about 13 hours. When its done it should look and smell like sweet tea. Use it within a couple of hours or the creatures will use up all the oxygen and it will go bad. There is much discussion about how long you brew it, etc., just as there are hundreds of stew recipes. This is the recipe taught me in my PDC and one I’ve heard elsewhere. If your tea smells bad, any hint of ammonia or ‘off’ smells, don’t apply it to your plants. You’ll be hurting them. Be sure you have good compost, fresh water and proper aeration, and don’t let it sit too long.
What you are making is not just tea, it is soil inoculant. The micororganisms in the compost will feed on the molasses and oxygen, reproducing until at about 13 hours their numbers will peak and begin dying off a little. The tea should be used within a couple of hours.
Brew the tea for 13 hours then gently apply as a soil drench or foliar spray. What this tea is doing when applied, is establishing or boosting the fungus, bacteria, amoebas, nematodes, and other soil inhabitants in your dirt, all of which are native to your particular area. If you have decent soil already, then you can use this tea 1:10 parts dechlorinated water. If you have rotten dirt, use it straight along with a topping of compost. Compost, whether it be cooked composed compost, straight leaf matter, shredded wood, logs, damp cardboard or natural fabrics, all provide shelter and hold moisture in so that your microbes have habitat. Compost, of course, is the best source of food, moisture and shelter for them.
Apply the tea with a watering can, or a sprayer that has a large opening for the nozzle if you are using the tea as a foliar spray. A squeeze-trigger bottle used for misting has too narrow an opening and will kill a lot of the little guys you have just grown.
Using the tea as a foliar spray will treat disease, fungus and nutrient deficiencies, and help protect plants against insect attack. Instead of spraying sulfur or Bordeaux solution on your trees as is preached by modern gardening books, use compost tea on the leaves and around the drip line. When applied to leaves, the plant’s exudates hold the beneficial microorganisms to the stomata or breathing holes protecting them from disease and many harmful insects. You can’t overdose with compost tea.
All the additives that are recommended to ‘improve’ your soil are bandages not solutions. Think of the billions of soft-bodied creatures living in your soil, waiting for organic matter to eat. Then think of the lime, the rock dusts, the gypsum, the sulfur, the NPK concentrated chemical fertilizers (even derived from organic sources), poured onto these creatures. It burns them, suffocates them and kills them. Your plants show some positive results to begin with because they’ve just received a dose of nutrients, both from what you applied and from the dead bodies of all those murdered microbes. However the problem still is there. The only long-term solution to locked-up nutrients in the soil, hard pan, heavy clay, sand, compaction, burned, or poisoned soil, is good microbe-filled compost. Remember that microbes turn soil into a neutral pH, and allow more collection of neutral pH rainwater. Nutrients in the soil all become available at a neutral pH; there is no such thing as an iron-deficient soil. The nutrients are just locked away from the roots because of the lack of microbes and the pH.
There are compost tea brewers of all sizes, and lots of discussion about how well they work and whether they actually kill off a lot of microbes. See Dr. Elaine Ingham’s work for discussion on different brewers. For large scale operations there are large tanks with aggressive aerators, and the tea is sprayed from the tanks from a truck bed directly on the fields. If you can’t compost your entire property, then spraying compost tea is the next best thing.
If you’d like to be more involved with the biology of your tea, see Qualitative Assessment of Microorganisms by Dr. Elaine Ingham and Dr. Carole Ann Rollins. This book has photos of different soil components as they appear under a microscope, identifying and explaining them. By studying your soil’s balance through a microscope and then tweaking your tea to compensate you’ll be making the most powerful soil inoculant you can.
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Curly Willow Trellis
A walk-through squash trellis. The vines will give it stability, and hang through. Thanks to generous friends, free seed opportunities and wonderful seed catalogs, we have many, many squash varieties to choose from this year. We also want to grow vertically where we can to save space so my daughter and I are creating trellises. No builder, I, but we’re hoping these will last for years to come.
This part of the trail was perfect for vertical growing space. This area of the upper trail isn’t lovely when not covered by vines. It is also quite warm when people are touring and it could use some shade and interesting focal point. Miranda had cut down a large curly willow tree a few months back (it was taking too much water from an avocado). We used a couple pieces of the trunk to inoculate with mushroom spores, and the rest was fair game for a trellis.
Curly willow (Salix matsudana ‘Tortuosa’) has wonderfully shaped branches that twist and curl naturally. You’ll see it often in bouquets, where it usually roots while in water. This willow enjoys more sun and a little less water than native willows do. Willows all produce salicin, the pain-killing ingredient that has now been synthetized as aspirin. Willows also produce a rooting hormone which can be used to encourage sprouting and rooting of other plants. Cut up a willow branch, soak it in water for a couple of days (if water is chlorinated, leave it sit for a day before adding willow) and use to water seedlings.
Miranda makes this look so easy! After we’d put these in, a friend recommended sliding the post pounder over the post before standing it up… for we short people who have trouble lifting the really heavy thing over our heads! Wanting to avoid cutting wood and nailing things together, we sunk four T-posts into the corners. The trellis is six feet across and eight feet wide; any wider and we would have put a center post on each side as well.
We wired on curly willow trunks in the corners, and wired long branches across the tops and the middle. We wired on the side posts and cross posts, cutting long branches from the willow. This willow was long dead; fresh willow could be sunk into the ground and it would root to make a living trellis, like the Withy Hide. We didn’t want that here, though.
We laid long whips from a Brazilian pepper tree across, then wove curly willow through for the top. We stood smaller branches upright along the sides and wired them on, keeping in mind spaces where the squash vines will want to find something on which to grab. Over the top we laid long slim branches from a Brazilian pepper that is growing wild in the streambed and really needs to come out. By pruning it and using the branches, we’re making use of the problem. In permaculture, the problem is the solution! I wanted to make an arched top and tried to nail the slim branches in a bended form, but this was difficult and didn’t work for me. I didn’t want to spend days finishing this… too much else to do! So we laid the branches over the top, wiring some on, and then wove curly willow branches long-wise through them. This weaving helps hold the branches in place, will give the vines support, and brings together the look.
We planted four kinds of squash along the poles. And it was done. It should stand up to wind. We may need to add some vertical support depending upon the weight of the squash vines. We planted four varieties of squash that have small (2-3 lb.) veg. We planted four seeds of each, two on either side. We also planted some herbs, flowers and alliums, and some perennial beans, the Golden Runner Bean.
Architecturally interesting when not covered by squash as well. If nothing else, it is lovely and interesting to look at; better in person than in the photos. We can’t wait for the squash to start vining! Now, onto the next trellis.
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Finch Frolic Facebook!
Thanks to my daughter Miranda, our permaculture food forest habitat Finch Frolic Garden has a Facebook page. Miranda steadily feeds information onto the site, mostly about the creatures she’s discovering that have recently been attracted to our property. Lizards, chickens, web spinners and much more. If you are a Facebook aficionado, consider giving us a visit and ‘liking’ our page. Thanks!
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The Mulberry Guild
The renovated and planted mulberry guild. One of our larger guilds has a Pakistani mulberry tree that I’d planted last spring, and around it had grown tomatoes, melons, eggplant, herbs, Swiss chard, artichokes and garlic chives.
Mulberry guild with last year’s plant matter and unreachable beds. This guild was too large; any vegetable bed should be able to be reached from a pathway without having to step into the bed. Stepping on your garden soil crushes fungus and microbes, and compacts (deoxygenates) the soil. So of course when I told my daughter last week that we had to plant that guild that day, what I ended up meaning was, we were going to do a lot of digging in the heat and maybe plant the next day. Most of my projects are like this.
Lavender, valerian, lemon balm, horehound, comfrey and clumping garlic chives were still thriving in the bed. Marsh fleabane, a native, had seeded itself all around the bed and had not only protected veggies from last summer’s extreme heat, but provided trellises for the current tomatoes.
Fleabane stalks from last year, with new growth coming from the roots. Marsh fleabane is an incredible lure for hundreds of our tiny native pollinators and other beneficial insects. Lots of lacewing eggs were on it, too. The plants were coming up from the base, so we cut and dropped these dead plants to mulch the guild.
The stalks of fleabane are hollow… perfect homes for small bees! The stems were hollow and just the right size to house beneficial bees such as mason bees. This plant is certainly a boon for our first line of defense, our native insects.
We also chopped and dropped the tomato vines. Tomatoes like growing in the same place every year. With excellent soil biology – something we are still working on achieving with compost and compost teas – you don’t have to rotate any crops.
Slashed and dropped tomato and fleabane. We had also discovered in the last flood that extra water through this heavy clay area would flow down the pathway to the pond, often channeled there via gopher tunnels.
The pathway is a water channel during heavy rains. It needs fixing. We decided to harvest that water and add water harvesting pathways to the garden at the same time. We dug a swale across the pathway, perpendicular to the flow of water, and continued the swale into the garden to a small hugel bed.
Swale dug on contour through the pathway and across the guild. Hugelkultur means soil on wood, and is an excellent way to store water in the ground, add nutrients, be rid of extra woody material and sequester carbon in the soil. We wanted the bottom of the swale to be level so that water caught on the pathway would slowly travel into the bed and passively be absorbed into the surrounding soil. We used our wonderful bunyip (water level).
Using a bunyip to make the bottom of the swale level. Water running into the path will now be channeled through the guild. Because of the heavy clay involved we decided to fill the swale with woody material, making it a long hugel bed. Water will enter the swale in the pathway, and will still channel water but will also percolate down to prevent overflow. We needed to capture a lot of water, but didn’t want a deep swale across our pathway. By making it a hugel bed with a slight concave surface it will capture water and percolate down quickly, running along the even bottom of the swale into the garden bed, without there being a trippable hole for visitors to have to navigate. So we filled the swale with stuff. Large wood is best for hugels because they hold more water and take more time to decompose, but we have little of that here. We had some very old firewood that had been sitting on soil. The life underneath wood is wonderful; isn’t this proof of how compost works?
The activity under an old log shows so many visible decomposers, and there are thousands that we don’t see. We laid the wood into the trench.
Placing old logs in the swale. If you don’t have old logs, what do you use? Everything else!
This giant palm has been a home to raccoons and orioles, and a perch for countless other birds. The last big wind storm distributed the fronds everywhere. We are wealthy in palm fronds.
Three quick cuts (to fit the bed) made these thorny fronds perfect hugelbed components. We layered all sorts of cuttings with the clay soil, and watered it in, making sure the water flowed across the level swale.
We filled the swale with fronds, rose and sage trimmings, some old firewood and sticks, and clay. As we worked, we felt as if we were being watched.
Can you spot the duck in this photo? Mr. and Mrs. Mallard were out for a graze, boldly checking out our progress. He is guarding her as she hikes around the property, leading him on a merry chase every afternoon. You can see Mr. Mallard to the left of the little bridge.
This male mallard and his mate, who is ‘ducked’ down in front of him, enjoyed grazing on weeds and watching we silly humans work so hard. After filling the swale, we covered the new trail that now transects the guild with cardboard to repress weeds.
Cardboard laid over the hugelswale. Then we covered that with wood chips and delineated the pathway with sticks; visitors never seem to see the pathways and are always stepping into the guilds. Grrr!
The cardboard was covered with wood chips and the pathway delineated with sticks. Where the trail curves to the left is a small raised hugelbed to help hold back water. At this point the day – and we – were done, but a couple of days later we planted. Polyculture is the best answer to pest problems and more nutritional food. We chose different mixes of seeds for each of the quadrants, based on situation, neighbor plants, companion planting and shade. We kept in mind the ‘recipe’ for plant guilds, choosing a nitrogen-fixer, a deep tap-rooted plant, a shade plant, an insect attractor, and a trellis plant. So, for one quarter we mixed together seeds of carrot, radish, corn, a bush squash, leaf parsley and a wildflower. Another had eggplant, a short-vined melon (we’ll be building trellises for most of our larger vining plants), basil, Swiss chard, garlic, poppies, and fava beans. In the raised hugelbed I planted peas, carrots, and flower seeds.
In the back quadrant next to the mulberry I wanted to trellis tomatoes.
This quadrant by the mulberry needed a trellis for tomatoes. I’d coppiced some young volunteer oaks, using the trunks for mushroom inoculation, and kept the tops because they branched out and I thought maybe they’d come in handy. Sure enough, we decided to try one for a tomato trellis. Tomatoes love to vine up other plants. Some of ours made it about ten feet in the air, which made them hard to pick but gave us a lesson in vines and were amusing to regard. So we dug a hole and stuck in one of these cuttings, then hammered in stakes on either side and tied the whole thing up.
Tying the trunk to two stakes with twine taken from straw bales. Love the blue color! The result looks like a dead tree. However, the leaves will drop, providing good mulch, the tiny current tomatoes which we seeded around the trunk will enjoy the support of all the small twigs and branches, and will cascade down from the arched side.
The ‘dead tree’ look won’t last long as the tomatoes climb over it and dangle close to the path for easy harvesting. We seeded the area with another kind of carrots (carrots love tomatoes!) and basil, and planted Tall Telephone beans around the mulberry trunk to use and protect it with vines. We watered it all in with well water, and can’t wait to see what pops up! We have so many new varieties from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds and other sources that we’re planting this year! Today we move onto the next bed.
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You Can Only Catch So Much Rain!
After a seriously dry and warm winter, last weekend we received most of our rain allotment over four days. Here in Fallbrook we received four inches. A long soaking rain would have been preferable, but I’m happy for what we received. Normally we receive downpours like cranky temper tantrums of the clouds that thunder down for a minute and then whimper away, but not this time.
The pathway between the Mexican bush sage and quail bush became a river. Now we know where to put new swales. 
Water from the driveway was channeled down to the new veggie bed trenches, and filled them up. This storm had rain events where it would pour down buckets, and then become heavier and last for much longer than usual. The last storm of this type was back in December, 2010, which is when I lost chunks of property down into the streambed due to erosion across the property. Thanks to permaculture methods, the property received very little damage and no serious erosion.
New temporary streams everywhere. This was a directed overflow from the ponds. If we had just received what had fallen on our property then we would have captured all of it. The downpours were so hard and long that we had tens of thousands of gallons of water flowing through from the street. My daughter and I left just after one of the last ginormous downpours and drove past a brown river running down the street and onto our property. It not only collected and flowed from other properties, but rain water was flowing from the cross street, Alvarado, down our street, through the neighbor’s property and through ours. It is amazing that we suffered as little damage as we did.
The large rain catchment basin worked beautifully, percolating well and slowing the flood. The rain catchment basins worked beautifully; the top one filled and percolated down many times, recharging the water table. Overflow systems worked well to channel water down an overflow pipe and into the streambed below. Water from the driveway was diverted to the long, level trenches we’d dug under our new ‘sunken’ veggie beds, and it worked well. It was good to see the overflows working, because there was no way in the world to capture the amount of water that flowed through this property. Oh, if only I could have! Let’s see: one inch of water falling in one hour on one acre is almost 27,000 gallons of water. I have 1.68 acres and we received four inches. That means that about 181, 440 gallons of water fell directly on my property alone. I couldn’t begin to calculate how much water flowed onto the property from the street and neighbor’s properties during the heavy rainfall times. Sigh. I’ll have to keep working on catching more! I’m water greedy!
The big pond backed up to the cement slab where the cob oven sits! It wasn’t until the last day that water backed up and overflowed the cement channel, effectively removing mulch we’d just laid over plywood and cardboard on the pathways. One area, notorious for its squidgy clay when wet, emulated quicksand under the layer of mulch (the boot photo at the top).
Plywood that had days before been topped with mulch. Repair work was time-consuming but not difficult, only we need more mulch! One of the great benefits of the overflow, however, is that it deposited sand and decomposed granite over the heavy clay in the beds. The storm helped amend the soil in these troublesome areas!
You can see the difference between the sandy silt that once belonged to our neighbors, deposited on the shiny thick clay of our garden bed. Thanks! In fact, outside of our gate where the street water flows to enter the property a lot of silt accumulated. We were out there with wheelbarrows today clearing it out and using it. It is a great mixture of sand, decomposed granite and organic materials! Beautiful stuff. We hauled it down the hill and used it to plant potatoes in milk crates, mixed with a little pigeon poo from our generous neighbors. I had been wondering where I’d be able to get the soil for those crates. We still have a lot left (more to collect, too, but it is heavy business) for other projects.
Just before the rains we’d covered this area in newspaper topped by mulch. You can see the river of water behind the tree and the shifted mulch in front. Strawberry plants under the olive were covered with debris. So on top of trying to catch up with the early spring here (did we even have winter??), we’ve been repairing the trails and making the walkways safe for the tours which have begun. It is a good lesson about where to place more swales and rain catchment basins for the next strange rain event. Since its March already, I don’t really have to worry about possible flooding for another twelve months or more!
By the end of the four days everything overflowed, but not violently. Here we have a temporary pond by the Mock Pavilion. -
The Fine Art of Pleaching or Plashing
Pleaching in the sky. My daughter and I pleached today, although I’ve had the pleasure of pleaching before this , and even later. Pleaching, or its synonym plashing, refers to the interweaving of branches, both live or dead. Basketry is one form, but more notably is the pleaching of living branches to form secure living fences, buildings or artwork. The withy (willow) bird hide (a covered place from which to watch birds) is a living building I planted two years ago. We pleached our withy hide today. Not many people can say that! (or admit to it).
Pleaching is where stems, usually from two plants, grow together. Pleaching can be done on many vigorous trees such as willow, or even fruit trees such as plum. The branches grow together making separate plants become part of a whole. The trees then share nutrients and water and can pull what it needs from roots a long distance away.
Curly willow is beautiful on its own. Pleaching essentially makes many plants into one living organism. Pleached hedgerows make a living barrier to keep in livestock; pleached trees can be woven into furniture, living artwork, decorative fences, and living trellises. Pleaching livestock fences was practiced a lot in Europe prior to the invention of barbed wire, and then was forgotten for awhile only to be revived as a form of artistic gardening.
This trunk unfortunately cracked while I pulled on it. As it is willow, it will heal quickly. My daughter used the opportunity to put a twig from the next willow through the crack, which will grow over it. Today I of course, as is my habit, waited until the sun was directly above the area where I was working so that I had to look into it as I worked. I don’t recommend this, however. My daughter used a fruit-picking pole to snag some of the taller, whippier branches of the curly willow that make up the withy hide. I stood on a ladder, squinting, and pulled two branches together.
Me on a ladder reaching over my head to pull two branches together to form a roof. To insure that you have a good pleach going, it is best to lightly scrape the bark from both pieces just where they are going to meet; something like you see blood brothers do with their hands in the movies, but with no blood involved.
Lightly scraping the bark from both branches where they will meet is important. Next time I’ll use a vegetable peeler, which will allow me better angles. Then you make sure the pieces fit snugly, then tie them on. I’ve use various materials to do this. Twist-ties hold securely but the wire can eventually girdle the growing branches. Twine is more difficult to use in that it doesn’t grip the branches well enough for a firm hold, but it will eventually break down, hopefully after the pleach is successful. This time I used green tree tape. It grips well, is easy to tie, and will stretch with the growing branches and eventually break. The green color won’t be noticeable when the willow leafs out, either.
Tying the scraped branches together so they stay put. They can’t move around in the wind or they won’t be able to grow together. As I pleached from the top of the ladder, working overhead while the sun and curly twigs attacked my eyes, my daughter pleached pleasing arches over the ‘windows’ of the hide.
Weaving curly willow can be a twisty challenge. The hide looks lopsided because the willows on one side have found sent out roots to drink from the small pond. With more pleaching, the thirsty trees on the other side will probably take advantage of that water source, too, and have a drink via their overhead connection. I think it is part of its charm. A half-wild building.
The withy hide as a duck on the big pond sees it. The willow is just about to begin leafing out. Try pleaching a small fence or a living bench or chair. It is tremendous fun and if you don’t like it, you can always cut it down. Oh, and work on a cloudy day.
A willow roof.
