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Subject: Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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  • From: "J Bailey" <jbmail@isomedia.com>
  • To: "Healthy soil and sustainable growing" <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Intro and post on herb/plant choices
  • Date: Sat, 29 Apr 2006 20:07:12 -0700

Hello,

Trading Post Paul pointed me to this list from a lost arts group because of a post I wrote he thought might be helpful here. It went something like this...

"We're in Whatcom county WA
on a tiny bit o' land, trying to see how much we can provide for ourselves
with it. We just moved to our place last fall, so are neck deep in projects.
I'm just getting ready to dig out a giant herb bed for all the starts in my
greenhouse, so herb lore is on my front burner. We also brew, so medicinal
beer & mead herbs are part of the plan too.

One website I like to look at when planning plantings is this one -
http://www.pfaf.org/index.html Plants for a Future. They rate plants by
usefulness, both food and medicine, so you can pick ones that will give a
lot of bang for your buck. For instance, we need to plant some shade trees
in one corner of a pasture, we'd also like something we can use for firewood
someday, and they need to be able to withstand windstorms up to 100mph. I
looked at linden trees and found not only will they meet those needs, but
they are an excellent medicinal plant too.

Same goes for heather. The flowers make a great addition to beer or mead,
they have medicinal uses, and seem to like the growing conditions around the
foundations of the house (which were bare when we moved in). They are
evergreen, and help trap rainwater before it can compromise the house crawl
space, and help hold water in that planting strip so the soil stays moister
where the plants need it."

Let me add to the description of our place by saying it's 1.25 acres on what used to be a larger working farm some time ago. The piece we bought fronts the main road and has the original 1920-built farmhouse. The outbuildings and fencing were removed long ago, so we're starting from scratch there. The house itself was a rental the past 20 years but has been updated and well insulated, and being well under 1000 square feet, is very easy to heat with a small woodstove.

We're fairly experienced gardeners and critter tenders, and our goal is to see just how much we can help this land provide for us. We inherited an ancient apple tree, a large blackberry patch, tasty nettles, and some herbs that went wild from someone's garden. We've added fruit trees, hop vines, raised veggie beds, a potato patch, small greenhouse, compost areas, chickens, goats and are researching if we have room to keep a dexter cow for milk and babies. The house is so tiny that most of the lot is lovely open pasture. Incredibly rich with timothy grass, which we overseeded with 2 kinds of hybrid clover (the best we could find for our microclimate) that brings nitrogen to the grass and is already making the pasture lush and alive. We have a huge salmonberry patch that is home to tree frogs and provides good goat fodder, and we're crossfencing everything into small paddocks we can manage for best growth and critter food potential. We're also learning how to use our scythe to mow so we can make a little hay too. We also have 7 old growth douglas fir trees that the house nestles in, which provide shade and habitat. We hope to underplant these with an appropriate food plant, once we figure out what that is....

We also want to add a couple of beehives, some hazel trees, and have a bunch of elderberries on order. Infrastructure-wise, we're building a small barn, a new coop, a woodshed, and looking into a smokehouse, outdoor bread oven, carport, doubling the barn next spring, etc, etc...

Anyway, I hope to learn a lot here about how to make Seven Trees a better place.And hopefully share what I've learned along the way too.

Joanna of Seven Trees
http://www.seventrees.blogspot.com/





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