Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Carrie Shepard <carrieshepard@yahoo.com>]

I've been outside this morning moving plants around in my next attempt at getting plants to actually grow in a high traffic zone that we look at through our large dining room window.  In the winter, we love having a line of beautiful evergreen trees, but there is little else but the bird feeders and wild birds all season.

 

I've only tried one other time to get at least grass to grow in this area, but as I said it's a high traffic zone across the back of our house.   The chickens, dog (s), cats, and people dragging stuff and a water hose tends to keep any grass from being able to take hold.  We do have one picture that shows grass at one point grew there BEFORE I got all the chickens.  My feeble attempt the first time entailed what I know now to have been a much too thin and sparse layer of mulch and seeds.

 

This time, I've rounded up a couple old tires (non-edibles going here) an old cold-frame and a couple of planters.  I filled them all with bunny poop and garden soil and have planted:  narcissus bulbs, mums, vinca, english ivy, and daylillies.  In front of this I've put a few landscaping rocks with more ivy and ajuga squished so the chickens can't possibly scratch out the new stuff.  I covered the whole thing with old wire fencing and chicken wire scraps till it's established.  Hopefully, after the county fair this week, I can add a few pansies and colors of mums I don't have and I can grow it out to where the whole area is filled in with rocks, stepping stones, and greenery.  Later in the fall, I'd like to add a few more bird feeders.

 

OK, I know I titled this shrubs and vines and here's where they come in.  I have wisteria, forsythia, and privet hedges that I've been working with to add stacking possibities and as a result I'm inspired to do even more with them. For management help now with the wisteria -- I need to leash train a few of my goats and have my children walk them over to where I want it curtailed.  We've had lots more wild bird nests built this year over the previous and it's been delightful to discover them.  I was really surprised to find a nest right at the fenceline where a grape vine and new tree and the fenceline intersect.  I saw what I think was a juvenile cardinal on that same fenceline this morning.  We also saw what we think was a mother goldfinch feeding her young and showing them the sunflowers just the other morning.  We watched her take them from the electrical line over to the sunflowers, then back to the line and feed them from her beak.  I'd never seen that before.  As I prune these shrubs and vines, I toss them into the pasture for the goats and sheep.

 

It was the Mollison permaculture books that encouraged me to really look at what resources were already in my reach and utilize those to the best of my abilities.  It's fabulous to see that paying off in so many ways.

 

Blessings,

Carrie

ps.  hello Kathy!  there's lots of us okie's on here now!

 

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