Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["Elizabeth B." <spacecitydx@webtv.net>]

The list I submitted to the group Paul is everything my goats, and when I had them, my Brangus, ate. Even I couldn't say I grow all of it Paul but there is quite a fair bit of it that I am growing in their pastures. I'm into growing live fodder.

I own a whopping 5 acres and needed more garden area. Also, my land had virtually no trees but it has many more now. I'm always foraging with my goats and sometimes, it's in different pastures. I have 5 pastures and grow different things in each pasture. I like to eat a variety of foods and tend to think my critters would like to as well. Since I only utilize 2 pastures at a time, this allows me to grow in those 2 pastures what I want/need and then I rotate the pastures. It's really not difficult to grow all of this, so long as you plan it out, which I didn't do in the beginning. I had lots of hills and valleys to my land so I filled the valleys and seeded the area then went on to the next valley.

On my perimeter fencing, I have blackberries and holly shrubs growing along the fence. Blackberries won't fruit because they are in dense shade but it's a great deterrant. As you come up into the sun, I have maxamillian sunflowers, amaranth and corn growing running the length of the fence which also makes a great privacy fence. As an example: on the cross-fencing, there is honeysuckle with either blackberries or dewberries followed by beautyberry and you tuck in low growing plants such as carrots, lettuce or herbs. Then about 25-30 in from the fence, I've got my runner bamboo. I have the bamboo Islands in two other pastures. There's no bamboo with the pond, that's where the banana trees are There are also 6 pecan trees between 2 pastures ie 2 trees on one side of the fence and the single tree on the other side. Gardenias divide the orchard from the 1st pasture.

I do have all those native grasses. Not a sales pitch but I bought the habitat collection from Bamert Seeds. I also fill in areas that either didn't get seed or didn't grow for whatever reason; so I go back and fill in with other grass/grain or plant seeds depending upon the season. This should give you an idea of what I've done. It's no hardship to add vining plants onto field fencing that I used to protect the bamboo and tree seedlings.

There are some drawbacks to growing native grasses. they require atleast 3 years before turning critters onto them. I also lost alot of grass with last 2 years deluge. Now I'm waiting to see what I have left after this round of rain with standing water and freezing temps.

This was easy to do but figuring out Harvey's edible forest for his poultry.... I'm having a tough time with this.

Elizabeth