Managing woodland – For I am the beauty of the green earth…

A month late, and in fact I’ve been up there again since I finished the work on the new vegetable bed, but haven’t had a chance to write things up, or show off the photos of my bit of forest in autumn. I think this is one of my favourite images:

Here are a couple more:

These were all taken in early November. It had rained quite heavily the week before, and the creeks all had water in them. The rain had also softened the ground, and so digging the rest of the vegetable bed was a much easier task than when I put in my Summer Solstice bee garden. I think I mentioned in my last post that this bed should be named for my grandfathers, who were both keen and experienced gardeners, and would certainly have wanted to help me with it even if only in the form of long distance encouragement and gardening tips. Although peanuts and ginger and peach trees — all on my to-do list — were not things they ever attempted to grow.

I know I’ve already shown you photos of site clearance when I dug the bee garden, but at the risk of boring you with more of the same, here is the adjacent vegetable patch in progress:

extending the bed — extending the veggie bed

And here’s the full extent of it (at least for now) before I covered it with landscaping cloth:

I was discussing progress with my dad, and he mentioned a gardening system I think I’ll try as well — “Das Hugelbeet”. It’s basically a layered mound of twigs, leaf litter, turf, compost… I have all the ingredients in huge abundance. Well perhaps not compost yet, but I’m working on that. Otepoti Urban Organics has a great post on this with step-by-step instructions.

And finally, my expanding to-do list. If I write it up here, it might spur me to do some of these things sooner rather than later. Now that semester has finished etc etc…

1. Finish posting “No Hunting” signs around the perimeter. (Should be easier to do now that the leaves have gone and I can see the pink boundary ribbon again).

2. Get an extension for the rain barrel (aka another rainbarrel?). It overfloweth.

3. FIREWOOD!! I think I own an axe. But I need to plan better to build up firewood stores over the coming year.

4. Construct some trails through the woodland. Potentially one of the easiest ways in from the homestead site is littered with old barbed wire fencing from animal enclosures, thicker undergrowth and fallen trees. With a bit of clearance, there could be a much more inviting (and less scratchy) beginning to a woodland walk.

5. Build a cabin! OK, this is a longer term goal, but I know where (photo below), and I’m always so inspired by people who’ve done it themselves. For now I’m reading up on the subject, but a first step will be to:

6. Salvage materials from what is already on site. Breeze blocks, an old window pane or two, corrugated iron roofing.

The first seeds have been planted inside – tomatoes, peppers, courgettes, squash and cauliflowers – and so I need to start preparing beds for them on the land. The first step is to decide where they should go, and I’m pretty confident I know now where to start digging… There’s a strip of clear land running east-west on the south side of The Old Man. That’s my squash, corn, tomato, pumpkin patch right there! But digging it wasn’t this week’s task…

That tyre was waiting for me, oh yeah, and I decided to finish that job first while I still had strength and enthusiasm. It took about an hour to saw out the second side wall. When I lifted the thing up, releasing clouds of nasty yellow-orange rusty dust, the metal inner ring fell away, and I had my first raised bed frame.

It needs rinsing out, as you can see, but we had such a heavy thunderstorm yesterday that I think nature has probably done that job for me! So, one down, two to go… These beds are going to contain my herb garden, and I’ve been browsing some lovely organic seed catalogues for ideas: Seeds of Change, and Southern Exposure Seed Exchange.

Southern Exposure are based in Virginia, only a little north of my land, so I’m thinking I might go with them, but Seeds of Change is full of useful and interesting information about the plants. Loving reading both these catalogues! And they are usefully breaking apart all my English expectations of what a garden should contain, vegetable or otherwise. I have learnt the hard way that I can’t really grow sweet peas here (sob, my favourite English summer flower), but I can grow peanuts, cotton, amazingly-coloured corn… This is not going to look like my grandad’s allotment!

This week has also seen me take steps on the one hand to encourage wildlife, on the other to keep it at bay. Yes, I did it. I’ve now bought all the components for a deer fence. After costing it all out, I realized I wouldn’t be able to afford to pay someone to do this for me. The raw ingredients alone, bought as cheaply as I could, totally maxed out my deer-defence budget. So, in a day or two’s time, several large, unwieldy packages will start to arrive… The neighbours have been warned! On the wildlife encouragement front, I’ve been struck the last few visits by how little birdsong I hear. It could be something to do with the presence of raptors overhead, but it could also be that there is nothing to attract them to my space. So I’ve installed a bird feeder and filled it full of songbird mix. Let’s see who comes…

Feeder in a tree — the new bird feeder awaiting songbirds...

The yellowish-green strip of land running in from the left is part of the area that will contain my veggie beds.

Preparing my first raised herb bed involved a bit more land clearing too… (I took a soil sample, and tested it later: not very fertile, unfortunately, so it will certainly be raised beds and bought-in topsoil for now). Once I’d finished all of that I was ready to take a break, and walk the woodland. I can’t believe I hadn’t done this before now, but there is something mesmerizing about the homestead area, and, let’s face it, the homestead area needs a lot more work on it right now – probably more than the woodland ever will.

Several creeks run through my property. Most will run dry in the summer months, to judge from what I saw last September, but this beautiful little pool should be there all year round. It’s embraced by the roots of an old tree, and a mini waterfall feeds it from the creek above. The water isn’t clear, as you can see, so one project will be to assess what is happening here, and clean up as appropriate. Lots of fallen leaves building up in there, but notice the ferns! These are present all along the banking here, which is quite steep in places. Another project suggested itself to me as I fought my way through brambles and small saplings from the homestead site down to the creek: creating a trail to make access easier.

Finally, an update on the daffodils – all with pretty golden heads turned south. Happy St. David’s Day!

Category: Managing woodland

November update

planting and planning