Winding Down

Chipmunks and birds are enjoying the sunflowers I left in that went to seed.

November - December, 2017
Regular frosts are here, so clean-up is now the main task in the garden, along with planning next year's beds. Planning was a simple thing at first, but the task seems to grow exponentially along with the garden each year. The last couple of years I started writing a list of goals before the season started, including growing comfrey and nettles for my compost, building more beds, improving my frequency of harvests and putting up much more of the spoils for winter usage, plus a few others.







Some of my goals for next year include:

• Add another 20+ fruit shrubs, trees and vines to the orchard
• Build 6" raised beds around the in-ground garden beds
• Further improve my composting by purchasing or building at least two compost bins
• Find load(s) of wood chips for delivery
• Add another 50 shiitake mushroom logs to the property
• "Plant" Wine Cap mushroom spores
• Build fence around orchard and garden

Kale was gorgeous right up until December.

I always make sure the list is beyond challenging, and often do well to get 1/2 to 2/3 of it done, but it pushes me to complete way more than I would otherwise. It feels awesome to check things off the list as well, even when it takes an extra year to accomplish. It also seems to help me prioritize and keep on track. Usually these goals fit into one of two categories, tasks that will reduce workload and tasks that will increase overall yields.

I'm really excited about all of these projects. I'm hoping to plant the last of the fruit trees and shrubs next year. I'm sure I'll add one here and there if I find an interesting variety down the road, but I'd like to see the brunt of them in now, growing and getting ready to feed us. I also want to make sure to plant enough perennials that even if we didn't plant the annual garden for a year, we would still have loads to harvest from the orchard / food forest. The fruit trees will take a few years to start to payoff, but I expect to have loads of fruit to sell, as well as enjoy ourselves, once they do. Planned additions include Asian pear, pecan and apple trees, along with additional pear, plum, and cherry trees to help pollinate the ones that are already in the orchard. I'm especially excited about adding the pecan trees, as pecans are quite expensive here and if we could harvest even a few pounds a year it would save us lots. The same goes for the heartnut trees, which will produce sweet walnuts in a few years.

I also plan on adding lots of smaller fruit bushes, shrubs and vines, including arctic kiwis, blackberries, seaberries, gooseberries, goji berries, cranberries, along with more blueberry bushes and raspberries. Of course, this is going to be a huge expense, but they don't take nearly as long to fruit as trees and once they're producing it will all pay for itself within a year or two.

Compost bins should be fairly inexpensive and hopefully not too much effort. I have a bit of scrap lumber and also some that is going to sit out all winter, so I can always use that to whip something up. I'd like to have a large 3 bin system so I can turn it properly and do hot composting instead of cold composting. Hot composting is much faster and takes a bit more effort as far as layering greens and browns. Greens materials are high in nitrogen, and include items such as vegetable peels, fresh garden debris, grass clippings, manure and coffee grounds. Browns are high in carbon and include things such as cardboard, paper, straw, hay, dead leaves and eggshells. I plan on planting a lot of comfrey and stinging nettle as well, to chop and add to the compost, or directly to the beds as mulch. Comfrey and nettle are both well known for their use in compost and as an organic garden mulch, as they have deep taproots that pull up nutrients from the soil.

Wood chips...the key to most permaculture food forests. I definitely need to get the chipper going this spring and take care of the pile of brush I collected from last year's big ice storm damage. That won't be nearly enough though, so I also need to find a local tree trimming company that would be willing to deliver a load (or seven) as I need way more than I can chip myself. The plan is to lay down contractor's paper around each tree to further choke out the grass, then add an inch or two of compost and finally top that with the 8-12" of wood chips. Once this is done I can stop mowing the orchard, plus I can start adding other permaculture layers such as herbs and ground cover (strawberries). For those of you that don't know about permaculture layers, the concept is to mimic the layers of the forest:

1. Canopy Layer - Taller trees 
2. Sub-canopy Layer - Smaller / dwarf trees and large shrubs
3. Shrub Layer 
4. Herbaceous Layer
5. Ground Cover Layer
6. Underground Layer
7. Vertical / Climber Layer
8. Aquatic / Wetland Layer
9. Mycelial / Fungal Layer

So far, I've only worked on Layers 1 & 2, but those should be mostly complete after next summer (2018), plus I'll be adding a number of plants from Layers 3, 4, 5, 7 and 9. Layer 9 brings me to my next goal, adding mushrooms to the garden!

As vegans, we eat a ton of mushrooms. I probably buy 2-4 lbs a week, sometimes more. At $5 a pound for just regular white mushrooms, and $6-7 a pound for Shiitakes, Cremini or Portobello, we probably spend $75-100 on mushrooms each month. You can imagine how excited I was when I found out you can grow them right in the garden! We took a mushroom growing course last year and bought a few each of Oyster and Shiitake inoculated logs. The Oysters were supposed to fruit this fall, and we did find one small mushroom right before the winter freeze, hopefully we'll see many more next year. The Shiitake logs are due to fruit in the spring and I'll be adding more Shiitake logs to that clearing, 50 is my goal, though I'd be happy if I can even get 25 done. I'll have to find a source for some birch logs, although I do have three on our property that I'll be sacrificing. Not a big sacrifice though as two of the three are leaning at a 45-degree angle into the yard due to the ice storm last year. I suspect the weight of the snow and ice will only make them worse by spring, so harvesting them for mushrooms will be a win / win.

I plan on planting Red Wine Cap mushrooms at the edges of the food forest once the wood chips are in. I may even use some straw to plant them in if I don't have enough wood chips, but I want to get them started. From what I hear, they are similar to Portobellos, which is great because those are a very "meaty" mushroom and great for vegan recipes. The Red Wine Caps are also supposed to be super easy to grow, as well as easy to identify as they have several obvious traits.



I ordered my mushroom supplies last week from a company in Maine called North Spore. Startup supplies included a set of three tools, two of which are a drill bit and adapter that are used to transform a regular angle grinder (I purchased one of these on sale last fall) into a high-speed drill. The third is a long, skinny metal plunger that you use to fill the holes with the sawdust spawn. I also purchased 5lbs of food grade paraffin wax, which is used to seal the spawn inside the holes after they are inoculated. The three bags of spawn, which include two bags of Red Wine Cap and one of Shiitake spawn will be sent closer to "planting" time, at the beginning of April. UPDATE: They didn't wait to send the spawn as advertised on the website (I was advised it shouldn't say that any more), instead sending it with the tools and wax. I called about it and they advised to just put the three enormous bags of sawdust spawn in the fridge until spring when I use them. Hopefully this doesn't affect the spawn in any way.

The final item on the 2018 list, a fence. A fence is something we've always felt like we needed, but couldn't afford. When we initially started expanding the garden a couple years ago, I contacted a fencing company for an estimate on a chain link fence to go around about 1/2 the property. I was quoted $15,000 and the idea of a fence any time soon, ended right about then. I've been watching a fellow on YouTube lately, (The Gardening Channel with James Prigioni) and in one of his latest videos, he builds a fence and just knocks it right out, complete with a gate that wasn't perfect, but he got the job done. It made me realize that some things (usually building things) that I put off, I need to just jump into and it will work out. Yesterday I spent the day watching videos on installing a chain-link fence and pricing components to build one myself. It will be costly to fence in the whole garden, but will only increase our property value and I figure we can do it ourselves for about $3500. There are several benefits to having the fence installed sooner, rather than later. For one, I can include a large, long pen for the dogs to run in while I'm in the garden. As we make the property more fertile and more inviting with its diversity, the amount of wildlife in the yard seems to increase every year. We haven't had problems yet, but down the road we undoubtedly will and this fence will keep out the deer, bear, fox, coyote and most things. The most exciting thing about the fence though, is it will provide additional growing space all around the food forest once it's completely installed, as the fence can be used as trellising for tomatoes, kiwis, grapes, raspberries, blackberries, cucumbers, etc. 

So that's the not-so-short list of goals for 2018. I'm sure it's possible one or two won't get done but I'm going to try like hell to make as many as possible happen. Either way I'm sure it's going to be another great year on the farm! I really appreciate everyone who has been along for the ride!