Permaculture or Die: Sourdough apple cobbler

Permaculture or Die: Sourdough apple cobbler: Part of having a more regenerative lifestyle is becoming less dependent on pre-made store bought foods. I am in the kitchen most of the day,...

Sourdough apple cobbler

Part of having a more regenerative lifestyle is becoming less dependent on pre-made store bought foods. I am in the kitchen most of the day, almost everyday (not that you need to do that in order to be more sustainable) but since I make just about everything from scratch I thought I'd start sharing my recipes in the hopes that they may inspire you to do some cooking of your own.

It's been rather cold lately and, since we've been inside so much more, I've been doing quite a bit of experimenting with sourdough breads. I came up with this recipe tonight since I wanted apple pie but I didn't really want to make a crust, plus this version has way less fat considering you only use about 3 tablespoons of butter in the entire recipe. This is meant to be a very flexible recipe, feel free to substitute and adjust to your taste. Hope you all enjoy!

Sourdough Apple Cobbler

1 batch sour dough cobbler biscuit (see recipe below)

2/3 C brown sugar pecan topping (see recipe below)

6 medium large Granny Smith apples, peeled*, cored and sliced

1/2 tsp. cinnamon

1 tsp. vanilla extract

1 tbs. sugar

1 tbs. flour

squeeze of lemon

1 tbs. butter

*as a bonus while baking snack on apple peels with a little cinnamon and sugar sprinkled on top.

1. Peel and core apples, cutting into 1/2" wedges, place them in the bottom of a 9" square baking dish, round skillet or pie dish.

2. Squeeze a bit of lemon onto the apple slices and mix together to coat. Sprinkle cinnamon, sugar, flour and vanilla over apple slices. Mix together with hands then smooth mixture to evenly distribute in dish. Cut the tbs. of butter into small bits and sprinkle over the top of apples then set aside. 

3. Remove the sourdough that has been resting from it's bowl and place on a lightly floured surface. Knead the dough using as little extra flour as possible. When dough has become more elastic and less sticky begin to pull off small chunks about 1-2" in diameter and rolling them into ball shapes. When a ball is ready place it on top of the apples in the dish. You should end up with about 4 rows of 4 balls. Place a towel over the entire dish and let it rest while you heat up the oven and prepare the pecan topping. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. 

4. When oven is ready, take towel off of the dish and, using a sharp knife, make a little slash in the top of each dough ball. Lightly sprinkle entire dish with water then spoon brown sugar pecan topping onto the dish. You should have just enough to cover. Place cobbler in the oven and bake for 8 minutes then turn the heat down to 375 degrees F and bake for about 35-40 more minutes. Keep an eye on the cobbler toward the end of baking time, if the brown sugar topping is getting too brown simply place some tin foil lightly over the top for the rest of baking time. Remove from oven and let rest for at least 20 minutes before serving.

Sourdough Biscuit recipe

1 1/2- 2 C. sourdough starter

1/2 C. unbleached flour

1/2 C. brown rice flour*

water

1 1/2 tbs. granulated sugar

pinch salt

1/4 tsp. yeast

*you do not have to use rice flour, you may use regular unbleached if you like or another non-glutenous whole grain flour. I like the light airiness that comes from using rice flour.

1. Be sure to feed your starter at least 6 hours before you plan on baking this recipe. 

2. Mix starter, flours, yeast, salt and sugar all together using just enough water to form it into a barely sticky ball. cover loosely with a towel and proceed with step one of recipe (peeling and coring apples)

Brown Sugar Pecan topping

2 tbs. unbleached flour

handful of raw pecan pieces, about 1/2 C.

2 tbs. butter cut into chunks

1/4 C. packed brown sugar

1/4 C. granulated sugar

pinch salt

1/2 tsp. cinnamon

Toss all ingredients together in a bowl, pinching ingredients between your fingers until butter is in small chunks and all ingredients are fully incorporated. Can be used to top almost any baked fruit dish.

Edit 12/12/2011: Just wanted to add a few things,

1. If you want to be extra fancy, try throwing the seeds from half a vanilla bean in the sourdough when you are mixing all the ingredients together.

2. If you are looking for a more simple dish you can omit the brown sugar crumble. Instead simply sprinkle sugar over the top of the biscuits before they go in the oven. (make sure to spray or sprinkle a little water first) 

Hooray for sheet mulching!

Well after taking a hiatus from writing for a bit, I found that I really did miss it, so I thought I would come back and continue to share all the things that I love about permaculture and working in the yard. I have to admit that my gardening practices are a bit unorthodox. I love to read and learn about permaculture and natural gardening practices, which are wonderful tools, but when it comes down to it, I like to listen to what the garden has to say. I have confidence that my tools can help me achieve what the natural world is asking of me, of us all.

Permaculture ideas will allow you to recognize the patterns found all around us in order to optimize the energy of the space, what is optimal, however, is where guidance is important. I think it's terribly important to remind ourselves that techniques are simply basic templates upon which to build our own model, you will have to figure out what works for you and your garden, don't be afraid to change a sheet mulching "recipe" to suit your needs.

That being said, let's get on with the sheet mulching shall we! Sheet mulching the yard this year was a few week process. There are two main areas of the graden that I want to make sure got a lot of love and soil building help, one of them is about 10x12' and the other is 3x13'. I started with the 10x12' plot a few weeks ago. The SE corner of the plot houses the compost pile, which was almost ready, but since it wasn't quite right yet was left in place to cook a little more. I did a lot of planting in this bed this year, squash, beans, beets, radishes, carrots, okra, tons of greens, but I left most of it in the ground. (I have no idea what has been done to this soil in previous years and I wanted to give the soil a chance to remediate itself before I did any testing, plus I really just wanted more organic matter in the soil.)


I took a couple of large cardboard boxes and laid them down over the garden bed, on top of any and all existing plant growth. For our yard the most important thing is to get as much organic matter into the soil as possible to leaving all the plants in the ground was vital. After I watered the cardboard (good sheet mulch is pretty wet, like a wrung out sponge) I tossed a layer of fallen leaves* down, I didn't mulch them but instead just walked around for a bit, then a placed a thin layer of soil on top of it all. I then took a hand aerator and walked over the entire area pushing the tongs into the ground to break up the cardboard a bit and break down the leaves even more. Then I watered, and watered a lot. It's amazing how much water sheet mulch will soak up.  *my leaves also include pine needles, some cones and pencil sized twigs

I placed three layers of leaves, each heavily watered and with a tiny bit of soil in between each layer. To finish it off I tossed a little more soil on top. Now as of this point I could have covered it with more cardboard but I knew it was going to snow in a few days and I wanted to capture that moisture. I waited until after the snow then went out and placed a tarp over the entire area and secured it in place with a few rocks from the garden. The tarp will help keep the moisture in while raising the temperature and aiding in the decomposition. It's only been a few days but I can tell the mycelium are already pretty happy, starting the process of soil making.

Sheet mulching can be very useful for soil building as well as weed management. For now I'm just focusing on the soil, I'll worry about uninvited plants another time.

Colorado Permaculture Convergence

This past Sunday the annual Colorado Permaculture Convergence was held here in Denver at The Grow Haus. The Colorado Permaculture Guild organized the event along with hosts, the Grow Haus. Since the convergence was held in Denver, an urban environment, most of the focus seemed to be on urban permaculture. It has taken me a few days to process all the information, and even now I will not be able to tell you all about it in one post. It was really amazing to get together with permaculture people from all over the state of Colorado in order to discuss the present state of permaculture and where we want it to go in the future.

We started the morning off with a beautiful indigenous blessing and burning of sweet grass and sage. This helped to bring a feeling of peace, serenity and purpose to our gathering. In permaculture we are seeking to create environments that are regenerative and mimic the natural eco-systems, it was proper to remind ourselves of the presence of the earth in all of our discussions that day. After the blessing we opened up to a town hall, with long time permaculture practitioners leading the way, voicing their concerns, opinions and ideas about how we should be approaching the current issues we may be coming up against.

There was a common theme among many of the speakers that we need to make more of an effort to turn "consumers back into humans again", which got a laugh a few times but is a very interesting statement, and which also set the tone for the discussions about urban permaculture that followed. Permaculture is at an interesting point in it's existence; it's coming out of obscurity and becoming a path more people are using and interpreting every day. There is a huge movement to go back to more "natural" gardening. Low interference, low maintenance but with high yield and biodiversity is a very appealing gardening strategy, and one that many more are starting to take seriously.

My favorite discussions were about urban permaculture though. Permaculture, when taken in an urban context, is not really about the types of plants, bed arrangements or guilds that work best, but about how we can apply permaculture principles to an urban environment. How can we use the idea of zones in a human culture? The Grow Haus is a non-profit hydroponics facility, located in a "food desert" in Northern Denver. There are no grocery stores for over two miles in any direction, which means the residents of the low income community have no real access to healthy fruits and vegetables. By creating the space and reaching out to the community, the Grow Haus is participating in a zone 1 that will be quite productive in generating food and positivity for the locals. They have programs for the neighborhood youth that teach them how to grow food, leadership principles and community participation, leading to what could be zones 2 and 3, homes and the greater city proper. If we can think of our urban environments in a manner similar to our garden environments we can create places ripe with hope and results. Focusing more on creating sustainable communities and environments will bring the foundations of permaculture to the greater culture.

After the town hall we had lunch and several breakout sessions so we could focus on specific issues. There were quite a few presentations that I wanted to see but since most were held at the same times (four presentations per session) I was not able to. The ones I did attend were green house design, patterns in people care and urban permaculture 101. I will be writing separate blogs for each session as I want to do justice to all the presenters and the information they shared. We came back together at the end of the day for a nice little wrap up and to reconnect to that group solidarity we had at the beginning of the day. It was so refreshing to think about permaculture outside of the garden and into the community at large, definitely gave me lots of ideas to incorporate into our non-profit. Many thanks to all who attended and spoke at this year's convergence, it was quite a dynamic day and I can't wait for next year.

Bees wonderful bees

The past few days I have been spending a lot of time just sitting in the garden observing all the wildlife coming and going. A few months ago you would have been hard pressed to find anything other than some spider mites, earwigs and mosquitos. Now there are tons of bees, butterflies, beetles and more, just cruising around, enjoying the lovely late summer flowers. The woodpeckers have also been very busy discovering all the anthills in the yard. I actually find it very comforting to find their holes in the ground every morning, I guess it just feels like the universe is responding to our very conscious decisions in the garden.

This is a picture os one of my favorite bee species in the area. I'm not quite sure of the exact name but I do know that it's native to Colorado and is a stingless bee. I just love how beautiful it is, the iridescent head and thorax are pretty breathtaking. The cosmo is a bit on the large side, about 4" or so across, so as you may be able to imagine the bees are quite small. We are thinking about putting out some bundles or old logs for them to nest in, the more support we can offer the pollinators the better! There are also tons of honey bees and bumble bees flying around but they just aren't quite as interesting as these little green bees, at least not to me right now anyway.

I also finally read "One straw revolution" by Masanobu Fukuoka, which is quite a wonderful book. I have to say that my favorite part was that the natural farming methods he uses were very similar to what we decided to do in our yard, mainly because it seemed like that's how the plants would be happiest growing. I took a few shots of our fledgling winter garden. I planted just about a month ago but the ground is so hard and has such a high percentage of clay the plants find it difficult to grow, so most of them are rather small and a few just germinated though they have been in the ground for weeks.

Yay for broccoli! I am super excited about this coming up. It was so hot after I planted I was afraid I fried all of the heat sensitive seedlings but luckily all of the grass and cheeseweed growing in the garden area provided just enough ground cover and shade to allow seeds to sprout. I am really looking forward to some homegrown broccoli. If you look closely you may be able to see the chard and kale sprouts that are coming up just to the left of the broccoli.

You can see our lovely winter squash slowly creeping it's way over the rows of winter greens. Notice the lower right has lots of grass, cheese weed and most importantly baby romaine. In the background against the brick wall are some of our beautiful sunflowers, eagerly soaking up the fall rays. We don't worry about grasses or weeds in any of the beds. They are bringing much needed life to the soil and create lots of leaf litter and shade for the other plants. If it seems as if the grass is too long and it's going to suffocate the sprouts I gently pull off the top few inches of grass blades, leaving the root system and soil intact. This contributes to a happy garden with plenty of organic matter in the soil and lots of plants to distract possible predatory insects.

 I almost forgot to mention what all those odd looking branches are, just resting on the soil. When I seeded the bed I cut down a bunch of the lamb's quarters from the other side of our yard and used them as fresh mulch. The soft leaves break down quickly and the branchy stalks keep the neighborhood cats from pooping in the garden. The leaves help to shade the soil, keeping water longer, and add much needed nutrients. Once all the leaves are gone and the stalks are dried out I usually remove them and add them to the compost, this year though I may try to build a berry mound and place them inside. I have also found they make great garden stakes. If they weren't so woody I would just leave them out but in order to properly decompose they really should have full contact with the soil.

Well that's about all for now. I'm heading to the Colorado Permaculture Convergence this weekend which looks to be very very interesting. I will do my best to take notes to give you all a proper write up of the state of permaculture in Colorado. Hope you all are out there creating a more diverse eco-system! Happy Fall!

Oh squirrels, how I want to love you...

It seems I have been slacking on the blogging a bit, many apologies. I have not, however, been slacking in the yard or working on our goal of a permacultured urban homestead. As my previous post states, I have been making an effort to do at least one thing every day having to do with nature. This past week has been filled with planting bulbs, a little yard cleanup, gathering seeds for storage, trying recipes for seed bombs and getting the winter greens started. We also now have 3 pollinated cucurbits (two butternut and a pumpkin) growing quite nicely, protected from the voracious squirrels.

Quite the bane of my existence lately, those squirrels. I have to say I have been really struggling with my feelings about the squirrels. They ate almost all of the squash blossoms this year, dug up countless seeds and seedlings, peed on me, chewed right through the stems of a few plants but did not take the bounty and, just yesterday, stole my gardening gloves and ripped of half of one finger and part of another. There is a mated pair who live in one of the trees that hang over our yard. We actually have no trees in our yard, sad to say, but thankfully the neighbors have quite a few. The squirrels seem to have taken a liking to our yard more than any of our neighbors though, I suspect it's because we are actually growing edible plants. There are very few gardens in our part of the neighborhood, and the few neighbors I've talked to with gardens have all told me about the squirrels raiding their's as well.

Some days I am quite angry with them for eating the plants. We have worked so hard to bring life into this yard and seeing them destroy it can be rather heart wrenching. I can also see how the squirrels see our yard as a buffet, easy pickings to get those much needed calories. I have been putting out seeds, fruit that should be composted and water for them, yet they stil raid the flowers. A few of the moms I know have said they trapped the squirrels in their yard and drove them out to the mountains. They also talk about pellet guns, and though there are days I have fleeting thoughts about their demise I could never go through with any course of action that would harm them. The squirrels have made their home, which just happens to be right outside our yard and no matter how crazy they drive me, it is their home. Personally I think the whole trap and release thing is silly, not to mention a waste of energy. Trapping the squirrels that are here now will do nothing about the squirrels in the future. The best course of action is to find a way to live in harmony with the wildlife.

The ridiculous lack of diversity in the ecosystem around here is much more of a problem than the squirrels, and really that is a major factor in creating the squirrel pest problem. When all the yards are lawn, sumac and ornamentals there are very few food crops the wild animals can enjoy, which drives them to consume all the food crops they do find. If every house in our neighborhood had at least one animal friendly food crop, I think the squirrels would cease to be "pests", instead they would become more like gardeners, ensuring that the crops stay healthy and don't over do themselves with production. Garden pests are only a problem if there is a lack of diversity, the stronger the eco-system the less impact any one creature will make. Now all I have to do is convince my neighbors to start gardening, that shouldn't be to hard, right?

Oh and one more thing, some woodpeckers have built a nest hole in the tree that is almost in our front yard. It's so neat to see them hopping around the yard in the morning, feasting on the plethora of ants around here. I can't wait to see if they have little babies in the spring. Yay!

Everyday Nature day 1

So we started a new activity in our household yesterday and we're calling it everyday nature. In order to get us more into the spirit of things, and get us even more used to working with the elements, we have decided that we must do something, anything, oriented toward the natural world every day. Doesn't have to be much, but it has to be something that will further our understanding of the earth.

I started with a bang yesterday. There has been this clump of iris in the back, just on the outside of the fence by the garage, in a tiny space of maybe 2x2'. How long they had been there is a mystery to me but I don't think they had ever been divided, which really wouldn't be such a problem if they had room to grow somewhere. Since they were so compacted and overgrown they could not bloom anymore and there was just a big sloppy mess. Now I have never had to divide iris before but being rhizomatous I figured it would be pretty easy to work with them. I had no idea what I was in for.

Honestly the entire space was one giant rhizome. Seriously. I have never seen anything like this before. There were three layers of rhizome laying on top of one another, roots growing every which way, and feet upon feet of spent bulbs. It took me almost two hours to dig it all out, then another hour to sort it all and snag the useful bulbs. The entire time I worked all I would think about was how sad it was to let a plant suffer like that for so long. This poor yard has just been abandoned for so many years that all the existing plants are suffering and in decline. There is a huge difference between natural gardening and torturing your plants, hopefully we'll be able to rehab this yard enough so that it can maintain itself through neglect and become more of a natural garden when we no longer occupy this space.

What's on the agenda for today? Just a little thinning of the radishes in the planter out front and a little experimentation with using the native clay soil for seed bombs. I am really excited about both actually, I am super happy radishes came up, thanks to mulching, and I can't wait to spread some seed love with native plants and soil. Woohoo! What are you going to do today that's nature related? How are you bringing yourself closer to the natural rhythm of things?

Little video tutorial...

So we are starting to venture into the world of vlog and video tutorial! YAY! I am so excited to really be making something happen. This morning I recorded a little video all about female squash blossom identification and pollination. We have been having a really really hard time with the squirrels this year, they eat every bloom on the squash before they have a chance to do anything. Out of 25 cucurbit plants we have 1 fruit currently on the vine, and that is all we have been able to keep from the squirrels all year! I started putting small milk crates and wire cages over the plants so the squirrels can't get them and it seems to be working. I hope you all enjoy the video! I promise to have my weed identification blog up in the next few days, I have been enjoying the end of summer a bit too much! I hope you all have a great weekend!

http://youtu.be/-yS1_pk-D14

Permaculture Media Blog: Dirt! The Movie (2009) - Documentary film online

This is in my queue for tonight,

Permaculture Media Blog: Dirt! The Movie (2009) - Documentary film online: DIRT! The Movie --directed and produced by Bill Benenson and Gene Rosow--takes you inside the wonders of the soil. It tells the story of E...

mini yard update

Well I know things have been quiet around here lately but around our house they have been hectic! Tons of planting, transplanting, pulling of more spurge from the yard and lots and lots of work on the Permaculture Project. There aren't any pictures tonight, should be some tomorrow, but here's the deal anyway...

We finally had our first pollenated female squash blossom, it was a lovely spaghetti squash and I was so looking forward to eating it, but the squirrels got it. I won't lie and say I wasn't bummed, kinda makes me wanna take the lid off the compost again. The good news is that there are finally tons of female flowers so we should be getting lots of yummy stuff very shortly, better late than never right?

We have started harvesting our bush beans and the edamame and pole beans should all be ready in the next few days. We haven't decided whether or not we're just going to mulch the edamame, either way the plants are going to be chopped and dropped. It ended up being too late in the season for the snow peas, it was just too hot and only one plant still survives, I'm just glad they got their little roots into the soil.

It also ended up being too hot for the artichoke this year, and I'm pretty sure the ground was just too hard for it as well. It stopped growing entirely a few weeks ago and is now definitely done. I planted a bunch of chard and kale seeds in the area that was supposed to be taken up by the artichoke and pumpkins, the ground is ridiculously hard there as well, all of the wild plants were going at the soil though, hopefully they broke it up a little and left some organic matter as well.

Last thing, our zinnias are blooming! hooray for planting in the grass! Actually I think that the plants that were planted in the grass are the happiest ones in the yard. I'm sure that location also factors into that but the grass as ground cover idea has really seemed to work, and if it gets too long I just rip a bit off the top by hand, super easy. Besides the zinnias we have a bunch of basil, cilantro, dill, sunflower and lavender hyssop, and a few sage too, that bee mix has turned out to be quite awesome.

That's all for now, the next post is going to be on identifying and using our lovely native and naturalized "weeds", enjoy the outdoors tomorrow, there's really nothing like it!

Permaculture Media Blog: Book Giveaway - The Quarter-Acre Farm

This book looks fantastic! Check out this give away from one of my favorite permaculture sites, Permaculture Media Blog: Book Giveaway - The Quarter-Acre Farm: This month we’re giving away The Quarter-Acre Farm book giveaway to ONE lucky PermacultureMediaBlog Reader! The Quarter-Acre Farm: How I K...

Learning

I just applied for the 2011 CSU extension's Building Urban Farmers program, ya, not only do I hope I get in but I also hope I can get a scholarship. It would be even better if we had the proper funding for the NPO in order to pay for it, especially since these are the foundations that would make our project incredibly strong. We want to do whatever it takes to ensure the sustainability of our community, including everything we can in order to give more inspiration for others to do so as well. I would be so honored to take both this course and the permaculture design course. Yay for positive change!

Planting seeds..

I planted so many seeds this morning it was quite incredible. Four packets of radishes, three packets of carrots, two packets of beets and one packet of some lovely bunching onions. I had to get his done while watching two toddlers, who were much more interested in making holes than planting anything in them and luckily my love rescued me by taking our son away to entertain somewhere else. One toddler in the garden is much easier to manage and so we were quickly able to plant the last few packets in the random bare spots in the yard and get on with the rest of our day.

I originally had only planned to plant a few seeds from each pack but when the kids were helping me water this morning, somehow they all got wet... wet seeds need to be planted, so that's what we did. In the madness of planting I completely forgot about writing down what I planted where I planted it. Plus I also over seeded many of the crops which will either take care of itself with the help of a few insects or is going to take me a bunch of time in thinning, especially since they are all root crops and need plenty of growing space in the soil. I'm actually more bummed about this than I am about not knowing where all the food is growing. As soon as those seeds come up I'll have a nice little game to play called "name that seedling," not only does it cause me to pay more attention to minute details, it also helps me to learn the exact names of plants and gives me more insight into plant geneology.

To be honest I have only very loose drawings of the garden areas with plant names written down in barely legible scrawl. My partner told me he couldn't figure them out at all, so it's probably for the best that I didn't go back through them and change a few of the pages, adding even more jibberish to what already lay there. I'm also not very upset at the fact that most of the seeds got sprinkled and thrown about a bit so all my plantings are interspersed. Yay for polyculture in the garden, especially multiple varietals from a few different plant families! Since we are rebuilding the soil we want to have different plants, and plant families contributing wonderful organic matter to the soil. They all have different nutritional needs, soil bacterium and insect populations that will contribute to the vitality of the fledgling eco-system. Most of the root crops are going to be left in the soil, remember that we are planning on sheet mulching everything at the end of the season anyway, and all that wonderful plant matter is going to compost in place, leaving all the colonies of micro-organisms intact. Just thinking about all that soil life makes me so excited! Add to that the excitement of mystery seedlings and I am dancing in the clouds. I'm sure a few of you out there are cringing at the idea of letting seeds fall where they may, overplanting, not labeling and not really caring about the soil conditions, to you I ask, when was the last time you felt free in the garden? When was the last time your garden was about the earth?

We got blogged!

Well sort of... one of my favorite blogs, Permaculture media, posted info about our permaculture project in some really cool spots! Check it out here, on the permaculture design courses list, http://permaculture-design-courses.blogspot.com/2011/08/permaculture-project-creating-living.html. When you're done there head over to this link, to reddit and make sure to vote and keep it up top while you're there!  http://www.reddit.com/r/Permaculture/ The more people who see this the better, we must start the dialogue of positive change!

Dreaming away..

Planning, planning, planning. This has been my life lately. It's quite funny though because I don't quite have a set space to plan for, just all the things that we need to do when we get our Permaculture Project space. I had a vision of the house, maybe it's silly, but I saw a vision of it so clearly that I had to draw it all out right then and there this morning. It felt so amazing to get all the ideas drawn out on paper, up until now we had just been writing, reading, talking and visualizing, but nothing on paper. I think the idea of putting ideas down on paper always make them more tangible than typing out words on the computer. Actually using your hands to form your thoughts takes it an entire step farther, and for me it was just what I needed.

To see all of our ideas laid out, mapped out, in ways that are very likely to work, was a huge jolt of positive energy. We started formulating different types of mini eco-systems for the yard, choosing plants that work together in guilds, letting experimental ideas in (like our attached open floor greenhouse), and wrote out our dream list of plant and animal species. I can't wait until we build that first swale, or our water filtration pond and basin, putting into practice ideas that could change our way of gardening for years to come. This house, this community, this living classroom, is somewhere waiting for us. This old house is just waiting to be transformed, turned over to the next generation. When we are ready to move on, another family will take our place and the community will live on, growing and changing, the house along with it. Do you know where this house is? Can you help us find it? If you see it, please let it know that I'm searching and we are coming, carrying the hopes of our children, we are coming.

Plants will grow if you let them...

Yay for the garden! Every day it's such a wonderful surprise to go out and see what changes have occurred overnight. Even though it been baking hot and dry, the plants are all taking off and even our late planted beans are producing. I'm excited to show you just a few pictures of the progress, especially these where the flowers, herbs and veggies are all growing right over the grass...

In the foreground are Zinnias, the taller stalks in the middle are sunflowers, the thin waspy plants are love-in-a-mist and back against the wall are squash and bean plants. All of the seeds in front were thrown down into the grass and a very thin layer of dirt was sprinkled over them. In the back I had placed a bunch of leaf mulch on the ground which was still there and quite deep, so I just planted the seeds directly into the mulch, just tucked under some of the leaves.

This is a round summer squash, it's starting to get some flowers and is really quite happy. You can see a bit of the leaf mulch in the top right section of the picture. In the bottom left corner are a few bush bean leaves. The grass has been great as a ground cover, keeping the water around for the squash to use. The combination of lawn and leaf mulch has proved to be quite beneficial.

Lovely Cilantro, growing up around the rocks of a keyhole. You can see one of the vining winter squash moving towards the center with the large mama Rose in the background, growing against the garage. This ia a thicketing rose and you can see some of it's shoots right next to the cilantro in front. All of these wonderful food plants growing in and around the grass, so easy! Plus the cilantro and rose are great companion plants and encourage better health in each other.

So this will be the last picture for now, and though it seems rather bland, I find it exciting. This tiny alpine strawberry was a transplant. I saved this little guy from a certain death of lawn mower blades and placed it in a very sad, down hill, barren space in the yard. It only had two triple leaf sets when I planted it and look now! It's really quite happy, growing tons of new leaves and even some runners as well. I'm really looking forward to having a nice mat of alpine strawberry instead of a bunch of dirt that just slides away.

As you can see the garden has been very busy lately. There are tons of bees buzzing around and this morning there was a whole troupe of sparrows outside the back door enjoying the fruits of the yard. I am so thankful to be able to go outside and enjoy the soil between my fingers. My son loves being outside now, he's just started helping mommy water, but I can't wait until we don't have to water anymore, when we can rely on the natural cycles. That won't happen in this house, but I know there is one just waiting to be turned into a living classroom, and we are more than happy to do all the work.

Permaculture Media Blog: How to Make a Zeer: Pot-in-Pot Refrigerator

Another awesome post that I have to share!

Permaculture Media Blog: How to Make a Zeer: Pot-in-Pot Refrigerator: "Cooling food without electricity! In a community without electricity, storage of food long-term can be tricky. One simple solution is to ..."

Permaculture Media Blog: Book Giveaway - The Quarter-Acre Farm

This is from one of my favorite permaculture blogs! They are giving away a fantastic book, all about creating a more sustainable life for our planet and it's inhabitants. Plus they are always posting great ideas and other news related to permaculture! Check it out!

Permaculture Media Blog: Book Giveaway - The Quarter-Acre Farm: "This month we’re giving away The Quarter-Acre Farm book giveaway to ONE lucky PermacultureMediaBlog Reader! The Quarter-Acre Farm: How I K..."

Into the land of non-profit....

It's been a few days since I've written a blog and I hope you all can forgive me; I've been at work on something quite large and exciting which has consumed most of my writing time. What is this fabulous something, you may be asking yourself. Well I'll gladly tell you, we have decided to start a non-profit! Yes, it's going to be a non-profit permaculture urban homestead model home. Whew, that's quite a mouthful isn't it? But the idea, really, is quite simple. We want to create a living breathing model, that follows average size limits, and building codes, for city dwellers to create their own sustainable eco-systems. By showing them that we did it, basically laymen, just with a vehement passion, they can too. Permaculture does not have to be difficult or complicated, in fact I find it to be quite intuitive, but it can be quite overwhelming for people. We want to create change in ourselves and our community, so what better way than to become active participants for change?

This idea came about a few weeks ago when my partner came home from his job and told me that everyone had been laid off. We had been kicking around the idea of doing something big permaculture wise for a little while now but we hadn't settled on anything. The Denver County Fair was not too long after that, and as I walked around the fair one afternoon it occurred to me that, although there were a few urban homestead and community garden groups and projects, no one was focusing on permaculture. Now if you are a regular reader of this blog you know how I feel about permaculture. Why waste your time and energy creating an eco-system only to destroy it a few months later? Every action we take should be purposely propelling us toward a more sustainable tomorrow, permaculture being the foundation of those actions. It seemed only natural for us to create a model of a permaculture in this tough Denver climate, short growing seasons, cold winters, and dry dry dry.

Now, we are not professionals, though one day I would like to call myself a permaculture professional of some sort, so we still have a lot to learn. Our ideas begin with books (my favorite is Gaia's Garden by Toby Hemenway, but there are many others, Attack on the front lawn and One Straw Revolution are also fantastic), and then evolve into something more organic. When we are out in the garden we think about how we affecting the soil, the plants, the insects, and the little micro-climates that are being created. By being open to the possibilites, we are engaging in what we feel to be, practices that will become second nature to future generations. We want to take our potential for learning, and share it with others to create more sustainable communities for us all.

Community is the key to this project, The Permaculture Project. The community is the reason for the project, as the only way to true sustainability and viability as communities is to work together for the betterment of us all. We want to share what we know and learn from others, documenting and sharing with the greater community the same time we share with our own. We plan on having donation-based classes, sliding scale priced workshops, community building days and bi-monthly tours. This is a living, evolving urban farm, with new challenges everyday. Taking on those challenges as a family is something we are greatly looking forward to. The series of events that have led us to this point have been incredible but I feel they were very purposeful. I want to make sure I am doing everything in my power to share what I know and teach it to others.

If you would like to help out with this project, please check out the indie go-go site we created to get it off the ground. Here's the page, http://www.indiegogo.com/The-Permaculture-Project. Please share, share, share, and donate if you can, anything helps. There is one big thing I didn't put on that site that we really need for the project, I just figured it wasn't the best place for it. We need a house! We need a house in Denver County in order to properly fulfill this dream. Denver is a city, with city codes and smaller lots than outlying areas. We want to show people a realistic view of all they can achieve with their smaller sized lots and restrictions on animals and water containment systems. These are not the only codes for urban homesteading they were just the first ones I thought of. I have a much more detailed proposal for the non-profit but we need to specify the land so I can be super specific about our plans. If you know someone who wants to donate land to the project, please leave me a comment so we can get in contact. In order to benefit all we must work together, and in order to do that we must take the steps necessary to make sure mother nature is there along with us.

You see a lawn that needs help, I see a happy vibrant niche polyculture...

This is our lawn. Well, it's not all of our lawn, there are places where the lawn is really lush, deep green and thriving. This is what our lawn looks like if it's only grass. Our front lawn, which is sloped, gets all day sun, and I mean ALL DAY SUN. Before we lived here the lawn was not taken care of, for years and years, it was entirely dead when we moved in, besides being lumpy and patchy. We watered, made some lovely compost tea for fertilizer, let the grass grow long to hopefully reseed itself, yet it was all to no avail. That grass is trashed. The only areas of grass that are doing well are living in relative harmony with what most people would call weeds. Here's an example,

Notice how lush everything is in this picture? The grass, looking very healthy, growing right along with prostrate spurge. Spotted Spurge, though labeled a common weed, is very useful in learning not only about the state of the lawn, but also the state of the soil. Spurge is considered an indicator plant when lawns are concerned. It tells you that the soil is too compact, arid, and that the grass was obviously very patchy and unhealthy before the spurge germinated.

So what does someone like me, who honestly couldn't care less about the grass itself, learn from the growth of the spurge? Well for one, the fact that it thrives in soil that is too compacted tell me that it has a lovely tap root that is great for breaking up soil, natures way of aerating the soil. It also tell me that it must bring valuable nutrients to the top of the soil, mainly because of the health of the grass around it, but also because that's what taproots are for, bringing nutrients up from deep underground. Last it tells me that there is more water getting down into the soil, this is from the taproots themselves, since they go deeper than the shallow roots of the grass, the water has a place to flow down into and essentially back up from those deep soil spots. Though having the spurge may not be desirable to most people when it's in the lawn, my landlady, for one, does not like it, it is desirable to know it's capabilities in other areas of the yard. I think that the grass is much healthier in the areas that it's sharing space with other plants, here's another example,

Look at that, healthy grass, spurge and cilantro all growing together quite happily. This is where, what I would call a niche polyculture is growing. I call it this because there are a few varieties of plants, all of whom essentially occupy the same niche, lowing growing, slender annuals. I know cilantro to be edible, most grass seeds are, but the milky white sap the spurge exudes may eliminate it's ability to be consumed; I don't know this for a fact, it just seems to make sense. These three plants, growing together, are doing better than a monoculture of any one of them. The grass is still growing, and it's essentially healing itself, with a little extra help.

Sadly my landlady was here yesterday and she was not such a big fan of the spurge as myself. Here's the essence of our conversation,

LL: Are those weeds in the lawn?

Me: No way, they are a native species that specialize in nutrient replacement and water retention in the     soil.

LL: Are you sure they aren't weeds? Have you tried using an herbicide on them?

Me: *shudder* umm no, I was just pulling them out by hand for a bit but I think the lawn is doing much better everywhere it's growing. Don't you think it's looks greener in those spots?

LL: Well yes, but my lawn is just lawn and it looks the best. I'm really not sure about all that plant, I think it's a weed, I'm going to look into it.

Me: ok, just let me know.

And then she left. I know she is going to come back and tell me to get rid of it, which is very sad, more so since the lawn is just going to go back to being thrashed without it. I went out today to go and pull some of the spurge up, from the front yard at least, and it started raining. A sign from mother nature to leave her perfect yard alone? Perhaps, but when it does come up, I know there's lots of nutrient mulch to be had.

A day at the fair...

Today was the first full day of the first ever Denver County Fair. I spent most of the day working at a few booths, one was a craft and gardening group I belong to and the other was the Denver Handmade Alliance. There were a ton of craft, sewing and other hand goods booths. After my shifts I spent a bunch of time walking around, checking out all the fair had to offer, and you know what? There were quite a few gardening and urban homesteading booths but not a single one about permaculture. Not one.

Now I believe very strongly in growing where you live, eating local foods, heirloom seed propagation and community gardening projects, but what is the point if you are not creating a more permanent structure or mature eco-system. By removing the plants at the end of the growing season, either through harvest, complete die back or tilling, you take away the entire life of the garden. Animals and insects no longer have homes. The soil no longer has any protection and is completely at the mercy of the elements. All that fertility is washed away, micro-organism colonies die off and the other soil life has to scramble to find other nutrient rich soils. Is it any wonder that we then think that our soil is terrible?

Nothing is more sad to me than walking by a garden that is simply bare earth. Plants bring life and keep it cycling through the ground and through the air we breathe. Native plant species, which most gardeners have come to regard as weeds, fix minerals and nutrients in order for more permanent perennials, bushy plants and trees to root and thrive. Building a foundation, and keeping it, should be our main goals as gardeners. Would you spend a whole year building a house, foundation, walls, a roof, only to tear it down in the fall and start building all over in the spring? No, and if you ever met someone who was doing that I'm sure the first thing that would come to your mind would be, Man that person must be crazy, why do they tear their house down and rebuild it year after year? That is precisely how I feel about most modern gardening.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm sure there are some urban homesteaders who practice permaculture, and probably some other home gardeners who do as well but none of them are talking about it. We need to break down this communication gap in order to move to the next level of sustainability. There is no sustainability with out permanent garden agriculture. Fertilizing with anything other than compost is not sustainable. Trucking in soil is not sustainable. I am even willing to go so far as to say that permanent raised beds are not sustainable, even if they are made from recycled building materials. The only way to achieve sustainability to to enrich the soil itself. By building soil life, you build life above ground.

Permaculture is not a buzz word, it is the world. Mother nature does not create eco-systems only to destroy them every fall. We need to take a cue from the world around us. We are a part of nature, not separate from it, so we should start acting like it.

Permaculture on the move in the mainstream...

Well just a bit it seems. Here's an article the NY Times just did on the movement and ideas surrounding it. Some good information and basic overview, it's a bit long but worth it...

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/28/garden/permaculture-emerges-from-the-underground.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

A few more pictures and some thoughts on Permaculture...

Thinking a lot about the yard today. Since we live in Denver we have a very short growing season, once it's cold, it's cold. I planted many seeds quite late in the season, so I'm sure that we will really only end up with a few crops this year. I seriously doubt that any of the watermelons, pumpkins (except the seedlings that were planted), or leeks are going to bear and be harvestable. I am perfectly alright with this. The plants growing in the soil promote micro-organism growth, insect populations and bring much needed nutrients up to the soil's surface, where they are needed most. In the fall I plan on chopping and dropping all of the annuals then sheet mulching most of the garden. There are a ton of trees around here so there is no shortage of fall leaves for mulch and there is always a place to get used cardboard. Doing this should be enough to suffocate the grass while encouraging even more happy soil organisms. This is all just step one of the journey, allowing the earth to repair takes time and patients, but it really is the only way to ensure the health of ourselves and our planet.

Now on to the pictures....

This is part of the newly rock outlined garden space. You can see a small keyhole walkway going from center left toward top right. In fron of the keyhole are a few watermelon, corn and been seedlings. I actually planted the corn, bean and squash seeds all together and all have been coming up beautifully. This, as in all the other areas around the lawn, was not cleared of grass before planting, only the strong survive, right? Really I just felt it would better serve the fledgling eco-system to just leave it all in place for now.

If you look closely there are two different plants in this picture. The tall stems and small plants with serrated leaves and what looks like a white powder in the center are called Lamb's Quarters. They are a native, edible plant with leaves that taste surprisingly like spinach. It is also fixes much needed minerals into the soil and is great to mulch in place. The small plants with smooth edged leaf pairs are young snow pea plants. Instead of staking or trellising the plants I'm using the lamb's quarters as a natural trellis. Less work for me and better for the plants too.

On the backside of the main garden plot is the alley. We want to use all the space possible for growing so we are also planting and repairing the no man's land that is the alley side patch. Pictured here are a bunch of corn, bean, okra and larkspur plants. This area gets full sun all day and really decent drainage, it really would be a shame to overlook this plot because of it's location.

This will be the last picture for now. This is the North side of our garage, which is a narrow strip between our garage and the neighbor's driveway. There are several trees in this area and tons of leaf litter. Actually I think this is some of the most fertile land we currently have. At the base of this tree you can see a bunch of snow pea sprouts, which will hopefully grow up the tree, and in the foreground there are some other bean, corn and squash plants. The lovely mushrooms are a friend of the tree's. Obviously there's quite a bit going on back there.

Well that's all for now. Oh and I'm sure I've never mentioned this but I am NOT and expert. I just have a deep deep love for our planet and a firm belief that we need to be more self-sufficient and community minded. I want there to be mature, thriving eco-systems that support themselves and us as well. Anyone can do this, and it takes a lot less work than you think.

Pictures Pictures Pictures

Thought I would post some pictures of the yard in it's infancy. 

The first photo is of the north side of the house. The grass back there was patchy, to put it nicely, and there was very little growing back there. I planted a bunch of edamame, which are doing quite well, in order to get more nitrogen in the super heavy clay soil and also to break up the soil a bit and create a little coverage for the bare ground. I ended up transplanting a few other squash/ bean seedling combinations so there should be even more ground cover back there very shortly. Though we are planning on sheet mulching most of the yard in the fall, it's important to get the soil working, if your soil has nothing to offer micro-organisms and other insects it doesn't really matter what you put on top of it.

The second picture is from the half barrel that sits in front of our house. There was a bunch of native ground cover already making itself quite happy there so I planted a watermelon in there as well. As it grows it should be able to cascade down the side of the planter and meander down the lawn out front.

This is a wild strawberry that I saved from a terrible death by mowing (from my neighbors lawn) and transplanted to a low, sandy, bare patch in the backyard. I transplanted a few others as well and if all goes right they will spread and cover the bare patch and we will have yummy berries.

This is the same side of the yard that the strawberries are planted in. If you can make it out, you'll notice a few of the squash transplants filling some patchy areas. This is also the fence that was completely over-run with the powdery mildewed Virginia Creeper. In the background you can see our make-shift compost bin. We had a large pile that was doing well but the squirrels became a bit pesky and we also decided that we wanted to plant some crops right where the pile was sitting. The box actually works pretty well and it was free which is always a plus.

My last picture for now, this is a shot of the wildflowers growing in the grass. I discovered an old metal garden fence when I was digging weeds out of the lawn one day and decided to recreate the garden that it once held. After placing a bunch of rocks to outline the space I just started planting. The grass is actually pretty decent ground cover, for now anyway, and I figured that if "weeds" can seed themselves in a lawn then purposefully placed seeds should be able to as well. All of the flower seedlings pictured here are from a "Save the Bees" mix, which just seemed perfect since we are trying to save the yard. This area is also going to be getting mulched in the fall which should do away with the grass entirely but this is working pretty well for the moment.

I'll post a few more pictures later today so you can see the rest of the yard. Remember, permaculture does not have to be perfect or pretty!

Powdery mildew part 2...

Just thought I'd post an update on the pumpkin plants. This morning I went out and only a few of them have any signs of still active fungus. The baking soda solution really did the trick. What is noticeable though is all of the places the mildew was damaging the plant. There are some crispy crunchy spots on a few of the leaves that were really bad, as long as it doesn't spread, they'll stay, though I am quite confident that the issue is pretty much resolved. I'm going to do another treatment on just a few leaves tomorrow morning and that should be the end of things. Hooray for organic solutions in the garden!

Oh that pesky powdery mildew...

There has been a ton of rain this summer. Almost every day from mid-june up until now there has been rain in the afternoon. Though it's been a bit of a blessing, not having to water the garden has been lovely, it hasn't come without a price, powdery mildew. What is powdery mildew? Well if you have ever seen splotchy grey spots, that look like a power on  your plants you have encountered this not so wonderful fungal friend. Here's a link to the wiki article all about it, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powdery_mildew. 

Now there were two main areas of the yard affected by this lovely organism, a few leaves on the pumpkin vines and virtually all of the neighbor's Virginia Creeper that had grown over the fence and was creeping up on all of the other garden beds. We do not believe in using chemical pesticides, herbicides or fungicides on our plants. If you poison the garden you poison yourself and really everyone else as well. This left a few options for controlling the outbreak. 

First I dealt with the pumpkins. Early this morning I went out with a spray bottle filled with two teaspoons of baking soda and a bunch of water. I then sprayed every leaf, top and bottom, every stem and flower. The ph change caused by the baking soda is unfavorable to the conditions that powdery mildew needs to thrive. I then watered and left the plants to dry in the morning sun. When I went to check on them later this afternoon only a few leaves had any trace of the fungus. I'm going to reapply the mix tomorrow to the still affected leaves but all signs point to a healthy recovery from the outbreak.

Next I dealt with the creeper. Now this was a much, much bigger job. So much of the vine was affected that there was no way for me to effectively treat it. Though there are different strains of powdery mildew, it is in the same family as grapes and in the future we are planning on growing quite a few and I really don't want the fungus overwintering in the soil. For all these reasons I decided to cut out all of the affected plant and dispose of the matter. As hard as it was for me to just toss all of the vines into a trash bag, it is extremely unwise to try and compost plant matter infected with powdery mildew, home compost and mulch piles do not usually get hot enough to kill the fungus, so I had to just let it go. If you have to dispose of plant matter be sure to do a thorough cleaning of the ground, picking up all dried and fallen leaves and branches as well. Everything must go! 

Though I spent most of the day I was able to eradicate this bout of powdery mildew, with no nasty chemicals and just a little bit of work. The weather looks like it may be stabilizing a bit so I hope this is the last I see of this little friend this year. Plus I think I may just plant a few useful climbers to replace all that creeper, hooray!

The seedlings are here...

*please note that this blog was originally posted on my other blog on July 18th, 2011*

So I planted and planted and planted. I did companion planting and placed some in the same hole and even layered and layered the seed. Now everything is coming up. Everything! Some parts of the yard are just overflowing with the potential for life. I had so many squash, bean and corn plants come up that I had to transfer a ton of them to parts of the yard not originally intended for planting. I really don't mind though, the more the merrier!
Why would you plant so many seeds you may ask... well, I planted so many seeds because the dirt needs some love, and frankly we need more plants and insects in our yard. We need to get the soil working. Plus I firmly believe that mono-cultures, even in sections of your own garden, are not healthy for the plants or the eco-system. There is no where in the natural world that has just one plant or animal species living there, to do so would be pure eco-system suicide. If the right predator or disease comes along the entire system is toast. Mono-culture creates pest and disease problems and depletes the soil. Inter-planting is the key, or at least that's what seems the most obvious to me.
I know where most everything I planted is. I have to say most everything because although I drew pretty detailed maps and diagrams of the garden planting areas, there was one day I did a ton of planting and forgot to record it the same day. I remembered that I hadn't written it down a day or so later but by then it was too late, I had forgotten the placement of quite a few of the seeds. This is part of what makes it so exciting that the seedlings are popping up, I finally get to see what I planted and where. I have been quite surprised at who the first to arrive are and I hope to see some of the seeds whom may take quite a bit longer to germinate.
What about water? Isn't all that planting using up a lot of water? Actually not only does it use quite a bit less than it would if I were growing grass in that space but since we are encouraging a perma-culture and allowing natural leaf litter and ground covers to grow we are losing much less water from the soil than if it was just open soil between all the plants. This summer has also been quite stormy with quite a few weeks of very intense afternoon thunder/lightening and rain storms so nature has been watering for us. Every year that goes by the garden will need less and less human watering and be able to rely on the natural water cycles. There is no one watering the plants in nature and they do just fine.
Every day I go outside several times and check on all the growth. I talk to the plants, encourage them and inspect them for damage. I am also studying them. I would like to be able to recognize all of the plants just by their seedlings. I'm starting to know them all, as of now the squash are still pretty hard to tell apart but I'm sure that in another week or two everything will be much more clear.

Adventures in permaculture

* please note, this post was originally from July 17th, 2011 and was posted on my other blog*

So we have decided to start a permaculture garden in our yard. Though we rent, the yard that goes along with the house has not been taken care of in years and needs tons of work if it's really going to be usable. Add to it a bunch of overgrown grass (which I can't stand and is such a HUGE waste of resources) and some mostly dead trees and you've got a lovely bit of mess on your hands.
I do not mind work. Actually I quite enjoy toiling in the garden but only if I know that in the future there will be much less toil. I have created a new border area that will hopefully be filled with lots of yummy greens and fun flowers and planted more seeds than I have ever seen. I have read a few books, a few blogs and have come to one conclusion about permaculture... all you really need to do is let go and let nature do the work for you.
Now for most people I think that is the hardest part, letting go of the garden. Letting go of the complete control we try to have over our plant allies. Letting the ground mature, slowly building more and more life within. Letting the leaves lay where they fall and the weeds grow tall, bringing more and more nutrients to the top soil. We have to accept that there are cycles to the earth, not just seasons, but cycles of life in the land. Most yards are being kept in a permanent state of youth. All those perfect lawns and well fertilized garden beds are actually yearning for large perennials with deep tap roots, groves of saplings to bring much needed shade and soil overflowing with micro-organisms.
Well we have simply decided to get out of the way. We have let the native "weeds" grow tall, turns out they are super beneficial and edible of course. We left the grass in the border area and simply planted on it and in it, knowing the strongest plants will survive and thrive. We have been chopping and dropping too tall plants, letting them mulch in place, creating much needed shade for the soil. We did huge mix plantings with beans, corn, squash, melons, herbs and flowers. We are working on creating an environment that is welcoming to birds, insects, small mammals and humans.
Sometimes it's hard to remember that the yard will not always be like this. There have been aphids, yellow jackets and some nasty squirrels but these are only "pests" because the current eco-system allows them to go unregulated. In a few years the yard will be able to regulate itself and every creature will have it's own unique place in the web. Such wonderful energy, all provided by this wonderful universe and our mother earth. After this growing season is done, we are going to sheet mulch all the garden area to keep all that life in the earth and allow it to thrive. Then next year when it comes time to plant there will be much less to establish, with every succeeding year leaving less to do in order to manage the space.
I know not everyone can just leave the earth to do it's thing. I for one don't understand why you would want to do so much extra work when mother nature wants to do it for you. Start small, create some space and she will end up taking your breath away.

The pumpkins are taking over...

Before we decided to start permaculturing the yard I had made a decision to just get a few plants in order to get the soil working for next year (also to get a feel for how well plants would grow without any soil treatments). I bought a few pumpkin seedlings, as well as a small artichoke plant and a bunch of onions. I then planted them in the only swathe of yard we had mulched with all the leaves from the fall. Surprise, surprise all the plants began to grow, and not just grow a little, grow a ton. This made me super excited, and I just started planting seeds everywhere.

Now, I have never grown pumpkins before so I didn't really know what I was in for. I thought I did but oh I was wrong. My two pumpkin plants have now taken over more than half of the garden area they were planted in and they don't even have any fruit yet. I have had to transplant just about everything that was planted around them, we are training them on some fence and slowly guiding them around the artichoke. Except for a slight case of powdery mildew, that is now fixed, they are growing and thriving, there's just one small problem, I have at least twenty other squash, melon or pumpkin plants growing as well. I planted so many seeds and so many of them came up and neither I nor my partner had the heart to just rip them up, so I transplanted them instead. Now we have vining plants everywhere in the yard, lining the entire back fence, over on the side of the house, and filling parts of the other beds. One thing is for sure, we will have plenty of large fruits and veggies to pass around.