The kind of garden I want next year…

Garden 2016

A shopping list:

Thought I would try to piece together visual examples of other people’s garden realities that I would like to try and emulate and integrate into our garden here at home for the new year.

A lot of my ideas and questions right now are about how to scale up in size without needing to do too much extra maintenance work. And, as always, what will actually be profitable — as well as what will be “worth it just to do it” type experience… they are not all created equal.

(Image sources hyperlinked under images)

Keywords: densely sown mixed grains and legumes as cover crops in small patches to build soil material. Will experiment with cutting and leaving patches to grow and different blends.

Plantes: (partial list) barley, rye, wheat, oats, sorghum, amaranth, quinoa, teff, millet, lentil, chick pea, mustard, mangels, sweet clover, radish, kale

I am far from this, but I find the images from this era of agriculture inspiring. I don’t see myself any day soon growing acreages of wheat, but you never know. It pays sometimes to look past what you currently think is possible..

Make no mistake! While these plants all have good and interesting final uses, I am realistic enough to know I will never do half or even a quarter of what they are. But I would like to get to know these plants, and the best way is by growing them and living with them over a season (at least) before you really understand much about them.

So this will be very much a “getting to know you” year for the garden. And it will be an invitational. Presumably some of my invited species will like it and get along in the conditions we live with here, and some will simply not thrive. It’s a selection process I want to encourage in the garden. I know enough to know that I don’t know, and then there’s what I don’t know but will come to pass in 5 years or 10 years. What will a climate change farm and garden look like in the North-Eastern states and provinces?

I kind of feel like rolling the dice and stacking the soil seed-bank with known heavy hitters, medicinal, material-generating, ecologic, economic plants, and let nature sort the rest out.

Within limits.

I have plans to build a positively chaotic number of fast & dirty bird-houses and stick them all over the field. So I’m really curious how their lives will link in with the lives of all these grains and whatnot growing in proximity.

I think it’s going to be “freaky” in a good way…

(I’m also curious if and how much birds will eat and then re-seed (ie, poop out) grains from my small parcel around the property, and the immediate vicinity (but don’t tell my neighbors!).

Guiding question: How much biodiversity should we encourage? And how do we know when it’s “working?”

If nothing else, I will probably get some interesting fodder for birds (turkey, chicken, duck) and pigs toward the end of the season, and will also have a chance to see what they prefer and then grow more of that over successive years.

Keywords: wildflower mixes, north-east, NE, perennials, annuals, self-seeding, edible & medicinal, butterly, bee, bird and wild-life promoting

Interspersed with experimental plots of different grains, which I might plant in sort of spirals or something radiating around a central post with at least an ID number on them, but also a bird house or three on each post might be interesting.

Like this, but closer together, and lots of them of different sizes and different seed source material

All the “good” edible wild plants already growing as weeds: amaranth, lamb’s quarters, dandelion, sorrel… and on and on — and all the ones I haven’t met yet…

Cultivated Italian dandelions, because that sounds fancy!

Plus planting in a semi-wild population of other noteworthy edible “weed” stragglers I haven’t yet seen make an appearance in the garden on their own: like claytonia (Miner’s lettuce) and purslane, and whatever else I can nail down seed sources for.

More and different varieties of hops.

A few varieties of seedless table grapes.

Maybe some hardy kiwi:

Going big on herbs next year. Culinary and medicinal. Fresh and dehydrated. Tea blends.

Keywords: (culinary) savory, thyme, marjoram, fennel, dill, sorrel, oregano, borage, catnip, sage, parsley, chive… to name a few.

In no particular order: lemon balm, mint, nettle, ginseng, baby ginger (if I can find a Canadian source), echinacea, comfrey, chamomile, calendula, arnica…

Shallots, chives, scallions, garlic, red onion… lots of different kinds of potatoes (as many as I can get) — which I will neglect utterly and harvest early…

Planter boxes, circuitous pathways, chairs & benches, habitat and cover for birds and small animals. Copious birdhouses. Natural fences. Willow fences. Heavy mulch.