before I left for work I popped out to check on the new blue berries. surrounded by a makeshift deer fence they seem to be enjoying the rain. three could produce berries this year. but I’m ahead of myself.
last year, towards the end of spring we built a garden box that was one foot deep, four and quarter feet wide and eighteen feet long with gopher wire attached to the bottom. and placed it at the edge of the orchard in view of the kitchen window. it’s my first garden box on the site and I’d plan to fill it with blue berry bushes. but first came the soil. working with no budget I had to make my own.
i started with a layer of wood chips to help hold water and then, over the next year I layered in green wast with pine needles, kitchen compost, fall leaves and lama poop with bedding. i turned it all this weekend with the help of a girlfriend. i’ll tell you… it looks fabulous! the soil is teaming with life and is almost black. one earthworm was ten inches long. my girlfriend also gifted me four blue berries plants and I picked up a few more from grocery outlet. seven in all; two south moons, two pink lemonades, and three something else. on Monday night I popped them out of their pots and into the ground, without disturbing the root ball, before the rains came on Tuesday night. i’ll need to mulch with pine needles this weekend to keep the weeds down because blue berries don’t like their roots disturbed by weed pulling.
I am a Permaculturest with an eye on a sustainable future. I feel it's time to take control of our personal environment and make it work for us and the planet. I am a Homesteader in an urban environment. Keeping it real on a budget and still enjoying all that life has to offer. I am an up-cycler: a creative, resourceful problem solver. I am a gardener and a Farmer. I am a resource, full of information for living a more sustainable lifestyle. I also build, paint, cook and sew.
FarmGarden Permaculture 
Leave a Reply