XOXO

The gardens have settled into their summertime style

I’m doing massive amounts of clean up - weeding out all the garden beds & sheet mulching (where things aren’t growing) to suppress weeds & make fresh soil for future plantings. The city came out & cleared a bunch of trees near electric wires & now i have lots of fresh tree mulch to top the beds with. Just moving resources around! That’s a lot of what regenerative gardening is all about - recognizing the potential of available resources and moving them around.

Sheet mulching isn’t just suppressing weeds - it’s creating rich soil to plant into. All of the weeds & grass under the cardboard are packed with nitrogen & as they decay they nourish the earth & attract all the wriggling & crawling creatures that feed off of the decaying vegetation. The bugs & fungal activity do the work of turning it into fertile soil.

While all that activity is going on below the cardboard- over time the cardboard itself will break down & you will be left with rich soil for future planting.

As you can see this is not a precious or precise process - just make sure you have complete coverage to suppress the weed growth you don’t want & then top it. I’m simply using mulch to top these sections as I have no plans to plant anything new into these beds this year. I’m using every scrap of cardboard i have around regardless of the size.

As I get into the detailed weeding of the rock garden beds I’m finding lots of rock roses growing in the crevices which of course I want to continue to flourish! So here is where I’m getting more detailed with some lighter weight brown paper to mulch around them a bit.

I’ve also been pruning back some of the trees. It’s not technically the right season - but the temps are low enough & they really (really!!) need it.

When you work with nature enough you start to be able to read it. It will tell you what it needs. Observation is the most powerful tool you have in your gardening kit. 🌱

This tube lichen is thriving on the logs in the garden - a good sign.

Because of their sensitivity, lichens are bioindicators – living organisms that reflect the health of an ecosystem. A diverse and thriving lichen community is a message from the land that things are going well - the air is clean & overall, the environment is healthy.

Another bioindicator on the land is a healthy population of frogs & toads! (enough frogs here that I’m pretty paranoid when i have to mow - I repeatedly stop & scan the ground before moving on to the next patch of grass) Frogs are a keystone species - their presence or absence can significantly impact the ecosystem they inhabit. They absorb contaminants through their skin, making them susceptible to pollutants - because they are a water and land based species, they are exposed to a wider range of pollutants & can serve as harbingers of potential ecological problems.

A great way to start establishing habitat that supports the broader ecosystem in your garden, is to use materials that are on site & may already be harmonizing with the ecology of your location. I used the same logs that the previous residents had used in their garden - just in the new location adjacent to the greenhouse,

If you don’t have any materials on site (which is rare from my experience;) that’s OK, you can bring materials in & let time do it’s thing.

An easy way to introduce a bit of habitat is through rocks piles. As with all things in permaculture design, the utility of these piles are multifunctional (such as slowing & directing water) and I think they are a pretty feature. They add a sense of grounded permanence.

As a habitat feature, all the nooks & crannies give frogs & other creatures a safe shady respite. Protection from the elements & predators, thermal regulation, overwintering…a simple grouping of rocks can be a boon to your garden.

All gardens benefit from biological diversity so including habitat features in your garden design is a good start to creating a garden ecosystem- where all the components work together to sustain the ecological community (your garden!)

a wooly day in the north, summer be damned. the air smells of spruce & rain

Gathered flowers yesterday to bring inside

A bit more time spent indoors than I’d like the past few days. Smoke from Canadian fires with thunderstorms. weird combo.

Listening to thunder while gazing at the blood red sun is eerie.

Luckily there is enough weather here to move things along & the air quality is going back to normal. I grabbed a few chances to walk around and observe the happenings in the gardens & made it down to the big lake with Minnie regardless.

In the garden…Lupine seed pods. As the flower spires wilt away these stalks of seed pods develop. In the fall the pods will have weathered sufficiently to split and scatter the seeds

Budding eggplant and its protective spikes. Careful of those little f’rs!! they are no joke

Bell peppers & every other kind of pepper are loving the greenhouse heat. I don’t know if it’s a “thing” but over the years I’ve come to plant my peppers close together. I think they like it.

i check the seed beds multiple times a day to see what’s sprouted up & how everyone is doing out there.

this morning i went out to the garden with my coffee & it was crazzzzzzyyyy

so many seeds came up while i was sleeping. the one above is about an inch tall & it was not there last night at around 7pm

all the years. all the gardens. and seeds continue to thrill me. little miracles

the service berries are ripening 💫

still tinkering away out here. the bottom of the fence is finished - my right hand hurts like hell but i got it done. now I can focus on more fun design aspects. i let my background mind ponder the fence design while i worked on other stuff in the garden & emerged with a stripped down design idea that i’m going to try - just to finish things off visually a bit more.

there are tons of peppers, greens & herbs popping off in the greenhouse & tomatoes are starting to come in. always satisfying.

i’m about to finally have some visitors after a really long stretch of hanging around with just my Minnie girl. will be great to see some friends!

i am in a period of pondering next moves. trying to tap in to my inner voice -which feels like it’s being drowned out by exhaustion from trying to figure shit out ;)

wow, these times we are moving in huh? all the fear & suffering & extinction. all i know to do is what is right in front of me. tending the life, & death, before me. you don’t live in the wild country without confronting death & wildness. getting adept fast at handling every single thing. no choice = handle it.

so i handle it. and make it look pretty.

xo

was inspired to add some visual heft to the garden beds with rocks as a rain garden/border & bit of extra habitat. i think the little frogs will love it. i’ve dug up a few bigger rocks from elsewhere on the land that i’ll try & roll over to the garden tomorrow;) still fleshing things out while being careful of the seeds i’ve already planted. continuing to fortify the bottom 2 feet of the fence - to ground contact - with chicken wire. plenty of hares around so can’t skimp out on that part of the process! i have carpal tunnel like crazy so i’m doing this part in sections each day. Almost done! You can see above on the right side of the fence the fortified section at the bottom. i fold the wire under on the ground (toward the garden) & hold into place with heavy u shaped landscaping staples.

yes, it would have made more sense to do the bottom fence section first - but i really wanted to get the garden beds & seeds in as early as i could ( i’m already pushing it seeding them in july) so i just kept it in mind when laying everything else out. so far so good.