Seven

Fall is a time to take stock. I tried a few things this year and learned a few lessons that will allow me to move forward into more focused plantings.

1.     Asparagus loves my site/soil/climate. Now I am trying to decide how much more to plant next year,  whether I should invest in roots or start plants from seed, and how to prepare the soil in advance for a massive planting.

Asparagus in July. Next spring it will be possible to harvest two spears per plant.

Dwarf cherry, the leaves slowly died
 back until there was only this little
 tuft left. It lives, for now.

2.       Cherries and miniature kiwis are not suited to my site. While the plants still cling to life, the amount of trouble they are having surviving does not bode well. In the spring I will replant these plants in a different area and plant more worthwhile plants in their place. There is no point leaving the prime top-of-the-hill real estate to a group of plants that won’t bear fruit. Better to fill the space with fruit trees that have been doing well.

3.       Plums and apricots are fantastic. More of these will be planted. I love them- they are tough and not many local producers have these crops which means should I ever take them to the farmer’s market I won’t have competition.

4.       Strawberries are delicious, and I am still harvesting in October. There are a lot of strawberry producers in the area, though, so I will keep my production for personal consumption only.

5.       Praying mantises live in Canada! They, along with snakes, love my bit of land and I expect this has to do with leaving tall grasses. I will keep the areas directly below my trees tidy in the future, but will leave wild areas for biodiversity. This will also help wild pollinator species as I want to introduce more species of flowers to those areas.

This red currant produced
DELICIOUS and sweet berries!

6.       Some red currant varieties are delicious and sweet. They bear fruit the second year. I will plant more. Saskatoons taste good and bear the first year, but the skin breaks upon picking. This destroys their potential for even short term storage.

7.       Since the field has no irrigation, there is no point in preparing a vegetable garden with non-drought tolerant crops. Most of my vegetables did not grow. 

I love my project. I love that I can make mistakes and learn and always keep dreaming of potential futures the project could have. I was afraid of taking this risk, but it is the most worthwhile risk I have ever taken.

Have a lovely week.

Apricots have beautiful red tinted foliage all summer long.

Munching on grape leaves, this is one fat caterpillar.

Hidden gifts

The past few weeks have been wild, both for the garden and for myself. After days of pain I went to the hospital where they kept me for a week and eventually let me leave having confiscated my gallbladder. They said I'd be back at full activity within a week, but no digging or strenuous exercise for two weeks. 

My 300 flower bulbs arrived in the mail the day I went in to the hospital. Poor Eden's Rise, I thought, but lucky me to live in an age where such a surgery can occur so quickly and the wounds can heal and be forgotten almost immediately. It only took four days for walking to become natural again, and I went to see how Eden's Rise fared with my two week absence.

Interesting news: the deer have found the field! Ends of branches have been nibbled off, and entire branches were shaved clean of leaves. Oh what a pickle. 

Having gone through a near death (and if not 'near death', then 'near to wishing for death') experience calms and places things in proportion. 

"The deer had a little to eat, okay, but this year was all about promoting root growth anyway. All those leaves that were eaten weren't important," I tell myself and hope that it is true. "If anything this will be good for the plants as it will encourage them to grow taller branches next year to get out of reach of the deer."

This positive thinking is no reason for inaction, however. I returned home, washed my hair (and let's face it, with my gut still covered in bandages and changing clothes being challenging, washing my hair was somewhat overdue anyway), and then I cut my hair. I placed the cut hair into a bag. Then I brushed my cat's long luxurious coat and collected her fur too. Then I was tired so I had a nap.

Fast forward a bit, now all the trees that had been nibbled in Eden's Rise have a few strands of hair hanging from each branch. 

I am not a hippy!

The smell of soap is a known deer deterrent, as is the smell of humans. I am not sure my cat's fur will deter deer, but who knows, maybe the mice will think twice about gnawing at the bark. 

My two weeks mandatory digging-free rest were over on Saturday, and I planted two thirds of my flower bulbs. On Sunday we had a gentle rain. 

What a glorious time to be alive and healthy. I wish the same to all of you. 

Better when it's free

Varieties are important. Apples are a famous example that just because what you planted was a McIntosh seed, doesn't necessarily mean a McIntosh apple tree will grow. In fact, apple seeds are so variable you could plant ten seeds from the same apple tree and get different colours, flavours, and textures from each of the offspring.

Genetics are important in this respect. I do not want to spend time and money caring for a plum tree whose yields might be poor, disease prone, or bitter. I pay a premium to make sure that the genetic stock I have purchased will really be the legendary plumcot and not a random mutation.

However, there are times when genetics are less important. There are some flower species I have been keeping my eye on because they are very attractive for bees, butterflies, hummingbirds, etc. I do not want to grow them for profit, rather I want to grow them because I think Eden's Rise should be about more than pure food production (see previous post), it should also improve the condition of the soil it is on and provide refuge for wildlife displaced by the constant expansion of lawns and car parks. 

Some of the flower species I was looking into buying were already growing in my mother's garden. I noticed from their growth pattern that they propagated underground, a root from the mother plant travelled beneath the surface of the earth and pushed out a fresh plant a few inches away. I asked my mother if in the fall I could dig up some of the baby plants to transplant them in my garden and she happily agreed- some of these plants spread aggressively and need thinning out anyway. A single root from these plants cost $15 in Vesey's catalogue. 

When the phlox flowers died back they revealed dried out seed pods, and when I picked one and tipped it upside down 15 tiny seeds tumbled out. I did a quick google search and found that propagating from seed is not recommended for phlox as the seedling will likely revert to its more wild form- the colour would not be the same as the mother plant. As it happens, that is not important to me in this case! If the bees still love it, the wilder, the better! I folded a sheet of paper that was destined for recycling, taped the edges shut, went back outside and shook each group of seed pods so their seeds rained down into the recycled paper envelop. 

Amazing that a single root would have cost $15 and now I have what must be at least 100,000 seeds! 

Now I am addicted. I love all the lilies in my mom's garden so I have been collecting those seeds too- I might even make little Christmas gifts with them! 

I was up North this week and saw a beautiful flower growing out of the crack in a sidewalk. It happened to have some dried seed pods on one branch. I did some seed sorting in my motel room! 

As I walked past a mature asparagus stand, well, I snagged some ripe berries from a female plant to see if I can propagate some from seed.

When I told my best friend about my new found hobby of stealing the genetic offspring of flowers she told me her mother is way ahead of me. Apparently she would go as far as carrying pruning shears and a small hand saw with her when they visited friends' homes. If she saw a plant she wanted she didn't just take seeds that have genetic variation- she took a genetic copy!

I hope I inspire you to look in the flower beds of your neighbourhood and embrace the possibility that it doesn't take any money to garden. In fact, you don't even need your own yard. Take some seeds from one place and guerrilla garden some forgotten corner of your neighbourhood. If you can harvest 10,000 seeds from one plant, even just broadcasting them over depleted soil  runs the chance that one of those unique seeds has the genetic make-up to grow, survive, and breed on that bit of ground. And you have taken a small action toward beautifying and re-naturalising an unloved space.

Have a lovely day

A small weekly harvest from the day neutral strawberries

The Farm vs. The Garden

What is a farm and what is a garden?

A farm should be profitable, first of all, and efficient. Straight rows, evenly spaced, soil tilled into a perfect seed bed in order to produce a uniform crop. Orchards are made up of trees in straight lines and the width between the rows reflects tractor size and manoeuvrability as much as it reflects plant requirements. Animals are fed a standard diet and more or less confined to a designated area. There is nothing growing on a farm that does not serve a purpose.

That, at least, is my impression of farms. I love them, and always have. I've worked on loads of farms and dearly wish I had found a nice farm lad to be my husband so that I could live and work on my own farm. 

Don't get the impression that I don't think I am capable of starting and running my own farm without a man involved. Of course I could, and if that's your dream (irregardless of gender or marital status) I encourage you to jump in. 

What is holding me back is that I do not like to limit myself to the analytical thinking required to make a farm efficient and profitable. When I'm at work I'm a huge fan of the "work smarter, not harder" approach, but when it comes to my dreams I want to create a place where food is plentiful, nature is welcome, and puttering is encouraged.

Eden's Rise is a productive garden. Fruit, flowers that are known to be good for wild bees, herbs, and some annual vegetables will all grow here. This year so far I've accomplished three of those four goals, though on a tiny scale. Next year Eden's Rise will be unrecognisable as the little fallow field it once was. 

This fall I am planting 155 more fruiting shrubs and ~200 mixed flower bulbs. In the spring will come ~40 more fruit trees, and possibly some nuts as well. Then, I have a plan for companion planting vegetables, flowers, and herbs below the fruit trees using the permaculture principles of plant guilds. I have begun digging swales and seeding the lower portion in clover to increase soil nitrogen and hopefully the deep roots will break up some of the bedrock. I also need to set about establishing some more permanent raised beds for vegetable and herb production. The raised bed designated for wild flowers will be reseeded again in the spring and hopefully next year a three month long drought will not once again kill all the newly sprouted plants. And all this while trying to plant in a way that is visually appealing. 

Eden's Rise aims to blur the lines between utility and beauty. 

What is a farm and what is a garden? Both are amazing proofs of humanity's ability to influence and change our landscapes and environment. But can a farm be productive and efficient while being beautiful? Can a garden be beautiful while still being efficient and productive? 

Have a lovely week.

Welcome Mantis, bring your friends

I kept my word and have been watering my plants every evening, when possible. I had to miss a night here and there due to either social events or back pain, but overall my plants have been spoiled these past two weeks and they love it!

I see lots of new wood, new leaves, and the largest surprise of all- a few days after I started regular watering, the insects that were eating the leaves nearly all disappeared. One exception is one apple tree was attacked by several hundred miniature caterpillars, but after a bit of squishing they seem to have disappeared too.

Best of all- it finally rained yesterday. A welcome relief during our summer or drought.

There haven't been many pictures lately of Eden's Rise and that is because of how brown, crispy, and dead the field looks. The only colour comes from my trees and the particularly drought resistant golden rod that has taken possession of the bottom of the field. 

And yet life carries on. I don't know anything about snake life cycles but there are some miniature snakes hanging out near my asparagus and I assume they must be some recent hatchlings. I love snakes, and I am happy that having left the grass long means that they feel comfortable having a habitat in my garden. 

There are also voles, or some kind of fluffy round ball animals. They make holes and run away in a flash of dark fur when I approach them. They don't seem particularly destructive, but I don't appreciate when they make their holes right through the roots of my newly planted trees. They likely don't appreciate me planting trees right through their newly dug holes.

Today I made a new friend: a praying mantis! 

At first I was horrified, all my knowledge about praying mantises came from an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer where Xander was nearly eaten by a large Praying Mantis Demon Lady. Still, I had an idea that it was probably not eating my plants and likely even a welcome visitor for my garden. A quick google search when I got home confirmed it. It seems they have enormous appetites for aphids, mosquitoes, caterpillars, and a bunch of other bugs I have no immediate love for. Suddenly I love my new freaky insect friend, and I hope she invites all her friends over for a party! 

Have a lovely week, and take some time to look at nursery catalogues. If you want to start your own orchard or want to plant flower bulbs, then fall is a great time to plant. 

Lessons

Things have been a bit bleak lately. My plums are being massacred by insects, my strawberries are being ripped up by neighbouring horses, my blueberries look like they're burning from the leaf edges, my grapes are stunted. 

It's all my fault.

I frequently visit other people's orchards. Usually they are an abandoned side project and I've been proud to see that for the most part my trees look like those in orchards that were planted several years ago. My bubble burst when I visited my best friends who planted their orchard at the same time as I planted mine. Their trees have at least twice as much new wood, three times more leaves, and no apparent evidence of insect damage. 

I hated them.

Only briefly. (C'mon, a little jealousy keeps you human!)

Their orchard is very near their house, which allows them to water it daily. They need to. Their soil is sandy and has trouble holding water. Daily water and the endless heat and sunshine that we've had this summer are the perfect recipe for plant growth. 

I've started a new job this summer and with the busy whirl of finding my feet in a job that has me travelling around the province I've been neglectful of my orchard. I've only been watering Eden's Rise once a week, sometimes even less. No wonder my trees are being ravaged by insects, curling their leaves up, turning yellow, and my two weakest plants (weak since being planted too early and getting a hard knock by the frost) have finally died. 

I realised that far from being on par with those older orchards, I was on the road to having my orchard stunted and looking much as it does now even 4 years from now when ideally I should be in full production. Tough love is not what these young trees need.

Like a procrastinator who has realised the deadline is now only 2 days away I've been pushed into action by panic. I have been watering my orchard every day for 4 days now. To see change overnight seemed too good to be true and yet change is here!

My elderberry plants have added an inch of new wood in 3 days, my plum which had lost 60% of its leaves to insect damaged has now sneezed out a huge tuft of new leaves which totally hides the half eaten massacre within. The blueberries with crusty leaf edges are pushing out some fresh green leaves and the grapes which have been lacking in action nearly all summer have finally sent enough tentacles to reach the first wire of my trellis (about 4 feet) (not all of them, some varieties seem to be struggling more than the rest). 

Seeing an immediate result to my extra work is exactly what I needed for morale. I should have known thirsty plants don't have the energy to fight off predators, etc.

Things will be back on track now at Eden's Rise. It may take 2 hours a night to water my orchard, but let's face it. What else would I be doing?

Have a lovely week!

-Eden

Cider

Of course when you are planning an orchard, there's a bit of you that thinks "wouldn't it be cool to make my own cider?"

At least that is my thought process.

Rather than wait until my own trees are producing enough to make a batch of alcoholic cider, I decided I should practice on cheap store bought juice first. Just to iron out the kinks in my knowledge of brewing.

First fermentation went well with a lot of gurgling, and the secondary fermentation was very quiet. The cider at this point tasted alcoholic but nearly unpalatable due to the lack of sugar. I decided to put some honey in the bottom of my bottles which I knew was likely to trigger a third fermentation which would make my cider bubbly. I also knew there was a risk that this third fermentation could be too violent and my bottles might explode.

When I went home this morning four of the corks had popped out. Cider all over the bathroom floor. Not a problem, I'm pretty sure cooling the cider down should halt fermentation. So I put as many as I could in a bucket with cold water, selecting particularly the bottles whose corks had already been coming out a little. 

This is clearly not a permanent solution during a hot summer. I happen to know, however, that there is a lot of unused fridge space at my mother's house. So I load the cider into my car and start driving very slowly towards her place with my AC blasted as high as it will go. Not high enough, incidentally. 

Shaking bottles that are full of pressure is not very good if you want to actually drink the cider someday. One cork pops, I wince, and the whole car smells of cider. I've gone too far now, I have to keep going.

I reach a stop sign and discover extensive road works are underway. There is nothing to do but sit in the baking sun with my own blood pressure rising as I know what the heat will do to the yeast having a party in my bottles. Two minutes pass, three minutes, four min- BANG! Cider sprayed all across the inside of my windshield, ceiling, dashboard and the cork whizzes past my ear. Right now I am really hoping I can make it to my mom's house without being stopped by a cop because I don't know how I'll be able to explain this. 

It is a happy ending, though. I made it home and I now have 20 bottles of cider in the fridge and the inside of my car drying in the sunshine. And I know for next time to STOP fermentation in the bottles after about a week if I want to avoid explosions and fountains of delicious cider. 

Have a lovely week, bottoms up!



Update: Having a glass of cider from one of the popped open bottles. It is sweet, fizzy, and definitely going straight to my head!

Why Garden?

It's a lot of work; so why garden?

It would be easier not to plant all these trees. In the supermarket we can buy local fruit and exotic fruit of all shapes and colours. But they have about 1/4 of the taste and texture compared to eating them ripe off the tree. That's one reason people garden. Taste. 

This is pretty much the entire harvest for 2016, so why bother?

You could spend Sunday mornings laying in bed until noon while watching a Netflix show and eating Nutella straight from the jar (tempting) instead of working 6 hours lugging water, raking, weeding, digging, and generally 'working'. This physical exertion gives you strength, a well earned hunger, and energy that can only come from regular exercise. You might garden for your health.

When you shop for seeds, bulbs, plants; fruit, vegetable, or floral- you have so many options to choose from. You can plant huge flowers of all colours, try 20 varieties of tomato, grow something you've never heard of for the chance to try an unknown berry in several years' time. You can garden for variety and discovery.


If you read this blog, you're likely a gardener yourself. What's your reason for gardening? Have you ever even stopped to wonder why you do it?


My reason is pure and simple: I enjoy it. 

I dig and sweat in the sun on a cool morning. I hear the birds sing. I look up to see a herd of wild turkeys watching me, or a weasel carrying a rodent half its size. I hear the wind and the hum of bees and forget about time, people, stress, traffic, internet, deadlines. I reconnect to the true meaning of life, to nature. 

It isn't work to me, I wouldn't want to be doing anything else. 

You can leave your comments below, I would love to hear about your own adventures into gardening! 

Have a lovely week.

Obsessed, mulch?

Strawberries plants are often mulched. Mulch keeps the berries clean (no direct contact with soil), it also acts as a temperature buffer and reduces moisture loss from the soil to the sun. Best of all for the farmer with a bad back; mulch suppresses weed growth!

Strawberry beds kept tidy with use of mulch

My little field has been fallow for at least seven years. That's seven years of grass growing and dying. Mulch can be expensive for the organic gardener, but for me it was only a matter of raking for 10 minutes to get enough old grass together to cover one bed. 40 minutes later all my strawberry beds were mulched!

Blueberries mulched with pine needles and grass

The result was so good (particularly on the weed side) that I figured I should do this for all the plants on Eden's rise! The blueberries have a mixed mulch of pine needles (to increase acidity) and grass. All trees, bushes, and vines have a small circle of coconut coir mulch from planting day that has now been covered by a larger circle of grass mulch. I am grateful that I began this little project after the first full week without rain. There has been very little rain so far this summer and the field is in the full sun all day when the temperature is frequently above 30 Celsius. The mulch keeps the weed competition away for the base of my plants so when I waddle over with water for each tree I know I am not wasting that water on weeds. Thanks to the layer of mulch the hot sun also loses much of its opportunity to steal the water and the soil does not bake. 

Those are the often praised advantages of mulch, but I enjoy mulch for another reason. Bare soil, as the soil would be if I managed to keep it weed free, is subject to erosion. Anyone who has ever had a passing interest in sustainable agriculture knows that loss of topsoil is a serious problem in areas that are routinely cultivated. Erosion from wind and rain can hit hard on fine soil particles (like my clay soil). Since the soil depth on my hill is only about 1.5 feet to bedrock, every bit of soil is precious. The mulch will eventually rot down and be incorporated into the topsoil with the positive effect that in this case agriculture adds to the topsoil rather than depleting it. 

Two rows of asparagus, mulched around the edges with plastic
 and mulched in between with grass

There is always work to be done on Eden's Rise, I will leave you at that! Have a lovely week.

The grass looking fairly well combed after a raking session to mulch the apple trees.

Paradise or Junkyard- the fine line

I don’t know if there’s a word for people like me. People who hate to see things wasted. People who recycle, upcycle, shop in charity shops, garage sales, flea markets, and who start and participate in clothing exchanges. People who unashamedly stop to pick up stuff from a stranger’s garbage that’s been put out to the curb.

Cheap?

Environmentally conscious?

Thrifty?

The word hoarder definitely does not apply to me as I love giving things away as much as I love collecting them. It is the knowledge that something that was destined for the trash has been rescued and given another life with someone who can appreciate the item’s worth that makes me happy.

What people who aren’t addicted to re-using don’t realise, is that it is actually quite a lot of hard work. You may call me ‘cheap’ because I was not willing to go out and spend $200 on a new computer chair, but you could also call me ‘patient’ for instead making do until one in my neighbourhood was put out for the trash. You may call me a ‘garbage picker’ for rescuing the shitty chair covered in chalk and paint, but you could also call me a ‘hard worker’ for spending over two hours cleaning it until it was a beautiful black computer chair. And you could call me ‘clever’ for then selling that chair many months later when I had to move.

Old tyres aren't widely recycled, but at Eden's Rise
they can live a second life as flower containers.

The problem with using the word cheap is that I am willing to spend large chunks of money on things I love. But when it comes to material goods, I know how much stuff is circulating in my rich country and how likely it is that what I want is sitting in someone’s basement somewhere waiting to be given a second life. Re-painting an old beige dresser, rescuing picture frames, getting a whole new wardrobe from the unloved clothes of a friend, these bring me so much joy and pride.

Eden’s Rise is an extension of this drive inside me. Raised beds made from old pallets, a flower bed made from old tyres, a rain barrel purchased second hand online, trellises made from the sides of an old crib found on the side of the road, mulch that was once a growing medium in a local greenhouse, and plastic mulch made from the growing bags. None of this is easier than just purchasing things new. Most worryingly, it is a fine line between a successful re-use and having the orchard look like a trash pile.

Old pallets used to make raised
beds for strawberries

Even the dead grass on Eden's Rise
gets a second life as 'straw'

The field itself is a prime example. Unused and vacant, now I am trying to give this little acre new life. Among my own trees and gardens are tall grasses, self-seeded trees, and weeds weeds weeds. Why don’t I just chop them all down? Good question. Partly because native wildlife depends on the little environment in the field, partly because I think if I removed all those distractions the wildlife would target my trees (which are still little more than twigs), and partly because I don’t think it’s necessary yet. I am looking for a second hand mower to keep the middle path trimmed down, but otherwise I keep a large enough circle of mulch around my trees and weed this diligently so that at least there is not competition for the water and nutrients at the base of my trees. I’ve also cut back the self-seeded tress that were shading my plants.

Asparagus hates competition-
here old grow bags are being
used as plastic mulch.

To come: the whole asparagus
patch will be framed with
recycled pallets. 

Ugly, or original beauty? Again comes the patience aspect of being a person like me. You don’t expect what you want to fall in your lap the second you conceive it. You wait. Now it looks like a disaster zone, but little by little I will transform it into a gem.

I want my orchard to be a beautiful paradise, fruit trees and bushes with an under story of wildflowers. 

Though for now it does look a bit like a hoarder’s back garden.

 Have a lovely week!

Eden's Rise- weedy mess or young paradise? Here are the edges of the crib I found in front of a neighbour's house, now painted white and added to the top of Eden's Rise to give the illusion of open gates welcoming you in. Hopefully we'll have some Nasturtiums climbing up these someday soon. Also in the picture is the second hand rain barrel that's often used for emergency watering needs.

Water on Eden's Rise

Let’s say you plant an orchard and then the rain doesn’t come. Your orchard does not have a well, and it is far from the main road. How do you cope?

The Eden’s Rise solution has been to carry water through the woods to the back acre slice that is the orchard. It’s not an elegant solution, but a working one until I can convince the sky to drop some water down into the field and find a way of collecting it.

We are expecting rain today, at last. All the plants are trembling with excitement (or is that the wind?). As you can probably see from the picture of my plum tree, the leaves are hanging a little low and look visibly dehydrated. Carrying water back in a large barrel is all right if you just want your trees to survive, but I am convinced had they had proper water this past month they would have grown twice as much. Every day I’ve been worryingly watching the forecast, rain kept disappearing further and further away. I know that I can’t hope to have my trees strong and healthy if I cannot deliver a proper soaking at least once a week. The weather for the past two weeks has been hot, dry, and sunny.

Today I am holding my breath until the rain comes, then I’m counting each drop of rain like a blessing. 

The Flowering spring

Eden’s Rise has gone from a low-maintenance uncultivated bit of land to an orchard screaming for attention. A week and a half without rain, grass growing through the mulch, vegetable gardens need to be prepared, the last raised bed box needs to be built and the flowers…

When transplanting bare-rooted trees, many roots are lost in the process. These little trees have a compromised root system and very little wood in their trunk. To compensate for the loss of root, I trimmed back the branches at planting time, being sure to leave only 50% or less of the wood (technically it should be closer to 30% but it was my first time and it’s scary hacking away at $50 trees!). Now the roots are able to adsorb enough water to support their remaining limbs.

This first year is a dance for life, if the roots don’t develop well enough this year, it will mean regular watering next year and the year after… it is better to encourage root development now and then have peace of mind next year that if it doesn’t rain for a week and a half, I don’t have to run over to the field with buckets of water every three days to help them out. I also want them to be developing a healthy thick trunk that will help them survive harsh winter temperatures.

How to do this?

You can imagine I gave my young trees a severe talking to this week when I walked into the field to find a dozen of them flowering! I quickly picked off all flower buds and open flowers but I know when I return today I will have more flowers to remove. Deflowering at three weeks! They are far too young!

The wood from these trees was originally a branch on a mature tree. They were cut off and grafted to a rootstock (most of mine I chose a semi-dwarfing rootstock) and shipped to me after the graft was properly healed. We can talk more about grafting in another post, but for now it’s just important as the trunk still thinks it’s a branch in a much larger tree system (plants don’t think in the sense humans do, but bear with me here guys, it’s artistic license).

When the tree flowers and a bee visits to introduces male pollen to the female flower’s stigma (the open end of a tunnel that will draw pollen into the ovary) it takes a lot of energy from the plant. By the time a fruitlet is visible, half of the energy required to make a fully ripened fruit has already been expended. This year I cannot allow/afford for the trees to bear a single fruit as it could come at the cost of losing the tree in the winter.

Simple as that.

Next year some of the smaller bushes will be allowed to fruit, like the blueberries, saskatoons, and currants. The apples, plums, and cherries will have to wait until year 3 at the earliest.

You don’t plant an orchard if you’re in a hurry!

Have a lovely week.

Saskatoon Berry

It has been a week since planting day, and I have returned almost daily to see the progress of my plants. While most of the trees are still dormant, the cherries are tentatively opening some buds. The winners in the race are my smaller fruiting plants- the bushes. There are signs of life from most of them, and several varieties have already been brave enough to unfurl a few leaves!

The real stars of the show are the Saskatoon berries. They have grown so rapidly I can almost see them grow. From a bare stick a week ago, they have shown a tremendous desire to thrive and survive. (The three pictures along the left are of the same plant a few days apart.)

Never heard of a Saskatoon berry?

 I have never heard of it being grown as a commercial crop, and had you asked me a year ago what they looked like I would not have had a clue what to tell you. It is the description from the nursery catalogue that pressed me into ordering 8 of these plants—but really after waiting so many years to have a chance at growing my own orchard, I had trouble not trying one of everything in the book!

Saskatoons make a good hedgerow, which is why my 8 plants are lined up with the neighbour’s fence, though far enough away that his horses can’t reach over and eat them! The plant is native to the prairies which makes it extremely hardy (up to Zone 2!) and the catalogue promises that Saskatoons are the easiest berries to grow, they will accept any type of soil! Perfect! Of course, now if the Saskatoons fail I will know that the problem is not my soil—it’s me!

As for flavour, I am not sure that Saskatoons are very palatable if eaten raw, but I am told that birds love them and this can be a useful crop for luring birds away from fruit that has higher market value.

How long before we can taste the berries? Hopefully these plants should be well established enough by next year to allow pollination of some flowers. A nice relief to have some plants that will bear fruit early. It is a shocking investment planting an orchard and then having to wait 5 years with your fingers crossed for good weather and low pest pressure before harvesting a decent crop!

 The star of the week, the lovely Saskatoon berry!

Planting Eden

The day arrived and with it came two large cardboard boxes.  Planting day, that is!

As soon as I saw the two boxes I realised that in all my planning I’d never really considered what to do once the trees got here. I walked in circles for a few minutes then opened one box. It is truly an achievement how many trees they can cram together in such a small space!

Once I laid my eyes on those trees, they had won me over. Twigs with freaky spidery roots, dancing the line between fragility and perseverance. I felt what can only be described as my nurturing instinct. I cannot stand the sight of a baby with stuff on its face, but these bare rooted trees needed me as much as I need them. I kicked into action and got to work.

Planting my trees was the most pleasant work I have ever done. It was a sunny day, not too warm, I was being active and surrounded by birdsong and the knowledge that I was finally doing what I’ve been dreaming of for… well, I remember drawing maps of my ideal farm with my friend Danielle when we were little more than 8 years old. Digging and planting these trees was where I belonged.

Eden’s Rise is such a beautiful and peaceful place, where even as I worked a ground hog lumbered past me. I only want to add to the beauty of this space. For now it is critical that rodents and deer do not get over keen and kill the trees before they have a chance to grow. I’ve left the self-seeded trees alone for now in order to leave current food sources unchanged. Creatures will not be worse off for the work I am doing, be sure of that!

Days are getting warmer, yet the leaves are still tucked away inside of their buds, and I am waiting on a delivery of strawberries and asparagus. 

I cannot wait to see what surprises will come from this adventure.

Next week I’d like to begin showing you around some of the varieties I’ve planted. There are so many!