Creating miniature forest gardens?

Posted by louisa on Friday 8 April 2011 in growing | 9 comments

On Wednesday Linda pointed out that my sawing wood avoidance isn’t lazy but “efficient”. Yes, *cough*, efficient, I concur.

I’m trying to be as efficient as possible in the garden this year – both according to that meaning and the conventional one — and from that and some recent reading, I’m thinking of creating two small forest gardens spots in my garden.

For those not familiar with the idea, forest gardening is a way to multicrop one area – growing (usually) edible plants, shrubs and trees at up to seven different levels, from the treetop canopy levels to ground cover and even root veg. You can create them at a forest scale or even just in small container. It’s efficient in terms of space – a variety of potential food from one area – and can be efficient in the not-sawing-really-lazy sense too if most/all of the layers are perennials or self-seeders.

Both spots I’ve thinking about are in raised beds underneath trees – the first underneath a super tall 100 year old silver birch, then second under a recently planted (currently 2 years old) morello cherry. The silver birch would be canopy layer-plus-plus as it’s miles away from anything else. The cherry, which is on semi-dwarf rootstock, will grow to no more than 2.5m-3m tall so is more at the second layer, the “low tree layer”.

The idea is to have a wedge shape if at all possible – the tall things at the back, the short things at the front, so everything gets sufficient light. The trees are, usefully, in just about the right position for this – towards the back of the space (or at least with ample space to the front) and positioned so that they won’t block the sun. (The back of the house, and thus the garden, is east-facing but the southern facing aspect is completely open too so the silver birch bed gets full sun from about 10am until 4pm-5pm in the summer, and the cherry space from dawn until 2pm.)

Both spots are small and both trees will be pretty thirsty, so I probably won’t be able to plant a full set of layers of demanding fruit & veg but I think there is potential for some stuff. Even if I’m not growing huge amounts of anything in particular, as long as it’s not taking me a lot of effort, it seems to be a good use of space – especially as they’re underused/used as a dumping ground as the birch bed (at the top) is used now.

I’ve already started to plant some shrub-layer fruit bushes under the silver birch – some raspberries that’ll hopefully grow to 3ft-4ft tall. I don’t think the bed is deep enough towards the front for root veg but it’ll certainly be fine for herbaceous things — it would make sense to put borage in there (which grew to between 2-3ft last year) because it’s near the chickens who love borage and I’ve got some chard just starting off, which could go in front of that. Finally, I’m not sure I’ll have any spare plants this year but hopefully once my strawberries start multiplying, I could plant some runners as ground cover/to topple over the edge. Borage self-seeds, chard can (can’t it?) and strawberry runners will last a few years before needing swapping out – so that, in theory, sounds like it could be a lazy efficient bed.

There is only about half that space around the cherry tree so I can’t pack it out. I think big berry bushes would overwhelm the space and clash with the lower tree branches but might get away with some shorter fruit bushes – possibly a small blueberry bush (I’ve seen some that are only about 2ft tall), and when I can propagate children from my cranberry & lingonberry bushes, I could include their offspring there too (the cranberry “strands” could flop over the side of the raised bed). I guess I wouldn’t be adding either of those things this year – which would probably be good as it would let the cherry tree get established in the meantime. I wonder if there is anything not resource crazy that I could put in there now… possibly some not-moisture-crazy herbs? Rosemary? Lavender? I have some little lavender plants in the nearby herb bed which could be transplanted without too much disruption and some other rosemary plantlets nearly ready to be planted out too.

One layer I’ve not talked about is climber/vines – which is the seventh layer. If I thought kiwis or grapes would grow well enough this far up north, I’d possibly consider them for climbing up around the silver birch. Is there anything else in that category that would work? I guess I could leave some space for annual vines – “climbing” squash or something but they are very resource intensive. I’m going to make sure the beds are well enhanced with organic matter before I start but it seems silly to overload them straight afterwards.

Has anyone else created any really small scale “forest gardens”? Is there anything to watch for or need to consider? Any suggestions/advice about my initial plant choices?

Summer will come again, it will, it will

Posted by louisa on Friday 17 December 2010 in growing | 1 comment

Hurrah, in the midst all this fervent frugality and frozen frigidity, I’ve been reminded that summer – and growing – will come again.

Yesterday, as the snow was coming down pretty hard, the postman delivered an parcel of live plants which I ordered back in November – a baby lingonberry bush, a baby cranberry bush and 12 strawberry runners (not pictured).

As I’m new to fruit and as it’s pretty damn chilly out there, I post an “arggh! what do I do with them?” message on Twitter and on UKVegGardeners, and the wonderful Jan told me exactly how to look after (but not molly-coddle) the strawberries. Thanks so much Jan!

I have a bit more faith in the lingonberry and cranberry making it through the winter in one piece since they’re both cold climate plants – I’m going to keep them in their current pots during this cold spell, and in the unheated sunporch rather than the greenhouse (it gets a little heat from the house but more importantly, it’ll be easier for me to keep an eye on them) and plant them into bigger containers when it gets warm enough for me go into the garden without my teeth chattering. I’m expecting a dwarf cherry tree as part of the same order – I’m kinda hoping it doesn’t arrive this side of Christmas now as that’ll involve digging out a big old shrub thing — not going to happen in this weather!

As well as those arriving, on Wednesday, my also-ordered-weeks-ago oyster mushroom dowel spores. I’m very excited about these – I’ve spent the last year reading and learning a lot about finding and identifying wild mushrooms, but not finding a whole lot of edibles near here. These will allow me to cultivate some of our own – and hopefully further utilise the shaded far end of our garden. Although as it’s currently being used as part log store/part bonfire-in-progress, I’m going to have to clearly mark my inseminated logs!

Speaking of which, I have to find some logs for inseminating – they need to be a hardwood, ideally oak, beech or birch, about 10-15cm in diameter and cut within the last six weeks or so. I’d hoped I could use sycamore as we have several thin-and-pointless sycamores that I could cull but apparently sycamore isn’t advised. I think the neighbours have a silly, never-going-to-grow-up silver birch in the neglected bit of their garden so I might ask if I could have in return for the promise of mushrooms at a later date.

(In other food-from-the-garden related news, the chickens seem to have succumbed to the winter – we’re only getting one or two a day from the four layers now, and the new girls still haven’t offered up anything, not even a wonky shelled one, even though they’re probably about 21 weeks old now. (They’re noticeably bigger than when we go them.) I’m going to give the original girls a good fondle this weekend to make sure nothing is wrong with them physically – I don’t think there is, just the lack of light. Hopefully they’ll pick up again as the days start lengthening.)