Circle of protection

[greenstorm]

 It's Lughnasadh, day of first fruits. Every year I don't think I'm going to get any fruit, it seems way too early. Every year I am wrong.

Last year I'd had my first tomato by this time and this year I have only had my green grocery store cherry tomatoes. 

I had a big bowl of saskatoons yesterday, the bushes are literally bent double under the weight of berries. I pickled the cereal bowl full in a few minutes and the bush looks untouched. I have a bunch of saskatoon bushes around here but this one, my favourite, provides enough for the freezer on its own.

I picked a couple of the first raspberries today, this year, despite not doing any pruning last year at all so there were dead canes, some single year canes, and a whole ton of this year's canes all mixed up together and bending over. It looks like there'll be a decent harvest of them after all.

I've been eating lettuce salads since the lamb's quarters finished, though I am still terrible at making viniagrettes. Josh is an artist with them and I just cannot get the delicacy they need for fresh homegrown lettuce. Today's salad had some of that very nice chard (I only like chard without offensive stalks, which means "perpetual spinach" or biatola e costa) and some oxeye daisy flowers and some chive seeds.

Most importantly to this time of year, I've sorted out some planning on the woody perennial part of the garden just off the house, and put in the remaining apple tree and some accompanying grapes, with spots roughed out for the haskap, a kiwi (issai), some sour cherries, gooseberries, and the roses. With a bow towards Hestia as home and hearth I'm centering the backbone of the gardens in rings on the garden firepit (apple trees in a 36' ring) and on the chimney/woodstove. If I put a bonfire ring in the back the third ring will center on it. 

This doesn't mean a solid ring of trees, but it means that an arc of apple trees punctuated with taller cherries along the south of the property will shade the south side of the garden from south sun and then with raspberries underplanted shade the house from west sun, will part to let the drive run through, and then either spiral out into the plum trees or just continue along the edge of the plum bed. Within that some arcs of roses, inside the fence of the inner garden, will screen the more private area there. 

Running a ring off the chimney will be a little more challenging that running one off the firepit, but I can probably use my work laser for that.

Spent a ton of time this weekend moving the sprinkler around for the garden and being super exhausted. Will make a separate post about corn etc.

Comments

[yarrowkat]

that extended ring around the hearth/firepit is a beautiful idea.

it remains very interesting to me how we can grow many of the same things, but with noticable differences - peas & tomatoes don't co-exist in time here, the peas being done & crispy-dry & pulled out & replaced with beans by the time the tomatoes ripen; our first fruits are in april (lettuces, bok choy, spinach, peas, carrots, chard, beets) and then most of those things disappear for the summer & return in September - we're doing fall planting now through early Sept. we just put squash in and have a reasonable expectation that we'll get some before it freezes, late as we are (which is just humans being human, not a planned thing - the plan was to plant them 4th of July weekend after the squash bugs are mostly over. oops).

[greenstorm]

Yeah, the compression of the growing season (caused by having really strong seasonality and lots of Other Seasons) took some getting used to for me. There's maybe 140-ish days of ground-thawed no-snow-on-ground (early May through to end-ish of Sept) so there just isn't time to stack cool-season and warm-season crops across time. Warm-season crops go into a greenhouse on Mother's day or the day after the full moon in beginning of June; cool season crops go into the ground on May long weekend, and that's that. Everything ends at the end of Sept.

That's why so much of my focus is on breeding traditional warm-weather crops into cool-weather crops so they can just live outside at all.

I think, sometimes, about how land is so much cheaper here but for gardening we get less than half the amount of time out of the land than I would down south.

[yarrowkat]

i keep thinking about how Cazadero is in zone 9b (i'm in 7b here bc winter) - and how different it will be to be able to grow anything i want, with probably much less juggling around heat/cold tolerance. but also the darkness of the winter compared to Abq's persistently blue skies and longer days, as we are further south.

[greenstorm]

Oh interesting, is it warm enough to have trouble with apples etc that need chill hours? I have a friend gardening in Spain and it blows my mind how she just replants seeds the day of harvest, because there isn't really a winter where she is. With enough water & fertility there's so much potential for the kind of fun fruits that don't ship well.

Is it a place with overcast winters? I know the PNW really is hard on some folks that way, I was surprised how much being up here was better for me in the winter despite the cold, because it was sunny.

[yarrowkat]

yes, they get all their rain between October and March, and the summers are long and sunny. 51 inches of rainfall a year! i might feel like I'm turning into a moss. 😬 Terra, who has lived in Sonoma County and in Seattle, says it's not overcast the way the PNW is - rain comes and goes with some sun between, rather than clouds living on top of you for months.

i asked that same question about apples! there's a particular variety, the Gravenstein, that was bred in Sonoma County and is popularly grown there. I'll have to research it more. when i asked if it freezes, Max said, "oh, yes, two or three times a year!" LOL. so i think i can protect some tender things like artichokes with just a little frost cover etc, as long as they're good with the winter rain. good drainage might be very important to establish for the perennials.

[greenstorm]

That's similar to Vancouver rainfall patterns, I guess it's a west coast thing. Good not to have the overcast! Rough if there's no water storage, since a huge amount of the growing season is dead dry. Though I guess one could grow overwinter and just let everything go dry-dormant in summer. Might have to be careful about establishing too much drainage, since it can mean a brutal watering regime. Then again, you may be used to that.

Artichokes are so good.

[yarrowkat]

i have the sense my dryland farming and gardening experience will be useful, even as i learn a really different local ecology. good point about drainage. what i know i will do, is look up the Sonoma County Master gardeners association, and amy local teaching farms i can find, and go take any interesting classes they're offering. to learn how the locals do it. because i think some of my reflexes will be very incorrect for the environment

rainwater barrels and a runoff infiltration system (swales, berms, mulch basins, to slow it down and soak it in) are on the list! here, our land is flat so we don't have a runoff problem. there, the house is in a dell, on a slope, and the whole ranch is hilly and even mountainous in a rolling coastal sort of way. so getting the rain to soak in or be stored for summer will be important.

[greenstorm]

I find the gods often don't come unless they're given an invitation. It's time.

[donnaidh_sidhe]

Thank you for describing such a lovely place to imagine.

[greenstorm]

Oh, hey, good to hear from you :)

[greenstorm]

Everything is babies yet.