I haven't been on Hypography for a while. Some things happened in the meantime...but I am alive! I needed some time to think about things. I was terribly sick and tired in January, due to toxic air pollution here (look up "oil refinery explosion Salt Lake City" in Google if you're curious). I am further convinced that we, the human race, need to find better ways to live healthily, sustainably, and responsibly. (Sorry, the environmentalist in me keeps jumping out. If you'd suffered the worst air pollution of your life for 2 weeks, so bad that it made your eyes and throat burn, caused your nose bleed, and filled your lungs with a poison you couldn't cough out, you might feel the same. I was also indescribably tired for that time. It was horrible. I felt like death, unavoidable death, was hovering over me.) And I met someone who is very special to me, and is not from Utah!

I did get my mug garden project started, although not on the scale I wanted. Growing a new round of herbs in mugs.

This is what has excited me as a gardener the last couple months: the incredibly edible forest garden,

Forest gardening - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Natural Farmer: Spring 2002: Edible Forest Gardens - an Invitation to Adventure
Edible Forest Gardens Home

For my gardening philosophy, I'm drawing a lot of inspiration from the Fukuoka farming method, pioneered by Fukuoka Masanobu:

Masanobu Fukuoka - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Fukuoka Farming website
The Plowboy Interview: Masanobu Fukuoka

Fukuoka's 4 principles, as he outlines them:

1. No tilling.
2. No chemical fertilizers/prepared compost
3. No weeding
4. No pesticides

Yes, they go contrary to most of what we're taught or learn in gardening and agriculture... But I do believe he's working on a sound, scientific and environmentally friendly base.

I'm building a raised-bed, fenced "forest garden" plot that utilizes biochar/terra preta. It's about 50 sq. ft. so far, but I hope to bump this up to 100 sq. ft. How big it becomes ultimately depends on when and how many of my fruit trees and blueberry, raspberry, etc. bushes show up. We've had a cold snap this week, so I haven't received all my plants yet in the mail.

Here's a small offering of some of the things I'll be growing:

Italian alder trees (for nitrogen fixation, create rich leaf litter in fall, drought resistant unlike other alders)
Dwarf apple trees
Chokecherries (a native plant, supposedly very healthy and a Native American favorite)
Blueberries (2-3 varieties)
Raspberries
Lavender
Lemon Grass (for cooking and to control pests/insects)
White clover, hairy vetch, etc. as ground cover and for nitrogen fixation.
Variety of beans
Sugar peas
Variety of squashes and melons
Indian corn (multicolored stuff)
Concord grapes
Strawberries (alpine and a new variety, supposedly "peach-sized"...let's see)
Oriental veggies like Chinese chives, baby bok choy, daikon radishes, etc.
Herb garden, maybe through an "herb spiral"

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...rgard2-003.gif

I want to have plants that fulfill all 7 levels. I'm going to add an "8th level" with the addition of shiitake, oyster, and other mushrooms from FungiPerfecti, probably growing them in logs or between other veggies and flowers. They will act as "edible decomposers," keeping in the theme that most, if not everything, in the forest garden should be edible and serve an important role in the functioning of this garden "ecosystem." (My N-fixers are not all edible but some are, and I want variety and diversity in what fixes N. I don't want keystone crops knocked out by diseases and pests, and I think species diversity should make the garden much more resilient.)

This is a bigger terra preta project than my ones in the past. I'll be using in-situ vermiculture in the plot to create compost and fertilizer for the garden, recycling coffee grounds and kitchen waste. I'll jumpstart this by culturing and releasing a lot of red worms (same kind as fishing worms, the preferred kind for vermiculture). So, in other words, worms take care of tilling and fertilizing for me. As Darwin wrote in his least known book: "Without the work of this humble creature, who knows nothing of the benefits he confers upon mankind, agriculture, as we know it, would be very difficult, if not wholly impossible." Damn straight!

As far as weeding goes, following Fukuoka's "do nothing" principle, I'll be putting my own "edible weeds" in the garden using hardy and vigorous plants like bee balm, mints, oregano, thyme, daikon, radishes, carrots, etc. to crowd out undesirables. And some "undesirables" I might end up eating, for example dandelions. What is a weed but a plant whose virtues are unknown? (As long as it isn't poisonous or inedible, it's welcome in the garden.) I also plan to let plants compete and figure out partly where they're supposed to be.

For pest control, I plan to release predatory mites, ladybug beetles, mantises, and planting of beneficial "companion" crops which should attract predators or ward off pests. I think this'll be keeping with the spirit of Fukuoka's no chemical fertilizer or prepped compost and no pesticides.

If I don't experiment, I won't know how good this garden is, but it seems to make sense, at least in theory, to me, considering how productive forests and forest ecosystems are. And I think most gardening techniques are either inefficient or terribly wasteful, as far as inputs, fertilizers, watering, and space management vs. productivity go. A forest garden is supposed to require very little to no water, offer abundant produce, have less problems with disease and pests, etc. I am trying to bias most of my plants toward those that are very hardy, drought tolerant or resistant, and can take strong sunlight. Utah's not an easy or nice place for most plants to grow. It's very dry, as hot as 43+ degrees Celsius in the summer, and we have high UV radiation here. The high, dry desert of the American West. I need stuff that can survive and thrive.

I like the wild.