Wednesday night after work I took the three younger kids to the farm to plant out our cucurbits. Mommy and Evie stayed home to finish a school paper and pressure can some ham stock.
Mommy and Daddy had an Anniversary Trip planned for the weekend, so no one was going to be home to baby the starts along in their little greenhouse. So into the ground they went. It is going to be a wet weekend so they should get watered in very nicely.
I would call the paper cups a success.
Cucumbers, winter squash, and pumpkins.
Ellie had the job of adding the organic fertilizer.
Winnie loves planting baby plants.
Seppie prefers running around and stomping on cardboard.
Outside the garden fence we planted the Moringa trees. This is an experiment, to see if they will survive as a cheap, rapid growing forage/biomass source in the PNW.
Look at that cute little shoot! They are supposed to grow 10-20 feet in a hot summer, so we shall see.
We moved the sheep and cows into the garden area to eat down the grass, with electric netting to keep them out of the garden and the raspberries. Turns out the sheep LOVE goumi berries. They stripped them bare.
They also love grape leaves, and hazelnut leaves, and strawberry leaves.
I am not supper concerned about the vines and bushes. That’s just free pruning, and the plan for the orchard is eventually to have everything pruned so fruit production all happens between 4 and 6 feet off the ground. That way the sheep can live underneath them whenever to keep the grass down, without bothering the plants too much.
However, the strawberries are a different story. They may resprout this year, but most likely won’t fruit, so that’s a bit of a bummer. I need to find a good place for more strawberries. Probably they will end up making up some of the understory of the food forest.
Little Farm in the Big City 