An update on the community forest garden

I planned to make this post an entry in @kiaraantonoviche's #homesteadingchallenge contest... However, after spending two weekends working on location with a broken camera and a dead battery phone, I ended up with no relevant photos to share and also missed the deadline for the contest.

What's more, the really interesting and important parts of this project have already been shared in a detailed post I wrote will all my heart a few months back, hoping to find funding for the garden via the @pennsif's monthly grant scheme that was not to be, afaik.

So I thought I write a short update on our forest garden project - what's been done already, what's currently going on and what's been planned for the season.

In the autumn of 2017

• We collectively purchased and planted dozens of fruit trees.
• We continuously dug out seedling trees and root suckers from our personal micro forest and moved them to the community plot.
• I managed to visit my grandparents' garden and take many plants from there as well - hazels, raspberries, some perennial flowers, herbs.
• I divided and set to root plenty of the herbs in our family garden.
• We gathered and set to root dozens upon dozens of cuttings - mainly fruit bushes and perennial herbs.

In the spring of 2018

Spring is now in full swing. We celebrated Earth Day on location with a group picnic and got plenty of work done.

We inspected all the autumn plantings for damage and marked which trees have not rooted and are in need of replacement in the coming autumn. We weeded around the new plants and strimmed like an acre of grass and used that as a mulch. We watered as much as possible, considering there's a single well and no electricity, so we had to haul the generator to fill the water tanks.

Another group activity was broadcasting plenty of seeds of clover and other leguminous species that we plan to use as ground cover, mulch and for nitrogen fixation. We also measured, drew schematics and planned a future water transportation and drip irrigation system. This whole part of the project would have to wait another year as it seems, as funds are quite low at the moment.

During the winter we had planned some spring plant purchases and planting, even prepared a few spots, however we failed to gather the necessary funds. I kinda hoped for the monthly grant and also was willing to sell all my own SBD/Steem to add some cash to the pool. The price drop of SBD, however, (from USD10+ to below USD2) made the whole thing rather pointless.

For autumn of 2018 we plan to

• Put in the ground 100+ broad-leaf seedling trees like elm, beech, oak, black locust, etc. All those would be sourced locally and for free (read: dug up from a derelict part of a local park space full of seedlings).
• Take out all the rooted cuttings and plant them in their permanent location - an edible hedge, as well as put more and more cuttings to root in the ground.
• Collect perennial herbs from our family garden and start propagating them in the community space.

One of the herb guilds we started as a propagation experiment. Different gilds can be found in our family garden under each fruit tree.

So that's the end of my "quick" report that took me most of the day to write :) I hope it gets considered as a... unfashionably late entry in @kiaraantonoviche's #homesteadingchallenge contest.

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More of my gardening posts

• Why are we growing chickpeas
• A garden is a school of life
• Slow and lazy compost
• Fruit tree herbal guilds
• Propagating currants
• Growing asparagus

To learn a bit more about my backstory, see my intro post. Also check out the blog of my wife and better half - Gerry.

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