Forest Garden Update

It's only the beginning of June, and up on the hill the plants are already struggling. Rhubarb has died. Aronia are trying their best but their leaves are curling up and drying out. The apricot tree still looks good, but it's surrounded by other plants specifically to keep the root-zone cool. I couldn't do that with all the plants.

I was going to put two more dwarf fruit trees up there this spring but I couldn't justify the cost and my experiment failed miserably (I didn't get the serviceberry seedlings I expected, so no grafting of fruit-trees onto serviceberry rootstock).

Once the canopy is in place it should bring the temperature down considerably in that area, which will allow more plants to thrive. I covered the whole thing with mulch last fall, and it worked for a while, but in certain areas the bare soil (sand) has been uncovered by the wind and in other areas the water doesn't spread.

I am learning about berms and swales firsthand. Namely, any bump or crevasse in the ground will STOP the water flow. I didn't even out the area up on the hill, didn't dig or really change the topography in any way, so there are rocks that divert the water, patches of tree roots that divert the water, places where the water pools rather than flowing because of soil composition. The path I put in, paving stones only two inches thick, stops all water flow. So either I can remove the path (which I don't want to do) or I can plant much more drought tolerant plants on the downhill side.

It's a work in progress. I dug up the elderberry and planted it in a pot so it can recover. It was literally dying up there, and when I dug down to take it out I learned why. I'd deliberately planted it right by a bunch of logs, under the assumption that the logs would hold water and feed it back into the soil as the soil dries out. Unfortunately what seems to be happening is that the logs absorb all the water from the surrounding soil (they're covered with fungus hyphae) and never give anything back. There are also rocks, so the rootball of the elderberry was crammed into this tiny little space less than 6 inches across in totally dry soil.

It occurred to me this morning that the majority of what I have up there right now are spring plants--greens, rhubarb, etc. Most everything can be expected to die back by late spring/early summer, leaving the soil (again!) unprotected from the worst of the sun. I need to plant summer and fall food bearing perennials (if I can afford any) so the space fills in when the spring plants die back in the heat.

This week I'll transplant a couple of echinacea seedlings and scatter beans around. And melons. And nasturtiums. Maybe that will help.