Moving Dirt

For the last couple of weeks, on my free days, I’ve been working on the plot of land where we are going to build our little home. Before any house starts to happen, we are putting in gardens and fruit and nut trees. The trees take a few years to start producing edibles so we want to get them in asap. And the garden is something we can do while we are still deciding about house stuff.
I’ve been listening in on Oli’s conversations with other people to try and figure out what kind of garden to build. Last winter Oliver took a “Permaculture Design” course given by Jesse Lemieux of Pacific Permaculture. (www.pacificpermaculture.ca)  Through the course Oli met several of the people who are now our friends on Denman. Whenever we get together with any of these friends, they speak in tongues. Permaculture language. I don’t always understand it, but I’ve caught on to a few things and I’m trying to use them in my garden project.  I’m sort of trying to get my way with the garden – I want it to have nice aesthetics. But I’m also sort of trying to impress Oli, who thinks I don’t give a rat’s behind about permaculture – which is not true, I just don’t care for the jargon.
I’ve been spending all of my time so far on this one garden bed. It started out as a four-foot-deep ditch between the stumps and top soil that were pushed over to clear space for the pond, and the sandy gravel that came out of the hole that will be the pond (once we get it sealed and the rain fills it up). I filled most of the ditch with living and rotting logs and branches and salal and then I dug top soil out from the jumble of stumps and put it on top. We got a load of seaweed and put that on, and some sawdust. Then we were given 6 truckloads of soil that had been built by Jesse for one of his courses – so we really lucked out. The soil was built from various types of plant matter that broke down into rich earth over the summer. So that went on next. Now I have a fairly large garden bed with some stony key-hole shaped pathways into it. The layers of organic matter will turn to soil over time, as will the stocks and leaves from the veggies we grow in it every year.  In a couple days I’ll be planting garlic into it – the first crop. The soil is raised in a way that water should flow into the garden when it rains, and the mulchy soil should hold it for a while, so it doesn’t have to be watered as often.
Next I think I’ll take over Oli’s project. He is building an even bigger garden and is doing it the way I did mine, but more accurately. He’s been busy planting and fencing our trees and helping his folks build their own house, so he hasn’t had time to work on his garden bed.
I’m really excited to be putting in big gardens that I will be able to keep, instead of move away from when the lease is up. I’m going to grow stuff, and can it, and get totally ready for Armageddon. Yay.