Spring is almost here. Preparations underway

[tenalachfarms]

Today the ground  was warm enough to work, and so I did. There’s an area at the foot of the hill below our house site that we’re going to convert into a shallow pond. The area already tends to flood, we’ll just be playing to its strengths in asking it to collect water – holding it may be more of a challenge, our entire site is sand, to at least sixty feet deep. Around the edges of that pond we’re installing a number of raised beds, because the water table in our wooded lowlands tends to rise up to and above ground level. To grow plants that don’t tolerate wet feet, we need raised beds. The problem is the solution at times – where do I put the soil excavated for making the pond? Into the raised beds, of course 😉 We’ve got loads of fallen logs to use for making the raised bed frames, plus we have been clearing trees, harvesting some to build our house, some others coming down because they’re unhealthy, a few just to make room for the pond and open the southern exposure. So the frames for the raised beds are just stacked logs, with posts made from branches, or other logs, or even the occasional tree stump incorporated. The area I worked on today is at the northerly end of the pond and will become a giant sun scoop. I’m thinking about adding a bunch of urbanite left from cleaning up after our house foundation was poured to the pond at this end, providing a thermal mass to store heat and perhaps let us grow water chestnuts in the area nearby.

[Author]

Posts