Autumn Waxing & How to Dig a Hole

Dear Readers, I am happy to commence a post after quite a span of months. Excuse me if it sounds a little scientific at first, but i assure you that my writing inexorably cascades into the poetic and the practical, hope you enjoy.

 In the normal course of the year -{volcanic eruptions and nuclear fallout notwithstanding}- Plants at this latitude and elevation turn brittle and dry and low on sugar. The sugar is returning the roots.

the most important equation you learned in college chemistry is this:

 water (H20) + carbon dioxide (C02) = 

C6 H12 06  (Sugar, etc.) + 02 (Oxygen)

In a nutshell, this is called photosynthesis--what plants do-- and the inverse of this equation is called respiration--what humans, animals, insects and protozoa do. In the northern hemisphere right now, the ubiquitous carpet of plants are pancaking their buttery and syrupy sweet sections under layers of weeks and months and weather. Having been rooted in their immobility, night and day blown, thrashed and cut, grazed and stomped, misted, rained, soil-saturated then baked in day-long heat and weeks-long, insect-buzzing drought, now finally they're getting cued into the diminishing daylight length and prepping for a different kind of the same rough treatment.

A cattle farmer once told me while we inspected cow pats for soil macro biota (beetles and worms) that the locusts and grasshoppers come out at this time because they thrive in the low-sugar environment of autumn. All the photosynthetic parts of plants--leaves & grasses-- are withdrawing their carbohydrates and sugars to roots. Because of special enzymes in their stomachs, locusts--a general term for an adult grasshopper-- are able to digest the dry roughage of grasses and trees that are transitioning into winter. These guys are the clean-up crew, sweeping up the un-digested litter of what summer's vacillating mood swings have sprouted and spawned over the landscape.

Autumn, then, is the colorful and still-alive transition into what one may call the more skeletal season of winter. Sure Autumn is beautiful, yet I like to think that each season has it's own severe beauty--even soft and succulent spring can bring heavy rain and a piercing-damp cold, or a sudden unexpected heat--but what I enjoy most are the spaces between the definite peaks of a season. The transitions of autumn and spring.

A season is like a breath, winter a breathing-in and summer a breathing-out. The Solstices are pauses in the movement between two extremes of distance from Sol, ('the sun', and stice, to stand still). Therein is an unremittingly flow outward and inward with indefinite points in between where opposites merge and flux for a period of dynamic intercourse. In Autumn, we see nature's final show before the contraction of winter, characterized by the cold and the dormant, a kind of shut-in tightness that is yet alive, ready to emerge and spring into summer's expansion.

I'm suddenly reminded of part a Rumi poem:

*****************************

There is a shimmering excitement in
being sentient and shaped. The

caravan master sees his camels lost
in it, nose to tail, as he himself is,

his friend, and the stranger coming
toward them. A gardener watches

the sky break into song, cloud wobbly
with what it is. Bud, thorn, the same.

Wind, water, wandering this essential
state. Fire, ground, gone. That's

How it is with the outside. Form is
ecstatic. Now imagine the inner:

soul, intelligence, the secret worlds!
And don't think the garden loses its

ecstacy in winter. It's quiet, but
the roots are down there are riotous.

*********************************************************************************

What Autumn means for trees is that their invisible vitality is going subterranean, while above, the leaves are shedding and --if they're fruit bearing-- plenty of sugar has concentrated in a round receptacle of seeds ready to drop. Leaf and flower buds that remain are the last impression, an imprint made from this year, made for the next.

In the forests and fields around my farm there's an abundance of sweet juicy persimmons, thousands of orange ornaments hanging-on impressively high. They're small, about 1 1/2" diameter max. The best persimmon tree stands alone in a cow pasture 70' tall on a saddle between two hills and two springs that's kinda like an 'X' from above. I hope to enter it as a state 'champion tree' someday (google it)

*************************************************

My last post was in January, and so in this one I must document spring, summer and autumn, but instead of cramming all that business in, i will instead segway into something I have wanted to share for quite some time:
how to plant a tree:

1.) Dig a hole. Seems pretty easy, but…what's the moisture of the soil? I like digging in winter and spring when the earth is perfect! at least the soil moisture is just right. if you have sandy soil, the day after a rain is great. the soil should not stick to the shovel, but should slide off. It's the same with tilling or plowing. too wet and it'll lose all it's pore space when it dries, turning cement-like. Too dry and it's hard to gain purchase with the implement and it can blow off and get powdery and likewise with wet soil, lose good soil structure, or tilth.

Dig a hole for your tree, shrub or bush that is approx. twice the size of the root ball. you don't have to go too deep, but at least break up the soil below where a hardpan may have formed from plowing or where the good topsoil meets the subsoil. Even so, roots will penetrate these layers.

2.) putting the tree in the hole.

Make sure you set the plant on loosened soil with few or no big spaces that might attract voles or gophers that eat tree roots (especially apples and pears). Make VERY sure that the top of the root ball or the portion of your plant below ground parts is HIGHER than the earth. It's a big mistake to plant too low, forming a depression--but most trees and shrubs like a well-drained soil, not one where water collects and dampens the roots.

So, If you plant with the top of potted plants' dirt portion/rootball 1" above the native soil it's good. If your hole is on sloping ground, and it looks like following this practice will allow too much of the roots to actually be up out of the earth--do it anyway! you can fill in around the roots with dirt and mulch later on, just don't let a low-spot form on top of the roots!

3.) filling in soil and soil amendments

The big question: put only compost in the hole or mix it halfsies with the soil or simply apply it on top as a mulch? there's been some back an forth in the landscape and growing world on this one... The main reason to avoid improving soil inside the hole is to avoid stress during drought, because too-rich soil may encourage laziness and shallow-rooting, whereas applying soil on top mimics the stratified soil of a forest (infertile subsoil, rich upper "duff" layer). Likewise, overwatering can lead to limited rooting.

So many variables are at play…the best i can say is to study & research just a little, then go to the field, employ your intuition and experiment! If you never make mistakes, your successes will only be half-hearted!

That said, I like to take the middle path: fill in half the hole with native dirt, then mix a shovel or two composted cow manure with the dirt, then mulch  on top with 4-5 inches of leaves, hay and wood chips. In nature, diversity--not uniformity--is the law :) In between the layers i add AZOMITE (volcanic ash--fulla minerals!), BONE MEAL, and either PLANT-TONE (chicken manure with calcium and others) or HOLLY-TONE if it's a blueberry, because it has the sulfur pellets to aid acidification for this Erikaceae family plant (think: azalea, laurel, rhododendron, sourwood, blueberry, dog-hobble)

Finally, i would like to say that I rarely give water. If the rainfall can't support the crops, forget about it! the self-proclaimed "do-nothing" farmer Masanobu Fukuoka was adamant that rain does not actually fall from the sky, but that plants attract it and man's ignorance is responsible. Frankly, and with utmost respect for the late Fukuoka-san, I must say he is wrong. Japan has consistent rainfall year round, perfect for agriculture, but certain areas dry out and we're in one of them all over the USA, incl. east coast.

That said, I will be connecting my 500 gallon water tank to the Cabin at the top of my ridge this winter to water during very dry spells this coming summer. Thanks to the Late L.D. "Buck" Fender for accepting a $100 dollar bill, an apple tree, and a 1/2 gallon of Fresh Jersey milk in trade for that fine rain barrel. Buck features in 3 pages of Tim Barnwell's "Faces of Appalachia" picture book, taken almost entirely in Madison County back in the 70's. Buck is shown pressing sorghum with a horse and turnstile, then boiling it down. As I would drive up to visit my cousins, he'd be setting in a rocker on his stoop at the beginning of Jass Cove Road always kind, quick-witted and laughingly funny.  He'd often make fun of himself for never keeping animals around for very long. Which is to say he'd soon be giving legs of goat to friends…

tree inventory, january 2014

Aah...winter sun and air!

i've been counting, scouting, nosing in the weeds and in the snow, spreading leaves to mark and grow my little seedlings and bigger trees into a lush edible EDEN.

I call this the bush, tree and shrub inventory

of 2014, here we go:

p.s. the following list is for my one acre. numerous neighbors and friends have more edible trees, bushes and shrubs of mine and their's right in the vicinity of my farm plus there are some very Big wild mulberry and persimmon trees--comma, smiley face-- :o}

Trees, shrubs, bushes at Raven Ridge Fruit Farm :

Apples 15 grafted in 2007, transplanted a couple times but now happy as clams, wish i had kept track of the varieties, but when they fruit this year it could be fun detective work
Pears 12 two european types grafted off Warren wilson college trees and 3 asian types
Cherries 1, a big fast growing tree with nice spring bloomin over my drive, fruit for the birds
Plums, planted 2
Plums, wild: 1,000's of suckering thorny stems....
Peaches 2, LOWE'S end-of-year steal. Belle of georgia, late blooming, i'm going to plant a bunch more on a part of what i call 'nose land', which has shallow soil, maybe 1' deep maximum. the wild plums like it there, and the two peaches filled out wonderfully in the first year.
Chokeberry 11, planted in a spring bed around pawpaws

Blueberry,  ok, i didn't actually count these buggers, but i figure there's 47 from 2009 on the North hill, + 12 +10 near the house, +41 and 20 recently purchased and planted in contour with, plus...15. that is estimably:

 145 blueberry bushes.
depending on spacing and variety, 1 acre of blueberries is 867-1,450 plants. i hope to have maybe 300-400 eventually, or possibly 200-225 by the end of 2014.

Raspberry 20, caroline and heritage, trellised yesterday
Blackberry10, ouachita(i think) the canes grew 3 to 5 feet tall in the first year.
Goumiberry 10, actually just eleagnus seeldings, nitrogen-fixing nurse crop  for larger trees
Figs 7, definitely frozen in the tops, roots will sprout in spring:)
Gooseberries 3, don't ask me where these are...
Serviceberries 4
Rosa Rugosa 3 the intermittently pretty and disheveled rose that makes ROSE HIPS for tea
Persimmon 14, large enough to graft 'in the field' this year:) a few of these are wild and one is 9" DBH, diameter at breast height
Pawpaw 12 mostly seedlings, a few grafted planted on wet site 7-8' spacings for good pollination
Mulberry tree 3 :o)
Grapes 3
Kiwi 5

here's just a few of the rebar hoops for climbing FRUIT 

Vines 

NUTS!

Japanese walnuts 2
Yellowhorn 6
Monkey Puzzle 3
Chestnuts 10
Pecan 2
Ginkgo 4 :1male pollinate, 1 female for nut bearing and 2 seedlings for grafting from female
Korean Nut pine 2

 Raspberry and blackberry trellising basics: they don't need too much tension on the wire. one 4'-5' high and a lower one to prevent the canes from falling over. Easier to mulch, weed and pick if they're upright. i used catalpa posts from a recent tree job and a few T posts spaced about 12-15' apart. This 'spinning jenny' or pay-out' spinner makes it easy to pull the 12gauge wire out. the same spinner helped a gang of my friends install a 4,500ft perimeter fence for our cows.

 my cane fruits are planted on top of a swale because there is a vein of thin soil through here and I have observed that cane fruits are deep rooted. When you're pulling at the wild blackberries almost always one root goes too deep to get out without a shovel.

In this same patch of ground above the swales, i have planted rows of blueberries, which should do well enough with the shallow soil. Blueberries have no tap roots, but instead a tight wad of orange roots, like a disheveled bun of an old scottish grandmum.

Blackberry, catalpa post, Cabin!

The neighborhood drum band

winter begins, house pictures w new siding

Thanks to Krsnadev Kevin Innes for helping fight some drafts in my house, it's very warm and cozy

 Looking west from the wild plum patch, Kevin and Kate Lanes house on the distant ridge (resting atop the outhouse peak:)

Sunrise to the East from the Garden

Fun spring project #2

The pictures speak for themselves what went on here

rented mixer, sand on left & clay on right 

Cutting the fibers shorter w a handy and versatile power tool

Mix it all up and smear, throw, pat, daub...whatever technique you find helps the mud plaster to adhere to the 'slip straw' wall.

Slip straw is thinner straw-bale like construction with added mud (sand/clay mix). Mine is 6 inches thick and wont insulate like an 18"thick strawbale wall, but...hey, it's just a workshop space. 12ft by 16 ft built four years ago and finallly getting plastered over, yay!

If you choose this construction method I recommend you get some help and feed them and love them, check out these cuties

These laddies were indispensable 

Oh what a dazzling spring day! to tie up a loose end on my acre, enjoying the company of friends and feeling in my heart-of-hearts the abundance that comes so naturally to the body each day. Furthermore, I am feeling that the wealth and mystery of this human mind can definitely and positively be trained to be exquisitely happy. Today i would describe this process as striving to have just the right degree of reverence for (and just as important, detachment from) the diverse phenomenal events and actional expressions of this world. Then, by training the mind with gratitude & reverence, shoot it out at just such an angle toward the horizon on the landscape, propel the mind with squinty eyed concentration beyond the scope of the gateway senses and mind's observation and reduction/analysis and its possible, just every bit possible that you will be visited by a feeling of serenity that is nothing short of humankind's greatest secret and best option for maintenance in this day and age. transcendence, immanence the same: life joy, pain sorrow, death all fervently coupled in the ecstacy of now:) Praise to the Most High, Baba ki Jai!

Fun Project # 1: the throne house

This is my composting toilet project, the culmination of a few earlier experiments, that has finally been given adequate time, money and joy to build.

Over a number of relaxing spring days, I framed this outhouse 4'x6' on three courses of block, with 61/2' high walls, 45 degree metal roof, sided with pine boards and finished sheetrock for a smooth interior. The windows are salvage and needed squaring up, casing and trim, glazing on all the panes and two replacement panes. The door was louvered top and bottom, but i removed those slats and put in wood and a nice piece of tempered glass for a sunset view.

The outhouse also doubles as a library museum of National Geographic magazines. I currently have 1935 thru til 1995, special thanks to my grandmother and grandfather Steen, who collected and shelved these jewels of earthly education. My lovely grandparents are now both 93 years old and live in their home in Candler, west of Asheville. Thank you two honeybears, I will be glad to see you monday night and stay with you most nights of this week:)

Here's how it works: poop down the chute and aim your pee to the funnel. Its not hard to do, actually the funnel catches your pee!

Here's the science: poop turns to nearly odorless dry nuggets in the absence of water (pee) and when mixed with carbonaceous materials like hay, pine bark or wood chips, the nuggets will readily compost. Because the 'chamber' of blocks underneath the building is enclosed, the poop must be pitched out into the sun and rain in order to begin its real digestion into rich, dark Humanure!
Wahoo lets have a poo!

The pee is diverted into this canola oil container. Leading to the question, what to do with the pee? But first lets look at what Urine is...

Urine has Urea, which is the form of nitrogen elimination common to all mammals. It is a water soluble white solid with two NH2 groups joined to a carbonyl or CO. Urea is a common fertilizer used in big-scale farming, and it has the most nitrogen for its weight (standardly, 46-0-0). However, it must be sealed tight before use on account that it is so readily water soluble that it will spoil by drawing moisture out of the air :o! If you are not familiar with the role nitrogen plays in plant protein synthesis, or do not understand the nitrogen cycle and its implications for human growth and civilization I recommend you read this book*

Urea is human pee has another compound attached to it called Biuret, which is toxic to plants and although nitrogenous does not lead to protein formation.
In fact, plants do not actually use Urea for protein synthesis, not until soil bacteria have converted it into Ammonium or nitrites can they make use of Urea fertilizer. Also, farmers must be more careful with Urea on account of its excessive water-solubility; it is easy to overuse it and even to lose much of it to leaching esp. in high rainfall areas.

If you are doing small-scale plantings organically i recommend blood meal (12-0-0) which releases slowly as well as fish meal, also called fish emulsion, which delivers P and K, as well (3 to 5-1-1, N-P-K) These are more expensive, but easier to handle and safer to use.

This is a cabinet called 'fertilizer land' attached to the front of my outhouse. Lots of nice things in here for nurturing the diversity of edible plantings that makes up 50% of my hobby headspace :) Inside there is Kelp meal, azomite, and bone meal for trace minerals, greensand for breaking up clay soil and binding sandy ones, soil acidifying pellets for blueberry bushes, the fertilizers above recommended and finally Copper and Neem for natural just-in-case fungicides. I would like to add space for 'garden-tool' land, 'hose' land and all other manner of 'lands' attached to the exterior of my outhouse that make planting projects even more fun and organized!

Here's the final skinny on human pee: it may indeed be used as fertilizer.  Typically it is safe to apply to plants cut with water on at least a 1:1 ratio, in which case the toxins are not usually an issue unless applied repeatedly to the same plants or patches of ground, garden, pasture or plantation. According to many studies study, Urine also has potassium and phosphorous, the two other plant MACRONUTRIENTS. Just be careful that your pee comes from a healthy human who is not using strange pharmaceutical drugs that may or may not leak out of them.

the clean-out door

 You may visit me with or without advance notice and make your deposit anytime while flipping past 1950's car adverts on your photographic trip to Bhutan! No charge for the first visit:)

* Enriching the Earth: Fritz Haber, Carl Bosch and the Transformation of World Food Production by Vaclav Smil.

Swales

Four weeks ago, I got a one-day-rental on a Trackhoe. If you're not familiar, think of a digging dinosaur on rubber treads.

 After an hour I had a grasp on it, after three was fairly comfortable and after 8 hours, fell head-over-heels for the smooth operation and cozy cockpit of the Kubota Trackhoe. So user-friendly and efficient. Below is a misty view of two of the longest swales. There are five total on about half an acre of east to south facing slope.

 What is a swale? Lets not get technical because I am not a technician or an engineer, I am a simple planter that desired to catch rainwater on a steep slope. So, the swale is a trench and berm system that catches water. Normally, hills are dry not for lack of water, but because the rains runoff. My observation is that a light, long rain on a hillside often moistens the soil better than a hard, fast and heavy rain followed by sun. If it doesn't runoff, it evaporates afterwards. A swale catches that water in the soil, where bushes, trees and shrubs can thrive in droughty weather. Now, some swales are designed to divert the water, say, into a pond. Mine are dead-level in order to water the entire contour, which then provides little microclimes for plants to thrive. Dead-level was achieved with the help of a 20' length of 1" wide clear vinyl hose taped around two yardsticks. Two men crouching in the grass, making slight motions and yelling out numbers to each other was all it took to tag a line on the earth with yellow spray paint and stakes. The trackhoe did the rest!

I chose to use the 2 foot wide bucket, 'get big or get out' the popular industrial ag slogan of the late 70's. Well, now it applies to permaculture, baby! dig em wide and dig em deep. I hope it was the right choice...they definitely aren't small. 

I will post some more pictures as the swales develop. The early plan is to fill the trench in with logs and compost and mulch. Then to plant the berms with probably canefruits interspersed with autumn olives and goumi bushes. Any readers with planting and swale know-how please pipe in. 

spring 13

After an absence of more than two years, I am here to resume blogging for those family, friends and followers who might be interested in my life, and the lives of people and plants in my neighborhood.

Spring has come on strong where i live. Inexorably, it bites the browngray ashen eyes of winter in a few wistful in-between weeks. Wham! there's buds and grass, and calves, and birds- worms- chomping -gnashing- jungles of insects and ticks! lots of them, raking the air to catch a host on the tip of a wee-leafing yellowhorn bush, sticking just out the top of a blue tree shelter installed to protect from wind, predation, but mainly a flag for 'human-with-weedwhacker':) Yellowhorn (Xanthoceras sorbifolia) is a little known nut tree from china that is exceptionally ornamental. check it out, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xanthoceras 

I woke up one day and discovered blooms on quite a few of the trees ive planted. Apples, a cherry, two peaches, a mulberry and over 60 blueberries. Nature has a way of bursting and giving an impetus to stagnant energy, a boost to lazy minerals ready to go to town on the cation exchange. likewise, i was given a boost to take my farming a little more seriously and make a cozier home for those budding bushes and trees trying to give me a first taste of their nourishing products that promise to show up after a season of sun, rain and root sucking fun:)

Today, Sea came up we made a cooperative of the blueberry crop. Together we layered tree bark mulch ontop of well-composted manure from a goat dairy in the county, then sprinkled cottonseed meal and soil acifying pellets (not much) around all 60 or so blueberries. Finally, we walked around to all of them offering a personal blessing for massively optimal health and luxuriant growth of their eerie bright blue-green leaves and red shoots. This latter step included a diluted squirt of fish fertilizer poured about the roots;)

 mulberry tree with tiny squinty-eyed influorescent and frankly WEIRD looking blooms. Some trees leaf out first, some bloom first, this guy does it simultaneous

Most of these 47 bushes on a north facing slope were planted in 2009 in what was previously virginia pine. Notice the pine stumps, that's a perfect site for blueberries. The north slope is cooler to keep the blooms delayed in case of warm february/march temperatures. Special thanks to Beth Lomski, Josh Goran and others who know their names- helped clear and plant that year.

Part of being a tree geek---besides knowing nearly all the scientific names of the most the woody species inhabiting the mixed mesic hardwoods of the southern mountains and being able to identify them by bark, bud, leaf, growth form..., *hem, hem.* excuse me.

Part of being a tree geek is that i actually sell firewood, if you would like a load of firewood custom cut to length, split and stacked and you live near Asheville north carolina, call or text. (sixoneseven) 470-94threesix.

Part of selling firewood, is that while driving at moderate speeds on winding mountain roads and moderate to high speeds on the freeway [depending on distance] is that I can identify dead trees suitable for selling as firewood. Actually, i have come to identify the species of a dead, dry or fallen tree based on its rot pattern, the way it lays and loses its bark etc. Sourwood is particularly nice for its barkless, blotchy pink and gray rot.

So, while driving like a tree geek on a winding mountain road named Hooker's Gap, i discovered some quality wood laying around that I made part of my weekly load to Farm and Sparrow bakery. More interesting however, was the discovery of an orchard of ten or more large and living chestnut trees in a bend of road that i just had to stop by to inspect/adore. They seemed to be Chinese trees, Castanea mollisima, probably 50-70 years old in various forms of health and one near dead.

That brick ranch house in the back seemed uninhabited else i would have knocked and hoped to talk about their trees. Eerie property with a nice flat and shady orchard of chestnuts.

Thats enough for now, Goodnight.