Gaia's Garden

Once or twice a year, I read an amazing book that helps clarify my life or an aspect of farming. Last Christmas, that book was The Small-Scale Poultry Flock, which Phil is currently reading and enjoying. I also loved Sepp Holzer's Permaculture.

In life, I enjoyed Louisa Williams's Radical Medicine (a textbook I haven't finished, but have enjoyed immensely).

And now I am devouring Gaia's Garden. I've read it every spare moment since Christmas, and what a treasure! I feel I have a better vision for how to connect the pieces of what we've tried. We're going the right direction, but a few additions will make the garden pop.

• Clarity for what went wrong with my lasagna garden. I put down cardboard, and covered with mulch, but I had a complete takeover of weeds. What would have been more successful would have been to cover the cardboard with three flakes of hay, and wet it all down until spongy, then cover with a few inches of seed-free material (woods chips, for example). The weed seeds, apparently, just rot until a few inches of barrier. This makes much more sense.
• How to plant a healthy guild. We long for fruit trees with life underneath enough to offer stable support. The book recommends a circle at the dripline of the tree: daffodils around the trunk (though we think we'll stick with peastone directly around the trunk, then daffodils), and a ring of daffodils at the dripline to prevent grass encroachment. Then some comfrey for mulch, some berry (currants?) for height stacking, some herbs for general healthy (yarrow, mint), some bee-attractants (phacelia, buckwheat). A nitrogen-fixing shrub (Siberian pea), maybe even planted in the hole with the tree, boosts nutrition (keep it trimmed below the tree, and perhaps cut it off in the fifth year or so). Fill in this circle of loveliness with a good mulch, and gradually begin to connect these circles, until the entire garden is rich with life, pollinators, insect predators and such.

Perhaps what I appreciate most about the book is that I have either attempted to source almost all the trees and plants he mentions, or I have them actively growing already, just not in a coherent order. To connect the pieces shouldn't be a big jump.

Growing season is coming, and I think I'll be ready!