Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Edible Forest Gardening in NH - The Beginning!

The moment I first walked around our new house in New Hampshire at the beginning of April 2009 I knew I was home.  I hadn’t seen the property in person and only saw photos before my husband wrote an offer.  This would be the fifth house we were buying and I trusted that my husband knew what I liked and what was most important to me.  So after selling our house in Charlie Daniels' home town, we packed up and literally drove up to New Hampshire to sign the papers and move in.

The photos I had seen of the place didn’t do it justice.  I was more than thrilled with everything inside the house but just as thrilled, if not more so, by what was outside.  At the very top of my list of what I wanted… what I needed…  was space.  I wanted to live in a place where I couldn’t see into my neighbor’s yard and they couldn’t see into ours.  I also didn’t want to live in a neighborhood controlled by a homeowner’s association.  I was tired of having to ask permission to plant a tree or garden.  Being forced to use chemical fertilizers and herbicides regularly wasn’t my idea of freedom.

Our pool area in TN.  Most private at night!
One of our attempts at privacy from the neighbors in TN.
One of the paths through our woods in NH.  Such a huge and welcome contrast!
 
My biggest surprise about the outside of our new home was the amount of fruit bearing bushes that were already growing here naturally!  In Tennessee, I was struggling to get our blueberry, blackberry and raspberry bushes to bear fruit in the clay, fill dirt that the builder had used to slope the neighborhood.  Here I found two different varieties of blueberries and they were growing everywhere on our acreage with no help from any thing but nature.  I also found a huge batch of blackberries, some raspberries and tons of wild strawberries.  In addition to the fruits I have growing naturally, I also have maple trees, sweet fern, plantain, mullein and even some sumac.


Keira standing in one of our wild blueberry bushes.

Not more than six months after we moved to New Hampshhire was when I got the bug to add more edible, native plants to our property.  I purchased a two volume series of books called Edible Forest Gardens: Ecological Vision and Theory for Temperate Climate Permaculture.  I also joined NOFA-NH (Northeast Organic Farming Association of New Hampshire).  It just so happened that one of the authors of those books was going to be giving a presentation at their upcoming conference. 



My first goal was to start an organic garden and I have to say 2010 was definitely the year to do it!  For the first time ever, I had successfully planted and harvested several varieties of potatoes, tomatoes, carrots, pumpkins, watermelon, eggplant, cucumbers, onions, shallots and peppers with absolutely zero use of any chemical fertilizers or herbicides. At the NOFA-NH conference, I had learned so much from a local organic farmer that I even had great success growing corn organically.  In fact, it was the most low maintenance vegetable garden I have ever had and it was completely free of problems pests or diseases.  Why?  I didn't mess with the natural balance of things any more than I had to!  I'll write more about that in a future posting.

Corn already popping up on the left in the beginning of May 2010.  All four rows were full of stalks with three ears each by the end of the season!

One of our many potato harvests.

Two pumpkin plants that didn't stop growing!
In late 2009, I also started learning about herbs.  I had a casual interest in Tennessee and had planted some on our property but never really went beyond using poke root, red raspberry leaf and some mint.  Once I delved more into what medicinal plants were native and already growing on my property, I got sidetracked from developing a larger planting plan and decided to write a book first instead.  Now that my book, The Herbal Beverage Book, has been released, I am getting refocused back on my planting. 

I wanted to start this blog to chronicle how I am taking my yard from the state it’s in to a completely edible forest garden.   My vegetable garden and cultivated strawberry patches have been doing great since I started those two years ago and I have learned so much about soil fertility already.  By the time I am done I hope to have turned our acre or so of dirt and barely growing grass into a fertile and self-sustaining, permaculture.

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