Garden Project for Nate’s Contest
Garden Project - One of Many
The front yard didn’t fare much better than the rest of my yard. Utter neglect.
But we are making progress! In previous posts, I showed you the cutting of trimming of some of the trees in the front yard.
You see the stump of the Guaje tree we pollarded and some of the dried pods on the ground. We ate the seeds in the green pods and they were delicious!!!
But back to the yard. By pollarding the tree, I get sun in the winter for my veggies and shade in the summer when the branches grow back in.
Now, it was clearing the weeds time. Yummy for the chickens. Then forking the ground - no turning the soil here.
Since it is late in the year, I splurged and got some starts at the nursery. Seeds are planted all over in the open spaces.
This post is for Nate’s contest. It seems I can only add one image. More pics coming later 👍 Maybe in a Steepshot follow up post.
https://steemit.com/homesteading/@nateonsteemit/quick-homestead-sbi-contest
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Thank you so much for being part of the #socalsteemit community.
Oh, the neglected front yards! Why don't we have our houses farther forward so our back yards can be bigger?
So many projects in one picture! You're entered :) don't forget to drop a link to your post in a comment on the main post.
I've heard of pollarding mulberry trees. I've got a really massive one, and don't k ow what to do with it, where can I learn more about pollarding?
Well, it is pretty easy. You cut all the branches back and make a straight or rather slightly tilted cut across the top. The next year, the tree sprouts all kinds of branches. It is often done to grow fodder, firewood and such. How high you make the cut depends on your purpose. In the front, I did it pretty short so I can cut it myself next fall. (I don't do chainsaws overhead.). In the chicken area, I have an elm I do that with but I cut it pretty high (with I, I mean my friend 🤪) to make a nice shade canopy for the chickens in the summer.
It's safe for the tree to do that? My mulberry erry is probably 40 feet tall, would it withstand taking down to a ten foot tall trunk?
Mulberries grow like weed!!! If you are worried, take a few cuttings and plant them. You will have more trees before you know it. But if your tree is so big, it does give you a lot of mulberries, no? and plenty of leaves and shade and such. Do you really want to cut such a big tree?
You could plant cuttings and keep them nice and short...
After looking, that's a better route. I know a good place for one more. Pruning is better for this one, as pollarding needs to be started young and maintained.
As for fruit, I haven't seen any. It may have fruited before we moved in in late April though, so I'll give it some time before I go to hacking lol
I really don't want to cut it a lot, it's a beautiful tree that does provide a lot of leaves. I got up in it this year and cut out some already dead limbs, but it looks largely healthy. The chickens enjoy eating leaves from the little sprouty type branches it puts off near the ground too.
Hope you get some nice fruit. I love Mulberries and so do the chicken :)
Hey, @mariannewest.
Looks like things are coming along. Is this like a second growing season for you folks? That would be great if we had another one up here. I haven't tried raising things in a greenhouse, but that's not likely to happen anyway. We'd probably end up moving somewhere with more than one growing season before we put together a greenhouse.
So, what kinds of vegetables grow well during this part of the year?
Yes, winter is a great time to grow in Southern Ca. pretty much all the cabbage family, all greens and such do very well in the winter. Herbs like cilantro do great. Potatoes, carrots, beets all grow well, so do peas.
Summer is more for tomatoes, eggplant, squashes of all kinds and such. It really is great here for having a garden - besides the fact that there is always garden work to do and not so much winter downtime like in the colder climates :)