This morning we add another component to our “food forest” — a Fuji apple tree. In permaculture, a food forest is a concept of poly-culture. Trees play a role to both maximize available space resources and provide a hospitable micro-climate for plants underneath its canopy.

Just a fun video to add to YouTube’s collection of vlogs.
On this day, we drove out to Habitat For Humanity, Irwindale to donate a couple of wall furnaces. Then it was out further east to check on my brother’s garden.

With a meager harvest it means that there is more to look forward to. Even though we did not get back a lot of potatoes, we did get more data points to work off of. We’ll continue to grow the Yukon potato. This time will be planted in the cooler months. We’ll then know if the Yukon potato can be grown in this climate.

With the purple potatoes, we are seeing good progress from our efforts. We’ll amp up are efforts and look forward to seeing what we get in return.

This afternoon we worked in the front yard garden to separate out the gladiolus (or sword lily) bulbs and replant them for next year. While the gladiolus take a fall through winter vacation in the soil, we plant on top of them some ‘Bright Lights’ Swiss chard to fill in the space.

Collard greens is something we are growing for the first time. Naturally, an heirloom variety was selected, ‘Morris Heading.’ They have been grown without too much attention given to them. The caterpillars seem to have left them along for the most part. With some veggies needed for dinner, we harvest some.

It is often the style when growing a new plant by diving right in and planting the plant in order to establish a baseline. In the attempt grow a pumpkin patch, we see the results from growing in native (clay) soil. Looking ahead to next year, we will (in the meantime) be providing the growing area with compost material in an effort to improve the soil. Additionally, we hope to make the soil an hospitable environment for earthworms.

In terms of space usage & permaculture, growing vining plants on top of the grass is meant to reduce the watering needs of the grass during the hot and dry months. The idea is to invest water on the pumpkin plants. The plants will provide shade to the grass and the soil underneath. In turn, less water is required to keep the grass happy.

In this update: Some Cherokee Purple heirloom tomatoes have begun to form. Sprouts have Round Black Spanish radishes are growing. We even find one with a tri-cot. It’ll be interesting to see how it grows.