Planting a Forest
Even after living here for a few years and even after getting used to all the open land, I'm still amazed at how much
land we personally own. Probably to many who live around here and have their farm yard full of buildings and equipment, they'd never be able to live on such a small parcel. But to me, its the biggest back yard I've ever seen!
When Roy first bought the place, no one had lived here for a while and he had to put all his energy into making the house livable. After that, he was able to work on the other buildings, like the garage and quonset (big corrugated metal building). In the last two or three years he's been able to put some energy into an area that he's quite passionate about: gardening. Every Spring brings the excitement of planting new things and expanding existing gardens. He has created some great raised beds for vegetables and a few little flower gardens, but what Roy really likes to plant are trees. What he does is more along the lines of forestation rather than gardening!
Last year Roy bowled me over by planting a small orchard on our place of 14 various fruit trees. The real surprise is that 13 survived their first year. That's pretty darn good in our dry climate, especially when we started the summer by hauling buckets of water out to them. Eventually, he set up a drip irrigation system to take care of the trees and the vegetable gardens, too.
In the last two weeks, new trees started arriving at our door from mail-order companies. I tease him incessantly about all the trees he buys, but I like them almost as much as he does. He started planting them this past Monday. He's expanding the orchard with a few apricot trees and has envisioned a grove of big shade trees (oaks, tulip tree, maples) in the open area behind our house. When I told him that he should slow down so that he would have places to plant trees next year, he gave me that look that means he has plans - plans that are still formulating and are maybe so big and complex that my brain couldn't even handle it . . .
Here's Roy and our dog, Scooter, planting the new trees. Check out that horizon without a single building on it.
Anyhow, my point for today is that it's great to have a big piece of land. Especially if your husband likes to plant forests!
When Roy first bought the place, no one had lived here for a while and he had to put all his energy into making the house livable. After that, he was able to work on the other buildings, like the garage and quonset (big corrugated metal building). In the last two or three years he's been able to put some energy into an area that he's quite passionate about: gardening. Every Spring brings the excitement of planting new things and expanding existing gardens. He has created some great raised beds for vegetables and a few little flower gardens, but what Roy really likes to plant are trees. What he does is more along the lines of forestation rather than gardening!
Last year Roy bowled me over by planting a small orchard on our place of 14 various fruit trees. The real surprise is that 13 survived their first year. That's pretty darn good in our dry climate, especially when we started the summer by hauling buckets of water out to them. Eventually, he set up a drip irrigation system to take care of the trees and the vegetable gardens, too.
In the last two weeks, new trees started arriving at our door from mail-order companies. I tease him incessantly about all the trees he buys, but I like them almost as much as he does. He started planting them this past Monday. He's expanding the orchard with a few apricot trees and has envisioned a grove of big shade trees (oaks, tulip tree, maples) in the open area behind our house. When I told him that he should slow down so that he would have places to plant trees next year, he gave me that look that means he has plans - plans that are still formulating and are maybe so big and complex that my brain couldn't even handle it . . .
Here's Roy and our dog, Scooter, planting the new trees. Check out that horizon without a single building on it.
Anyhow, my point for today is that it's great to have a big piece of land. Especially if your husband likes to plant forests!
Posted by Susan at April 17, 2009 
Categories: Rural Living
Tags: raised beds trees planting acres gardening orchard grove drip irrigation vegetable gardens climate
Categories: Rural Living
Tags: raised beds trees planting acres gardening orchard grove drip irrigation vegetable gardens climate
Hi Sus! I had to check out your blog and I'm enjoying it because it reminds me of where I live. I live in a small rural town, too. A lot of people here have a forest of "fruit" trees. Fruit is in quotation marks because these trees rarely bear fruit. The weather here is somewhat cold in the winter, but we usually have a couple of very warm weeks in March. All the trees bloom, and then it freezes hard so the trees don't bear fruit. Bummer. Throughout April and May we have warm weather interspersed with periodic cold snaps that freeze everything that has started to grow. Then there are the spring winds. These aren't just little breezes like the ones we got in Gilroy every afternoon. These are 90mph winds that blow trampolines into neighbors' yards. All this has led me to experiment with gardening and makeshift tiny greenhouses made out of milk jugs. Pretty fun stuff!
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Thanks for your comment Julia! I plan to talk about wind one of these days because its not a little thing here either. Today, for instance, we're hiding in the house and hoping not too many things are blowing away outside, like the dog!
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