Sustainability is more than just a home that provides shelter, warmth, and power. Sustainability is good, nutrient rich, organic food. Secure your families local organic food by investing in Edible Landscaping. It’s easy, long-lasting, with minimal maintenance.
Edible Landscapes can be created in innumerable combinations of annuals and perennials. Annual plants are herbaceous and live one, sometimes two, seasons. Perennial plants live for more than two seasons and are perpetual growers’ season after season. Many perennials are deciduous, meaning they are woody stemmed plants that shed their leaves annually; while some perennials are herbaceous, meaning they have the texture, color, and resemblance of foliage leaves. Herbaceous perennials die back to their roots in the winter and re-grow new foliage every season.
I have been planting edible landscapes for seven years now. I have found that both perennials and annuals will practically maintain themselves when planted and grown under three key guidelines.
- Heirloom, Organically Grown Plants
The first key is to always plant heirloom, organically grown plants, whether annuals or perennials. You want gardening to be easy, fun, and long-lasting. The best way to cause yourself intense yearly work and expense is by planting poisoned plants that produce no viable seeds, are genetically modified, or have synthetic pesticide or fertilizer contaminates.
Heirlooms have no genetic modifications and produce viable healthy seed season after season; replanting and re-growing themselves God’s way. Organically grown plants contain no dangerous contaminates that poison you, your water, and soil; but are nutrient rich, healthy and delicious.
A great source for heirloom vegetable, flower, and herbaceous seeds is www.HeirloomSeeds.com. For deciduous heirloom fruit baring perennials, check out www.TreesofAntiquity.com. I’ve personally purchased seeds and plants from both company’s and have found them to be of excellent quality and reasonable priced.
- Companion Planting
Using only heirloom and organic plants, the next key is to companion plant. Companion planting is when you arrange your desired selections so that plants that are highly susceptible to certain bugs are planted in the area of a plant that either repels the harmful insect or attracts a beneficial insect that likes to eat the harmful one. These plants are then called “companions”.
Companion planting takes forethought, but is one of the easiest ways to maintain a healthy, vibrant, productive garden. From my own experience, every cause a synthetic pesticide drug pusher tries selling you dangerous contaminates for, there is a companion planting arrangement that will solve the same problem cheaply and perpetually. The trick is finding and knowing the right companion plant. A great book for finding your companion plants is Carrots Love Tomatoes: Secrets of Companion Planting for Successful Gardening by Louise Riotte.
- Fertility Cultivation
In order to choose the right edible plants, everything depends on your soil. Whether your grow-able area is sandy, clayey, or rocky; you can grow an organic edible landscape. Your goal is to create pH balanced, nutrient rich, water-retentive soil. The key is fertility cultivation.
You do not create fertility by fertilization, but by cultivation. Cultivating fertility is creating an environment where the fertility of the soil increases perpetually. This can be done by feeding your soil microorganisms, which then grow and produce all the nutrients needed for your healthy, vigorous plants.
You feed your soil microorganisms by composting and mulching. In the beginning, you will need to compost and mulch twice a season while your seedlings or transplants are getting established. Compost and mulch before the trees begin to bud and after the first winter frost; mulch midseason or as needed to control weeds. By the third season of growth, mulching becomes all that’s necessary for maintaining your soil’s fertility.
Composting:
You can make your own compost with a simple, no-turn, no-fuss, no-smell backyard composting bin by doing Layer Composting. Layer Composting, also called Continuous Composting, is exactly how it sounds. All year, you layer your nitrate-rich manure between layers of carbon-rich foliage in one bin. At the end of the first year, you begin another bin the same way as the first. By the end of the second year, the first bin is completely composted and ready for use. After emptying the first bin, you begin the third year’s layering in the first bin while the second bin is composting; going back and forth, from bin to bin, year after year.
Manure can be sourced by using your own manure, manure from a local animal farm, and right from your kitchen with all your leftover meat, dairy, and veggie scraps. Foliage can be sourced by using fallen tree leaves, the dead tops of herbaceous plants, straw, hay, sawdust, and soft wooded woodchips. The ideal ratio for composting is one part manure to thirty parts foliage. In the beginning, you might have to source your composting foliage from outside your garden; but once your plants begin to grow, you’ll have an abundance of yearly foliage.
Mulching:
For mature plants that only require yearly mulching, when the plant drops its leaves or the foliage tops die, breakup and pile the dead foliage right around the dormant plants. The dead foliage will provide adequate mulching for water retention while giving back all the nutrients contained in the foliage.
I’ve been Layer Composting for ten years and have never turned a pile. With adequate covering material (carbon-rich foliage), decomposing manure never smells or attracts animals. I’ve purposely walked guests by my composting bins and asked them to breathe as deeply as they can. They always say the same thing: no noxious smells.
Where to Begin:
Start with one area at a time. Decide what you want to eat, smell, see, and attract to your garden. Choose the companions needed for those plants. Cultivate the soil’s fertility with composting and mulching. After the first area, plan and plant one area after another until your entire grow-able land is filled with healthy, vigorous, productive plants baring delicious food.