Escape Plan From Civilization - Brief Update

For several years we planned to implement our tribal escape plan by moving to far northern California, somewhere along the Klamath River between Happy Camp and Orleans. We even made an unsuccessful offer on land in Somes Bar in spring 2009. When that didn't work out, we decided to fix up our current house to improve salability while we kept an eye out for other attractive properties.

In August 2010, as we hit the half-way point of our house project, our friend Wade returned to visit Portland after eighteen months on the big island of Hawaii. He convinced us to take a closer look at Hawaii, extolling the ease of growing food (plant a cutting and two years later you have bananas!), the ideal climate, and the abundance of people living alternative lifestyles. I had considered Hawaii years ago, but wrote it off as too island-like: very little room to move as climate change, energy descent, and economic collapse unfold. Wade pointed out the relative ease of growing enough food quickly to feed the current inhabitants, the diversity of microclimates along two nearly 14,000 foot tall mountains, and the remaining abundance of land even after, say, a 50' rise in sea levels.

So Tulsey and I spent five weeks from early November into December on the big island, getting a feel for the current self sufficiency activity; the tropical environment; the foragable foods such as breadfruit, coconuts, mangos, and avocados; the forest reserve system (somewhat equivalent to national forests on the mainland); land for sale; hunting opportunities; and overall potential of the landbase to support its inhabitants. Plus a bit of outright sight seeing on the dry side of the island. Our friend Jasmine, potentially interested in the tribe or at least in living nearby, joined us for the last 10 days.

We have reservations about Hawaii, but overall we liked what we saw enough to move there instead of CA. The decision mostly comes down to ease of living in Hawaii vs lots of landbase to support a very small human population in CA; and even more fundamentally to prioritizing horticulture (permaculture) over hunting & gathering. Both subsistence methods can work in both regions, but horticulture is much easier in HI while in the short term CA more easily support hunting & gathering. Surprisingly, it generally costs a bit less for land in HI than in CA, especially when you consider the potential of tropical vs temperate production.

A few months ago we made a new friend; Jonathan attended a few of our classes and expressed interest when we mentioned our tribe and Hawaii plans. We've spent a lot of time getting to know each other since then, chatting about visions and goals and past experiences while continuing to plug away at the house project with Jonathan's help. He's decided to move to HI With us where we'll continue to build our relationship while exploring and looking for land to purchase. Jonathan has a lot of experience living in community, which should help a lot as we formalize our vision and procedures for people to join our tribe. And we definitely want several more people to join us soon, with a long term target of 10 to 25 folks of all ages.

We're now in the final stages of our house project, perhaps three weeks from having an open house and actively marketing it for sale. We plan on a short trip to the eastern US after the house sells to bid farewell to our families, then off to the big island. Jasmine will probably fly over with us and spend another ten days on the island to make her own decision about whether she wants to move there.

Once in Hawaii we'll exercise patience as we learn more about the microclimates and available land and our own needs, before actually purchasing a parcel. We'll spend the time until then caretaking or WWOOFing. Once we buy property of our own, we'll observe the site for a year before designing and implementing our long term structures, orchards, animal paddocks, etc. So it'll be quite some time before I've learned enough to make many meaningful Hawaii-related posts to this blog. But I have a lot of knowledge I still need to share from my experiences in Portland, so keep checking back for that!

Ecoroof Grant Report

Here's the report I wrote for the City of Portland's Bureau of Environmental Services, which gave us a $5 per square foot grant to implement our ecoroofs. You can also download a PDF (1 MB) of this report.

Update: addendum to the original report as a blog post or as a small PDF download.

Introduction

Project Summary

We implemented four ecoroofs on our residence at 4510 NE Going St, covering a total of 1000 square feet with ecoroof soil mixes sourced from Philips Soil Products in depths ranging from 3.5" to 8". We implemented and planted two in October 2010, and two in June 2011. We have another 660 square feet of house roof we deemed too difficult to beef up adequately to support an ecoroof. We roofed this area in metal, and it all drains onto the sunspace, front porch, and carport roofs.

About Us

Tulsey Latoski and Norris Thomlinson have experimented at this site since 2006 practicing sustainable, low-work food production via a food forest, perennial vegetable garden, and chickens and bees.

Read more about our projects in general at http://farmerscrub.blogspot.com

Read ecoroof-specific blog posts at http://farmerscrub.blogspot.com/search/label/Ecoroof

View food harvest logs from our ecoroofs at http://discountpermaculture.com/cgi-bin/harvest.py?ecoroof=1

Email us at norristh@gmail.com

Design Goals

• Food production - We planned the ecoroofs for production of food crops either naturally adapted to our seasonal rains, or drought tolerant to make it through the summer.
  
• Reasonably low maintenance - We hope for minimum irrigation requirements, no more often than once every week or two. Once the perennial plants have fully established they shouldn't require much weeding.
  
• Human hang-out areas - We included space for humans to spend time eating, reading, or watching the ecoroof or the rest of the neighborhood below.
  
• Bird & insect habitat - Our food producing, perennial plants provide a diversity of flowers for insects through several seasons, and various seeds for birds to eat.
  
• Potential rabbit or chicken fodder - We envision rabbits potentially grazing on the roofs with human supervision. We planted a few plants which can either serve as human food or be cut and dropped to the chickens below.
  

Four Roofs - Details

Sunspace

392 ft² (13' 3" x 29' 7"): A newly expanded room whose roof we rebuilt from scratch. This roof slopes south with 1/12 pitch, and we constructed it with an ecoroof in mind. The west end receives full sun year round; the east end receives dappled morning shade from black locust trees from late spring through mid fall. It holds 5.5" of intensive B-4 soil mix.

~290 ft² of metal roof drains into this roof, evenly distributed along a ~28' line, depositing into the upper end of the ecoroof.

Since we have the quickest and easiest access from our kitchen to this roof, we planned it as our zone of most frequent harvest, concentrating leaf and flower crops here for frequent picking. The central 2' wide path extending the length of the roof doubles as a sitting area. The south, lower end of the roof overlooks the back yard, where our chickens free range, allowing for possible harvest and dropping of fodder to the chickens below. Rabbits may eventually range here, but they would require a ramp to get to it from their likely dwelling area on the garage roof.

Front Porch

136.5 ft² (7' 3" x 18' 10"): The front porch roof slopes north with about 1/12 pitch. It receives full sun year round. It holds 8" of intensive B-4 soil mix.

To access this roof, we have to walk from the sunspace roof up and over 20' of metal roof, so we planned this roof for less frequently harvested crops such as root crops, seeds, and berries.

~265 ft² of metal roof drains into this roof, with about 2/3 of that evenly distributed along a ~19' line dropping water from above into the upper end of the ecoroof. The other 1/3 coming into the ecoroof meets the soil perpendicular to the slope, allowing very little infiltration; this water mostly runs straight down the side of the soil to a drainage pipe directing it to the gutter.

Garage

245.3 ft² (11' 6" x 21' 4"): The garage roof slopes south with about 1.5/12 pitch. It receives afternoon shade from the house and from late spring through mid fall much of the roof receives dappled to heavy shade the rest of the day from black locust trees. It holds an average of 1.5" of extensive-E soil mix, but we created mounds of soil 3 - 3.5" high in between paths and areas of no soil.

We have a hang-out area for three or four people to gather and sit together in the sun, plus the path lower in the roof in the shade of the locusts allows one person to sit. As with the sunspace, the south end of this roof overlooks the chickens and could be used to grow fodder plants, though the thin soil depth limits the possibilities.

Carport

227.2 ft² (11' 9" x 19' 4"): The carport roof slopes east with about 1/12 pitch. It adjoins the garage roof. It receives afternoon shade from the house. ~85 square feet of metal roof drops its water into the upper edge of this roof, with about 75% dropping into a single spot.

Two paths run the length of the roof, allowing for sitting in the sun or during the afternoon in the shade of the house. It holds an average of 1.5" of extensive-E soil mix, but we created mounds of soil 3 - 3.5" high in between paths and areas of no soil. The thin soil depth and mostly full sun exposure doesn't allow for much more than succulents and Alliums.

Structure & Layers

Structural Engineering

We worked with Ken Safe and Jeff Hartman at Miller Consulting Engineers to determine the necessary structural modifications to support a minimum additional ecoroof weight of 35 pounds per square foot (psf), allowing 5.5" of intensive soil mix:

Sunspace

We had already built the sunspace with 2x12 joists on 16" centers, spanning ~12', sheathed with 7/8" tongue & groove OSB. The north wall of the sunspace is a standard 2x4 stud wall, with a 2x12 ledger attached with lag bolts to carry the joists. The south wall is a window wall, with multiple windows 34" wide with 2x6 studs between them on 3' centers. A 6x8 header spans the windows and rests on 6x6 posts (one 9' and one 12' span between posts).

Miller determined that the 2x6 studs between the windows were too weak to handle the load from the 6x8 header, and the header couldn't make the full 9' and 12' spans on its own. They recommended the retrofit of adding a 2x6 LVL to both the inside and outside face of the header to stiffen it up. They also had us add SDS screws to attach the 2x12 ledger to the house wall, as the existing lag screws weren't strong enough. Because the window wall had too few areas of plywood sheathing to provide adequate shear strength, they had us add plywood to the interior north wall of the room, calculating that the shear load could be transferred via the OSB roof sheathing to that interior wall.

Front porch

Our porch roof had existing 2x6 joists on 16" centers, spanning 67", sheathed with 1/2" plywood. One end of the joists hung from a 2x6 ledger nailed to the house studs; the other end rested on a 4x6 beam supported by 4x4 posts. Miller determined that we needed to use a 4x12 beam instead of the 4x6, and 4x6 posts set in poured concrete pads instead of the 4x4s on pre-cast pier blocks. They also had us add SDS screws to attach the 2x6 ledger to the house wall. These changes permitted 50 psf.

Garage

Our garage roof has 2x6 joists on 24" centers spanning 10' 1", sheathed with 1/2" plywood. One end of each joist hangs from a 2x6 ledger lag bolted to the house; the other end rests on a 2x4 wall. Miller determined we would need one extra joist between each existing set for a final spacing of 12" on center, and we would need to strengthen the 2x4 wall.

Carport

Our carport roof has 2x6 joists on 24" centers spanning 11' 2", sheathed with 1/2" plywood. One end of each joist hangs from a 2x6 ledger lag bolted to the house; the other end rests on a 4x6 beam support by 4x4 posts. Miller determined that we needed to add two joists between each existing set for a final spacing of 8" on center, and do something to strengthen the 4x6 beam, such as adding metal C-beams. The 2x6 ledger against the house should have SDS screws added to attach to the house studs.

Scale-Down of Garage & Carport

We originally planned to implement the garage and carport roofs similar to the sunspace and front porch, with at least 5.5" of intensive soil mix to support food crops. However, these two roofs were built right up to the property line in the past, so to put ecoroofs requiring permits on these structures would have triggered requirements to bring various aspects up to code. We didn't want to deal with that, so we decided instead to implement very light ecoroofs of 30% of the allowed dead load value. Therefore, we did not add any joists or strengthen the beams for these roofs.

Layers

From bottom to top, the ecoroof layers consist of:

• Sheathing (1/2" plywood on all roofs except the sunspace with its 7/8" OSB)
  
• Feltex (light-weight substitute for tar paper)
  
• EPDM pond liner (45 mil Firestone Pondgard. We purchased sheets large enough to fit onto each roof without having to join multiple pieces together, so as to avoid potential leak spots.)
  
• Rotting wood (on sunspace and front porch roofs, to act as a physical dam slowing water down as it works down the roof, and to hold and store water and nutrients. Though the wood was already rotting and soft, we placed a thin layer of soil mix under the wood as an extra precaution to protect the pond liner.)
  
• Soil mix (Intensive on sunspace & front porch; extensive on garage & carport)
  

We figured that the roofs had sufficient slope (1 or 1.5 in 12) to move water via gravity through the soil mix, so we didn't include a separate drainage layer.

We created "raised beds" by using 2x6 and 2x8 boards around the edges of the roofs, running the pond liner up and over before capping the boards with metal rake edge protecting the edge boards and the sheathing, extending down at least 2" into the fascia boards attached under the sheathing. We secured the edge boards with 4"x4" right angle brackets, and placed scrap pond liner pieces or foam padding over the exposed metal to prevent the main pond liner layer from being damaged by the brackets.

Overflow

The front porch roof already had a gutter attached, so we worked with that for our overflow drainage. We lifted the lower "raised bed" edge board an inch off the surface of the decking, then cut slits in the pond liner to allow water to run under the board and into the gutter. We placed filter fabric all along the slit with a layer of river rock to retain soil.

For the other three roofs, we cut holes at the bottom edge of the roof through the decking, large enough to allow a 1.5" diameter PVC or ABS pipe to fit through. We cut the pond liner in an "X" pattern over the drainpipe, folded the flaps down into the pipe, and secured and caulked it with P&L Roof & Flashing Sealant. (For the garage & carport roofs we inserted a plastic ring to help hold the flaps against the inner wall of the pipe.) We used one hole each for the garage and carport roofs, and two holes for the sunspace roof.

Over each drainage hole, we placed a ~10" diameter coffee can with holes drilled or cut out all around the sides of the can. We cut one hole in the bottom of the can to match the hole cut through the pond liner. We wrapped each can with filter fabric then a ring of river rock to minimize loss of soil, and caulked the bottom of each can to the pond liner to secure it and prevent soil from getting under the can. We painted each can with rustoleum.

The excess water from the roofs drains to different places:

• Sunspace: waterfalls into three bath tub ponds, which then overflow away from the house
  
• Front porch: waterfalls into a large pond constructed of the scrap pond liner pieces left over from the four ecoroofs
  
• Garage and Carport: trees and shrubs near their respective downspouts
  

Plants

Sunspace & Front Porch Planting Plan

The deep soil of the sunspace and front porch roofs supports a relatively broad palette of plant species, and hopefully allows for productive cropping. We designed these roof plantings for polycultures of edible plants providing nearly 100% soil coverage throughout the year. Mostly we aimed for each patch to include an evergreen ground cover with evergreen or deciduous plants rising above.

For ground covers, we planted Arctostaphylos uva-ursi, Fragaria chiloensis, Rubus calycinoides, Viola odorata, Campanula portenschlagiana, C. poscharskyana, C. cochlearifolia, Gaultheria shallon, G. procumbens, Vaccinium angustifolium, V. vitis-idaea, Valerianella locusta, and Sedum telephium. For taller plants, we planted many Allium species including garlic and elephant garlic, Astragalus canadensis, Linum perenne, Hemerocallis sp, Agastache foeniculum, Asphodeline lutea, Chenopodium bonus-henricus, Sedum spectabile, Anthriscus cerefolium, Papaver somniferum, Oenothera biennis, several ephemeral bulbs in the Camassia, Triteleia, Brodiaea, and Erythronium species, and a few miscellaneous others. See our Ecoroof Final Planting Plan blog post for full details.

Carport & Garage General Plan

We didn't design the carport & garage roofs in as much detail, since we only had about 3.5" of soil depth to work with. We obtained numerous cuttings of Sedums and other succulents, mostly of unknown species from similarly thin-soiled, dry conditions. We also planted several Allium cernuum plants, one Fragaria chiloensis, a large Origanum vulgare, and a large unknown species of Thymus. In areas of the garage roof which receive heavy summer shade from the black locust trees, we planted Viola odorata and Campanula glomerata, since the protection from the sun may allow a wider diversity of plants to grow in that area despite the thin soil.

Mid-summer report

For an ongoing record of harvests from the ecoroofs, visit http://discountpermaculture.com/cgi-bin/harvest.py?ecoroof=1

Sunspace & Front Porch

Our one plant of Vaccinium moupinense died within a month of being planted. Our seeds of Lepidium peruvianum (old seed), Valerianella locusta, and Papaver somniferum never germinated. Otherwise, the plants on the sunspace and front porch, planted in October 2010, survived the winter and now flourish to a greater or lesser extent. The wet spring and summer this year have sustained growth with no irrigation on our part except for a few recently added plants, and occasional spot watering of some of our more valued experiments (Vaccinium angustifolium, V. vitis-idaea, Gaultheria shallon, G. procumbens, Chenopodium bonus-henricus, Akebia, and Astragalus canadensis).

The Fragaria chiloensis has impressed us with its rapid growth and precocious berry production; this species may make sense as the primary ground cover, since it stays evergreen, grows low, fills in gaps between taller plants very quickly, and tastes delicious! Large swaths of the Arctostaphylos uva-ursi died off following its transplantation from our yard below, but the portions that survived have made a few berries. Unfortunately, the berries of this species don't taste very exciting so it makes an inferior ground cover in our food-focused system. The Rubus calycinoides is establishing fairly slowly, though a few plants have produced flowers. The Vaccinium angustifolium is producing a few berries.

The garlic and elephant garlic seem to have done very well, producing numerous scapes followed by reasonably sized bulbs. We haven't weighed them all yet, but it looks like a very good yield. The other Alliums are establishing fairly well, but with much less vigor so far.

The Chenopodium bonus-henricus has produced a tiny amount of seed; we'll need to wait until next year to assess the production potential of established, mature plants. The Linum perenne made numerous flowers but only a handful across all the plants set seed; we're waiting anxiously to evaluate convenience of seed harvest and their taste. We're disappointed that the Papaver somniferum didn't germinate, as we would have enjoyed that as a seed crop. We have one Oenothera biennis plant flowering profusely, which should result in a reasonable number of seeds for ourselves or for the chickens.

Hemerocallis (daylily) is proving itself very tough, already producing numerous flowers for harvest.

Many other plants have flowered over the last two months, providing an ongoing diversity of blooms and making the roofs pleasant hang-out spaces and valuable for foraging insects.

Carport & Garage

We didn't plant the carport and garage roofs until late June 2011. A month later the cuttings and plants seem to be establishing well.

Implementation

We found it fairly straight forward to implement everything. For each roof, once we had the structural supports in place as designed by our structural engineer, we removed all the old asphalt roofing, tar paper, and roofing nails. We swept up all the dirt and debris to create a clean surface. In places with more than 1/8" gap between plywood we added shims so the pond liner wouldn't get stretched down into the crevice.

Once we had the plywood surface cleaned up, we laid the feltex on the decking in the same manner as tar paper. Then we placed our pond liner, running it under the flashings of the roofs above (sunspace and front porch) or up the wall of the house (garage and carport). We worked it up and over the "raised bed" edge boards, and cut off the excess. We adjusted the liner to minimize any bubbles in the middle of the roof, and folded the extra material at the corners.

The hardest part of placing the liner was dealing with the wood stove chimney projecting through the sunspace roof. We cut an oval hole about 2/3 the size of the chimney flashing, and worked the pond liner down over the chimney, making small cuts as needed to get the pond liner down to the roof. We had to make sure the pond liner stayed 2" away from the actual chimney, so we could only bring it up the flashing to that point. It proved difficult to cut the hole in exactly the right place, so we wound up with a slit in the pond liner extending upslope from the chimney for a few inches. We protected that by adding scrap pieces of pond liner, caulked to the chimney flashing underneath the storm collar and to the main layer of pond liner. To minimize water approaching from upslope, we placed two pieces of plastic to divert water to either side of the chimney. (We also initially placed a ring of drainage pipe and river rock around the chimney, but removed them later when we suspected that rainfall was splashing off those and getting under the storm collar.)

Next we placed the rotting wood for the sunspace & front porch, then soil for all the roofs. And finally, of course, we planted the plants!

Maintenance

Irrigation

Since we planted the sunspace & front porch roofs last October, and have had a wet spring with rains extending into June, as of July 12th we've only watered a few spring-planted additions and (perhaps unnecessarily) some of our more valued experimental plants (see "Plants" section above for details.) Since we completed the carport & garage plantings at the end of June, we expect to water two or three times a week to allow establishment.

The metal roofs condense some water during humid summer nights. We don't know yet whether that will provide any meaningful moisture input, but we hope that the plants at the upper edges of the sunspace and front porch roofs will benefit.

We expect to provide occasional (perhaps once a week) irrigation in future summers to maximize crop production, though certainly we have the option to not irrigate and just accept whatever harvests are possible.

Harvests

Most of the future maintenance should be simply harvesting greens & flowers two or three times a week, plus seasonal harvest of root crops like garlic, camassia, and yellow asphodel.

Further experimentation

We'll adjust the crops planted based on how well they perform. If new plants suggest themselves as good candidates, we'll try adding them.

Weeding

Hopefully most unwanted plants will be excluded by the establishment of a solid canopy of desired plants. After that, we just have to keep those desired plants in balance, which may mean rearranging some polycultures or selectively harvesting greens of certain plants more heavily to set them back.

Fertilization

The sunspace and front porch roofs will require ongoing fertilization to replenish nutrients taking during harvest. We can easily accomplish this by occasional application of urine during harvest trips.

Lessons Learned

Early loss of silt

The runoff water from the sunspace and front porch roofs obviously carried a lot of silt for at least two weeks after the beginning of the fall rains. Perhaps the ideal time to install soil and plant would be mid spring, so that plant roots could grow quickly while the soil was still moist, but without heavy enough rains to carry off so much silt and presumably fertility.

Excess water flows

Due to the extra water coming from our existing metal roofs, we had two problem spots. On two occasions of the heaviest rainfall last winter, the water flowing onto the sunspace roof backed up enough to get past the flashing and into the interior wall of the house. We added two drainpipes, one towards each end of the ecoroof, buried and running under the path directly down the roof. The pipes are wrapped in filter fabric with the upper ends protruding past the upper end of the soil for water to easily enter. This now allows excess water to safely drain away.

On the front porch roof, moderate rains caused a stream of water to overflow the lower edge of the "side channel" where some of the metal house roof meets the edge of the ecoroof perpendicular to the ecoroof slope. We built up a higher "dam" with metal caulked to the existing edge, which now allows excess water to enter a drainpipe running from that spot towards the gutter. The picture on the left shows eroded soil piled up against the original, shallow edge at the far right.

Gutter vs Drainhole

We found integration with the front porch gutter to be more awkward than the drainholes we created for the other roofs. We made a mistake by not caulking the pond liner down to the feltex along the slit we cut for discharge into the gutter, so water initially wicked back upwards under the pond liner and leaked through nail holes in the sheathing until we corrected the problem. The gutter will require more ongoing maintenance to keep it free of leaves than will the drainholes with their small cans.

Surprising absorption of rainfall events

We've been impressed by how much of the rainfall the roofs can hold before discharging anything into the overflow, especially the sunspace & front porch which receive so much extra water from the rest of the house. We haven't made precise measurements and observations, but it seems that if the roofs dry out a bit, they can fully absorb at least a .25" rainfall.

Difficult to buy low-cost plants

We were disappointed to find that we couldn't source low-cost sedums or other ecoroof plants. The wholesalers with good prices apparently only sell to retailers, not directly to end users, even if you can meet the minimum bulk requirements. Luckily, we found friends who allowed us to take cuttings of their sedums.

Costs

With the help of friends, we did all the labor ourselves, so we only had to pay for construction materials, soil mix, plants, structural engineering, and the permit. We located used material as much as possible via the Rebuilding Center, craigslist, etc. Our total cost was about $5400:

• $700 - Structural engineering
  
• $94 - Permit
  
• $180 - Concrete (front porch pier pads)
  
• $129 - Dump fees for old roofing
  
• $1023 - Lumber - structural posts & beams, sheathing, edge boards, etc. (We would have bought some of this lumber anyway for the sunspace, but it wouldn't have needed to be so beefy had we not put the ecoroof on it.)
  
• $108 - Nails & fasteners
  
• $157 - Brackets (to attach edge boards)
  
• $403 - Rake edge to protect edge boards & match existing metal roofing theme
  
• $148 - Feltex (light-weight tar paper equivalent)
  
• $849 - Pond liner
  
• $692 - Soil mix
  
• $906 - Plants & seeds
  
• $15 - Drain pipe for water overflow
  

Perennial polyculture: New Designs

This is part three of a three part series on perennial polycultures:

1. Designs: a five year review
   
2. Species profiles
   
3. New designs
   

Introduction

Following the massive failure of our original polyculture designs (see part one), I spent some time this past winter utilizing my hard-won knowledge of our successful perennials to try again. I didn't design anything for greens, since we have more than enough already established and coexisting quite nicely. I focused instead on root crops, which have proved more difficult to just plant here and there for a few reasons (not all reasons apply to all root crops):

• Soil disturbance damages adjacent perennials or roots of woody plants
  
• I lose track of where I planted odd plants after they've gone dormant, so can't harvest the roots
  
• Roots (especially those starting from small tubers or seeds) get outcompeted by other perennials
  

In this post I'll present the polycultures we're trying this year. I'll also mention a few other ideas I've had but haven't tried to implement. Refer to part two of this series, species profiles, for individual plant characteristics, presented in roughly the same order in which they appear in polycultures in this post.

Polycultures

Implementing

Garlic & Skirret

Garlic & skirret in foreground volunteer burdock & more skirret in background

This bicrop makes use of different time niches with these two root crops. I planted garlic at about 9" between bulbs, with skirret between with 9" spacing to other skirrets and 4.5" to neighboring garlics. Garlic grows through the winter and has died down in early summer by the time skirret has gotten big enough to begin competing for light. Garlic bulbs should lift out easily without disturbing the skirret, and skirret's drought tolerance allows for non-irrigation of the garlic while the bulbs dry down.

This patch could be replanted in the same place year after year by harvesting all the skirret in September and October, then replanting garlic cloves and skirret crowns. Or move the garlic to a new patch and harvest the skirret as needed through the winter, replanting the skirret crowns into that new patch as they become available.

Skirret, Day Neutral Strawberry, & Oniony Thing

This patch combines the need to thin strawberry plants with the need to thoroughly dig up skirret roots. It works because you can leave skirret in the ground for two years before harvesting, and because we have day neutral strawberries which should be thinned in late fall or over the winter. (June bearing strawberries should be thinned after they bear their crop in mid summer). I planted four rows 15" apart in a 5' bed, with skirret and strawberries alternating in their rows every 8". (16" between strawberries, 16" between skirrets, 8" from a skirret to the closest strawberry.)

I planted some sort of evergreen oniony thing between the rows to have some winter growth of its edible leaves. Originally I planned for the ongoing disturbance of the skirret & strawberries to prevent the oniony thing from getting swamped out. But as of mid June, the oniony thing is dominating the area and I'm aggressively harvesting their leaves to open up space for the strawberry and skirret!

This fall I would harvest skirret from two of the four rows (rows 1 and 3), replanting skirret crown divisions after harvest. This will wipe out most or all of the strawberries in those two rows. Next year the strawberries left in the undisturbed rows 2 and 4 will recolonize rows 1 and 3, while the skirrets in rows 2 and 4 grow for a second year.

Next fall I would harvest the skirret in rows 2 and 4, wiping out those strawberries and replanting the skirret crowns. Then follow the same pattern in the future, harvesting two rows each year, such that each row is harvested every other year. This should keep the strawberries from crowding themselves out, as a natural byproduct of thoroughly digging the soil to harvest the skirret. I would adjust the size of the skirret crown divisions in future years to integrate well with the strawberry growth rate--smaller if the skirret is outcompeting the strawberries, or larger if the skirret is getting swamped.

Skirret, Oca, & Potato

This patch uses time niches to some effect, though it doesn't have any winter evergreens.

Oca and potatoes alternate in rows with 16" from one oca to the next potato, (32" from oca to oca and 32" from potato to potato.) I spaced two rows 30" apart in a 5' bed. I then planted one row of skirret halfway between the oca/potato rows, with skirret on 12" spacing within its row.

Skirret and potatoes grow vigorously early in the season, with oca putting on growth more slowly. We'll harvest potatoes July through September, with skirret still providing shade for the oca in the heat of the summer. With the cooler cloudier weather in September, the oca vegetation should quickly fill out to use up the space left behind by the potatoes. We'll dig all the oca tubers out after the first frost, and harvest skirret as needed through the winter. We can either reimplement the same polyculture in the same bed, or rotate it to other beds to prevent disease problems with the potatoes.

Oca, Asiatic Lily, & Yellow Asphodel

Confusing mess w/unplanned strawberry etc

Utilizes different time and height niches. These are planted in an understory wedge to the north of a young persimmon. At 6' tall the persimmon casts minor shade. Oca is planted on 30" centers with asphodel surrounding it on 10" centers. One lily is planted in the center of each oca "triangle". I don't have enough asphodel propagated yet, but eventually their density could be increased to about 6" between plants.

Asphodel grows from fall through winter til early summer, making its roots available for harvest while the oca is still small. The oca and asphodel provide ground cover for the lily, which grows above them. Harvest all oca after first frost, and harvest lilies as needed through the winter.

Lilies and asphodels can be harvested with fairly minor soil disturbance, so the main conflict might be the effects of oca harvest on the asphodel roots with their new-ish growth going into winter.

We planted this polyculture into an area somewhat invaded by strawberries, and with remnant camassia and weeds including dandelion & popweed. We may have trouble with the strawberries especially, since we don't have a strong ground cover or weed excluding element.

Yellow Asphodel, Good King Henry, & Violet

Utilizes height & time niches. Violet should be an evergreen (we're using Viola odorata) for permanent low ground cover and winter greens, with the yellow asphodel and good king henry (GKH) growing up through it. The GKH begins growing late in the spring, but the other two plants should help suppress early weeds, and the asphodel will then die down in summer for the GKH to fill out further. We should be able to harvest the asphodel roots in the summer with minimal disturbance to the GKH.

I planted GKH about 2' apart, and would eventually like to have asphodel at 6-8" spacing filling all the interior area. We don't have enough asphodel plants yet for full density, so they're more sporadic for now. The violets will fill in wherever they find gaps.

Jerusalem Artichoke, Mashua or Groundnut, & Chinese Artichoke or Creeping Bellflower

Jerusalem artichokes with small chinese artichoke underneath

This polyculture has a core structure but multiple possible plants to plug into the different niches. It mimics the well known three sisters guild of corn, beans and squash, which Eric Toensmeier has proposed morphing into the perennial guild of jerusalem artichoke, groundnut, and chinese artichoke. This polyculture makes use of above ground space niches, but not of time niches, since these root crops require heavy disturbance for harvest in fall through early spring. With the possible exception of the creeping bellflower, they should all benefit from the regular ground disturbance and loosening of the soil.

We're retaining jerusalem artichoke as the vertical element; we had an existing 100 square foot patch. However, we've never had much success growing ground nuts here, so we only planted 3 or 4 which survived from last year, instead mostly planting mashua on 3' centers as the vining element to climb the jerusalem artichokes. We can easily supply nitrogen via our urine so we don't require the leguminous groundnut for nitrogen fixation.

For the ground cover layer, we're trying about half a dozen fast-spreading chinese artichoke in half the patch, with creeping bellflower 1-2' apart as another vigorous, shade tolerant root crop in the rest of the area.

Our patch gave us about 100 pounds of jerusalem artichokes last year (1 pound per square foot). It makes sense to knock back the jerusalem artichoke production a bit in favor of more root diversity, and hopefully the total yield of roots will increase while we're at it.

Brief Mention

Oca & Tomatillo / Ground Cherry

Ocas & tomatillo at bottom tree collard and mashua at top not part of guild

Inspired by oca-testbed's oca & tomato bi-crops, I've planted 3 ocas, 2 annual ground cherries, and 2 tomatillos with 10" between each oca and its neighboring ground cherry or tomatillo (20" from one ground cherry or tomatillo to the next).

Squash & yacon

I planted some squash seeds at 6' centers and yacon halfway between at the 3' mark. The yacon should grow tall enough to hold its own by the time the squash reaches it, to share the space niche a bit. It may work somewhat as a time niche, too, as squash often dies back in early to mid fall with powdery mildew, while the yacon can keep growing until frosts kill it.

Not Implementing

Oca & squash

We created an accidental time niche bicrop a few years ago when a squash covered up some oca for most of the summer, but started dying back with powdery mildew in early fall, allowing the oca to explode in growth and fill out the space. We didn't get much of an oca yield--but I wasn't experienced enough at that time to pay close attention to frost and harvesting all the oca promptly. So maybe we got some roots but they rotted? Or maybe the squash didn't allow the oca to grow well enough to produce roots? I'd like to try this again with squash on 6' centers and two or three ocas at the 3' point in between. Or try combining it with the squash & yacon polyculture, with the squash and yacons spaced further apart to allow oca some breathing room between the larger plants. (See oca-testbed's polyculture mound of yacon, oca, and chinese artichoke.)

June bearing strawberry & summer root crop

I've tried to design a polyculture which combines digging some root crop with the need to thin June bearing strawberries in late summer, after they've finished cropping for the year. I've had a much harder time with this than with day neutral strawberries (see my polyculture with skirret above), since very few root crops can be harvested in the summertime after two years of growth to allow the alternating row harvest method. Strawberries fill out quite well by mid spring, creating a lot of competition for anything shorter than they are, limiting the ability to sow seeds or plant small divisions at the beginning of the growing season. Further, the root crop can't be allowed to outcompete the strawberries too badly -- we have some burdock in our patch, and we have to keep harvesting the huge leaves (we do eat the leaf stalks) or the strawberries get totally covered up!

Spring ephemeral bulbs such as Camassia, Triteleia, Brodiaea, or Erythronium might work for the row harvest method, especially if you establish a solid patch first, then add strawberries later. Or instead of harvesting a full row at at time, you could do a distributed harvest of the thickest clumps of bulbs, disturbing patches of strawberries here and there while eating the largest ephemeral bulbs and leaving the small ones behind to regrow quickly the following spring. Or try root crops whose seeds can germinate in the autumn, overwinter as a small plant, and grow quickly in spring: black salsify (Scorzonera hispanica) or dandelions for full row harvest after 1.5 years, or black salsify, dandelions, or parsnips for distributed patch harvest the summer after they've been sown.

Perennial polyculture species profiles

This is part two of a three part series on perennial polycultures:

1. Designs: a five year review
   
2. Species profiles
   
3. New designs
   

Introduction

In Perennial polyculture designs, I mentioned inadequate knowledge of plants as one barrier to successful implementation of my designs. We've now gained enough knowledge of a few perennial plants to try again. With this mouthful of a title, I give the relevant design characteristics of perennial vegetables we're trying in polycultures this year. Unless otherwise noted, I consider these plants primarily root crops, though some have secondary uses like edible flowers or leaves. By the way, for more information on many of these unusual root crops, including some polyculture experiments, see:

• Oca testbed - nice details on tomato & oca bicrops, plus lots more on oca and some on other roots
  
• Radix Root Crop Research and Ruminations - pioneering work with many roots I haven't tracked down or in some cases even heard of before
  
• Obligatory link to Plants for a Future database.
  

Species characteristics

Garlic (Allium sativum)

• Harvest time: July or August
  
• Harvest process: Lift all bulbs, which doesn't require much soil disturbance. Store in cool dark place.
  
• Planting process: Plant cloves in October or November, which doesn't disturb soil, but cloves shouldn't be disturbed by other digging after being planted.
  
• Generally doesn't require any watering, and in fact shouldn't receive water in July so the bulbs can dry out for long term storage.
  
• Vegetative growth: small amount of leaves over the winter, growing more actively in spring. Die back in July with the summer drought.
  

Skirret (Sium sisarum)

• Harvest time: October through April. Stores in the ground all winter.
  
• Harvest year: can harvest after one year of growth, or leave in the ground for multiple years for more and larger roots, which seem less prone to having a woody core.
  
• Harvest process: Dig large chunk of soil from around plant (up to 2.5' diameter with older plants), pull out crown. Cut off roots, optionally divide and replant crown. Can be difficult to find in late winter after stalks have rotted away.
  
• Drought & shade tolerant
  
• Vegetative growth: Appears mid-season (April), grows fairly quickly to 3-5' tall (depending on age of plant), and dies down in early fall (October). Dense, casting heavy shade.
  

Garden strawberry (Fragaria x ananassa)

• Use: berries
  
• Harvest time: summer through fall
  
• Best with full sun and adequate water through growing season.
  
• Benefits from thinning (following the annual harvest for June bearing varieties, and in the winter for day neutral varieties)
  
• Vegetative growth: semi evergreen to 1' high, spreading quickly from runners
  

Potato (Solanum tuberosum)

We haven't actually grown potatoes very much, but my understanding so far:

• Harvest time: June onwards. Can probably store in the ground through the winter?
  
• Harvest process: Seems to need a fairly thorough excavation of the soil, especially to find all the roots. We had many potatoes return this year from last year's plantings, so this seems to have potential as an overwintering perennial. Disease buildup normally demands crop rotation.
  
• Supposedly fairly drought and shade tolerant.
  
• Vegetative growth: Starts growing in late March or April. Reaches 3' wide? Yields supposed to improve with hilling up soil onto the lower stem.
  

Oca (Oxalis tuberosa)

• Harvest time: after the first light frost(s) kill the foliage, but before hard freezes damage the tubers, which often dwell close to the soil surface.
  
• Harvest process: Dig out all the roots, generally concentrated at the center, though some may form where foliage touches the soil. Store in cool dark place for the winter, replanting some tubers in spring. In mild climates, tubers missed at harvest time may resprout on their own in spring.
  
• Appreciates some shade during heat of the summer, but may not tolerate too heavy competition. We tried it as a ground cover amongst other plants one year, and they swamped it out with very little root yield.
  
• Vegetative growth: Leafs out in April or May, generally low growing to about 1', though can clamber up other plants if it needs to gain access to sunlight. Doesn't put on much growth until September, when cooler cloudier weather kicks in, at which time the foliage explodes to 3-4' wide.
  

Asiatic lily (Lilum sp)

• Harvest time: Late fall through early spring.
  
• Harvest method: Compact bulb, so fairly easy to harvest with minimal soil disturbance. Leave large offsets behind to regrow. Can be difficult to find in late winter after top stalks have rotted away.
  
• Like their feet in shade and top growth in sun, thus well suited to combination with a low ground cover.
  
• Vegetative growth: comes up in early to mid spring, grows to 3-4' tall, and dies down in fall.
  

Yellow asphodel (Asphodeline lutea)

• Harvest time: Can definitely harvest in the summer, and I think we can dig roots year round.
  
• Harvest process: Medium soil disturbance, concentrated around center of each plant. The plants make numerous offsets, and each plant has multiple thin roots. So you can harvest some entire plants and leave/replant others, or cut some of the roots off of each plant and replant them all for slower/less vigorous regrowth. Not sure yet of the best method.
  
• I think it prefers full sun, and probably doesn't need any irrigation.
  
• Vegetative growth: somewhat sparse, to about 1.5' tall on flowerless plants, or 3' tall on single flower spike. Doesn't seem to compete all that well with other plants, so may do best with a low growing ground cover for weed exclusion. From the Mediterranean, so well adapted to our summer drought by dying down in mid summer and coming back with fall rains, staying green through the winter.
  

Good King Henry (Chenopodium bonus-henricus)

• Uses: leaf crop (spinach substitute) and seed crop (used like quinoa, though smaller).
  
• Harvest time: leaves throughout season. Seeds over a period of about three months, July through September.
  
• Harvest process: seeds require periodic picking every week or two as different seed stalks ripen at different times.
  
• Somewhat shade & drought tolerant, though I assume for optimum seed production we should give it full sun and summer water.
  
• Vegetative growth: comes up in late spring, reaching about 1.5' tall and perhaps a bit wider. In our back yard where chickens roam, we have a fairly pure stand of GKH and it does fine. In our front yard, (because chickens aren't eliminating the other plants? or because the GKH hasn't dominated the root zone yet?) the GKH gets crowded out by the early spring growth of nipplewort (Lapsana communis), lemon balm (Melissa officinalis), and wood avens (Geum urbanum) and I've had to weed the bed this year. Like the yellow asphodel, would probably benefit from a low growing weed suppressing ground cover.
  

Jerusalem artichoke / Sunchoke (Helianthus tuberosus)

• Harvest time: October through April
  
• Harvest process: Major soil disturbance. Will always miss some roots so that it will regrow the next year. Can be difficult to find roots in late winter after stalks have rotted.
  
• Drought and shade tolerant
  
• Vegetative growth: appears mid spring, reaches 8+' tall. Dies off in late fall.
  

Mashua (Tropaeolum tuberosum)

• Harvest time: In theory, should harvest after the first light frost(s) kill the foliage, but before hard freezes damage the tubers. Roots seem much hardier than oca and yacon, though, such that they might store OK in the ground through the winter.
  
• Harvest process: Fairly thorough excavation to dig all roots, storing in cool dark place for the winter. We usually miss some of the roots so that it regrows the next year.
  
• Appreciates some shade during heat of the summer
  
• Vegetative growth: Vining to at least 10' tall, climbing other vegetation. Appears in mid spring and grows at a fairly steady rate until frosts.
  

Groundnut (Apios americana)

(c) 2004 Steve Baskauf

We haven't had much success with this plant, but we haven't totally given up on it yet..

• Harvest time: dormant season, late fall? through late spring?
  
• Harvest method: Extensive excavation required. Leave some tubers behind to regrow.
  
• Fixes nitrogen
  
• Vegetative growth: vining, scrambling up surrounding vegetation. In our climate, appears around June and disappears in September or October.
  

Chinese artichoke (Stachys affinis)

We've only grown these for one year, so I base this mostly on the literature:

• Harvest time: Dormant season (fall through early spring)
  
• Harvest process: Probably requires major soil disturbance, especially since I don't think dead plants leave woody stalks behind to mark their spots. Will regrow in spring from tubers you missed.
  
• Moderate moisture requirements?
  
• Vegetative growth: appears in early or mid spring, gets about 1' to 1.5' tall, runs quickly (mint family) and forms good ground cover. Not sure exactly when it dies down.
  

Creeping bellflower (Campanula rapunculoides)

• Harvest time: I think we can get usable roots year round.
  
• Harvest process: Fairly major soil disturbance. Need to dig towards the center of the clump to find usable roots. I suspect it will keep regrowing vigorously after each harvest with no need to deliberately leave roots behind.
  
• Very shade tolerant, and competes well with other vegetation.
  
• Vegetative growth: Leaves appear in early spring and make a good source of greens while others are somewhat scarce. Plant reaches about 3' tall and runs vigorously. I think that without irrigation it responds to our summer drought by going somewhat dormant, resuming growth in the fall before dying back for good over the winter.
  

Perennial polyculture designs: five year review

This is part one of a three part series on perennial polycultures:

1. Designs: a five year review
   
2. Species profiles
   
3. New designs
   

Background

When we first moved to this site in 2006, I designed, on paper, elaborate perennial polycultures for tree understories. In each guild I included at least one plant to perform the main "food forest" functions: nitrogen fixation, nutrient accumulation (generally deep taprooted plants), beneficial insect feeding (plants in the carrot and sunflower families), aromatic pest confusing (onion family and mint family with their strong odors to throw off pests trying to find their preferred plant), spring ephemeral for early season nutrient cycling, ground cover, and foot tolerant path cover. I also wanted all the plants to have some direct human use, whether as food or medicine. And I tried to minimize inter-plant competition by matching vigorous runners with taller clumpers, plus designing for a combination of taprooted, fibrous, and flat rooted plants. I placed plants under each tree according to their sun requirements, designing for a fairly mature tree canopy casting significant shade (with some thought to the transition period of full sun in the early years.) And I matched guilds to tree root patterns, so that a taprooted tree would mostly have shallow rooted plants under it, and vice versa. Example polyculture design (1 MB PDF) I can't call these designs complete failures. The exercise of working them out helped me think through all the factors involved, and helped me learn the on-paper characteristics of many interesting perennial plants. I'm glad I did it. However, I never successfully implemented a single design, for several reasons.

Reasons for failure

Plant (Un)Availability

Our Process

To create my list of desired species, I diligently went through every entry in the species table at the end of Volume II of Edible Forest Gardens by Dave Jacke and Eric Toensmeier, plus all the species rated 4 or 5 in the Plants for a Future database. I added a few plants from books like Simon Hickmott's Growing Unusual Vegetables, local edible plant nursery catalogs, and odd mentions here and there. I came up with a great list of about 175 potential guild plants. I worked from the list to create my polycultures, then began tracking down the plants to implement the guilds. I hadn't anticipated the difficulty I would have locating the plants, even in the form of seeds which posed their own propagation learning curve. Over the last five years I've ordered hundreds of species of seeds from dozens of seed companies, spending hours researching and combing through plant catalogs. (My two most useful plant source search engines: Dave's Garden Plant Scout and UMN's Plant Information Online.) I managed to track down 90-95% of the species on my original list, though I kept adding more species of interest over the years, so that I still have dozens of species I would trial here if we were staying in this bioregion. Of the species I could find, only about 50% grew successfully. The rest never germinated, succumbed to slugs, got outcompeted by other plants, rotted from winter moisture, died with drought, or disappeared while we weren't watching. With the skills I've gained over the years in seed starting and with willingness to provide some extra babying to the most interesting species, I'd probably re-try another dozen or two of those failed species if we were staying here longer.

Repercussions

The long, drawn out process of tracking down seeds over several years, starting them up, waiting for them to get large enough to plant out, and having many of the attempts fail to produce a viable plant meant we never had all the planned species for a given polyculture at once. So my on-paper designs had to adjust to accomodate what I actually had available, with additions over the years as I successfully grew out new plants to incorporate. I still tried to make additions based on the original factors of guild function, top growth, and root patterns, but inevitably my incremental plantings lacked the full integration of my theoretical designs.

Inadequate Knowledge of Plants

I gathered as much information as I could on plant habits, culture requirements, and uses before designing my initial polycultures. But the books can only give so much detail on the intricacies of a living organism's life cycle, don't always accurately describe a plant's response to our particular climate and site, and certainly can't tell us whether we'll actually like eating the plant, or which part(s) we'll value the most, or what time of year we find the plant most useful.

Examples

Size, life cycle, & harvest methods: Skirret

The literature led me to believe that skirret (Sium sisarum) would grow to 3' tall by 1-2' wide. We've found that, on our site, that accurately describes a first year plant with its flowers, but older plants easily reach 5' tall and 3' wide. In mid-summer, after our typical weeks without rain, the first rainstorm or the first irrigation via our sprinkler weighs the foliage down so much that the whole plant flops right over. So my skirret placed carefully 1.5' from the edges of paths fell into them and created a maintenance problem. Other subtle details of skirret's life cycle and harvest methods affect how it integrates with other plants:

• The roots radiate outwards in all directions from the central crown, necessitating a thorough excavation of the soil to find all the roots. So as opposed to something like garlic with a bulb easy to pull out without soil disturbance, skirret does not work well under trees and shrubs, nor next to perennial greens. Instead, it needs to integrate with other root crops or self seeding annuals.
  
• The foliage dies down relatively early in the autumn, before the first frosts, allowing early harvest and potential cover crops or garlic plantings. Many of the roots we grow can't be harvested until November or later, so this timing makes a big difference in polycultures or time niche planning.
  
• Skirret top stalks stay visible for several months into the winter, but by late winter or early spring they've rotted off, making it difficult to find the root locations. So it works best to have predictable locations for the skirret, or situations where it doesn't matter if some plants regrow in the spring where we missed harvesting.
  

Life cycle & harvest methods: Creeping bellflower

Creeping bellflower (Campanula rapunculoides) volunteered in our yard. I identified it, looked it up, discovered it's considered invasive in gardens as it runs rapidly but that the roots are edible, and devised a plan of allowing it to grow in place, with periodic harvesting of the roots from the edges to keep it in check.

Several times I dug up the edges to find the roots, but never found anything larger than spaghetti, tough and fibrous with nothing that seemed actually edible. I wondered whether this was a famine food, or if I had defective plants, or what. Finally I happened to dig into the center of my neighbor's patch of the plant, and discovered numerous sizable roots up to 3/4" diameter and 1' or longer! So apparently the plant only makes large roots over time, and my plan to harvest young roots from the edges won't work.

Parts used: Scorzonera & Dandelion

We originally planted scorzonera (Scorzonera hispanica) as a root crop. Soon thereafter, we learned that the leaves make an excellent lettuce substitute, so the plant became primarily a perennial green, with self-seeded plants as a bonus root crop. So rather than growing scorzonera in frequently disturbed soil in zone 2, we grow it in an undisturbed zone 1 bed. Conversely, we originally considered dandelion (Taraxacum officinale) just a leaf crop, best used during early spring then weeded out. Last year I discovered the roots make an excellent vegetable in their own right, providing a low maintenance root crop in the summer. So now we let the dandelions stay and harvest them from late spring til fall, when more desirable roots become available.

Inappropriate zone placement

I missed a very basic permaculture principle with many of my original polyculture designs. I didn't pay attention to what sort of yields went under which trees in the yard, and their accessibility from our front door. So I had leaf crops designed under trees in the far corner of the yard, which in practice I would almost never get around to harvesting.

Crop balance

When I first designed our guilds, I had no concept of how many leaf crops we would need vs roots, shoots, berries, seeds, etc. Since the perennial plant world offers many greens but relatively few foods from the other categories, I overdesigned leaf crops by default.

Difficulty implementing self seeding annuals

I sometimes consider myself a terrible gardener, such as when I have to admit that I failed--several years in a row--to grow pigweed (Amaranthus sp) and lambs quarters (Chenopodium album). You know, those weeds that gardeners everywhere else persistently pull out of their beds year after year. I tried several different species of amaranth, and at least two of Chenopodium, and I don't think I ever got any to grow the first year, let alone persist as an annoying weed. My original designs incorporated several other self seeding annuals: breadseed poppy (Papaver somniferum), miner's lettuce (Montia sp), land cress (Barbarea verna), corn salad (Valerianella locusta), and some biennials like evening primrose (Oenothera biennis). Only the evening primrose has really succeeded here; the rest never got started or have failed to robustly self seed. I attribute the failures to our heavily mulched, rarely dug soils. The first two years (especially the first), everything had a thick layer of wood chips. I tried spreading a thin 1" layer of soil in some places to seed plants like the amaranth & chenopodiums, but those tend to germinate in late spring or early summer with more heat, which coincides with the end of our rains and thus drying out of those 1" layers of soil. In subsequent years, we had heavy slug pressure, and rarely had bare patches of soil with full sun to support such pioneering annuals, especially late in the season. I did include root crops amongst those self-seeding annuals in my original design, to facilitate creation of bare soil, but with the exception of evening primrose (whose root I dig over the winter), those combinations of digging & self-seeding never really came together.

Spring Ephemerals Not So Useful

I made a small design mistake by including, in each guild, a spring ephemeral as suggested in Edible Forest Gardens. These ephemerals begin growing in late winter or early spring, taking advantage of full sun conditions before shrubs and trees above them leaf out. They flower early in the season, then die back to the ground as shade increases. On the east coast, with its harsher winters and frequent late winter snowpacks, these ephemerals play a crucial role in "catching" nutrients early, preventing snow melt or rains from leaching them out before the woody plants come into growth. In the pacific northwest, we have mild winters with many warm spells throughout the winter allowing some plant growth. In Portland we never get a real snow pack. Here it makes more sense to incorporate evergreens or fall planted crops such as garlic and fava beans. The ephemerals I've tried have competed poorly with other perennials and the late winter/early spring annual weeds.

If I Knew Then What I Know Now...

If I had the opportunity to do this all again, I would:

• Design with the plants available to me, so I could plant them all out at once. (I would reserve some areas as nursery & trial beds for new experiments.)
  
• Plant out low growing or easily removable ground covers everywhere I'm not yet ready to implement permanent designs. Selection criteria:
  
  • Evergreens preferred
    
  • Winter leaf crops
    
  • Berries
    
  • Duck forage
    
  I haven't put much thought into this, but some ideas on species:
  • Evergreen violets such as Viola odorata (edible leaves & flowers)
    
  • Evergreen bellflowers such as Campanula poscharskyana and C. portenschlagiana (edible leaves & flowers)
    
  • Bunchberry (Cornus canadensis) as a native berry crop. This did poorly in early years, but might succeed now with more shade from maturing trees.
    
  • Various low growing Rubus species, such as R. nepalensis, R. tricolor, R. x stellarcticus, R. arcticus, R. pentalobus.
    
  • Strawberries, both garden variety and species (Fragaria sp.)
    
  • Perennial ground cherries (Physalis sp.)
    
• Plant fewer greens, and concentrate them closer to the house since I pick them once or twice a day.
  
• Plant more perennial seed crops.
  
• Try to design a soil disturbance regime to suit self seeding annual seeds from Amaranthus sp. and Chenopodium sp.
  
• Incorporate ducks to reduce slug pressure on leguminous seed crops of favas, peas, and runner beans.
  
• Include more evergreens in general rather than spring ephemerals
  
• Group root crops together for complementary soil disturbance. I'll post soon with several root polyculture ideas I'm trialing this year.
  
• Skip the nitrogen-fixing function from my list of guild requirements. One person can fertilize 4000-5000 square feet of forest garden with urine.
  

Crop summary: Fuki, Petasites japonicus

Fuki with young rhubarb in foreground

We have an abundance of low maintenance, perennial and self-seeding annual greens through most of the year. I eat salads and cooking greens almost every day as my primary veggies. We have a much more limited selection of other veggies, though--relatively few shoots, stalks, and flower buds. So I really appreciate fuki (Petasites japonicus) as a low maintenance, shade and chicken tolerant, leaf stalk and flower bud crop.

Fuki, also known as butterbur, hails from Japan, where people sometimes cultivate it for its edible flower stalks with flower buds, and 2-4' long leaf stalks. We planted a one gallon pot in 2007 in the back yard chicken free-range area, in the north quadrant of our Hollywood Plum tree circle. Before the existing mature trees on our property line leaf out, the fuki gets almost full sun in early spring, but by late spring receives only a few hours of afternoon sun. We also planted the native coltsfoot, Petasites frigidus, in the east quadrant of the same tree circle. (The coltsfoot has fared poorly, hanging on but not spreading, even with some fencing to partially protect it from the chickens. Another coltsfoot patch in the front yard has done a lot better.) Both plants prefer moist but well-drained soil with partial to full shade. I also placed a non-draining pot with the semi-aquatic plant sweet flag (Acorus calamus) in the west quadrant, with the plan to frequently top off the pot and water the Petasites species through the summer.

In practice, we find it too inconvenient to water consistently through the summer. Although the area lies more or less in zone 1, adjacent to the path we travel twice each day to the hen house, the garden hose moves around the yard, making it more difficult to water the moist zone as often as the plants would like. We probably give them water two to three times a week through the heat of the summer, more than the rest of the yard receives, but less than the daily watering they would prefer.

Our chickens enjoy the large leaves as shelter from rain and sun

Despite near daily wilting for months in a row, full-time chicken access, and our harvesting modest amounts of leaf stalks in past years, the fuki patch has lived up to its reputation as a rampant spreader! It now covers about 30 square feet, the maximum area I'd like it to occupy. Over the last few weeks we've harvested heavily from the edges to keep it in check, about 2-4 large leaf stalks every 2-4 days, averaging 3.25 ounces per day. The fuki keeps growing new stalks, and last year we harvested stalks til the end of July, so we have plenty more crop ahead of us. If we can't eat enough to keep up, we can propagate some for sale, and use it as a cut mulch, taking advantage of the large leaves for soil protection while knocking back its vigor.

After we planted our one gallon pot, we waited a year before harvesting. The first harvest in 2008 gave us a poor impression of the plant; it tasted very strong, very medicinal. We could only envision using it as a small addition to dishes, though I did find a mixture of fuki/angelica/rhubarb palatable enough in an interestingly flavored sort of way.

Fortunately, for the last three years (2009-present), the fuki has had a much milder flavor, very edible in larger amounts, especially with adequate cooking. In 2009 and 2010 I generally steamed the stalks for about 10 minutes without peeling them, and found them pretty good, but quite fibrous. This year I've taken the time to peel them fairly well before cooking, and I've increased the cooking time to 20-25 minutes, which makes them much more tender and very enjoyable in large amounts. I can eat about 3 stalks, or 9-10 ounces, as the veggie side dish to a meal. Fuki doesn't provide many calories--only 4 per ounce--so it definitely serves as a standard vegetable, providing the micronutrients vitamin C, calcium, potassium, and manganese, but not the macronutrients of fat, protein, and carbs.

We've eaten a few of the flower buds with stalks, which have a similar flavor and expand the season by appearing in February and March, a month before the leaf stalks come up and two months before the leaf stalks grow to full size. We have had some trouble with the chickens breaking off the flower stalks by scratching them, and kicking dirt onto the buds, which tend to trap the debris. We didn't have our rotating chicken paddocks implemented in time for the fuki flower buds, so the chickens may create less of a harvest problem in future years when they only visit the fuki one week out of three or four.

As always, see the Plants for a Future entry for lots more useful information!

Harvest log - one full year

We've just completed one full year of weighing and recording everything we harvest from the yard. I've uploaded a snapshot of the one year harvest so it's archived even as I update the regular harvest log. We harvested on average each day two pounds of food, providing 675 calories. As far as our goal of self sufficiency is concerned, that means we could choose between feeding less than half of Tulsi (who requires 1500 calories per day) or barely feed one third of me (2000 per day).

I last blogged about the harvest log in September. Since then, we've harvested fall and winter root crops of 105 pounds of jerusalem artichokes, 15 pounds of skirret, 15 pounds of mashua, 2 delicious pounds of lilies, 10 pounds of yacon, and a few other miscellaneous species, for about 170 pounds total.

We harvested 70 pounds of tomatoes since September. We had a first-time harvest of 8 pounds 11 ounces of Jiro persimmons, our largest crop of fruit yet from any of the trees we've planted.

We harvested 2.5 pounds of fennel seed, the equivalent calorie-wise of 25 pounds of greens.

Harvest of greens dropped dramatically with the hard winter freezes, both because we had fewer leaves available, and because I don't enjoy picking them in cold rainy weather with freezing fingers. We picked up again in March with the return of milder weather making happier plants and people.

Egg harvest slowed similarly with the onset of cold weather, as our older hens quit laying. Our new batch of four chicks (purchased in late May I believe) started laying in December, and we've had an average of a little over 3 eggs per day over the last four and a half months, with egg laying accelerating with the spring. (I guess it makes chickens happier, too.)

I've killed four chickens since September, all older hens we received last summer from some folks who were replacing them with a new flock but didn't have the heart to kill them themselves. (These have all been difficult for me, since they've been my first non-mercy killings of healthy and happy animals.)

We harvested 26 pounds of honey (about 3 gallons) a week ago, which gave a huge increase to our calories, taking us from 575 to 675 calories per day on average for the year. As with the other animal products (eggs and meat), this harvest represents a certain amount of imported resources from off-site, since the bees forage from all around the neighborhood to make their concentrated sweetness.

I won't go into great detail analyzing the calorie breakdowns, since I haven't gotten any comments asking for elaboration in the past, and you can take a look at all the data yourself. I'll just note that the vast majority of our harvested calories this year have come from animal products (eggs 25%, honey 15%, meat 6.5%) and roots (jerusalem artichokes 15%, all others combined 13.5%). Greens provided 10%, which speaks to the large quantities we've eaten since they don't actually provide very many calories per pound. Fruits and berries combined provided 9.5%. Seeds, shoots & stalks, flowers & buds, mushrooms, and squash provided relatively few calories.

We don't expect to be here more than a few months longer, so we probably won't get to see how the harvests of fruit and nuts turn out. If successful, they'll add a lot to the calories harvested. We'll keep recording the data as long as we're around, and I expect to resume similar tracking once we move to a new homestead in a year or two, since this has helped me a lot to figure out how much of what we actually eat, what we're lacking, etc.