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annual garden


ANNUAL PLANTS

An annual plant is a plant that completes its life cycle, from germination to the production of seed, within one year, and then dies.   Some examples of annual plants are beans, lettuces, peas, corn, and marigolds. 
Source:
Wikipedia

Annuals are the most labour intensive plants to grow because you need to go through the work of sowing new seeds every year.  This entails ensuring the temperature and moisture levels are suitable enough in order for the seeds to germinate and will become good strong seedlings.  Then you must take the time to transplant the seedlings to an outdoor garden bed where they will further depend on your attentiveness to ensure a decent crop is produced at harvest time.

In spite of this arduous process, annual edibles are some of the tastiest and versatile crops we can grow so it is well worth the effort.  Plus, we have an advantage to make the process less toilsome - the permaculture principles we learned!!  We were extremely excited to put them to use and to see if they really would reduce the intensity of labour required for this whole process.  Read on to see how and what we did.

PLANNING

Refer to the design process listed on the bottom of the Permaculture page.  You can see how we implemented essentially the first 5 steps in the photos below.  When choosing the location of the garden, we to took into consideration that it will take a little while to build our house, so to ensure we can keep a watchful eye on our production for the time being, we decided to place the veg garden in front of our temporary dwelling.  We also consider this whole area our 'temporary' Zone 1.  We keep in mind that the annual beds can always be converted to a perennial garden that requires less attention when we move over to our permanent home.

Some other key observations:
  • The land is sloping and it faces south
  • Soil is very sandy
  • A variety of wildflowers surround this area including; St. John's Wort, Milkweed, Thistle, Wild Sweet Peas, Bladder Campion
  • In terms of wildlife, there are various birds that fly across this clearing, plenty of grasshoppers, frogs too, and some snakes.  There are definitely deer that come through the property, wild turkeys and rabbit.
Garden location
Taking advantage of the slope, we decide to terrace the garden. Here we measure the contour lines to define and dig our swales
Our design
One part of our garden planting plan

IMPLEMENTING

Here we prepare the garden beds.  You can see how we take advantage of the shape of the land in addition to the many resources it has to offer.  To add nutrients and improve the moisture retention of the sandy soil we added manure that we collected from a local cattle farmer. 
Hügelkultur is a composting process employing raised planting beds constructed on top of decaying wood debris and other compostable biomass plant materials. The process helps to improve soil fertility, water retention, and soil warming, thus benefiting plants grown on or near such mounds
Swales as used in permaculture are designed to slow and capture water runoff by spreading it horizontally across the landscape along an elevation contour line, facilitating runoff infiltration into the soil.
Hugelkultur was used in all the beds from the poplars we cleared at the bottom of the field
Swales dug, hugelkulturs buried
Defining the beds - first row with stones collected from the building site
Defining paths
Reclaimed boards were used for the second row
Round tree logs cut from the land will be used for the third row
Pond made with reclaimed 6mil plastic and more stones
Mulching with cardboard and then a layer of grass clippings
Some seeds already directly planted and only 2 beds left to mulch


COMPOSTING

An essential part of any garden.  We used old pallets to create our compost containters.
Terracing the compost area
We used stones to retain the earth where we terraced
Andrés using the tamper tool to compact the ground
First cubicle for adding compost, the next two are used for rotating the 'working compost'
Compost moved to third cubicle
Glorious compost!


SOWING SEEDS

Every single plant was grown from seed.  Some were started inside - somehow we found space in the trailer to keep the tender annual starters warm.  Others were planted directly in the garden beds.
Seedling setup inside
Tomato seeds just planted
Tomato seedlings 5 weeks later and ready to be transplanted


GROWING GARDEN

We wait and watch patiently as the garden turns from brown to green!
Corn, peas, beans and spinach
Baby sunflowers
Baby sweetcorn
Peas climbing slowly
Pea flowers up close
Spinach, beans and lettuce
Carrot, beetroot and parsnip
Radishes, lettuce and beans
Painted lady runner beans
Radish - fastest growing veg!
Good for impatient beginners!
Very first radish - hurray!


CHANGING GARDEN

More patience as we see colours appear amongst the green.
Growing corn
Painted Lady Runner Beans
Very first nasturtium!
Tobacco on the left, kale on the right
Tomatoes
Tomatoes up close
San marzano tomatoes
Tomatoes turning red
Red tomatoes up close
Hubbard squash flowers
First calendula in full bloom!
Pepper and eggplants
Eggplant flower
Peppers
Zucchini
Butternut squash
Hubbard squash
Sweetcorn
Sunflowers in full bloom
Blazing star (yes - a perennial that snuck in to the annunal beds)
Monarch in the calendulas
Nasturtiums and calendulas in full bloom
Pinching out suckers in the tomatoes
The whole garden at harvest time


HARVESTING


Enjoying the fruits of our labour - an indescribable feeling. 
Zucchinis!
Beets!
Peas!
Buttercrunch lettuce!
Cucumbers!
First carrot!
Very first tomato!
Here I go!
Yummy - I'll finish that!
(Almost) a complete homegrown meal
More zucchini, squash and peppers
Our own lettuce, radish and wild strawberries
German green tomato - sweet and juicy and a Matina tomato
The bounty!
Last carrots of the season

PRESERVING

My first shot at preserving - tomatoes, spicy beans, dill pickles, zucchini relish, cucumber relish, bread and butter pickles, and peaches.  Most of this produce came from the garden except for the peaches which were purchased on discount from the friendly Mennonites in town.


REFLECTING

In conclusion, I can say with full conviction that the permaculture principles and design process we put to use helped us succeed with flying colours.  Despite concerns about the sandy soil, we believe the mulching really helped keep the moisture locked in the soil.  It also kept virtually all weeds down.  Honestly, there were a couple that popped up here and there but I only plucked them out because everyone around me was complaining about all the weeding they were doing so I felt I should do some weeding.   

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