Garden fertility out of thin air!
September 1, 2007
We are blessed this year with an amazingly abundant fruit season! This dry spring allowed for a huge fruit set and these hot summer days are sweetening our pears, apples, plums, and berries to perfection. In addition from the agreeable weather from mother nature, we also treated our orchard trees with sheet-mulch with plants from our pond and recycled cardboard sheets from the floor of our chicken coop, plus a healthy compost foliar spray.
To quote Bill Mollison, we are in fact living in grave danger of falling food! What to do with all this fruit? The local wildlife are certainly taking their share, including the fox, coyote, wood rats, bees, yellowjackets, and lizards (yes lizards! We spied a lizard lapping up the juicy flesh of a fallen plum!). Nonetheless, we are busy drying, jamming, juicing, freezing, and grazing on all the delicious fruit. We even used a fresh plum puree to sweeten a Wild Food Pate for the Taste of Marin last week.
It has been wonderful to see how the happy hands of our seasonal staff, volunteers, and course participants have contributed to so many facets of the health and abundance of Commonweal Garden – not just the orchard, but also our annual plant care, integrated animal management, natural buildings, grey water systems, and more. We extend our thanks to everyone for their contributions!
To quote Bill Mollison, we are in fact living in grave danger of falling food! What to do with all this fruit? The local wildlife are certainly taking their share, including the fox, coyote, wood rats, bees, yellowjackets, and lizards (yes lizards! We spied a lizard lapping up the juicy flesh of a fallen plum!). Nonetheless, we are busy drying, jamming, juicing, freezing, and grazing on all the delicious fruit. We even used a fresh plum puree to sweeten a Wild Food Pate for the Taste of Marin last week.
It has been wonderful to see how the happy hands of our seasonal staff, volunteers, and course participants have contributed to so many facets of the health and abundance of Commonweal Garden – not just the orchard, but also our annual plant care, integrated animal management, natural buildings, grey water systems, and more. We extend our thanks to everyone for their contributions!
