Winter

A warm-ish winter day, but I'm sitting inside on the computer. This is mostly because I am not feeling too well. I've placed my Johnny's order and Fedco order and I'm pretty excited for spring. We have a huge year planned at the garden this year. The biggest, is getting married this coming May. As of right now, the plan is to get married in the garden, but we're having all sorts of scheduling issues.

We're going to have work days almost every friday, so stay tuned for schedule and update about that. Some of this years projects include:
-Building a large series of sheet mulched beds and cover cropping
-Finishing our hugelkultur berm along the sidewalk
-A street water run off catchment
-Using old Christmas trees and other acidic mulch items to attempt to create a soil suitable for blueberries, lingonberries, and other acid loving plants
-Planting out a polyculture orchard of more standard fruits (apples, pears, plums, peaches etc)
-Planting forest garden edges of Paw Paws, persimmons, hazels, elderberries, serviceberries and various ground covers
-creating a large compost section for compost piles and vermicompost bins...and storage areas for mulch materials like leaves, grass clippings, hay, straw, and whatever else.
-Chickens, ducks, and a goat may be new additions as well.


And we are in the process of designing a hoophouse made from old fence poles and a glass add-on green house on the south side of the house. We're also exploring the appropriateness of a rocket mass heater to be our primary heat source. Its hard to say if these projects will come into fruition this year. We already have the glass for the green house and quite a few fence poles for the hoop house. The main rocket heater issue is finding the right way to reinforce the floor from the basement to be able to hold up the 5 tons of thermal mass needed for the heater. Any input welcome.

There is also a plan in the works for a larger forest garden. More info on that at another post, when it looks more like it might actually happen. An exciting year to be in Detroit and specifically Brightmoor!