Holyoke edible forest garden

July 8 - berry season in full swing. Blueberries, all Ribes (clove, white, red, black, gooseberry, josta), raspberries, last alpine strawberries, last juneberries, last mulberries, sand cherry! Not eating much of any perennial vegetables at this point except sorrel and walking onion topsets. Eating self-seeding black nightshade greens which are excellent this time of year.

 July 22

All Ribes finished except for clove currant. Blueberries and raspberries in full swing. First grapes coming in, the dry year means we are having great yields unlike last two wet summers with very poor yields. Those first grapes taste fantastic! Annuals and tropical perennials making up our vegetable diet, things like moringa, eggplant, and cranberry hibiscus.

This month eating strawberries, alpine strawberries, red and white currants, mulberries, goumis, "regent" and stolonifera juneberries, sorrel, reseeding "western front" kale, Solanum pitycanthum leaves, underripe gooseberries, annual crops, Lactuca canadensis. Generally moving from shoots/broccolis/leaves into small fruits, withmore reliance on annuals for vegetables. 

Here's an in-depth tour of our persimmon patch.

Having great perennial vegetable harvests but looking forward to fruit. Here is Jonathan with sea kale broccoli, asparagus, and Turkish rocket broccolis. Yum!

"Next generation polycultures" looking good. Honeyberries started ripening about May 12, first strawberries May 17. Many of best perennial vegetables already past their prime and our frost-tender veggies aren't even planted yet! Excellent loads of fruit ripening on all Ribes, strawberries. Honeyberry and beach plum suffering from poor pollination. Asian pear has a fair amount of curculio damage, we will selectively cull those fruits when we thin (which we are late to do). Bamboo shooting.

May 23. Lovely flowers everywhere. We never intended to have a pretty garden, but it turns out that between insect nectaries and crops that happen to flower, it's pretty lovely out here.

April 20, 2010.

Continuing transplanting and reworking polycultures.

Here's what we are eating out of the garden these days:

Water celery (almost past its prime), sea kale broccolis (getting started), asparagus, shiitake mushrooms, ramps, walking and Welsh onion scallions (almost done), toothwort rhizomes, hablitzia (leaves, as shoots are all done), garlic chives, chives, sylvetta, violets, sorrel, fuki (ready, have not had yet). 

March 10, 2010

Unlike much of eastern North America, we had an unusually mild winter. Our bamboo is so far almosty totally undamaged by cold. We had very little snow, which usually insulates our perennials undera thick blanket.

Fuki buds, usually emerged but still under snow at this point, are up and started to cautiously flower. I saw a honeybee on one yesterday. I think they are tough enough to handle another cold snap just fine. THey are probably up under the snow starting in February most winters anyway. Ramps are also up almost 1". Water celery up about 2", I'm enjoying my first harvest of edible greens from outside. In the greenhouse of course our salads have been great for about 4 weeks, including very nice water celery and sorrel which we brought in last fall. We have been wrapping up our pruning, taking our last cuttings,and generally getting ready. Yesterday I bare-root transplanted some of our juneberries. Ground still frozen in some places about 6" down.

March 22

Eating sorrel, water celery, great walking and Welsh onion scallions, first hablitzia shoots, early garlic chives. Also last year's dormant tubers: sunchoke, Chinese artichoke, groundnut, skirret, giant Solomon's seal.