Monarch on (what we believe to be) Jerusalem artichoke. 
Posts in: Gardening
Expanding Green Man’s Grotto
We’ve started expanding Green Man’s Grotto. We emptied one of the old raised beds by transplanting some orange butterfly weed, hairy woodmint, and swamp milkweed partly into the existing GMG and partly into a new section. Next we’ll double the depth of that old raised bed and use it for a kitchen garden next year. Then we’ll transplant what remains in the other old raised bed into that expanded section of GMG and then double the depth of that raised bed for the other half of the kitchen garden.
We’ve been hoping for a dragonfly or two to find out little wildlife pond. Well, tonight we have a swarm. I assume they’re feeding on mosquitoes, which are plentiful on a humid evening like tonight. I have no idea if they’ll come back but watching dozens of them swooping and swerving is amazing.
Ridiculously cute frog actually sitting on a lily pad in Green Man’s Grotto. Maybe he’s admiring the hyacinthh bloom.
Principles of Permaculture
A reference post. From Toby Hemenway, Gaia’s Garden: The aim of permaculture is to design ecologically sound, economically prosperous human communities. It is guided by a set of ethics: caring for Earth, caring for people, and reinvesting the surplus that this care will create. From these ethics stem a set of design guidelines or principles, described in many places and in slightly varying forms. The list below is the version I use, compiled with the aid of many permaculture teachers and flowing from the work of Mollison, Holmgren, and their coauthors.
An update on our worms. (Thanks for asking.) They’re doing well. We’re determining through trial and error what they enjoy eating. So far they like:
- Leafy greens
- Any fruit
- Cilantro
They do not like:
- Squash
- Basil
We’ll collect their castings for use on the garden this fall.
So the frogs are clearly enjoying our pond. As I mentioned before, we found a generation of “wild” tadpoles in our pond after placing six bullfrog tadpoles in there ourselves. An additional generation has shown up in the time since then. And now this morning, Rachel found a new clutch of eggs, making a fourth generation. (In the picture, they’re the tiny white spots in the roots of the hyacinth.) We haven’t even had the pond a month. And they say rabbits are prolific….
A few more plants have been added to the pond in Green Man’s Grotto. Tadpoles — both those we put in ourselves and the “wild” ones — seem to be doing well.
If you build it, they will come.
When we built our pond, we put in six bullfrog tadpoles and several aquatic plants from a pond supply store. Today, however, we have found at least a dozen much smaller – tiny, in fact – tadpoles in the pond. We know that a frog has been hanging out there but we don’t know if he has anything to do with this new development or if these hitched a ride on the plants from the store.
Think globally, act hyperlocally
The amount of land (more or less) under my control right now is 0.14 acres. This amounts to: 1.79 x 10-5 of my town 4.84 x 10-7 of my county 6.01 x 10-9 of my state 5.76 x 10-11 of the United States 3.82 x 10-12 of land on Earth So, not much. HOWEVER, this is an advantage when I attempt to think about the energy flows. For example, I was never very worried about food waste since it is biodegradable and would break down in the landfill fairly quickly.