Plans for the new season

Slowly the temperatures are creeping up again, onto the plus side of the Celsius scale, the bitter wind has finally blown itself out, the neighbours are poking their noses out of their doors again, with the help of them we have cleared out a ton of rubble from our doorstep which was still lying there since the earthquake, hopefully we have now survived the worst of winter and we'll remain catastrophe free for a while.  This has been the longest sub-zero spell we have known here, not so much snow, but a cold wind.  Most producing plants look rather sad on my land now.  Even the broad beans have suffered damage, I hope they will recover.  The only thing quite happy with the temperatures is this Japanese spinach.

Anyway, with the weather finally improving we have ventured out again taking a look at the land.  I've used the time being holed up indoors to work on this free permaculture course and as I said before I'm planning to turn our land into a food forest now.  So one of the things it tells you is to start your planning by making a map of your plot of land including all outside influences.  Now this is easier said then done.  I envy those people who have a flat square or rectangular plot of land where they can draw in everything neatly and show there crop rotations and all, neat beds etc.

My land is roughly triangular in shape, but that isn't the real problem it is also on a steep slop.  I have now worked it out: along our southeastern border where the landslides of 2010 have actually created a fairly even slope rather than being interupted by terraces, I have a 43% downward gradient.  In other words in the parts where I still have terraces I have almost as much vertical areas as I have horizontal ones.  Try drawing that onto a flat piece of paper!  I need to have some sophisticated computer software to make a 3d map, which needless to say I don't.

Anyway, here's my attempt of a 2d map.  I used my original ground survey map which we received when we purchased the plot and then drew around it a bit.  The first one shows a lot of the neighbouring land for a general impression of where water and wind come from.

Our plot is the little triangle in the centre, number 299 with a rough idea of the tree cover.  We are located in the southwestern corner of a kind of amphitheatre.  Our terraces face east with slight northern inclination.  The large plot to our southeast is badly overgrown and has suffered a lot worse from the landslides.  It shades  the area of our land that borders ours as it is a kind of a fold in the land.  This is where most of the water has come down too causing most of the devastation.  Much of it we haven't even attempted to fix yet, except that we have diverted water off the top to down along the road rather than down our land.

The plot to the north of us is a well tended vineyard facing the same way as us.  The plots to the north of that are also vineyards and some woodland facing south.  Water runs off in a seasonal gully in an easterly direction.  To our west is some woodland on a steep upwards slope, so we are sheltered from all prevailing winds.  The little purple circle incidentally represents our caravan.  The elevation of the plot is between 100 m (300 feet) at the eastern corner of our land to 130 metres (400 feet) at the western end.  For scale, the line representing our southeastern border is about 70 metres in length.

Now we zoom in a bit and show what trees currently grow where:

You may have to click on the image to enlarge it a bit.  I've named some of the trees, not that all have a name, but I didn't have room to give each their name.  The incline is sharper at the top end, so the terraces at the bottom are lower and wider.  At the top they are only about a metre (3 feet) wide in places.  However the top end, especially the northern half, gets the most sunshine, whilst the bottom, especially the southern side, is colder, damper and more likely to catch frost.

As you can see there are still plenty of white spots that can be filled in.  I am looking for biodiversity, including some species that don't imediately come to mind as edible species.  I have already bought a strawberry tree, a classic forest edge variety around here, and an eleagnus ebingii, which is good for stabilising soil, is a nitrogene fixer, attracts wildlife and produces edible and nutritious fruit.  All the kind of things I'm looking for.

If any of you out there have any other suggestions I'd be really grateful, especially combinations of plants benefitting each other.  Below the caravan we have built some sub-terraces to strengthen that particular terrace.  As posts to hold up the boards I have used freshly cut elder wood, some of them have now started sprouting.  The most vigorous one I have now named Pliny (the Elder...).  This should hopefully strengthen that area even more as well as giving us elderflowers and berries.

And finally a request to anybody likely to visit us anytime soon: instead of bringing us chocolate and wine, bring a tree :)  Thank you!

Woodland garden plans and carbon off-setting

We're back from the mountains and have survived the festive season in one piece.  We are now at the beginning of a new year and a new growing season, wondering where the path to self sufficiency is going to take us next.  I have already mentioned that we are toying with the idea of joining or setting up an eco-community.  This is still very much on our minds and I'll write a bit more about it next time around.

In the meantime though it's time to plan what we are going to do with our land for this year.  I'm all for living in the now and not abandoning half projects, just because of some future plan which may or may not come to fruition.  I have now decided to turn our 18 crumbling terraces into a permaculture woodland garden, planting at least 30 more trees and shrubs.  The roots should therefore help keep the hill from sliding down, minimising erosion and self-fertilise the soil.  Everything I am planning to grow will have some edible use to it.  I doodled around a bit making a little collage of plants I'd like to plant:

As those of you who follow my blog regularly may know, we already have quite a few permanent features on our land, some 100 trees and shrubs.  Apart from the usual suspects of olive, apple, pear, peach, cherry, plum trees etc, I'd like to grow a few exotics.  I've done a bit of research, many of the following will be difficult to find in Italy, as Italians don't go much for the unusual.  So if anyone out there can help me obtain cuttings, seeds or knows where I could get hold of plants, please let me know.

Here's a list of what I'm looking for:

For the canopy level:

• A mulberry tree.  Never seen one here, but should be able to find one.
• Japanese Dogwood.  Don't know this tree, but it is said to grow to 10m and produce some nice fruit.
• Hawthorn:  Leaves and berries are edible (see my haw ketchup and haw jelly) as well as hugely medicinal as a heart tonic.
• Elder: for the flowers and berries
• A lime tree:  Apparently the young leaves are really tasty in salads.

For the shrub layer:

• Black and redcurrants
• Flowering Maple (abutilon vitifolium): This small tree flowers abundantly and the flowers are edible with a pleasant mild flavour used in salads.
• Juneberry (amelanchier): a 2-3 m shrub bearing small currant like fruit in mid-summer
• Strawberry tree
• Autumn Olive trees:  I saved some seeds from the last wild harvest
• Myrtle: With the previous two the fruit of this makes my delicious Christmas jam!
• Salt bush: The leaves and young shoots of this plant make a tasty spinach substitute or can be added to salads.
• Tree collards and daubenton: These are two varieties of perennial brassica, the latter from the kale family.  I understand they quite tricky to find, so if anyone has any seeds of these...?
• Dwarf quince: Not a true quince, but the flavour of the fruit of this small tree is very similar to quince
• Cornelian cherry: A 5m shrub flowering bright yellow in winter and producing some cherry-like fruit in summer
• Blue Sausage Tree:  Now this has got to be my favourite!  I've never seen this, but this 4m tall shrub bears blue sausage shaped fruits, which looks disgusting but tastes good.  Anyone know where I can find one of those?
• Eleagnus: A genus of evergreen or deciduous shrubs producing delicious fruit with edible seeds
• Fuchsia: Not sure how well this would do with us, but the flowers are actually edible.
• Wolfberry or gojiberry:  I've heard a lot about the nutritious values of this little berry.  I'd love to get hold of a few shrubs
• Oregon grape: Medium -sized shrub with blue edible berries
• Chilean guava: Not a true guava producing small deliciously aromatic fruit in flavour somewhere between a wild strawberry and a guava

On top of that of course a herbaceous layer as well as some climbers such as some additional kiwis, some ground nut (edible roots) and Schisandra rubiflora (tall fruit bearing climber).


Apart from the fact that many of the above plants will not be easily obtainable in Italy we have one other problem, our perennial shortage of money to buy these plants.  A recent blog post from Jeremy on Make Wealth History gave me an idea though.  He blogs about many issues surrounding the threat of global warming and tries to offer solutions to the problem we face on earth.  He himself strives to keep his own carbon footprint low and has recently been wondering how to off-set his rest carbon emission.


So if anyone out there would like to make a positive impact to counter-balance their direct or indirect emissions, you could donate to the 'Pathtoselfsufficiency Tree Planting Fund'.  Ok I'm not certified and I can't tell you exactly how much you reduce your carbon by, but I promise I will give you a full report on exactly the trees your money has helped to plant. I will even individually name the tree, as some concerned friends of mine have already found out when I showed them around introducing them to trees by name (Stan the plum, Ollie the olive tree, Simon the cherry tree, Bela you can call him Edgar the olive tree, Walter the walnut tree, Al and Capone the almond trees, Ronny the rennet apple tree etc...).  Any donations would be very welcome.  :)  Tree planting will start in early spring.