Looking to next year's exhale

November 3, 2011 Posted by niffer in Nature, Permaculture

Looking to next year's exhale

Plum, pear, and apple guild ready for the winter.

Tis the time to think about the coming winter season. Time to gather up the garden edges and tuck them into the earth for a good long winter's nap. It is a reflective time of year. A breath of both relief and sorrow at the end of the growing season escapes the earth. Next a great inhale for the winter ready, preparing to exhale all the stored winter energy next year.

But we are already planning for next year.

Linden and apple guild almost ready for next year's plantings.

The slow and constant march to expand out forest gardens is a never ending quest. Every autumn our neighbours bring over their leaves, away from their land and out of sight. Of course we welcome this influx of biomass and nutrition. Great piles of plant material wait under our trees. Waiting to be spread across the landscape in curvy shapes and beside pathways. Spread inches thick to protect the soil and the animals that hide in the litter all winter.

We don't know what these leaves hide. Conventional wisdom says we should not pile "strange" leaves on our land as they may harbour diseases. I suppose that is a valid reason to haul them off to the municipal compost, have them turned into compost, and then bring it home again. But we would rather bypass that whole cycle and the energy used to do it. We would rather compost in place. If there is a disease or insect hiding in the leaf litter, we feel it is our job to make the ecosystem healthier so it can resist the attacker instead of trying to get rid of the attacker. The healthier the ecosystem, the less likely the attacker is to have an impact on it.

Sunflower heads ready to help feed the birds in winter and provide winter shelter for other critters.

So we let nature even herself out and become balanced. Less work and chemical free. It will take a while, but it does seem to happen. We are even beginning to see anecdotal evidence of that in our gardens.

We are grateful for the leaves from our trees, and for the leaves of our neighbours. It helps lay a great deep bed don for the next year. By the time spring rolls around often the soil critters have done a great job at breaking down the leaf layer. Of course the grass doesn't do very well, but that's the point, less grass to cut for the coming year.

Our gardens get similar treatment to the leaves. We don't do much once everything is harvested. All the leftover vegetation gives homes, and hovels for a variety of insects and critters over the winter. Dead plant heads are a wonderful food for so many of the winter birds too. the chickadees and juncos are already beginning to harvest the goldenrod, echinacea, and sunflower heads. Some will be good, some critters will be bad, but they will all end up as food somewhere along the natural cycle circle.

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