My Own Personal Jungle

Today’s Morning News Tribune included a small item on the White House garden. It is apparently flourishing throughout the icy Washington D.C. winter with the help of plastic fixed onto hoops. I immediately felt guilty for having abandoned my own 10’ x 6’ winter garden after the relatively minor setback of having my goats eat it down to nothing.

The winter garden before the goat attack

After looking into the cost and effort of building a protective structure to keep the goats and frost at bay, I set my sights on rehabilitating the greenhouse. After a year of being used as a storage facility by friends of my father, the owners of the stuff finally cleared it away and I decided to take the opportunity to put the greenhouse back into service.

 The greenhouse

Reminiscing on my Costa Rica experience and the lettuce box that I observed there, I have begun creating a similar setup.  My materials are simple and my methods easily replicated. Using scrap wood, a chop saw, and 1 ½ screws, I cobbled together three boxes about 18” wide, 8” deep, and 4’ to 5’ in length and lined each with clear, thick plastic using tack nails. I then set up two wooden crates that I’d acquired from a tile store, each of which was about 36” x 48” x 30” , and placed two 12’ x 6” boards on top to form a bench sturdy enough to support 200 pounds of wood and dirt.

My next steps will be to fill the bottoms with a few inches of pea gravel followed by a loose mix of peat, vermiculite, and potting mix. Into this I’ll plant the veggies that I started last August in my winter garden:

Cabbage – Early Jersey Wakefield

Kale – Red Russian

Onion – Evergreen Hardy White Bunching

Radish – Relish Cross Daikon Hybrid

Beets – Boro Hybrid

At present, the greenhouse is unheated in part due to the cost of the electricity that it would take to keep it warm. I am contemplating low cost heating systems such as small wood or oil stoves that would maintain it around 55 degrees Fahrenheit, but in the meantime I’ll probably insulate the plants with an additional cover of plastic. So far, the weather has been on my side with persistant rain and lows around 45 degrees.

The larger plan is to use the greenhouse to grow both winter vegetables and starts for the summer garden. Hopefully, with about 0.25 acre in cultivation I can produce enough for year ‘round home consumption plus extra for sale. I will also need to set up a propagation area to grow the large number of ornamental and native plants that I will need to acquire to complete my landscaping projects.

En route to the greenhouse, I passed my Helleborus foetidus with expectant green buds,

and the three, six inch high Sarcoccocca confusa loaded with tiny white blooms, well worth getting down on my knees to smell.  

These small things do not yet fill my garden in the way that I wish they would, but then every journey must start with a single step.

I took December off and went to Costa Rica. It was my first foray into the tropics, and every bit as appealing biologically as I had expected. I took photos, hiked into exotic places, added about 40 new bird species to my life list, and basked in the warm humidity, far from the cold rains of the Pacific Northwest.

An additional and unexpected benefit, however, was a timely introduction to tropical permaculture.

During the cold, muddy season that comprises the typical Northwest winter, I’ve been studying landscape design and considering its applications both to my future career and the 20 acres I’ve been pondering since May.  Seeking a way to mix both agriculture and landscape design, I recently picked up two books on permaculture, Gaia’s Garden, by Toby Hemenway, and Permaculture:  A Designer’s Manual by Bill Mollison. Both have held be transfixed. At last, I’ve found the link between my studies of ecology and the more creative aspects of landscape design.

Permaculture, a shortening of the terms “Permanent” and “Agriculture”, is a way to apply a knowledge of natural processes and patterns to create an efficient and sustainable system for food production. I began looking to it as a way to help myself, as an individual of finite means and physical strength, to create a system for managing and maintaining a large property in a way that will produce food and recreate a functional ecosystem in a diverse, attractive setting.

The words and ideas enthralled me. Hydrology, soils, even pattern analysis all work themselves into a new way to design landscapes. More than just creating beautiful landscapes, I could build something that appealed to my more pragmatic side as well, and Costa Rica supplied me with abundant examples.

Costa Rica prides itself upon its green tourism industry, touting not only a large number of national parks and reserves built upon private and public partnerships, but also programs that encourage recycling, conservation, and even sustainability within the industry. One example was the resort that we stayed at for four nights north of San Ramon in the Canton of Alajuela. Villa Blanca Cloud Forest Hotel, Spa, and Natural Reserve is a five-leaf award winner in the Certification Program for Sustainable Tourism.  Located adjacent to the private Los Angeles Cloud Forest Biological Reserve, the property offers cloud-forest tours on the premises, and has its own gardens, greenhouses, and composting sheds with which to grow and recycle food used in its kitchens.

I spent many hours walking the property and surrounding farm lands gathering ideas for creating and irrigating a low-till garden with associated animal pens, compost bins, and water supply. Since the mountains of Costa Rica experience a long rainy season, much like Western Washington, I found that many of the solutions for runoff management were applicable to home, and I carefully photographed and noted drains, swales, and gutters of stone, cement, and natural vegetation in hopes of replicating the same.

   An intricate rock catchment system at Villa Blanca.

 Beyond the resort, I observed terraced farmlands practicing polyculture with a patchwork of different crop types shaded by trees. The rainforest has been substantially reduced by clearing, but it was heartening to observe that at least the smaller farms were adopting practices that reduced runoff and encouraged a healthier management of resources. Whether or not this is an old practice among the smaller farms, or fincas, or a new approach to agriculture I don’t know. I contrasted this, however, with industrialized farms further inland towards Arenal where acres of land had been shrouded in plastic to grow ornamental plants.

One of the more novel ideas that I observed was the concept of the living fence, which in the tropics can be easily achieved by simply placing green branches in the ground as fence posts and letting them sprout.

I hope to achieve similar results using willows and plantings of entangling plants such as Rosa and Spirea to create my own livestock and deer barriers. I also took notes on the use of piling materials on top of harvest beds to enrich the soil and minimize tilling. Villa Blanca used an extensive drip irrigation system for both greenhouse and outdoor crops, and used several methods of composting, including Bokashi, a natural fertilizer comprised of manure, coffee pulp or rice hulls, yeast and molasses. The smell, however, might prevent my adoption of that particular technique.

Throughout the trip, and perhaps somewhat to my travelling partner’s chagrain, I snapped hundreds of photos and sketched out my revised garden plan which I shall share in future postings. Returning from my vacation, I felt a curious mix of both relaxation and exhileration. It certainly beats the way I used to feel when I returned to my ‘real’ job.