Rachelle's Permaculture garden

01/07/2024

Todays foraging. Wild black raspberries, wild greens, wild onion flowers, burdock flower stalks(just a few to try for the first time), and red and gold raspberries from the garden with the last of the red currents.

30/06/2024

Gooseberries. I harvested some today. They have so many thorns! But the berry picker makes it easier.

21/06/2024

I leave an old sheet under the mulberry tree to catch whatever falls to the ground. But the chipmunks, birds, chickens and now a little frog found my secret. Today’s forage and harvest. The biggest garlic bulbs I’ve grown so far.

10/06/2024

My first canning preservation project of the season. I picked all the ripe red and white currents and made jalapeño currents jelly. Jalapeños are frozen from last years crop. This is so good with cheese and crackers. Or just on bread.

07/06/2024

Mulberries, goumi berries and Service berries. I’m competing with the birds for the berries - the service berries are so good. I only realized last year that I have a tree on the property. Now I see seedlings everywhere!

05/06/2024

Teaching my grandson to forage. Today we ate from the mulberry tree, harvested the first peas and caught a tadpole in the pond.

04/06/2024

Baking cattail flower bread. It’s still the best bread - it tastes like corn bread and so good with melting butter. I also harvested more garlic scapes and strawberries for breakfast smoothies.

01/06/2024

Today’s harvest and preservation. Daisies, honeysuckle and elder flowers to dry for tea, garlic scapes which I blended with ginger and chillies into a paste and freeze in ice cube trays. And rose hip cordial from frozen hips from last years foraging. I want to take some to the Great Lakes foragers gathering in 2 weeks.

26/05/2024

When I first planted my tomato seedlings something ate them all overnight. Now. They’re sharing the strawberries. And maybe the snake got them. His belly is very big. Right next to the greenhouse planter.

23/05/2024

I was so busy planting and just started to make time for harvesting. There is so much in the garden. Today I got strawberries, rhubarb, asparagus, lovage flowers to dry for my tea and lots of oregano to dry before they start flowering.

22/05/2024

Harvesting.. the last of the haskaps, strawberries and asparagus and cutting down invasive honeysuckle for chop and drop - to mulch the new trees.

17/05/2024

Sooo many blackberry flowers!

15/05/2024

Last year I added more flowers to the garden. Especially peonies. They’re starting to flower. 💕

12/05/2024

Our first berries are ready. Honey berries. Remy loves them straight from the plant. Usually I don’t get any - either the chickens or the little animals get them first.

10/05/2024

Is a beautiful day today after all the rain we got.

06/05/2024

Since I retired on April 15 I’ve planted over 100 trees and shrubs on the new part of our food forest. The front part will have a mix of fruits, berries, perennial veggies and herbs and the back part will be more nuts and hopefully one day look like our woods with lots of mushrooms. In the existing food forest I’ve grafted about 10 apples, 5 plums and many (I stopped counting) callery pears. I used the tractor for the first time today to move old logs for edges to annual veggie beds. The little trees are very small and will take a few years to grow. I also sowed a lot of asparagus, rhubarb and other perennial veggie seeds. I see rows of rhubarb sprouting. After the annual veggies are in the ground the pruning (chop n drop around the rows of trees) starts.

01/05/2024

One for me.. two for you I’ve never seen a morel this size. The little snake was in the area and warning me not to come closer😊.

01/05/2024

This beautiful crab apple was planted by the animals. It has little red apples the size of golf balls. It had fruit for the first time 2 years ago and makes the best jelly! I’m so excited for all the fruit this year.

24/04/2024

3 years ago I bought a few bulbs to get a patch established. 2 years ago I harvested seeds from them which i planted and now I have 1yr old baby ramps! I’m so inspired now and by Sam Thayer’s Ramp video that I’m going to look for ramp seeds to plant again this year.

24/04/2024

I knew there was at least one in our woods. Dryads saddle.

23/04/2024

Foraging today: found a few morels for dinner in our woods. I think the animals eat them too - I found just a stalk here and there.

20/04/2024

I found morels growing in my usual spot in the woods. I can pick them later this week. The asparagus are just starting and I am dehydrating garlic salt made with wild garlic - foraged from my garden. Last year I picked a lot of seed heads from the wild garlic and spread them all through my garden.

14/04/2024

I’m trying something new. Grafting service berry to callery pear. Someone else in another group had success last year. I have so many of these invasive trees that I can experiment.

12/04/2024

I love all the spring flowers. Bumble bee on the honey berry flowers. The first peach blossom is open and the quince is flowering too! Hoping for a bumper strawberry crop.

19/01/2024

Home Made Apple scrap vinegar. So healthy. And many uses. Natural probiotics, use neat, or in a shrub, I even used mine to pickle this year. https://www.seriouseats.com/cold-processed-berry-shrub-recipe

16/12/2023

Final harvest. I left the carrots and beets as long as possible while harvesting only what we eat. I harvested the remainder today. I still have pickled beets from last year!

09/12/2023

10/09/2023

Harvested all the Seckel pears. They are so sweet! Also the peaches. I don’t know the variety. It was a plum tree that died and the rootstock sprouted and gave us a massive harvest this year.

06/09/2023

Foraging: hen of the woods is out!! I could not find any last year and decided to do a quick check after work today. Guess what’s for dinner tonight? I’ll be able to dry some for later.