You can learn all the things about permaculture and zones and planning and STILL get into bad habits.
For the past 17 years, the Holler Homestead kitchen garden has been in a place affectionately known as Sunshine Plot. Out of sight and behind my home, I try to remember to go up there every day to at least take a look at it. Because it is in such a weird location, we have tried to change where livestock was and other things to make my morning coffee roam pass through there.
The things I grow in my aquaponics system get the most care. The garden that Tactical built for himself outside his back door gets plenty of attention. Sunshine plot is managed through methods to help keep things going even if I don’t drop by – with heavy mulch to keep down weeds and automated watering.
Over the past seven years, we have worked hard to adjust the design of this homestead from its original layout to one that integrates zones so that it is easier to maintain and just flows. For seven years, we have oft discussed ways to stretch my zone one to include that garden. For seven years this approach has been just plain silly and it hasn’t worked.
Then Tactical asked the question: Why, after seven years, have we not just moved that garden into your zone one?
Sometimes on your own land, you stop seeing the big picture for the details and the fact is, that garden was there when I moved in. That is why that garden is there seventeen years later. Even better, that garden was there because it WAS in zone one for the original 1880’s era cabin that was first here. You could walk out its door into the kitchen garden which also integrated chickens. I had to take that cabin down due to termite damage which is why I know this.
So my garden, firmly in zone 2, is there because someone who built a one-room cabin in the late 1800s put it in THEIR zone 1 and no one ever moved it after my house was built.
When Tactical asked me this question, it was very clear where the garden should go.
Timing is everything.
He asked this before we were about to embark on a process of transforming my kitchen garden into raised beds so that they would be easier to tend in 20 years. After he asked me this, it was so clear where my raised beds should go it, that there wasn’t any debate on the topic. Just a plan for how many beds and in which configuration.
Which brings me to today. Having JUST become an affiliate with Vevor, I plan to test their $96 raised beds in that space. They have a $70 one too that is smaller. If you are interested in these beds and you use my links to them, I get a small cut. (Use coupon code VVPROMO for 5% off).
I plan to document the advent of this project as we go. Here’s to putting my kitchen garden in zone 1 where she belongs!
