And the design phase continues

So I presented the idea of the large mulched peach/mulberry/banana swing set area to my husband. He listened graciously and then offered some valid concerns like the kids climbing the fragile banana trees. He thought the design was pretty, but the effect wouldn't be in our smallish yard and that it would be too much mulch in relation to the size and amount of grass. As my favorite virtual mentor "the Nester" says, I now have a Lovely Limitation.

So I went back to the sketch pad last night and came up with this:

I really liked the idea of incorporating the bananas and bushes into my little garden and would still be able to guild them and give them lots of care inside my foot high raised bed. I would still be doubling my existing grow space too.

Unfortunately when I looked at the space from my kitchen window in the light of day and took my measuring tape to it, I realized that the roof has a generous 2ft overhang and only goes up about 10ft at the peak. My bananas will easily reach that high meaning the banana on the left next to the wall would be growing into the roof.

Darn. Back to the drawing board. Time for plan A, B, C, D...E! Yes, I think Plan E may be a winner. Now I just need a Plan E...

My husband made some suggestions about where I may incorporate the mulberries and banana trees into my garden or the existing landscaping.

1. In the above garden minding the roof and a 2ft setback from the A/C unit

Pros: I like that I'd get to see them from my kitchen window and have easy access to water and garden tools and freedom to "guild them" however I want. I could also reach the mulberries from all sides which would make pruning and fruit harvest easy.

Cons: I would probably loose a bit of growing space. The trees might shade other plants. This area is a bit shaded during most of the day but makes up for it with late day west sunlight (too much shade?)

2. In an existing landscaped area. This could be: in place of the bottlebrush in the far back corner and as the other foundation tree to round out my hedge. I was originally thinking of a palm or crape myrtle as the corner plant next to the hedge and the bottle brush is quite drought tolerant where it is.

Pros: the banana trees would be incorporated into the landscaping. I'm actually not sure why I care about this point?

Cons: I'd have to relocate the bottlebrush. I would not be able to guild the banana near the hedge. The banana where the bottlebrush is would take extra effort to water.

And then there's crazy option number 3 which currently looks like this:

This is the extension of the original fence along the north side of our house. The old gate to the backyard was where you see the two random fence posts near the corner of the house. This area is unused, out of sight, and basically a pain to maintain because the mower doesn't fit back there. I currently have some of the kids toys buried beneath the mountains of Spanish needle and weeds. I usually lean the kids pool against the house here during winter.

In spite of how it currently looks this site does actually have some pros: I could put the bananas and plant some sort of pretty guild here and mulch the whole 8ftx8ft square (anything would be better than what it currently is!) It is in an isolated area of the yard that gets full west sun (the camera angle shows how the sun hits the area). I'm pretty sure it is a zone 10 microclimate that would get nice and hot and humid which the bananas may thrive in.

Which leads me to a couple major drawbacks most of which center around the isolation of the area (it's a double edged sword): The bananas may get too hot here. I've never grown them before and I'm just not sure how hot is too hot especially with the majority of sun coming in from the west. It is also harder to water. It would be out of sight and I'd be less likely to remember to water it and fertilize it. There are a pack of hungry squirrels that like in the oak tree just to the other side of the fence and I'm afraid they'd ravish any fruit from any plant I put here because it's isolated.

 

Overall, I like the idea of option 1 the best. Fitting the trees and bushes into the garden would add beauty and make maintanence much much simpler. As I'll be having baby #4 in just a couple months, I need to make life easy for myself. However, I know that my banana trees will pup sometime in the next year and I'll have to do something with the pups. I may take that opportunity to try out the pups in option 3 and see how they do in the microclimate while the mom plants are safe in the garden. Also, it would be a fun little challenge, don't you think?

 

One more Guild Idea

We finally got the yard bushwhacked back to just about normal after over a month a neglect. As we all know, crap happens, and the back yard just didn't top the priority list. Or it did, but it was raining since this is the rainy season. Needless to say, our backyard was up to my hips and we could have easily lost children back there. People outside of FL just don't understand the maintenance required to keep a lawn from returning to its wild native field-like state. It took a couple hours and involved a riding lawnmower, a push mower, a couple rakes and a shovel, but, finally, we have a backyard again.

All that to say, I can show some picks of where the first guild will go. I was thinking about the peach guild again and am considering combining the peach and banana guild for two reasons. 1. (Maintanence) It would be less work to have only one guild (for now) to water, fertilize (naturally of course) and to mow/weed whack around. 2. (Aesthetics) It would look a bit more suburban and keep with the overall design of the backyard.

It is definitely simpler, but it may be a really good starting place.

As you can see, I probably overestimated the space between the swing set and the peach guild in my previous designs. Here is the tree with my baby bananas and mulberry bushes. You can where I went ahead and scorched the earth so to speak with my lawn mower in preparation for mulching under/around the swing set. I am sick to death of this area getting taken over by grass and weeds and wasps and wolf spiders moving in as a result. I have to check for wasps every single time they want to play on their set and then there is the constant weed whacking around the base of the swing set. Ain't nobody got time for that! So I'm laying weed block and mulching the area.

Since I'm mulching that area, why not go ahead and connect it with the peach guild so there is just one large thing to drive the mower around and weed whack every couple weeks. Would be much simpler to my thinking. And it would keep the yard more continuous instead of looking like there are a bajillion little mulch islands all over the place. And the bananas would grow fast and help screen out the neighbors behind us. All about privacy we are.

So this is the idea I'm going to present to the hubby and see what he thinks. We are a team after all, and he is the one who usually does the mowing and weed whacking.

 

For the Good of the Guild

Lately, I've been thinking about guilds. I've had plenty of time to research them and jot down ideas while I've been sick with a headcold the last several days. What's a guild you ask? It's something everyone has seen but maybe never noticed in detail. It's basically a micro ecosystem designed around plants. It's also a permaculture buzz word along with food forest, sustainable, and micro climate. Many people have done fantastic articles and video series on permaculture guilds. If you want an in depth look at all that jazz look up Geoff Lawton, check out the Permies forums and go from there.

But I like to keep things simple, and have found that I learn well by putting knowledge into my own words and taking notes. So, here is my little sketch of a guild.

Guilds occur in nature all by themselves and a forest, prairie, jungle, swamp are all just giant guilds. Permaculture backyard sized guilds consist of several different trees and plants working together in a mutually beneficial way. They require less outside input (water and fertilizer) and support beneficial insects and plants that outcompete the "bad bugs" (aphids, hornworms, etc) and undesirable weeds.

The main parts or layers, as I like to think of them, of a guild are these:

1. Tree Canopy

2. Tree Sub Canopy

3. Shrubs/Berries

4. Herbaceous/Insectors/Mulch

5. Ground Cover

6. Root Plants/Bulbs

7. Vines

8. Fungi

 

So, I'm going to pull from a list I'm working on to give an 8 part example to better illustrate the concept. A possible guild could be: 1. Oak Tree, 2. Japanese Maple Tree, 3. Gardenia, 4. Salvia, 5. Pothos, 6. Daffodils, 7. Honeysuckle, 8. Lichen.

Each plant in the example fits into the ecosystem as a whole and together they suppress weeds, create wildlife and insect habitat, conserve water by shading and covering the soil with dropped leaves and branches, and require similar light and soil and temperature conditions to grow. There are many many ways a tiny guild becomes its own ecosystem that is more self sufficient than a single plant by itself. Again I point to the expert Geoff Lawton for further instruction, and that's all I'll say in the way of explanation.

Why do I care about guilds? Because I bought two Dwarf Everbearing Black Mulberry bushes. Huh? My hobbies always start so innocuously :) So I've been on the hunt for a black mulberry bush/tree for about a year, but have not found any locally until Monday while I was at Lowes, of all places, browsing their selection of fruit bushes and trees. I had actually stopped in to look at Crape Myrtles which they didn't have. I usually find things I want when I'm not looking for them. So, I grabbed my two mulberry bushes and began considering where to put them. I wanted to do them in pots, but it gets so. stinking. hot. and sunny here that unless they are inside my house, potted plants tend to croak due to over heating and moisture loss or root rot during the rainy season. So, I knew I wanted to be able to walk all the way around the bushes wherever they ended up to make fruit harvest and pruning a breeze. This led me to the center on my backyard. And what is in the center-ish of my backyard? My Florida Prince Peach Tree (who is thriving and has a couple blossoms!!!) But would the berries and tree play nice together? I began to research. And I fell into days of reading about mutually beneficial plantings of trees, berries, herbs, vines and all the goodness of a food forest, but shrunken down into a tiny guild centered around one tree and the little bushes and plants to help support it. Like I said, it all begins so innocuously.

I emerged days later from my research and have sketched out a few different ideas for my peach/mulberry guild which are my two biggest concerns. I should also point out that the design HAS TO BE aesthetically pleasing in the overall landscape of my backyard and can't be left to its own devises like most natural food foresty type guild grow to look. They look wild people. Just wild. And my better half likes form more than function, beauty over utility, and sees beauty in clean lines and designated defined spaces. So I want my guilds (because I have now planned out three...cough, cough, Intervention please!) to be very structured and suburban landscape-ish.

The peach centric guilds with two different options (I'm leaning towards the second).

In the first photo, you can see that my bottlebrush tree told me he needs friends, and that I've caught a whim to purchase two banana trees because of fortuitous circumstances so they too will need a little tropical guild. I planned a second guild option for them also that I like better than the first.

Some of my considerations have been size, soil conditions, how they behave in my climate, ease and inexpensive of the plants, if they'll provide food, and what they'll bring to the landscape as a whole functionally and aesthetically. Basically, I've had lots of fun. I just LOVE the design phase.

Hopefully I'll be acquiring my banana trees tomorrow. It's pretty much tomorrow or never because of circumstances, so here's hoping!