Rectangle panes of broken grass

Self Heal

Self heal filling the "Herb Circle" garden - which is a space where the trees form a circle.  This area is where we currently live till the house is built

Butterfly weed & Black eyed Susan

We've been learning to grow using perma-culture and are reading "Gaia's Garden" by Toby Hemenway.  We are growing organically, but want to eliminate organic bug sprays  and fertilizers.  The plants in the first bed haven't needed any organic bug spray, but we did have to pick off some horn worms  - not an overwhelming amount and none for a while.  But the potatoes, beans and brassicas just were not in the right place at the right time.  When you go into healthy woods, you rarely see plants destroyed by bugs, it's in balance.  Nature knows how to grow plants without our help and people that study those systems have learned to come close to mimicking nature in many ways in the garden.  A balanced garden in a balanced place shouldn't need to worry about pest control - organic or otherwise. 

Lasagna or no-till gardening

Oh fall has been glorious!!!

This year we tested out a no-till or lasagna garden patch.  It seemed easy and required less money and effort than a typical tilled garden with equipment and gas considered.  Not only that, it's much better for the soil and the micro-organisms that live there.  A small patch was started in March with just paper in some places, cardboard in others and really old hay.  That's all we could get for the first patch and the hay was very old.  Should have used straw.   Not a "by the book" start, but with no real compost yet and little time, it's all we could muster.  After 7 months, the soil looks great!  Dark and crumbly already and we've done a second planting.