Cleaning up after a tree fell on the garden, then using chop-and-drop mulching to build soil fertility. The tree came down across the grapes and potatoes, but we got it cleared and turned it into an opportunity to expand the growing area.
What started as storm cleanup turned into a full garden walkthrough: cutting up the fallen tree, rescuing the squash bed, chop-and-drop around the kale and chickpeas, checking on the sunflowers and terraces, and a tour of the herb plantings, onions, Roman chamomile, lovage, and dill.
This is what permaculture looks like in practice: the weeds aren't waste, they're fertility. Cut them, drop them, let them feed the soil. Between chop-and-drop, compost, and running the chickens and ducks through in the off season, we can grow food here indefinitely without buying inputs.
00:00:00 Tree Down, Chainsaw Time
00:00:10 Assessing the Damage
00:00:28 Chipmunks and Fence Lines
00:01:32 Squash, Wheat, and Sunflowers Under the Fallen Tree
00:02:08 Chainsaw Work Begins
00:02:44 Chainsaw Runs Out of Gas
00:02:46 Cutting the Rest: Grapes and Potatoes
00:03:21 Quick Face Check
00:03:26 Chop and Drop: Mustard, Turnips, and Kale
00:04:33 Weeds Are Fertility
00:05:18 Building Soil Forever: Seed, Compost, Chickens
00:06:16 Mowing and Compost Plans
00:07:03 Sunflowers for Biomass, Tilting New Beds
00:07:40 Easier Than Mulching
00:08:05 Terrace Tour: Sunflowers, Lupin, Onions
00:09:06 Roman Chamomile, Lovage, and Dill
00:10:10 Onion Greens as Backup
00:10:43 Kale on the Berms (Not Coming Up)
00:10:52 A Local Wildflower That Came Back
Tags
permaculture, chop-and-drop, homesteading, garden-update, tree-removal, mulching, soil-fertility, no-till, sustainable-farming, agroecology, food-forest, natural-farming, compost, sunflowers, onions, kale, terraces, storm-cleanup