Author name: Karla Nathan

I hate to see the garden season come to an end.

This year was special with the creation of the Fairy Food Forest that my son and our Gypsy designed and grew.

We had some delicious meals plucked from its mounds.

And fresh flowers popping up all over. The wild flower mixes held varieties that attracted good bugs to eat the bad ones, and some plants were meant simply for bugs to eat, to them them away from a plant we might have wanted to eat ourselves.

This year was just a start. My son says it is a five year plan. This was the basics, more trees and edible shrubs will be going in next spring.

And our baby trees will grow tall and produce for us.

There are swales down one side, that trap rainwater so that it is saved in the garden, not washed down the hillside to the creek.  Next spring, more swales and trees will go in on the other side.

I'm hoping for more arching structures of vines too.  Peas, then beans, then cucumbers all climbed these one after each other.  I think the veggies liked the arches as much as I did. 

The kids loved planting and picking food too.  Both girls knew they could eat tiny, current tomatoes and mini strawberries whenever they saw one ripen.  The yard was organically planted, so no nastiness needed to be washed off before popping a tasty treat into their mouths.

It was nice to see little girls playing outside in the dirt and eating produce right off the plants.

Our kitchen garden, fenced off from bunnies, was a success too.  We are still pulling up carrots and beets.

And we have about 4,000 cardoon plants.  Those seeds really took off and I'm not quite sure what to do with them.

Sadly, we got very few large tomatoes this year, although we had small, salad sized ones daily.  I'd have liked some big, slicing tomatoes for sandwiches and some for making sauce to freeze too.

The raccoons seemed to like the few big tomatoes that ripened. Unless I picked them green and brought them in to finish, the animals beat me to them.

Even with a guard gnome.

This week, we had our first hard freeze. Before we'd even had a light frost.  In Kansas, you just never know.  Last Thanksgiving, I was picking fresh tomatoes.  Some years, we are done before October. 

Before the cold snap came, I was able to get these farewell pictures taken, and my kids planted some cool weather crops that weren't even affected by the freeze. We fixed a big bowl of salad greens up last night. It was lovely to have fresh lettuce at Halloween.

I wonder how long it will be til we are picking apples off this tree?

At the base of it, the kids have planted companion plants. It's a whole different look than what you'd expect from an orchard.  I'm learning a lot about it all, but I still have issues with what looks like weed problems to me.

I did my best to pull up grasses and baby trees, as well as some other pesky things that I knew we didn't plant.  My son said it was unnecessary.  You just "chop and drop", cut off the tops and leave them on the soil for nutrition. 

I was worried about seed heads on the things we didn't want growing there. He says it isn't an issue.

But I wonder how the good things know to reseed and the bad don't? Seems to me like grasses need to go before they go to seed. But he explained that, over time, the fruit and nut bearing trees and shrubs and other forest components work together and fill in so that things you don't want don't grow. Or if they do, it's just a bit here and there.  Apparently, it's not a perfectly manicured look.  It will be wild and unruly, and well, look like a forest.

For now, while the trees and all the plants are small, we are using the mounds for our garden veggies too. But as time goes on, they won't work there and we'll have to move them back to the "kitchen garden".

All of it has been quite the learning curve for me.  Luckily, our Gypsy has a thumb so green, it's practically neon. And my son has a deep love of growing food for his family.

The bounty is barely beginning.  Thinking about the years to come is quite exciting!!

What is the best part about the long descent from Fall to Winter? Thinking about the holidays!! I hope you'll join me here at the Cottage for my Christmas workshop where we will make 4 projects in one day.   Details in the previous post.

ps- if the weather and the garden cooperate, I'll be serving fresh greens from the food forest at our holiday luncheon on November 23!