In this article, we’ll review what we observed during our visit to the Feuilles de Vie garden on Wednesday 15.11.2023. Among other things, we’ll talk about raspberry bushes that are growing (and producing), feeding our vermicompost, and our Jostaberry plant with an invasive tree.
Growing raspberries in November?
The raspberry bushes have been very productive this season. We’ve already been able to harvest three times this year! As you can see from the photo, they’re in great shape despite the cold that’s starting to set in on the fields.
The idea with the raspberry bushes was to create a natural barrier for the garden. Even though the plot is only two years old, there are already a lot of plants growing and it’s time to organize them properly.
As you can see from the photo below, until now we’ve been using bamboo stakes. But since some raspberry bushes are now almost 2 meters high, it’s time to update these structures.
This morning, we removed the stakes you see in the photo and took the measurements for the posts that will replace them.
Lynne also dug up a few raspberry plants that had escaped from the intended perimeter. She then used some compost and soil freshly turned over by the animals/worms (see below) to pot them up.
Compost worms do the work!
It’s always fascinating to see how much organic matter worms can process/digest. The pile of compost we have left is no longer hot, but it’s teeming with loads of worms! The vermicompost is like gold in the garden. The soil food web really relies on these worms! We were surprised to turn the compost pile that has our rabbit litter (droppings, hay, etc) inside it. The worms are taking over and working hard on creating great compost for the garden.
Feeding our Vermicompost
To feed the vermicompost, Lynne cut off a good portion of the comfrey plant and placed the cuttings on top of the pile. Worms were also added (along with the hay), as well as cuttings of kale. It’ll be interesting to see what the worms can do with them over the next few weeks!
Worms & other small animals are helpful for turning the soil. In fact, worms are capable of turning 15cm of each per year! This is especially interesting because we can top feed worms with things as mentioned above and they will come and break it down. They like to turn the earth when it’s covered or hidden from the sun.
You can see this in the photo below of Lynne potting a raspberry bush. The worms and animals are at work turning the soil. In particular, we observed it under the fire bowl when it was placed upside down.
So we’re going to do a little experiment: we’ve placed the fire bowl upside down, on a “blank” surface. It will be interesting to see how long it takes to have a nice pile of aerated soil to use! To be continued 🙂
We also covered the rabbit hay (which is teeming with earthworms) with a thick layer of kale. We will see what happens when we come back in a week!
The Jostaberry (black Current x gooseberry) has been invaded!
We were able to recover our Jostaberry from our old garden. It has integrated well into the plot. However, we noticed that another tree (we think it is a Chinese Sumac) had taken root in the middle of the bush! So we took steps to cut down the other tree this morning. It was impossible to dismantle the roots. We’ll see how this space evolves next season.
That’s all for this time!
We’ll continue to share the progress of the project and the evolution of the garden in future blogs like this one 🙂
