livepods.base
Livepods base started in January 2021 in full COVID-19 lock down on a plot that includes a one-story bungalow built in the ’70s and a 2000m2 garden in the back. The plot is located close to Wavre but still on the Flemish side of Belgium. The plot is managed by a team of two: Zuzana and myself.
The idea was to use part of the plot to start an edible garden following the principles of permaculture. With a little research, we discovered that the plot already had several fruit trees, including two cherry trees, a medlar, two plum trees, a hazelnut, a walnut and an apple tree.
We decided to use the apple tree as the center of the edible garden, which fans out around it on the south side. A corridor marks the North axis. We started the plots by covering the existing grass lawn with cardboard, compost and hay. We did not dig, we planted directly in hay. We let all plants grow, flourish and seed.
In our second year, we are starting to harvest without planting. Just to give an idea, on a harvest of 70kg of potatoes, almost half was produced by potatoes we did not plant. Next year we are planning to just harvest what grows from what we left in.
In addition, eight plots are already completely covered by spontaneous spinach, lamb lettuce, rucola, mixed salad and peas.
We are now moving from permaculture to Fukuoka’s principles of natural agriculture. The plots may remain as initial starting beds, but they will eventually be absorbed by the plants.
The plot, after almost two year, has a lot of additions to it, marked in green below. We have a chicken area, some additional fruit trees, a strawberry patch, blackberry, raspberry and more. Everything will be covered in future updates, when we work on it. This post is about the update on weekend of Sept. 17th and 18th, 2022.
September 17th update
This Saturday was about preparing the ground for a border of sunflowers, peas, beans and pumpkin. We used the same method as when we prepared the initial plots, except this time we moved the ground below. I will address in a post what happens when you move the ground, but in this case we needed it.
The compost is organic and sourced from Vera Tuincentrum at 45€ per cubic meter. We will leave it for the full winter and will plant a mix of seeds in Spring. Can’t wait, really.
September 18th update
Sunday was dedicated to inoculating the logs of Birch that we sourced from a dead tree in our plot. The tree was cut approximately a month ago, I placed the logs under the branches of the trees that run from the pear three to the birch.
The spawn come from Homegreen, I bought Chicken of the wood, Lions’ mane, Summer Oyster, Pioppino and Shiitake, 100 dovels each at 11,90€ per packet.
Here’s the layout of where they are.
Zuzana buried the fallen apples under one of the patch, to make an apple compost patch for next spring’s pumpkin and zucchini.