If you missed how excited about Arctic kiwi growing in Massachusetts I got last week, allow me to remind you with a video and some audio from y trip to permaculture farms, Food Forest Farm and Tripple Brook Farm. Eric, Jonathan and Steve welcomed our class into their edible forest gardens and showed us all sorts of leafy greens, sweet potatoes, berries, fruits, and tubers they grow. Here are some kiwi, black walnuts, ground nuts, butternuts (not squash), a root a bit similar to wasabi (but not as delicious), French sorrel, Turkish arugula, Beauregard(?) sweet potatoes, and more, all growing in their backyard. Then Steve talks at Tripple Brooke Farm about his almonds. You don’t get to see his hazel trees, walnut trees, persimmons, kiwi or raspberry patch, but they’re all there. In peach season he says he basically lives on the peaches his trees produce. I believe him. I’d live on tree-ripe peaches too, if I could.
And here’s a little intro to permaculture in case you’re scratching you head going, “How is this different than growing a few fruit trees and having a little garden?” There’s a whole lot more involved, from combining ground cover and nitrogen fixers with animals for pest control and tilling and compost, to stacking different shade and sun-loving plants with symbiotic relatinoships. It’s kind of a holistic garden. When everything is in place it all works well, but there’s nothing new-agey about it. In fact it’s the most natural garden there can be since the whole point is that the “gardener” does very little, and every year the perennial plants come back. Here’s Eric:
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