Until I visited the north shore of Georgian bay, I took soil for granted. When we purchase our property the best spot for a garden was bare rock. That didn't deter my reserve to have a garden and so began my search for a sustainable way to grow biomass.
I experimented with companion planting, square foot gardening, no dig French intensive method etc.. these all had their use but they weren't dealing with my lack of soil. It wasn't until I found out about biomass mounds aka huglektur and learned about Forest Gardening principles that it occurred to me I could mimic the forest floor by making sure never to add the soil directly to the rock bed.
Our first year was difficult. We had no running water and burned so much good wood, branches and grasses that my heart sinks every time i think about all this carbon I could have sequestered. But I didn't know better. We now have unlimited water supply thanks to our off grid energy system but the garden needs very little watering.
Now I am always on the look out for dead wood, I make my compost, gather lakeside grasses and still have to order hundreds of soil yearly. The garden gets bigger and yet is easier to manage from one season to the next. The quality of the biomass is improving and so has our lifestyle. We just added 6 new panels to our system.
Over the years, I've developed a method for gardening on a boat access rock. I look forward to sharing my step by step approach with you next.
Thanks for reading.
Keep being a blessing. Xx
You have done an outstanding job on the gardens. Looking forward to reading more about your gardening techniques.
Thank you and the steemit community. It feels good to not writing in a vacuum. I already know what my second post will be about. Take care.
What a creative thing to do! Most folks would have given up, but you persevered and conquered the problem! Excellent blog entry, and kudos to you! 😊 #steemitbloggers
It's been my best work so far and I am happy to spend the winter sharing in detail our progress. Thanks for reading and your encouraging comment.
Gardening on top of bedrock, now that's seriously adapting to the conditions of where you're at!
I'm looking forward to reading more about your gardening efforts.
It's been a creative venture of love. Watching plants grow and frogs, salamanders and bird attracted to the ecosystem we have help create is the best reward.
I really like the way your garden beds look! They're like little islands of growth on the rock. That seems a lot like the way nature does it over time on bedrock outcroppings.
If I could make a suggestion...if you're writing about your gardening, you should use either the word "gardening" or the word "homesteading" as the first tag for your post. That will make it easier for the homesteaders on here and the people who search for those tags to find your posts. That can help you pick up more followers.
Resteemed
That's a great idea. I welcome suggestions as I am new to steemit and hope to write on this platform a lot. ICO's the community spirit and the opportunity to share what I've learned. About tagging, is it possible to change a tag once the post is published?
You can edit the post to change any tag except the first one.
Ah and it's the first one I made a mistake on. Thanks for clary
Well done, looks like it worked out pretty well in the end!
Thanks, it's been a case of perseverance paying off handsomely.
Cool, really looking forward to reading about the method that worked for you. Pretty impressive you are able to garden successfully on bare rock. Following :)
Much love - Carl
Thanks for following and your encouragement. I'm new to steemit but have been documenting our journey to self sufficiency for years now. I look forward to getting to know you and other in the community.
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STOP@carlgnash from the @humanbot Human Certified Original Works Initiative has manually determined this post to be the original and truly creative work of the post author.
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Thanks for being an original and creative content creator! You rock!
I think gardening is definitely fulfilling activity :)