Weed grower diaries: distributing the treasures of the forest
One of my biggest ambitions at this moment is to be able to feed myself entirely without buying anything. My time moving towards this goal has shown me that i have to redefine the way i eat and obtain food because if I wanted to eat the same that I am used to like grains and the vegetables that can be bought at stores I would have to prepare tons of soil make large fences and cut many trees for enough sunlight to come in. All is doable but it requires plenty of time, so the way I see it I need a short term plan before all that can happen.
From the beginning of my journey to live in the forest I have been told many times that I must grow a garden to sustain myself. The problem is, I have never met anyone who could live entirely off their garden unless they had help from machines. However, I have fed abundantly from weeds this year and I would continue to do so if I wasn't competing with the surrounding cattle for them, who have exhausted most of the nearby fields at this moment. Also having to bend my back to forage these weeds is very exhausting and so I have come up with the idea of building piles of soil and organic matter to allow them to be populated by weeds.
Beside the piles i have also dug little trenches to act as swales and gather the nutrients that will run down with the rains. My guess is that one of the reasons why the land where i live has such clayish and low nutrient soil is because the top soil is constantly being washed into the stream with the heavy winter rains. Having lots of these trenches should help mitigate this effect.
Piles are composed of leaves, twigs and mature soil that has been building under the willows but was compressed under the huge mass of material that is constantly dropping from the trees which stopped anything from growing there. It is also my intention to build some piles even where there is only soil so that it becomes comfortable to harvest the weeds that grow on it.
Beginning to form a pile
There is an ocean of leaves i want to take advantage of this way
I have also been throwing lots of seeds into the piles. Every time I go to town I pay attention to the plants at the edge of the gardens in the street and check if they have seeds on them. I harvest as much as I can fit in my pocket and throw them in the piles. In the picture you can see fennel seeds and I have also been throwing a lot of lambs quarter and curly dock seeds.
It was a great discovery to find that there are so many seeds to be harvested in town because to me going there was always something that i didn't really enjoy doing, more of a need. Now I know i can go and take a walk around to come back with my pockets filled with treasure.
Excellent keep heading for your goal of self sufficiency. You are leading the way and on the right track. Keep ahead of the curve.
Thanks, that is a top tier compliment right there
Thanks @ewkaw !
Much of what we eat started as weeds, and much of what we call weeds today was called food just a couple of hundred years ago! Instead of piles that may "melt" when rained on, it might be a good idea to put the soil in buckets, plastic sacks, anything that holds it in one place. With holes in the bottom to drain excess water, of course.
Willows (and many other trees) are great at creating their own soil from their dropped leaves and branches. Just remember not to take too much from any individual tree, and always replace the top layer afterwards so they can keep doing it. :)
Haha, townspeople don't know what they have anyway! Harvesting their seeds is a great idea 👍 There used to be huge pots of lavender growing outside the shopping centre here, and one day I noticed they were removing the lavender and replacing with a new plant, so I asked "mind if I take these, instead of you just tossing them in the garbage?" and the so called gardeners got all confused. "Why do you want this, the flowers have wilted already? We'll have to call our boss and ask if you can take them, we're supposed to throw everything away..." Their boss said NO, so I went back after work hours and pulled the drying leaves and flowers off of the remaining lavender plants. Still got a huge bag full of nicely smelling dried leaves and flowers in my closet 😁
I don't think the piles will melt, the weeds of the roots will keep them together. I've noticed that when there is soil removal in a place the weeds are very good at taking over the pile of removed soil, so it shouldn't be a problem. However, nutrients will always run down, that's why there's the trenches at the bottom of each like.
Also buckets are hard to find and expensive to buy where I live.
Good story, it depicts all that is wrong with society hehe and good for you for not being that way
I can relate! Trying to feed myself from the garden has been frustrating but also I have learned so much!! I have come to rely on some weeds like wild quinoa and amor seco. But for now I am focusing on what I do best - grow herbs for myself and for sale and then work in a store to fill in for what I cannot grow myself. Good luck with your journey!!
By wild quinoa do you mean chenopodium album? Feeding off the land is a hard task, takes more patience than I ever knew. Was it too much a hassle to set up your herbal sales?
It must be some kinda of chenopodium, they call it quinoa silvestre where I live. And as for the herb business it wasn't difficult as I am so passionate about herbs and I was already working at a store that sells health food & teas. The important part was to make the packaging beautiful and focus on herbs that no one else was growing or selling. Maybe you could do something similar!!
Yeah, that crossed my mind, if could be a good way to get some income 😊