Growing at AIO
This year we’re not just opening the doors to the new building, we’re breaking ground for an edible landscape that’s grounded in permaculture principles. We’re designing our ‘forest farm’ to supply the food pantry with fresh fruit (think apples, raspberries, blueberries, strawberries) and perennial vegetables (asparagus, arugula, and rhubarb, oh my!) that give high yields with little maintenance. Our plans also include lots of space for traditional annual veggies – tomatoes, squash, lettuce, cabbage, cucumbers, peppers, peas, beans, beets and radishes – as well as community gardens open to anyone who wants to grow food for themselves or for the pantry.
This year we hope to fill our not yet built tool shed with the tools of the trade: shovels, trowels, hoses, sprinklers, spades, and so on. We’d also appreciate donations of cardboard (for sheet mulching); manure from organic cows, horses, chickens, sheep or turkeys; wood chips or other mulch materials; garden loam and compost. We’ll use these to literally lay the groundwork for our blueberry grove, raspberry bed, orchard, and maple grove that we’ll plant next spring.
Next spring is the optimum time to plant the trees and shrubs that will take the longest to bear fruit. We’d be grateful for 2-3 apple trees; 3 red maples; 7 high bush blueberry shrubs suitable for this area (we can provide recommendations) that cover the season from early to late; and 3-5 rhubarb plants. And volunteers to help rototill in soil and soil amendments, dig the holes and plant!! If we’re able to build a set of terraced gardens down the hill between the old building and new building this year, we’ll want to make the top level or two our asparagus bed (they can tolerate a bit of salt). That will also require some roto-tilling in compost and whatever soil amendments the asparagus needs to take root and give us 20 years of harvest!
And of course once we start growing, we would be very grateful for help mulching, watering, and keeping our gardens alive and thriving. If you are interested in volunteering for the AIO Forest Farm project, we’d love to hear from you. Please reach out to Marty Shaw shaw4717@roadrunner.com) or Deb Michaelsen (michaelsend@yahoo.com) and we’ll get you going and growing. You can also sign up to volunteer HERE.