New garden/raised beds in windy garden, suggestions?

Discussion in 'Planting, growing, nurturing Plants' started by Leiari, Oct 5, 2012.

  1. Dzionik

    Dzionik Junior Member

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    Jerusalem artichokes are recommended as a windbreak but I have bad experience with them. Maybe they should be planted densely, my two lines are not sufficient and are regularly knocked out.
     
  2. Pakanohida

    Pakanohida Junior Member

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    Wind source direction

    Perennial windbreak bushes for insectiary, wildlife, and use...

    Plant chop & drop hedgerow for mulching (like 2m+ grasses, sunchokes, stacked functions, etc)

    plant beds (be it hugel or not)

    Chop & Drop mulch row like above

    rock walkway

    Chop & Drop mulch row like above

    plant beds

    Chop & Drop mulch row like above




    :bow: -think very long term, not seasonally.
     
  3. deee

    deee Junior Member

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    Jerry Coleby-Williams (gardening Aust) has had success on a windy site in Brisbane using bales of sugar cane mulch (but hay would do the same job) to completely surround his garden beds during the growing season (you'd find him with a quick search: the property is called Bellis). At the end of the season he uses the decomposing hay to mulch and surrounds the beds with new bales. This would enable you to obtain a yield in the first year while you wait for your wind breaks to grow, reduce evaporation from the wind, improve the soil and stop your sheet mulching blowing away. May not work for tall growers like corn, but would be fine for most others. As a bonus, it gives you a support you can drape bird netting, shade cloth or frost prevention covers on when the weather demands it. The only down side is that it takes up a bit of growing space, but once you develop good wind breaks, you could do away with it.

    Wind breaks need to be about 50% permeable and provide a ramp shape on the windward side, so that the wind can "run" up the ramp and go over your growing space. If you make an impermeable barrier (eg a wall) or present a flat face to the wind (eg a wall or the standard landscaping hedge), the wind will go over the top of the windbreak and you'll get lots of turbulence (ie more wind) on the other side of the wind break, smack in the middle of your growing space. Good initial species should be fast growing, deep rooted, preferably nitrogen fixing and include a variety of species or varying leaf sizes that give you cover to the ground. Lots of natives, especially wattles, are well suited and you'll get a tidy yield of fire wood in 5-7 years if you treat them as a removable nurse plant and interplant with more long term edible species. The taller grasses make good outer layer low-medium growers

    Gaia's Garden (Hemenway) and the Earthuser's guide to permaculture (Morrow) have good info about windbreaks
    Hope this helps
    Danielle
     
  4. sweetpea

    sweetpea Junior Member

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    I second the vertical shadecloth windbreak. Like a Christo fabric wall. I use them a lot, and the temps on the protected side go way up and create a really nice environment right next to the heat-loving plants, like tomatoes, that have a rough time in the wind. The fabric can be right next to the plants, yet there's airflow enough to keep the plants healthy. I have some shadecloth that is 15 years old.

    I wouldn't ever wait to plant fruit trees, because for the first 5 years they shouldn't be allowed to bear much fruit anyway, they should be focusing on their root systems. Life is too short to put off planting fruit trees :)
     

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