Perennial systems in an oceanic climate with cool, wet summers- Experiences?

Discussion in 'Planting, growing, nurturing Plants' started by chook-in-eire, Jan 21, 2013.

  1. Pakanohida

    Pakanohida Junior Member

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    The Oryza sativa I thought was for northern Climates since it is growing in Maine of all places. Good luck in your search.
     
  2. chook-in-eire

    chook-in-eire Junior Member

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    Surprising as it is that one could grow Oryza in Maine... I'm talking about 800km further north with much cooler summers.
     
  3. Pakanohida

    Pakanohida Junior Member

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    Random thought, well outside the scope of Permaculture in many ways, but not in many. Have you tried contacting Findhorn for rice?
     
  4. sweetpea

    sweetpea Junior Member

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    chook in eire, wow, you described my summers exactly! And it's tricky because the winters for me are mild, and so fruit trees that need lots of chill hours don't do well here, and yet if they need too few chill hours they bloom in mid-winter, which is hopeless for getting them warm-enough temps. The exact right pollinators are always an issue, too, because bloom time changes with the weather.

    Have you checked out food forests and guild planting? Robert Hart is a great resource: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hart_(horticulturist) and there are YouTube videos about this setup.


    For an easy carbohydrate, amaranth is great, the plants are beautiful, and reseed easily, although they are annuals. Soybeans are good for you and the soil, beans that can be dried are a great crop to grow and easy to store. Mung beans are great used in Indian dishes.
     
  5. chook-in-eire

    chook-in-eire Junior Member

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    That's a whole different challenge again. Not enough chill hours can be devastating for apples and such. But I'm surprised that your summers would be so cold and wet!? Our average summer temps are in the 58-61F range with lots and lots of rain. The past 2 "summers" have been particularly bad. I haven't been out of my Wellington's in 18 months and the land is destroyed wherever I or the animals walk. We no longer have soil, just chocolate-brown sludge. =(

    Absolutely. Have read the books too and taken some cues on plantings from that. But again, his area is a few degrees Celsius warmer on average in the summer, gets a good bit more sunshine and half the rain.

    I have grown Amaranth for leaves and seeds last year but it only grows in the polytunnel/hoophouse here and that space is at a premium for tomatoes etc.. Too cold for soybeans or mung beans...

    I am looking at some plants that grow in the Valdivian temperate rainforest in Chiloe (SW Chile) for some diversity, ground cover, berries and such. Will write more about that later.

    @Pak. Thanks. Hadn't though of them. I have however found a place in Hungary, https://www.indianrizs.hu/vadrizs_eng.html . Maybe if I ask very nicely, they'll let me have some seed. At least it's in the EU, so does away with the bureaucracy.

    Been in the country for 20 years but am slowly despairing ...
     
  6. Synergy

    Synergy Junior Member

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    I intended to grow amaranth for the first time this year. Is it easy to thresh ? I had a friend who said she grew it and had a hard time collecting the seeds so I thought at worst I can hang it to dry and feed chickens with it in winter .
    We have a wet climate as well and predicted climate change is for wetter yet with four months of summer drought. I have horses and find they destroy any plant cover on such a small property and would turn it into a wallow if they never had gravel paddocks so I am actually slowly divesting myself of the horses in favour of smaller animals better suited to my goals ( milking sheep and kune kune pigs maybe the largest animals I want on my land) .

    I think sweetpea , your latitude is closer to that of Portugal whereas British Columbia may be more the same latitude as chooks because we are coastal here and too have issues with summer not getting hot enough, I can grow grapes and kiwi and such but ripening them is often an issue . Seeds planted in spring are as likely to drown and rot if it is wet than to germinate sometimes and I end up seeding twice etc. Don't get me going on fungal problems . But no despair, so far so good , we are all working on making it a better existance here.
     
  7. sweetpea

    sweetpea Junior Member

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    chook-in-eire,

    That's a lot of rain, and maybe if you made berms of soil you could grow rice? There's so many kinds, I'm sure there's a few that could handle cool summers. I've always admired the rice paddies in China, and there's lots of info on YouTube about how the paddies are laid out. That might also capture the rain and allow for some good drainage on higher ground. When we do get a lot of rain, my clay soil turns into the sludge you mention. I dig trenches that collect and redirect the rain and ground water, leaving the soil on either side quite workable. Maybe a series of trenches leading to a rice paddy would give you the best of both growing situations?

    Another way to try to control ground water is planting water-hungry trees. My neighbor has too many springs on his property, literally to the point where the water is running down the hill all the time. He's planted trees at half spacing in the worst places. Trees that would work for your winters, create a wind break, and also be coppiced down eventually for firewood for you or to sell? :)

    Our summers are foggy, so much so that it *rains* fog. That's how the large redwood trees survive here, they "harvest" the fog. We don't get rain for much of the year, but the moisture from the fog affects everything, plants, light levels, mold in houses, rust, it's always an issue. When the fog is in the temps average 55F, in the winter and even in mid summer.
     
  8. chook-in-eire

    chook-in-eire Junior Member

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    Ireland is full of Paddies. But not of the rice kind. ;) The furthest north in Europe rice (as in Oryza sativa) can be grown is Northern Italy/Southern France, more than 1000 km south of here. But Northern American wild rice, a completely unrelated species, may be possible and I'm looking into it, as I was saying above. It would be just for fun since it would need a large area to really serve as a staple crop. Might be catch22 though - it might need much more winter cold than we get.

    :y:
    We've done that alright. The first thing we did, back in the 90s, was to plant hundreds of willows on the boundaries for wind shelter/sun traps, browse (goats), bee forage, firewood, crafts. A couple winters ago we started coppicing, doing sections every year and it is already contributing a nice bit of firewood. Also in the "pumping" category and suited to our soils/climate are birch, sycamore, horse chestnut, alder, ash, alder buckthorn, elder, Sorbaria and guelder rose, all of which we have planted in broad mixed shelterbelts and other places on the land where appropriate. All of them also have other uses, e.g. berries for wild birds, chickens or us, bee forage, goat browse, and/or coppice fuelwood etc. They do help dry up the land, but with the amount of rain we are getting, over the last few years in particular, there's only so much they can achieve, especially in the dormant season. We've had more than an inch of rain per week on average since the start of the year on top of already totally saturated land.

    Thankfully the last 2 days have been dry with a drying wind and a spring-like feel. Crocus are in flower, the first daffodils are not far off, my garlic is up a couple inches, and I sowed some corn salad and radishes in the polytunnel, took some cuttings of currants, Josta, and gooseberries. Things are looking up. :)

    Wow. Sounds familiar alright. I guess most foreigners associate California with eternal sunshine and warmth :blush:
    I spent a couple summer weeks in coastal Oregon and Washington (Seattle area) in the late 80s and thought it was pure bliss. Must have been lucky not to catch a foggy period.

    chook
     
  9. sweetpea

    sweetpea Junior Member

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    Thank heaven for the cheery daffodils. I love this poem by Wordsworth:

    Daffodils

    I wandered lonely as a cloud
    That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
    When all at once I saw a crowd,
    A host, of golden daffodils;
    Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
    Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

    Continuous as the stars that shine
    And twinkle on the milky way,
    They stretched in never-ending line
    Along the margin of a bay:
    Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
    Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

    The waves beside them danced; but they
    Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
    A poet could not but be gay,
    In such a jocund company:
    I gazed--and gazed--but little thought
    What wealth the show to me had brought:

    For oft, when on my couch I lie
    In vacant or in pensive mood,
    They flash upon that inward eye
    Which is the bliss of solitude;
    And then my heart with pleasure fills,
    And dances with the daffodils.





    William Wordsworth
     
  10. sweetpea

    sweetpea Junior Member

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    chook -Sounds like you are well underway with your system! Are you cooking with the buckthorn fruit? Mud around all the time is tough. It makes boots heavier, tools heavier, gets all over things, trying to go in and out of sheds and the house is twice the work, it's colder when things are wet, and you are getting more than your share of all that extra effort! Psychologically it's tough, too! Glad to hear the daffodils are on their way. Mine are starting in, I use them around perennials to keep the gophers away, so I've got hundreds of them.



    Not sure if you want any more greenhouses, but I have several of the rebar hoop houses (I couldn't grow tomatoes if I didn't have the heat of a greenhouse), and they are not expensive, do really well in the wind, and can be added onto easily if you want to make them bigger. They are really long pieces of rebar 6.5 meters approx, covered with small white PVC pipe and stuck into the ground in a hoop shape. There's a few more pieces attached horizontally to stabilize the whole thing.

    https://www.northerngreenhouse.com/ideas/gallery/custrebar.htm

    Would you say you have a short growing season in the summer?

    ----

    Do you have a pond? There's another thread here on aquaponics/hydroponics

    ---

    The crops that do really well here are brussels sprouts, rhubarb and blackberries that like the cool marine temps and low light levels of fog, and a type of strawberry that "does well at the coast" (that crucial phrase!)

    This is a nursery I use a lot because they are in similar conditions, and they might be a good reference for you to look up some things:

    https://www.raintreenursery.com

    Although I am jealous that I cannot have access to the UK version of Thompson Morgan, so often I've wanted to try things that can't be shipped here.

    -----

    Now you've got me thinking about grains in difficult situations. I just read about in Iceland barley grows well. I love barley in soups and stews, and it stores well. Yes, wild rice is not really rice, but it is great. My mom has a famous turkey stuffing with wild rice.

    California is warm, except on the coast. There is a mountain range that runs the length of the state right on the coast, and the ocean side of those mountains is where the foggy, cool summers are. Inland from that it's all warm. The center of the state is the 7th largest agricultural producing area in the World, not just the US, the Central Valley, where it gets very hot, and they can start 80-day tomatoes at the end of summer!

    :)
     
  11. sweetpea

    sweetpea Junior Member

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    synergy, where are you? Yes, the latitudes make a difference. I am not able to plant seeds directly at all, mostly because of mice and birds, but also the tricky conditions. But transplants do really well here, and if they are a good size before going in, nothing bothers them, which is a relief for me. Plus I can see if the seeds are viable within a week or two and whether I need to start more.

    Fungal diseases, those are tough, but that's where Permaculture has really helped me. I mix things up now, vegetables, flowers and herbs are all together, so lettuce or chard or spinach are never any closer than 18" or half a meter, and there is very little insect damage. The ones that are together, volunteers or a couple of seeds that sprouted together, always have more damage. So intensive planting doesn't work for me. There's lots of air flow.

    I have used a baking soda spray in the past, a couple of teaspoons in a kitchen-sized sprayer with a couple drops of cooking oil, sprayed on the leaves in anticipation of problems, not after they've happened.

    And I think that lots and lots of compost, literally berms of it with layers of rotted straw and mowed weeds really help the plant immune systems.

    And I get seeds through the mail, not the local places, and they all have descriptions like "does well in cool summers" "does well in all conditions" "prefers cooler temperatures". And it's hopeless to grow heirlooms here, they are for the hotter regions.
     
  12. Synergy

    Synergy Junior Member

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    I am on the 49th parallel 5 miles inland off the Pacific . I think we have challenges growing here but we certainly are blessed with lots of water and I would rather have that than adapt to live without it so I am going to keep on working at it .
     
  13. Synergy

    Synergy Junior Member

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    Thank you Chook for the suggestions of shrubs and small trees that might aid in medicinal honey production and add diversity to my shelterbelt and thank you Sweetpea for sharing your baking soda spray strategy .

    I think sometimes I am going to have both my faith and patience tested .
    It seems like a lot of work that results in failures as part of my learning curve .
     
  14. chook-in-eire

    chook-in-eire Junior Member

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    Sweetpea, thanks for your thoughts and for the poem. My heart too fills with pleasure as the first daffodils open. Soul food! I just planted another 200. They should have gone in in the autumn but .... (fill in four letter word starting with r). Same thing happened last year - I planted 250 or so in early February and the first ones were in flower by the end of March. :) This year many of them went around fruit trees, the rest on the south side of a long E-W shelterbelt I planted in 2000 in a windswept wet field. (There are some photos from 2000 + 2012 here: https://permacultureglobal.com/posts/2380). The trees and shrubs are well established now and the soil underneath them is very nice, humus-rich and fluffy which suits the daffodils. They are mostly for us and the bees but I also hope - once they have grown into nice big clumps, helped along with some N-rich chicken poop - to sell some bunches through my egg honorbox 'stall'.

    re hoop-houses: We have two, they are called polytunnels here, short for polythene covered tunnels. I'm dreaming of a very large glass greenhouse 8) I don't know what I would do without them. Like in your place, they are essential for starting plants and for tomatoes. Also for pumpkins and sweetcorn which I don't want to go without. They just don't get enough heat outdoors.

    re pond: Not yet. ;) I'm planning on digging a small one wrapping around the E and S of my second polytunnel to reflect light into it, for wildlife and for growing highbush blueberries and some other bits and pieces on the berm created with the dug out peat, plus perhaps wild rice if I can get my hands on some seed. This is on fen peat where the groundwater level is never far from the surface, so no liner will be needed.

    re seeds: Luckily we have the Irish Seedsavers Association here, so Irish-grown heirlooms and well-adapted seeds, potatoes and fruit trees are available. I also buy from Salt Spring Seeds in BC (strangely they can ship to the EU but not the US) and occasionally from Germany. But I have had the reverse problem to yours, with US companies not shipping to the EU. I'm too always on the look-out for "will do well in cool summers" :D

    You asked
    We have a strange combination of a very long grass-growing season (c. Feb-Nov) which is also great for hardy veg like cabbages, and a relatively short frost-free season (late May or early June to late September) which limits tender crops and can wipe out fruit blossom.

    Coming back to the theme of perennials: I just found (why did it take me so long :think:) that mints (Mentha sp.) do very well on fen peat, so I will try out a rake of different species and cultivars this year to see which ones do best here. Not exactly a staple crop but they should delight us, the bees and other insects, and could also be propagated and added to the honor box. I already have a little assortment, including the very pretty 'Chocolate mint' and have ordered Lime, Lemon, Orange, Strawberry, Thai, Morrocan, Bowles Apple, Mojito, English Green... The names alone make my mouth water. Mint sauce is a favourite here to go with lamb. And mint tea in different flavours is nice too of course.
     
  15. chook-in-eire

    chook-in-eire Junior Member

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    Actually, I forgot one: Chilean myrtle, aptly named Luma apiculata (syn. Myrtus luma). "Its fruit is appreciated in Chile and Argentina and its flowers are important for honey production. The Chilean Myrtle has medicinal uses for the Mapuche people. It is also kept as bonsai and cultivated in gardens for the contrast of the glossy foliage and slender red stems. It has become naturalised in parts of Ireland and western Great Britain and it has been planted in Spain.
    Grows along water currents in the Valdivian temperate rain forests in Chile; (Irish nursery says:Needs a mild climate to thrive. Grows well near the coast if sheltered from cold winds. Any reasonably fertile, well drained soil in sun or light shade)"

    If it naturalized in Ireland it should grow in coastal BC I think.

    I think we all do at times. But isn't it great that we can help each other out here? 20 years ago that would have been impossible without the internet. And thanks to PRI, Geoff's "dogged persistence" and Craig's virtual wizardry we have this great forum and the Worldwide Network. :y:
    You can do it!
     
  16. Pakanohida

    Pakanohida Junior Member

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    Like nature, the path to success is rarely straight my friends. :)
     
  17. Dzionik

    Dzionik Junior Member

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    Zizania can be found in health food stores, if not processed it can germinate. Try it..
     
  18. wynot

    wynot Junior Member

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    I got wild rice from here: https://www.habitatnow.com/store/shop/shop.php?pn_selected_category=19
     
  19. wynot

    wynot Junior Member

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    Seemed that it was time to resurrect the thread.

    We worked like crazy people this summer. We only had 5 weeks from leaving one country and leaving to start new positions in another country. We cleared the remainder of the garden space, dug drainage ditches/swales/berms, put up deer proof fence around the lot, planted 70 trees, transplanted native nettles, doubled the potato bin size, put in an asparagus bin, ripped down the old 6' chicken wire fence around the small existing orchard, ripped up the 3 layers of black plastic that had been there for some years before we bought the place, seeded in clover, planted apples, plums, pears, medlar, aronia,mountain ash, mulberry, black hawthorn, siberian pea, blackberries, blueberries, currants, honey berries, logan berries, black elder, pears, hazel nuts, service berry, rosa rugosa, cranberry, ramps, garlic, broadcast a variety of perennial vegetables, broadcast clover in an effort to out compete the existing grass that grows to 8 ft., dug up a lot of the grass sod and used it to hugelculture the remaining spruce and ceder stumps. We call it "stumpkulture". . . yes, you heard it here first. I didn't want to toss all that lovely root mass, soil and worms out of the garden, so I started mounding it up around the stumps. The stumpkultures are 2-4 ft. high and will provide good drainage sites for future plantings. We had a lot of carrots left from our bulk order that had green spouts, so I inter-planted them on one of the berms with the clover I had seeded in. The aronia we planted last year had exploded and was putting up many shoots.

    Some potatoes we had planted three years ago and did not harvest as an experiment continued to come back. Next year I will dig them up and put them in a better location. The horseradish is doing okay. The sunchokes didn't make it. We will try again till we get that right.

    The spring and summer was unusually dry and warm. In the 5 weeks we were there the skiff only had to be bailed out once. The summer run of salmon was dismal with only 12,000 returning. We only needed a few for our smoked salmon habit, and they were easily caught.

    Taking down the remaining spruce and cedar in the "garden" had the noticeable effect of making it much warmer than the water side of the house. Apparently the smaller opening in the forest made by the previous owners was not sufficiently large to really warm up. It will be interesting to see the effect on the existing apple and cherry trees. The trees had flowered well and had a lot of fruit. The improved drainage, improved air flow and warmer environment should only help.

    Our pet deer, Lucy, did get in one night before the permanent gate was up. She pushed by the temporary plastic sheeting I had put in place and helped herself to some of the apple, pear and plum leaves. Hopefully they recover.

    Our worries about the 7.5 earthquake in January were groundless. The RMH showed no ill effects, and none of the jarred food had fallen off the shelves. The one item in the building supply shipment needed to finish the RMH was missing, so the plaster coat will have to wait for next year.
     

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