Living Wall - Dense, Diverse and Vibrant

it's been a minute since we've taken a look at our living wall system certainly been a little while since we looked at our friendly chickens - that'll be an update video soon enough I figured after a nice rain last night we have two days in a row with some decent rain so we're getting caught up again on moisture and the living wall is just growing like crazy thick as anything so let's take a look and see how things stand definitely some issues here there but overall it's doing really nicely so just a groan I'll start here with the long view from across the road here's the east side thick enough that you can basically see the route for the house and that's about it and the west side which from this angle has now filled out enough that you can't even see that there's a high tunnel just on the other side they're little little more gaps here there on the west side but overall pretty legit and a little room in the driveway I have to prune every week or so just enough basically I walk out to the point where a normal person in a car or truck would be having to figure out who's coming or going and prune things so that it's safe enough for us to come and go and for visitors to come and go but this has filled out to the point where you're hard-pressed to see a drop of light especially on this side there's enough density and complexity in here now that we're at a stage where I need to start making some decisions around who gets chopped and dropped which is probably for me one of the hardest things to do is set set in motion all these different plants these amazing beautiful plants and we want to keep the diversity because there's resiliency in that but so we need to basically like how do I prune my way through here so I can get in to do some management in there so is it like do I cut some of the hazelnut do I cut some of the sunchokes do I cut these Japanese walnuts that volunteered because some squirrels planted them in are they gonna get too big it's a little hard to say what I tend to do instead for now because these plants don't mind it is basically just push my way in it's not as though this is a zone one garden that we're coming into every day to go and pick lettuce it's just basically managing the interior of a jungle it's pretty special I push my way through the Miscanthus grass past the aronia and the English walnut into the interior we are about twelve feet from the road right here the roads over there you'll be able to see the car go through but this is what the inside of a thriving living wall looks like if mid season and this isn't a cold climate you can see here's the English walnut this will be one of the overstory elements in the long run and so some of the management that has to happen for them is to keep the Miscanthus pruned back it's an amazing mulch plan and I'll cut them flush to ground and lay them down as mulch to support this walnut I'll keep a little eye on the hops and the grapes which the vines are real wild cards and systems like this but they're great mulch too I think once you start thinking of everyone as wonderful biomass and soil building when they're chopped and laid down it takes a little pressure off but you can see everyone's kind of knitting together and this is making more resiliency from moments of extreme heavy wind it's kind of knitting the whole system together you could hear the car but you couldn't see it that's kind of fun there are little rabbits that are starting to live in here now which are completely fine by us they can stay they can raise kids in here there's nothing tender or precious down below in here so if they choose to make this their habitat we're happy to have them voles definitely live in the Duff of the Miscanthus overwinter they actually make these beautiful little nests in between the stalks they weave and shred the leaves and live down in here if they venture into the chicken yard the chickens will eat them to boost for protein but there's enough going on out here that we don't have to worry about who might be coming in here to make a life for themselves you can see their grapes all through this wall and here this is the actual fence for the chicken yard and between the grapes and the hops it gets dense enough that in a little while the wild birds will more likely than not make another round of summer housing and nests inside of this these huge leaves make for really nice roofing material to keep nests protected so they'll find some nooks that are really well knit back in there and make some nests they'll probably August or so there seems to be a moment where when I walk by the fence it feels like the fence is yelling at me the leaves just kind of shake and I'm guessing it's the birds with their kids and get back out to the road might as well grab a snack on that way black currant productive even in the shade that's pretty fun so if I were designing this space for ease of access or for a yupik operation would be a miserable failure but for density you can't beat it prob about 40 different species in there 25 of which could have some catastrophic failure and we'd still have some coverage from the road nature's been very helpful in filling out some of the gaps in here to certainly to your eye this could read as just complete we deenis and that would be a true statement this is an unbearable are lik vipers bug loss sascha added and that worked pretty well for a little while but this is an incredibly tough situation there's a huge amount of road salt and BS coming off of cars that washes out here this is really trashed rough soil it's kind of like there was this grace and that they dumped in and compacted and over the last few years chicory and Queen Anne's lace have shown up both amazing deep taproot adiy compacting plants burdock has shown up he can see it's a good signature the this is second year burdock it's only gotten this tall I think because the soils are so depleted and tight and so here these beautiful flowers with this cargo Oh taking on the gross fumes from the cars and trucks whatever pollutants come off of their wheels and making nectar while they go and D compacting the soil so I think by allowing these plants to be here for a few years going through their life cycles dropping seed leaving their roots to die in the soil it'll soften and condition it to the point where we can have some other more complex diversity in here but for now we're so thrilled that they're willing to be here this is the north east corner of the whole scene on our way over to our neighbors food forest from lawn conversion project and some very serious work that needs to be done for sure we've got now some more tree layers that have been added in there's some walnuts some English walnuts and black walnut a butternut here some Red Bud so basically expanding out this hedgerow and the early succession parts of this wall which are the alders and the willows have now grown so much that two things are happening that need to be put in check number one the alder in particulars is growing incredibly fast that is its nature right it's a very fast early succession tree and so now that we've had some good rains what I need to think about doing is coming through and cutting this back it seems harsh but cutting it right around here right around head height taking all of that green luscious nitrogen-rich material chopping it up with pruners to feed these other layers two things will happen one there'll be a huge nitrogen release that'll feed the sunchokes the English walnuts the red buds the raspberries the mints that are all in here so there'll be a nutrient release there'll be a light release that will help these boost up and then the regrowth from these will fill out where we want the visual and wind barrier left to their own devices what will ultimately happen if you've seen this with privacy plantings before is if they're never pruned they just get taller and taller and taller to the point where there's complete visibility you can see it's starting to happen most of the canopy is way above where we want it so they'll get taller they'll get leaner below and there'll be so much shade that other elements won't be able to thrive so that is a pretty big management project I'll probably document that in a separate video midseason chop and drop but there's mountains of mulch and fertility to be had from pruning these back to release light to other members that are a little bit lower you can see if that would willow and alder and even this poplar were cut back how much more light would come down to this layer which has some new varieties of willow some perennial sunflowers which could certainly use a bit more light and even the Miscanthus so I think would get a little bit stronger there's a gap in here that I think the perennial sunflowers are starting to fill out but more light coming in would really help to boost that element up it's a closed system now there's truly zero reason for me to consider at all bringing in a bale of hay bringing in compost you know fertilizer any of that kind of stuff there's just no point to it no more woodchips all of the nutrient needed to pulse and cycle through the system exists in the plants that are here and that's it's a pretty magical moment from here on out it only gets more intense with that but there is management to be done on this side we're on the west side now we're seeing Colt afoot they showed up on their own they like this cool moist context on the north side of this shrub layer and we added in some fimble berry that's another very shade tolerant spreading low layer and we have Fuki which is very similar to Coldfoot but from Japan instead and they're starting to fill out down in here so the ground cover elements are starting to happen on this side a little bit this side has none of there we go there we go has none of the Miscanthus and so there's little gaps here there but there's a lot more diversity happening and I like that we've got the Willows the curly willow talked about this before some of them have up and died here's one that is just a skeleton but it's acting as a great trellis for schisandra vine which is working its way through and once this schisandra finds its way up onto the hazelnut onto the elderberry that should all fill out pretty nicely so even with some death in this system you can see that gap but it's pretty stimulating for the other members that are in here so again thank goodness for not going for one element there about five different varieties of elderberry that are in here elder seems like a great companion for the hedgerow here it they sucker and spread they are shade enough tolerant that they can handle even when they're in competition for light now here's this big willow happening a morph of fruticosa or the river locusts over here and it's just kind of growing and squeezing its way through figuring out where the light is and by having so many different varieties we have flowering you can see there's still flowers on this one this elder here on the north side is still in flower and some of them are starting to ripen their fruit so they'll be nectar flow for bees for quite a long time which overlaps with fresh fruit and medicine for the birds so there's always value if you're gonna plant elderberry think about at least two varieties maybe try to get cuttings or plants at four or five and let them sucker and spread and you'll have a huge overlap between flower and fruit that you can harvest and that the wild creatures can enjoy that same side of the living wall is just looking at but now looking at it from the south to the north and you can see the high tunnel here question might be well would does it make sense to have so much vegetation around this high tunnel how does it get the light it needs well is just to the south of this wall so it's getting all of the light throughout the day a little bit of shade in the late day but since this is all deciduous cover for the most part once they drop their leaves in the fall this high tunnel gets more than enough light from fall winter and into early spring to be able to grow some winter crops so it's not as though if you have season extension it has to be full bore straight in the Sun in order to work it's kind of like tucked into the jungle but with an opening from above that the Sun can strike most of this not much room between the high tunnel and the wall but again being on the north side I'm happy to have these hazelnuts reaching over they're not blocking any light to crops from the inside but they're also I think helping to keep this side of the high tunnel cool so as it draws air from the outside it's actually cooling down the tunnel during the season it's like a little bit like a shade cloth but a shade cloth that makes fat and protein look at the size of these really nice hazelnut fingers crossed we'll be able to get at least some of the Hazel's from this this year they're a ton all through here and a whole bunch in the chicken yard is a really nice year for hazel production overall we're just so happy with this space these plants and what they're doing for us and with us I'm gonna wrap it up here because we're at nearly 15 minutes walking and looking at a wall of plants but I guess the takeaway that I would want to reiterate and hopefully it came through in a very clear way in the video is that if you're thinking about installing some sort of visual barrier or wildlife corridor or hedgerow windbreak strong recommendation that I would love to offer up is really consider the idea of as much species diversity as possible structural diversity as possible and lean into that density pattern as well if you own pruners or handsaw you can manage and adjust and change as it goes and a lot of these plants can become nutrient to feed other plants and lastly it feels important to remind folks that sure we had a rough ID of what this would look like as far as the plants and the layout when we started at least a rough idea but we've added and subtracted quite a bit over the years and it's an evolving and changing system so if you are thinking about doing it and you're not exactly sure where to begin or you feel like you've got to get it right before you start at least our experience has been take that pressure off yourself and start planting you can always adjust later on and at least the plants get a chance to start so thanks for watching I hope you have solid walls of lush plant life between you and less lovely spaces take care

Channel: EdibleAcres

Views: 18,822

Rating: 4.9755101 out of 5

Keywords: living wall, fedge, permaculture, living privacy, privacy hedge, hedgerow

Id: l-yQoo2EhYc

Length: 16min 24sec (984 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 13 2020