Phew! We just finished planting 75 bare root strawberry plants (of three different varieties) and 25, year-old asparagus crowns. That’s a lot of tiny holes to dig and fill. It took me an entire week of quiet times (that’s what we call naptime at our house), plus a little extra beyond that. It’s a good thing the kids like to help and don’t mind playing a bit while they wait for me to dig. I guess to some people, 100 plantings already sounds like a lot—so maybe it’s just me who is surprised.
What I think took more time than the actual planting of said bare-root plants was digging and relocating the beautiful clumps of sod that were in the way and threatened to encroach on the berries and asparagus, taking their nutrients. Some people might just compost it, but there are places we wish there was more grass and, though we know it will come eventually, we transplanted our saved sod there. One handy thing about planting in the springtime rain is that you don’t have to carry around a 5 gallon bucket of water to each thing you plant; I started to do that on day one of planting, then the rains came and although the mud is slippery and messy—it helped save my lower back for future plantings.
You might wonder why we got so many plants (and that’s just one batch of things I’ve ordered this year; we’ve still got plenty coming: goji berries, rosehips, raspberries and black raspberries, Siberian Pea Shrubs—on top of transplants and annuals we are starting in the greenhouse). The simple answer is this: we are building our food forest and garden, simultaneously. While 75 strawberries are LOTS of strawberries, they might not all make it (spoiler alert: I didn’t follow the “rules”). Not to mention that by getting a start on all these permaculture (i.e., permanent) plantings now, in just a couple years we’ll need to spend much less time at the grocery store where we spend far too much money on organic berries that have traveled across thousands of miles to reach us out of season.
We planted the berries all over the property because we like to bend the “rules” of planting. Our purpose is not solely for our enjoyment of the fruits—though those are a great byproduct—we are using them as groundcover along the edge of the woods, under the trees in our orchard, and in the “flower beds” in the front of our house. As a groundcover, they will cover up Mother Nature who is quite modest (thank you Justin Rhodes for that analogy). They’ll keep weeds at bay once they’re established. They’ll help contribute to a complex ecosystem in the soil, consisting of microbes, mycorrhizae, bugs and other things we might not have named yet. We can’t forget their contribution to the pollinators, too! I’m sure I’m missing some things here, but the point is they are multi-purpose and we are excited about that. The same thing goes for the asparagus; they’ll produce for 30 or more years. What an investment! See, the “experts” tell you to plant both of these plants in full sun, a certain distance from each other, and give lots of other rules for optimal berry/spear production; but we have to remember that strawberries and asparagus are found in the wild, too, often in wooded situations. When we aren’t focused solely on “purpose” these plants have, we can deviate from those expert’s rules and make something really beautiful happen. Hooray for fruit and vegetable anarchy!