Our first order of perennial plants has arrived for the Tiny Diner. A truck came early this morning and unloaded everything from rhubarb to apple trees to wooly thyme. Over 80 plants wait to get out of their tight plastic pots and into the border spaces around the Diner property. While we are ready to plant them, it took a lot of site work to be ready for these precious plants. Planting is the icing on the back-breaking sweat cake of soil preparation.
As with the farm, we encountered plenty of time-consuming bumps while prepping the spaces for new plants. We had to remove massive amounts of tightly entangled dead juniper roots and non-biodegradable landscape fabric two feet under the surface on the boulevard. We had broken concrete, old wire, and posts to haul away. We had to level the area around the patio, with a slight down slope towards the north to allow for water catchment, We measure and re-measure all the beds and walkways for the annual and perennial beds to allow for proper plant spacing and smooth traffic flows. And lastly, we had to import a soil mix of compost and topsoil for our site to enrich garden beds. It took a couple of weeks to prepare for plants that will take 8 hours but it is one of the most fundamental and often overlooked steps for farming and installing permaculture design.
Now we’ve got a short window to put these plants in their spots. We do not have an alternative protected outdoor space to hold them. In 2-3 days, we will have to plant, water, and mulch all of these plants or we could lose them to drought due to exposure or root-bounded dehydration. Unfortunately, it is extremely hot this time of summer. We will see how it goes.
Categories: Installation
tiny diner farm 