Next to our patio we have a fairly large landscape area and it was made up of ornamental plants – penstemon, daylilies, lavender, ornamental grasses and wild lilac. While it was blooming it was gorgeous, but that was just a short period of time. Since I’m a landscape design consultant, I am always specifying ornamental plants so it was kind of a default landscape for me.
We also have a few trees – olives, apples, oranges, pomegranates and quince – and two raised herb boxes. The herbs in the boxes have been obliterated by the turkeys, so the boxes pretty much sit empty now. Since we freed up space in our vegetable beds when we decided to go with potato boxes we moved the herbs into vegetable garden. Bonus is that the turkeys can’t eat them – except they jumped the fence and ate all our chives. We’ll have to fix that.
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| Still working on it – the grasses and boxes still need to be removed. |
We’ve decided to pull everything out but the trees. If it’s not a food source for us or our animals we’ve decided it’s gotta go. The cost of alfalfa right now is astronomical at $25/bale and of very poor quality. While we can’t grow all of their food, we can at least offset some of the cost. Our old landscape area is going to become our livestock feed area.
At first I felt guilty for pulling all the ornamentals because the bees like to use it for forage, however, the alfalfa we plan on growing also flowers and bees absolutely love it. Along with the alfalfa we’re going to also grow orchard grass. I’m also going to save a block and plant it with Sonora Wheat for ourselves.
Unfortunately we’re going to have to fence it somehow to keep the turkeys and dogs out.
