From the Field: Forest Garden "Greenhouse" Season Extension

Inside the unheated high tunnel at Fields Without Fences, OCTOBER 2020

From the Field: Forest Garden “Greenhouse” Season Extension

Inside the unheated high tunnel at Fields Without Fences for a look at perennial seasonal extension

* Our “From the Field” Series features projects, production, and reflections derived from our work at home on our two farm sites in near Frenchtown, New Jersey.*

When given the opportunity to freely flourish, plants will spread, and clump, and climb, and vine, and reach, and grow upward and outward, and down and deep - inhabiting all available space and strata! Forest gardening allows for this diverse expression by design, combining plants in ways that support one another, and mimic nature’s tendency to fill all niches and cover all exposed ground.

Above is a late season snap shot of our unheated high tunnel in late October 2020, which is planted with perennial species that benefit from the heat gain and wind protection that the house provides in our zone 6. Figs, trifoliate orange, and passionflower grow into the vertical space, while a diverse understory of primarily mediterranean herbs clump and crawl across the understory (rosemary, sage, oregano, thyme, lavender, hyssop, lemon verbena).

There is also a population of self seeding annuals (kale, mustard, lettuce, leeks, cilantro) that grow and flourish from late fall to early spring, when the warm season perennials are in dormancy. Several successions of greens had flourished and flowered by the time this early spring photo was taken in early April 2021.

The annuals have been self seeding since 2013. The perennials were first planted in 2014. We occasionally edit, add and subtract, but otherwise mostly let things be in here. So much elegance in art of non-doing because life is naturally oriented toward diverse abundance (may that be true for us all!).

Inside the unheated high tunnel at Fields Without Fences, April 2021