Hugelkultur update

Remember the berry project from last spring?  Here they are on May 1!

A year later and the currants are flowering!

 One of the two surviving gooseberry plants has a few flowers, too.

 

One of the gooseberries has filled out nicely. 

 

Only 2 of 8 gooseberries survived...but they did arrive from Burgess dead, after all.  All the replacement plants they sent were also obviously DOA.  They sent more recently, my third shipment, and about half looked completely dead and two of the maybe-alive ones were broken off just above the roots.  Order anywhere else.  One plant marked as a gooseberry was actually a grape, too.  Sheesh!  The aggravation and time lost was definitely not worth the perceived savings.

 

The currants are doing better, although the biggest one is still smaller than the gooseberries.  The bricks in the photos are to keep the hens from digging them up....they are obsessed with any area of disturbed soil.  The plan is to eventually woodchip this area, in the spirit of the film, Back to Eden.  More on this coming up soon!