Forest & Kitchen Garden
Annual Vegetables
Beside the house, there is a little kitchen garden that provides us with tomatoes, peppers, squash and much more. The previous owners had already used this little patch to grow their vegetables. Recently, we added two raised beds in the forest garden.
A circle of growth
Forest Gardens are a system of growing fruits, vegetables and mushrooms that emulate young-growth forests. It takes time, but once established they produce without much outside input. At Sota la Quinta we have planted cherries, peaches, plums, pears, apples, chestnuts, sea buckthorns, autumn olives, gojis, gooseberries, blueberries, Sichuan pepper, artichoke, cardoon, asparagus, chocolate vine, Italian alder, Judas trees and many more. Some of them are for their crop only (most fruit trees), some are functional to provide nitrogen and minerals to others (alders and comfrey), some do both (sea buckthorn for example). The forest garden is currently in its infancy and trees and shrubs are still young and bare few fruits. We are still planting and spreading out herbaceous perennials and climbers, but the harvest is growing more plentiful with each season.