Adore working the permaculture, love the learning, love the funky new plants that I am learning and adding.. my personal favorite that I am growing this year is mouse melon, its acting as a climbing vine in my seven layers, its a annual but a easy seed saver!

http://www.motherearthnews.com/real-food/mouse-melons.aspx#axzz32AjmQ0gV

I would love to say that we were taking it easy on the growing this year but point in fact we are going totally the other way.. its going to be a wild year in the gardens

It seems counter intuitive but I have planted a few fruit trees in the garden. Its to provide shade during the peak dry times and draw up deep moisture. I'll plant grapes along the alder encroachment to climb and fight the alders while providing food that keeps coming back. The goal of the year is to keep cutting the fields and dump it all on the garden. The buggies are doing all the tilling for us under the hay while keeping every thing live in the soil from being killed by the sun. As a bonus, we wont have the garden grow back into field if we leave it. A few weeds still get through but diversity can be beneficial and it points out which places don't have enough mulch cover. The down side is slugs like it so I now have to attract things that like eating slugs.