Permaculture in action 3

If you have viewed the garden lately you would see an area with what looks like unmaintained grass amongst the newly planted trees.  To us this is a beautiful thing.  It is the rye that we planted last fall as groundcover.  We thought the geese got most of it but I guess  there was enough to share.  The rye was cut long enough to still provide some ground cover but all that was cut is now mulch which is decomposing to make our soil.  As you may recall this area has very poor soil, so we are building it up.  We covered the area with cardboard which will decompose, slashed the ground cover for mulch, and our plantings will further improve the soil by adding nitrogen or sending a taproot deep into the ground.