Permaculture Apprentice: Creating A Food Forest Step By Step Guide
My Smart Garden: Creating A Food Forest - AU
Shrub layer:
Tree Lucerne (Tagasaste)
Acacia Cognata (cousin It)
wormwood,
southernwood,
rosemary,
lavender,
hyssop,
lemon verbena,
citronella,
scented geraniums,
tansy and
other shrub sized daisies and
mountain marigold
ABC Fact Sheet: planning your foodforest
I have a LOT of trees. And not much space. And I feel like any design that I undertake will be half-assed at best.
I went through the trees and am wondering if I should plant the citrus (lemon, kaffir lime, kumquat) right up against the fence. Put the pomegranate in with the fig on the triangle garden.
Part of the problem is that I have so many trees that are listed as 'delicate' and 'don't like cold winds" which I'm thinking, right in the middle of winter, is a pretty tricky thing.
The current count:
3 citrus (lemon, k lime, kumquat)
1 acerola cherry
2 macadamia
1 pomegranate (to go with the fig, I think)
2 avocados (grafted)
1 avocado (from seed)
1 chocolate pudding tree (sapote?)
1 almond/peach (from seed)
1 elder tree
I have a loquat, but I'm thinking of not planting it anymore. There used to be a loquat at the corner of the next street, but they chopped it down and have planted a nice, sedate hedge, probably of lilly pillies. At least that's one thing that I won't have to plant around here. Besides, loquat are kind of monstrous, and I'd rather a lychee tree.
There's root systems to consider. How tall they're going to grow. Shade considerations. And nutrient requirements.
The almond/peach has a deep root system. The citrus, avos, and elder have shallow systems.
There's also the issue of there being a stormwater pipe that runs parallel to the street across our property. You can tell where it is because it leaks a little - the grass over that pipe grows more thickly - it was much more noticeable during the dry summer. I can't plant anything with deep roots close to that or they'll just take it over and then the council will have to come in and dig up the space. So, nope.
Citrus like a lot of feeding. So do Avos. Pomegranates and figs survive just about anywhere, but would probably produce best in hotter drier conditions. Acerola cherry likes acidic soil (like blueberries), and macadamias have developed in poor soil and dry conditions. (I'm thinking about on the council verge.)
3 citrus up against the fence
1 acerola cherry with bluebs underneath
2 macadamia on the council verge
1 pomegranate in the triangle orchard with the fic
2 avocados (grafted)
1 avocado (from seed)
1 chocolate pudding tree (sapote?)
1 almond/peach planted at the end of the row
1 elder tree
Also, I tink I need more shrubs and bushes. Chickpeas? I have pigeon pea seeds. Also some herbs that smell nice and attract bees. I have flower seeds - sweet peas and suchlike, but those are annuals. I want some perennials.
Current chook tractor location is the Crepe-Apricot bed:
All that leaf litter I'll leave to sit for a few weeks more and then plant it out. Planting out" for this bed requires planting more seeds of broccoli, mini cabbages, caulis, silverbeet, and anything else I can persuade to grow in there.
Onions, carrots, and parsnips are being grown in very fine soil. Radishes and beetroot and garlic have also been sown in a raised garden bed I put over the chook tractor bed base. I forgot to take a picture of it, though, but the radishes and garlic have both sprouted, although the carrots and parsnips aren't showing yet. Hopefully hopefully...
The azolla is growing great guns, and has been excellent for feeding to the chooks, making compost, and keeping mosquitoes from breeding in the water.
At the height of summer:
And now (after several 'harvests' for composts and chook food) it's dying down in autumn (as azolla does):
The stuff grows back so fast I can't stop it. And I haven't had trouble with mosquitoes since the end of February.
ASPARAGUS!
I can't tell you how excited I am about the asparagus this year! I mean, it's long since been exhausted, and definitely needs further mulching, and pretty soon, too, I think - before we start getting frosts. Which we're hovering on the edge of right now.
Avo-Shed bed - has been growing tomatoes all summer, eggplants and sunflowers a little, and pumpkins/curcubits NOT AT ALL.
The chickens are going on that bed next, and will probably be there until August.
I managed to grow a whole slew of papaya seedlings:
Gave a bunch away, then a whole heap of them got waterlogged and about half died. I have maybe four or five left and I don't know how well they'll do. They'll be going into the banana circle...if I can get them to keep growing!
Speaking of the banana circle, there's a lot to go into and around it: bananas, turmeric, ginger, galangal, taro, mango, paw paw, pineapple, comfrey, lemongrass...
Don't even talk to me about the 'food forest'.
I also considered the best location for sweet peas and have decided that it would be best utilised beneath the front window, where we have been trying to grow raspberries (they burn in summer) and where the rosebush has been doing utterly splendidly. They should be fine there up until spring, at which point, they might burn some...
I really need to take to that rosebush with a chainsaw, because I don't see how else I'm going to get it properly cut back. Plus, I think the trunk has some kind of scale on it.
I do need somewhere in the back to put clumps of flowers - at this stage, the best option would appear to be in front of the apricot, or else running alongside the bathtub gardens. I wonder if I could get poppies to grow?
Flowers for Spring
Poppies, wildflowers, etc. in one of the square cement pots.
Tulips in the green pot on the front porch.
More bulbs the square cement pot by the back door.
So many thing to do; so little time...
"Woodchips" are not the chipped wood pieces that I assume they are.
"Woodchips" as described by the guy on Back to Eden are actually composted material comprised of both chipped wood logs and leafy mulch.
So I piled the woodchips up in a windrow by the fence, unfortunately no chance to add water or coffee grounds... I think I'll probably end up having to add them in compost tea over the coming weeks
Contemplating compost: maybe I should turn the compost bays tomorrow?
Growing potatoes and improving the soil
- autumn leaves and coffee grounds (sprinkled) about 6 inches
- plant the potatoes in a hole in the leaves/grounds surrounded by some handfuls of vermicompost with worms
- cover up, sprinkle coffee grounds, cover with more leaves/grounds, water
- when potatoes grow up about 6-12 inches above the soil, mulch again with leaves/grounds
I need a bed in which to put the potatoes; I don't have one. Either need to make something (metal rebar stakes and low wire edges?) or else buy/swap a garden bed...
Hm. What if I levered the two pallets apart and used the wood in those? Dig the posts in, put down lots of newspaper and shredded paper in the base to block off the weeds, then start layering the leaves and the coffee grounds...
But at $130 AUD, the practical side of me says: you could do this with a worm farm box in your garden. Just drill a few extra holes in the sides of the box and sink it into a garden bed and it'll do the same thing, only less slickly. And you'd have to make your own cover, but that's not so hard, I think.
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I just bought another HenSafe door for the triangle coop which will be the house for the girls for a portion of the next month. The intention is to put them in the front garden and just leave them there day and night, with the netting fencing to keep them in.
Compost 1 (backyard, apricot-avo bed) seems rather hot - it's got a big mix of stuff: lettuce leaves, autumn leaves, chook poop, coffee grounds, woodchips. It's pretty much steaming. I'm debating whether I turn it or leave it to just collapse over time.
Compost 2 (front yard, next to driveway) is pretty hot - this is mostly chip/leafmulch and used coffee grounds.
Compost 3 (front chookyard, in small black bin) isn't heating up at all - I don't think that the bin is big enough to hold the heat together. It's been well urine-watered, though.
Compost Bay 1 (behind shed, close to wall) is settling down, I think. It got made about 3 weeks ago and I covered it up and haven't really looked at it. I think it's just active, but not really burning hot.
Compost Bay 2 (behind shed) is pretty hot beneath the surface. That's a mix of grass clippings, woodchips, and I think some green wastes. It only got filled up with woodmulch on Monday, and that's pretty hot.
still to do
fence windrow
- use mattock to dig out a trench about 1m away from the fence (basically break the grass line)
- line space between fence and trench with wet newspaper, then woodchips on top as high as it will go (use cardboard to keep from tumbling onto lawn?)
- add manures/green wastes
- cover with woodchips
banana circle
- use mattock to dig out a circle for the bananas, heap up the soil in a semicircle, with an open U facing upwards
- need to decide location: south of path, or in the middle of the yard?
- also to plant: paw paw, ginger, galangal, turmeric, qld arrowroot, mango (?), comfrey, lemongrass
backyard tree mulches
- need to consider what has priority: banana circle or backyard mulches?
Very little can be done about government policy destroying the world - it seems we're in for a close one. And if a close one fails, then I'm looking at survival for me and my community. Which means building that community.
What I can do apart from appealing to my LNP member of Parliament is keep growing my garden. This week I'm planning one metre plots over the winter. I'll probably be planting them in the next week too. I'm using one magic Square grow your own food on one square metre by Lolo who Bane who be in South Australia, so it's written by an Australian for Australian gardens. And I have all the seeds necessary for the coming season. I just need to work out where I'm growing everything.
eta: two weeks later
I just received a 4 m cubed pile of woodchips on the front lawn. The guy said it was 'leafmulch' but it's actually 'chipmulch' with very little leaves. Someone's already come by and taken a bite of it, I can see the furrows where they've scraped it up.
So, the next problem is what to do with 4 cubic m of woodchips, and I am reading up like crazy. There's only so many compost piles you can make with woodchips, which aren't apparently a particularly good bacterial compost anyway - they work better fungally, because fungi do a better job of breaking down high-lignin/high-tannin materials.
There's a whole thread on this at Permies.com, and additionally a movie of nearly 2 hours Back To Eden, which should be interesting because I think that it was made and produced by Christians.
Also very much worth looking into: the work of a guy by the name of Jean Pain who not only made woodchip heaps, but also heated water in them and all kinds of other things! And now I'm trying to work out where I could build this large a compost heap, with which to take showers in! (Actually, more effective for us in the moment would probably be heating the house in winter by running an air pipe through the heap to gain heat, then sending the output into a high vent in the house which would then heat the room, sinking to the floor as it cooled and pulling more warm air into the place. It's certainly a thought!
One place where I should definitely heap up those leaves and woodchips is the passionfruit bed. At least a couple of wheelbarrows - maybe a few more. So long as the chooks don't get out, we should be okay. A pity I can't run the water from the laundry out to it. I mean, we probably could, but I don't have the piping just yet...
I've planted out the Plum-Stone bed at ground level, and the Apple-Crepe bed using a metal frame half-filled with half-mulched woodchips from last time, and half-filled with free soil collected from the artwork Absorption by Asad Raza.
This week, I'll be planting out the front vegie bed
Things To Do During The upcoming Permabee
Food Forest along front fence
Citrus, Macadamias, Avocados, and others.
Banana circle
May need to make one of the composts in the middle of this.
Laundry greywater?
Need to talk with the sister about this; whether she's willing to have the option of using more natural products for washing things, and then passing the water out to the garden.
