permaculture

Fish-fun-food

Haven't had the heart to do much in the garden in recent weeks - too dispirited by the fact that so many of my plants have been killed off or severely knocked back by the extreme heat, extreme cold or extremely dry conditions. However, last weekend we went out to a property near Braidwood (through a course titled 'Fish-fun-food', organised by the Canberra Institute of Technology), where Paul, the owner, has spent many years trying to establish a sustainable lifestyle. It was an interesting day, although pretty depressing to see how much the land is suffering from the prolonged drought. Best part was the view (shown in the photo below), and it was also good to discuss ideas for growing vegetables - Paul had an ingenious system of a raised garden bed with a moat round it, the idea being that the plants would put down deep roots to get to the water.

Click on image to enlarge photo

Visit to Jackie French

There hasn't been much action on this site recently - with Bruce away for a month, it was all we could do to keep the dogs walked and the chooks fed, so the garden has suffered a bit. However, he's now back, and this weekend we went out to Braidwood to visit Jackie French's garden (at least I did, while Bruce went off to explore Monga National Park). The garden was an inspiration, Jackie has something like 135 varieties of apple, and countless other fruits. She grows the fruit trees close together, to form a grove, which has many advantages: it stops the birds taking most of the fruit (they only get what's growing at the top of the tree), prevents extremes of temperature, reduces fungal infections and deters many pests. The trees certainly seemed to be thriving, and there were masses of avocados, limes, oranges, lemons, kumquats, lily pillies, sapotes and medlars.

The path through the grove of fruit trees:

Click on image to enlarge photo

Jackie's house nestled among the trees - the veggie garden and fruit forest are off to the left:

Click on image to enlarge photo

Permaculture course

Got lots of good ideas for the garden this weekend from attending a permaculture course at the Canberra Institute of Technology. After working from Linda Woodrow's book - The permaculture home garden - for the past 18 months, it was great to talk to some real people for a change! The instructors, Dave and Barbara, had come to the topic from quite different backgrounds (garbage collection and architecture, respectively), and were full of interesting ideas, not just about gardening, but also about whole systems and sustainability. The course was extremely practical, with lots of opportunities to learn from the other participants as well as the instructors. I was pleased to finally understand what swales and mounds are all about, and I’m keen to start building them around the mandala so that it can survive on less water. Now I just have to persuade Bruce to get on his tractor and start shifting earth.

Meanwhile, the area around the pond, where the flowers are entirely self sown (I planted seeds last year, but nothing this year), is looking great ...

Click on photo to enlarge the image