10 January 2012

swale update

I've just finished another "chop and drop on the swales" as well as having planted lots more ground cover.  So we now have the main trees as: macadamia nut, avocado, pecan nut, black sapote (chocolate pudding fruit), jaboticaba, peanut butter tree, custard apple, lemonade, pomegranate, Tahitian lime, malabar chestnut, finger lime, lemon, orange, tangelo, fig, guava, mango, mandarin and tropical apple.  There are still a few more I'd like to plant, but its a feast waiting to happen as it is.

Then in terms of ground cover, we have the current summer green manure of Japanese millet and mung bean, as well as comfrey, sweet potato, pumpkin and mint.  Then for bushes we have pepino, edible hybiscus and pigeon pea.  There's lots more to do in terms of ground cover as there are plenty of weeds to suppress, but as many of them are also nitrogen fixers, I'm trying to cut myself some slack there.  We are still watering the slope by hand as the irrigation is only arriving at the end of the week and we'll install it over the weekend.  What a relief when that goes in!  I feel like I've dislocated a should carting those buckets up and down.  So here are some recent pics, but you'll have to look hard to see the ground covers....


2 comments:

  1. Wow what a lot of work you've done!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Its been a labour of love (and I've now got the muscles in my arms to prove it). Next steps are to join up the swales and make it a forest

    ReplyDelete