A few surprises

In my last post I was talking about my cardamon and how much I love it.  I had heard, probably from the wonderful Jerry Coleby Williams, that we are too far south here in Brissie for the cardamon to ever flower and give us seeds.  But guess what??

I couldn't believe it this morning when I was giving the hedge a bit of water.  It was tucked away and the cardamon is now head height so it would have been easy to miss.  Well, I may not get seeds still, but I'm pretty happy just to see the flower.

Slow growing trees

I had some friends over yesterday that I knew when I was in Sydney.  They had been looking at my posts on facebook and when they were in Brisbane, wanted to come out and see what I've been up to.  As we walked around the property, we chatted about what I was trying to do and how much our food bill had gone down already.  When we got to the food forest, more for the mulberries than for anything else, my friend said "so you're here for the long haul." She was right.  The food that will be available to us in five years will be very different to what we've got now.  In the short term, its mostly the veggie patch that is feeding us, with a top up from the two citrus trees and the two mango trees that were already here when we arrived two and a half years ago.  Since then, we've put in well over a hundred trees and shrubs, none of which (except the mulberries) have given us anything to eat....yet.  But in five years, things will be completely different. We'll be able to add avocados, pecan nuts, macadamia nuts, peaches, pears, apricots, nectarine, plums, jack fruit, chocolate pudding fruit, jaboticaba, apples, chestnuts, figs and loads more citrus. But you do have to be patient.  I've also been patiently working on layering my food forest with other edible shrubs and ground covers which are faster to yield, as well as herbs and flowering plants to attract the bees.  So here are a few pics to show how things are progressing

The nursery

For my birthday last month, my sister-in-law and mother-in-law gave me a box of goodies from Green Harvest (the perfect present for me).  In the box where many packets of warm season seeds and sub-tropical seeds, so I ramped up the nursery and added a few more seeds that I'd saved from last season and got to it.  Three or four weeks later, its looking fabulous

Spring in the patch

I was made redundant a few weeks ago and so that has meant more time in the garden, which I'm really enjoying.  And now that we are in the dry season, its a good thing too, as the patch needs plenty of water.  Our soil is on the clay side of things and when it dries out, its not pretty.  But if you keep the water up to it, its beautiful.  So I've just come back up to the house after doing just that.  And here's how it looks

A big weekend - part 2

So here are the results of the second day of back breaking work

A big weekend

We have a section of the food forest  that the swales didn't extend to, as there was a large old wattle that needed to be taken down before it fell on someone.  So Shaun took care of it, cut up most of the trunk and branches but we didn't get around to taking them all away before summer and the dreaded plague - triffid grass.  Apparently the CSIRO did some research on a variety of grass for stock feed.  As it turns out, its good for cattle but dangerous for horses.  Not only does it grow head height in a matter of week, it also grows with a 20 cm matt of roots that chocks out everything else. And our property is covered with the stuff.  We have struggled to remove it in our veggie patch area and in the end need a rotary hoe to remove it.  But some still finds its way in.  On the swales, we put in a green manure cover crop and then put down sugar cane mulch.  After a great first season of nitrogen fixing plants, the grass started to come back.  In hind sight, I should have got on top of it them.  Live and learn.  The area that we hadn't touched is not only covered in this grass, it also was now thick with lantana.  But given that its still winter, when the grass is dry and the weather conducive to hard labour, we decided to give it a crack.  Two days and two ute loads of lantana later, here's how its looking

End of the season

It feels like spring is already here.  With the shortest day long past and the weather here in Queensland starting to really warm up, all our plants are springing and sprouting.  We've had 24 degree days all week and its predicted to be 26 degrees tomorrow.  Wouldn't you be fooled? So I took a little walk around to show you whats blooming.
This is the first time I've grown loofas and I've been waiting patiently as they've grown and finally dried out.  So I peeled one back to take this pick.  And I thought they were sponges and grew in the ocean!

Fence it Baby!

We've been talking for a long time about fencing off the top 1.5 acres above and to the side of the house.  Its quite steep and really just suited for livestock who don't mind a bit of exercise.  Goats would love it but I don't think we'd love dragging goats out of our veggie patch once they'd climbed over the new fence, so we've decided to go for sheep instead.  There are at least three breeds that molt instead of needing to be shorn and so we'll be opting for one of those.  We'll have a small flock that will be for meat.  But before we get to all of that, there was some fencing to do.  So we called a few of our friends from the local growers gang and got to it.  There was lots of measuring, digging, eating and pounding and at the end of it all, we christened our fire pit and had a BBQ with all the families to thank them for their hard work.  It will take a few more days like this one to get it done, but the guys did an amazing job and all the big poles are in and the gate is hung.  Here's how it went. A HUGE thanks to Adrian, Jason and John!

Feeding the soul

The parts so the garden that don't feed the body feed the soul.  Having said that, I probably don't give as much attention to these corners as I could.  But they are certainly coming along.  My dear friend Linda let me rummage through her rain forest garden with her to harvest a massive car load of bromeliads for my own little tropical haven.  They've made themselves at home and have been flowering, much to my delight.

Another garden altogether

I recently went to Singapore to speak at the global Impact Investment Forum and added a day to the trip to go and see the amazing Gardens by the Bay.  Its relatively new and so will only get better with time, but I have to say I couldn't have been more impressed.  There are a series of gardens that represent all the cultures that make up Singapore, including the cultural, culinary and spiritual uses for all sorts of plants in each culture, and then other gardens that teach children about the wide diversity in nature.  These gardens surround a cluster of 15 story high man-made trees that have been planted out with bromeliads and the like.  They capture their own solar energy an water and at night, light up like a scene from Avatar.  Then there are two domes, one that recreates the climates of the world and a second that recreates a mountain forest.  The contents of these domes are indescribable, so best I share the images now and stop gushing....