Africanaussie

Living on the edge of the Daintree forest I can see firsthand how forests are such an awesome self-sustaining culture.  The leaves and fruit drop on the ground and breakdown to form a wonderful thick rich humus. It makes sense to try to replicate that system in the area of our gardens where we grow food.  That is where the idea of food forests in permaculture was born. I like trees that just give a little filtered light because the fact is that sometimes I still do need to have some sunshine. Living in the tropics, full sun is just too much for most plants.  I find that I am continually cutting branches back to let light in or planting new shoots to create more shade in another area.  Those branches that I cut back are returned to the floor of the food forest, either as green mulch or into the compost and added later.  I am going to focus in the next few posts on each of the main trees I have as the upper layer in my food forest. A while back I planted a mori...

As I was doing my update on my in ground worm buckets last week I began to mull over how my gardening has changed since I started blogging.... Worms ;  I had never even heard of worm composting when I first started gardening.  In fact I thought they were talking about earthworms.  I didnt have room for a worm bin, so discounted the idea of having compost worms in my small garden.  Then I read about worm tubes, but wanted to be able to harvest the castings, so with a little bit of inspiration from here and there my worm buckets were born. worm buckets Permaculture :  This is something that still does elude me a little.  I have such a small garden that I really only have zone 1/2 or 1.  Permaculture can spill out into other areas though and so I see those principles popping up in different areas of my life.  Nice to know that we dont have to own a huge farm to become permaculturists. Food forest :  I have lately been seeing more and m...

Everywhere I look I see food forests being referred to as the way to go growing food in a small area.  I often have to put up a shade cloth to protect the delicate greens like lettuce.  I have toyed with the idea of planting a dwarf avocado, and growing lettuces and greens in the shade of the tree instead of putting up a shade cloth.  A couple of weeks ago I saw a grafted avocado which the market seller assured me was not going to grow too big for my little yard.  In a leap of faith I purchased it, pushing aside the memory of the 40ft tree that was growing in my back yard in Africa.  This weekend I added yet another shade cloth.  It is so hot and dry and the shade cloth helps to keep the plants cooler and they dont dry out as quickly. I had to prune back the long branches of the barbadoes cherry so that they didnt touch the shade cloth.  I have been mulching with my own compost instead of buying mulch, but at this rate if it doesnt rain soon I ...