Gardens
Gardening on the farm includes:
(1) Vegetable and Herb Garden
(2) Fruit Orchard
(3) Eatable Forest of Exotic Fruit and Bush Tucker
(4) Flower Gardens
Each year I've continued to expand the range and variety of food produced as various plants mature and produce fruit, berries, nuts or other eatable components and now have over 48 different trees growing which is added to fortnightly.
Self taught through the school of hard knocks; "plant it, if it dies try something else, if it lives plant more". I have gotten a bit smarter over time on what will grow by asking locals, going on long walks, visiting local agricultural shows and attending local garage sales which have all became valuable sources of information. I think the best lesson I'v learned was to stop listening to TV Gardners and their crap, they build and plant stuff to look good for 30 seconds of TV then it all falls down, rusts or rots away and dies as they choose ideas and plants the family is incapable of looking after.
Before this farm it would be true to say I knew sweet bugger all about growing my own food. I lived in the city, ate out at restaurants and cafes almost every meal and cared more for the presentation of a dish to make a good social media photo than the origin and taste of the food. After RSI in both elbows, a trip to the hospital with a torn stomach, paralysis ticks needing surgery, twisted ankles, snakes, and devastation from marauding cattle, I can say I did it my way and made something out of nothing.
Vegetable Garden; I built the vegetable garden from a weed infected paddock. I first cleared the paddock with my kids and I taking time walking through the bush looking for rocks and the other following on the old secondhand ride on mower levelling it 32 inches wide at a time. Once mown I sprayed the area I wanted to turn into the vegetable garden with weed killer and then started digging with a shovel and crow bar to get all the rocks. Yep it was all hand dug no modern machinery here.
When I think back now doing it digging all by hand was a good way to understand the soil as it changes over the length of the garden from black crumbly soil at the top end to the red volcanic soil 30 meters away. The top end gets dry quickly and the bottom end gets very clay bound and tough for plants to penetrate. Luckily the local refuse station gives away free recycled compost every few months. Once the chickens, cattle, horses and alpacas arrived I also had a decent supply of manure to help improve the soil. It's a crappy job, garden the pun, walking around picking up after animals but as a parent that had raised teenagers I figured I already had the necessary skills.
Fruit Orchard; It's taken 5 years to really start producing some fruit but I've still a long way to go yet. Fruit trees take 2 or 3 years to get going and olives and nut trees even longer. Within the first 5 years I managed managed to get a supply of lemons, quince, figs, tamarillos, passionfruit, limes, pears, peaches, mulberries and mandarines. Also growing well and yet to fruit are oranges, olives, lychees, feijoa, avocados, macadamia and pecan nuts. The most important lessons I've learned in growing fruit and nut trees is patience and observation. Regularly observe the trees for the first sign of pests and address the issues before any spread. Fruit and nut trees also can take years to get established and bear fruit - don't dig them out before that in frustration.
Eatable Forest; Canistel, Acerola, Davidson's Plum, Soursop, Guava, Jaboticaba, Carob, Black Apple, Finger Lime, Black and White Sapote, Lemon, Cinnamon and Aniseed Mertyle, Bunya Nut, Coffee, Salt Bush, Pepper Bush, Paw Paw, Star Anise, Winter Apple, Malay Apple, and more. As I cleared the over grown areas of the farm which had become infested with noxious weeds like lantana, devil's fig, wild tobacco I fenced off about 1 acre to re-plant as an eatable forest which would also act as a filter for water runoff into the dam. This area now has walkways through the trees and shrubs which will provide many flavoursome supplements which are not readily available in supermarkets.
Flower Gardens. Now I'd be the first to admit I'm not a Gardner, well the sort of Gardner that marvels in the flowers I can grow. I'm more a photographer who is looking for subjects and grows flowers. I do like flowers and the more I now grow the more I want to grow. Each morning I take my dogs and pet alpaca for a walk around the farm and I admit, seeing which flowers have come out that morning is a pleasure of the journey. I guess the strategy with flower gardens, or in my case, integrated flower gardens within a farm, is to get an all round mix that has flowers in the garden all year round. From things like lavender that will flower through winter, to bulbs that will flower in late spring and natives that will flower with the summer wet season.
Planning. I didn't start with any plan, at first it was - open patch of soil plant something, anything. Then my plan B was look really clever - grow as many different things as possible even if you don't eat them to impress visitors. I finally smartened up, looked at what I purchased most from the shops and the ingredients from my favourite recipes and started growing them to save money. Here are my tips on planning a garden by cuisine and recipe, press on this link if you would like to watch my video; Planing your garden BIG or small
Integration. Traditionally with an orchard you would have it fenced off so alpacas couldn't eat all the new growth or the cattle wouldn't rub them selves on the young trees and break them off but on a small farm you have to learn how to integrated the animals and your fruit trees to get maximin use of all your land. After loosing several trees I quickly invented my own tree guards so the animals could graze among the trees while the orchard grew to maturity. You can watch a video on the tree guards by pressing on this link; Fruit Tree Guards or if you would like to see how to fertilise fruit trees my way then follow this link ; Effectively Fertilizing Trees
Huge Zucchini. I'm a stereotypical male, I don't read instructions because I already know what to do. At first I would just plant anything, if it was in the local nursery then it was growing in my garden. I grew Zucchinis first and didn't realise you had to pick them small like the shops or they just keep growing. So after they got about two wine bottles long I asked my neighbour about them and he laughed. I then traded them all to another neighbour from the Country Women's Association who had a recipe on stuffed Zucchini and I got scones in return.
Cabbage. Like wild fire, the faster they grew the more I put in. The dam things were resistant to pest and they looked fabulous and hearts as big a soccer balls. But I don't eat cabbage, well maybe a little purple cabbage, as my old man would say, "Cabbage - That's pigs food". I had so much cabbage I challenged everyone on social media I knew to come up with a recipe to make it more palatable. I steamed it, boiled it, stewed it, BBQ'd it and ate it raw then finally gave up and fed it to the cows. Lesson learned, be a little more considered what you grow and if you're not going to eat it, don't grow it.
Lost it all - Two years into my adventure I lost my whole vegetable garden. During the second winter which was a long cold one the cattle broke down the fence a devastated the garden, everything was eaten, carrots pulled out of the ground, two meter tall tomato bushes eaten down to sticks in less than three hours. The only thing they didn't eat was the lavender bushes which they delicately walked around. Oh well it was back to the beginning again and the lesson learned was to use a solar electric fence around the garden and not feed the cattle over the garden fence so they got a taste for the delights grown in there.
Carrots - not really my favourite thing to grow, its a bit like the three bears with me except there is no Goldie Locks. They are too big or they are too small or they look deformed. I've worked out the main issue was my garden soil was just too heavy (clay) and they couldn't force their way through. Once I created a specific carrot bed the buggers grew too big and exploded under ground as i wasn't picking them early enough. My carrots growing has become a source of amusement to the bull who watches on as if to say, " ha ha you stuffed it again, give them here I'll eat them for you".
Each year I've continued to expand the range and variety of food produced as various plants mature and produce fruit, berries, nuts or other eatable components and now have over 48 different trees growing which is added to fortnightly.
Before this farm it would be true to say I knew sweet bugger all about growing my own food. I lived in the city, ate out at restaurants and cafes almost every meal and cared more for the presentation of a dish to make a good social media photo than the origin and taste of the food. After RSI in both elbows, a trip to the hospital with a torn stomach, paralysis ticks needing surgery, twisted ankles, snakes, and devastation from marauding cattle, I can say I did it my way and made something out of nothing.
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| August 2013 |
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| May 2019 |
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| Quince |
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| Bunya Nut |
Planning. I didn't start with any plan, at first it was - open patch of soil plant something, anything. Then my plan B was look really clever - grow as many different things as possible even if you don't eat them to impress visitors. I finally smartened up, looked at what I purchased most from the shops and the ingredients from my favourite recipes and started growing them to save money. Here are my tips on planning a garden by cuisine and recipe, press on this link if you would like to watch my video; Planing your garden BIG or small
Integration. Traditionally with an orchard you would have it fenced off so alpacas couldn't eat all the new growth or the cattle wouldn't rub them selves on the young trees and break them off but on a small farm you have to learn how to integrated the animals and your fruit trees to get maximin use of all your land. After loosing several trees I quickly invented my own tree guards so the animals could graze among the trees while the orchard grew to maturity. You can watch a video on the tree guards by pressing on this link; Fruit Tree Guards or if you would like to see how to fertilise fruit trees my way then follow this link ; Effectively Fertilizing Trees
Some Successes and Some Failures
Huge Zucchini. I'm a stereotypical male, I don't read instructions because I already know what to do. At first I would just plant anything, if it was in the local nursery then it was growing in my garden. I grew Zucchinis first and didn't realise you had to pick them small like the shops or they just keep growing. So after they got about two wine bottles long I asked my neighbour about them and he laughed. I then traded them all to another neighbour from the Country Women's Association who had a recipe on stuffed Zucchini and I got scones in return.
Cabbage. Like wild fire, the faster they grew the more I put in. The dam things were resistant to pest and they looked fabulous and hearts as big a soccer balls. But I don't eat cabbage, well maybe a little purple cabbage, as my old man would say, "Cabbage - That's pigs food". I had so much cabbage I challenged everyone on social media I knew to come up with a recipe to make it more palatable. I steamed it, boiled it, stewed it, BBQ'd it and ate it raw then finally gave up and fed it to the cows. Lesson learned, be a little more considered what you grow and if you're not going to eat it, don't grow it.
Lost it all - Two years into my adventure I lost my whole vegetable garden. During the second winter which was a long cold one the cattle broke down the fence a devastated the garden, everything was eaten, carrots pulled out of the ground, two meter tall tomato bushes eaten down to sticks in less than three hours. The only thing they didn't eat was the lavender bushes which they delicately walked around. Oh well it was back to the beginning again and the lesson learned was to use a solar electric fence around the garden and not feed the cattle over the garden fence so they got a taste for the delights grown in there.
Building A Garden Shed. You can find lots of gardening ideas at my Youtube Channel like this one on how to build your own garden shed.
Wow you have been busy. Over the years I’ve had many vege patches in different climates too. Darwin was by far the most challenging, such a short growing season, then competing with parrots and other pests. My corn crop was obliterated in a matter of minutes.
ReplyDeleteBundaberg was the best for veges, but Nelson in NZ wasn’t too bad either. I grew the best grapes and passion fruit in Nelson. It’ll be interesting to see your farm.