blueshoes
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Post by blueshoes on Feb 23, 2017 21:45:18 GMT 10
paranoia What are the seed heads on the left in that last photo of the fig tree? ... If you've been eating solarium nigrum that's reassuring to me that they really are OK. ... Are you planning on adding other varieties to the mix? Cape gooseberries (physalis) or borage would probably hold their own well and they aren't prickly unlike finger limes. ... I might be a lot jealous of your sunflowers! They're beautiful, I haven't managed to grow some yet. We got our first passion fruits off our vine last week! Oldest child and I have been collecting Kale seed, and the silverbeet is nearly dried out enough to collect. The "Giant Red Mustard" i tried from Diggers Club was too spicy and none of us liked it so I fed it to the chooks. No point growing it given we'd all rather eat grass... Our dwarf granny smith tree gave us a single apple this year, but at least we got to eat it - last year's got nicked off the tree while we were away. The dwarf Pink Lady tree has about 10 apples on it - I'm looking forward to when it grows a bit (it's only about 1m tall). We have two raised garden beds. They're not big - i think it worked out to two lots of just under 3sqm. They have spinach, kale (because they're easy and we eat it!), cherry tomatoes, pumpkin, cucumber, corn and a lonely onion that was growing in the cupboard so i thought I'd give it a chance. There's also suspected corn plants coming up in our lawn after i threw wild bird seed on it in spring.. apparently pigeons don't like cornseed.
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paranoia
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Post by paranoia on Feb 23, 2017 22:18:49 GMT 10
Seed heads are from the rainbow chard. I'm always adding new species and varieties into the mix to observe what happens.
Another angle... jacaranda tree on the left, rosemary on the right, mustard greens... there are also 3 varieties of rose in this photo but all bush type and no flowers at the moment so difficult to see. There is also a weeping cherry, poplar, crab apple, ornamental pear trees in the garden for the leaf drop trying to get the organic matter content up over the next few years. This is like my sandbox I play and play. Most important thing to do is observe interactions between the different plants, try to work out what is going on. I think there's a lot to be discovered and I can spend hours out there with the kids trying to work out it all out.
I'm VERY passionate about sunflowers, such a pretty flower with many utilities good for the bees and the chooks. Also good for humans but people tend to not like eating the shells and its impractical to peel them. If you sprout them beforehand you can raise the protein even higher but I tend to just throw the heads I'm not keeping for seeds to the chooks. I used to grow large single headed varieties (Giant Russian and similar) but I found they always took too many resources and needed to be babied. They would also snap if wind hit at the wrong time. My current variety is a mix of multi-headed alternative colour flowers. I just select the ones that are particularly pretty to keep for seed and it has been working out well.
^^ much better habit for the wind and you get a longer season out of them.
Here are a few pics I took today;
Remind me before the next meet up and I'll bring you some seeds!
Another of my favourite edible flowers is nasturtium but if you didn't like the mustard I'd be hesitant to recommend it, similar in flavour to rocket but you can eat leaves, flowers and seeds!
I'm hesitant with dwarf trees as they have a shorter life and would usually recommend people get a larger tree and aggressively prune it. You'll get a bigger crop sooner (so long as you're pruning correctly) and it'll be more forgiving.
I do have a more normal garden bed over the other side of the house with zucchinis, tomatoes, capsicums ect... but that's mostly to keep the wife happy.
Jealous of your passionfruits, I neglect my plants too much to keep them... I've tried a few times and they end up dead. Are they grafted or from seed??
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shinester
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Post by shinester on Feb 24, 2017 4:31:16 GMT 10
That's quite interesting paranoia. I very much like the way it looks too, it looks more like an out of control flower garden than a large food source. Would you care to do a post with some details, I'm quite fascinated in what you've got going on there.
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paranoia
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Post by paranoia on Feb 24, 2017 12:17:55 GMT 10
That's quite interesting paranoia. I very much like the way it looks too, it looks more like an out of control flower garden than a large food source. Would you care to do a post with some details, I'm quite fascinated in what you've got going on there. I've started a thread and explained a couple of the concepts here;
ausprep.com/thread/4238/experimental-permaculture-patch
Thanks for the thread idea mate. 
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shinester
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Post by shinester on Feb 24, 2017 13:00:04 GMT 10
No thank you, I'm wanting to get on that bandwagon myself, as I've been exploring how to feed yourself via crops lately [again], quantifying it with what the returns are and have tons of spreadsheet tabulated data [of course] already. I can tell you approximate yields/costs per square meter for many crops for instance lol. After a conversation with gasman about feeding pigs via pasture, which is in essence the same as human food, I saw how that might provide another pathway to food production. I would imagine that the yields would be down doing so, though the labor costs would also be down. Your insights and experience will be most useful. I'm looking to turn the small amount of backyard I have that doesn't get nearly enough sun into something similar.
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blueshoes
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Post by blueshoes on Feb 25, 2017 13:38:52 GMT 10
Thanks paranoia for starting the thread on your yard, I really appreciate the insights into the reasoning behind what (at first glance) looks like a mess of weeds and uneven ground. Makes a lot more sense when you explain it and now I totally want to try it, even though I probably will have to wait years to have enough land. Good call shinesterThose sunflowers really are something. Our passionfruit (its grafted) is growing over a trellis between two large fruit trees (winter orange and lemon) and gets water runoff from the lawn in summer, but it did drop its fruit a little early I think - they were a bit on the small side. I took a bunch of photos but its been weeks since i turned the computer on - when I next get it out I will post some. |
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shinester
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Post by shinester on Feb 25, 2017 16:49:01 GMT 10
I rather like that it looks like a mess, stealthier. I suppose if you combined that with uncommon plants, natives only the very knowledgeable would know about the supermarket of food in the ground.
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paranoia
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Post by paranoia on Feb 25, 2017 17:30:36 GMT 10
I used to be familiar with similar charts (area/yield) but they're all based on commercial spacing and monoculture. A big part of building a food forest is realising that stacking multiple plants in the same area your yield per crop goes down but total yield goes up. Tricks like running grapes up a mulberry tree rather than a trellis changes what you can grow in a small area. I'm also of the belief that a shady area whilst producing less total crops does so at a much more efficient rate of resource use due to less evaporation and need for extreme nutrient levels. Find suitable crops and you'll have an even more hands off garden than one in full sun! As for it being stealthy and looking like a mess of weeds 'at first glance', in my experience it looks that way to most people even at second, third and forth look too. People are so conditioned to see neat, weeded raised beds that even with recognisable species in there you almost need to put peoples faces in it before they realise the food in front of their eyes. I'm always looking for new weird food sources though... can't beat 'edible weeds' How have you found the passionfruit graft? How much maintenance have you had to do and do you find many suckers? Any benching or issues around the graft point? I'm yet to find a grafted passionfruit I was happy with as they tend to use highly vigorous rootstocks so they can claim fast growth but they always seem to revert... If you've got the original sticker I'd be curious as to the name of the rootstock also if its on there??? Look forward to the pictures too. |
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Post by bushranger on Feb 27, 2017 15:45:48 GMT 10
I pulled up all my tomatoes today, I still have a potted lemon tree growing, corn, broccoli has self sown, some kind of squash, butternut, zucchini, sweet potato, sunflowers, mizuna, basil, warrigal greens, strawberry, blueberry, rocket, mustard greens, broccoli raab, mint, and potted parsley has self sown.
Going to start more broccoli next week and buy garlic bulbs.
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blueshoes
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Post by blueshoes on Mar 10, 2017 21:03:54 GMT 10
Here's the passionfruit growing over a trellis - not big, but enough to start producing a few. After saying it had been fine I went and looked closely and over summer it had shot up two or three long shoots from the rootstock, you can probably see them if you look closely. I chopped them off. The tag's still choking the vine, i better chop it off tomorrow! It's a "nelly kelly" from Bunnings.   You can see the netted chook yard in the background (We got sick of the chooks leaving all the bits of food they didn't like for the pigeons) and on the right you can barely see the edge of a raised garden bed. The only capsicum I've managed to grow so far: by keeping it in the little pot...  |
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remnantprep
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Post by remnantprep on Mar 11, 2017 9:12:44 GMT 10
Sweet potatoes are doing well, we have a rockmelon and picked some grapes and brussel sprouts (last of) but we have held off on replanting as the owner wants to sell this house so we are waiting to see what happens.
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bce1
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Post by bce1 on Mar 12, 2017 14:29:31 GMT 10
Have just finished 24 1l jars coarse apple sauce, 24 peaches, 14 tomatoes and 12 piston soup - using tomatos, red peppers corn and zucchini. Trying potatoes and carrots in sawdust this year to see how long we can keep them - a cool / dry place didn't work very well last year - both rotted over 8-10cweeks. Also did 24 500ml jars of kimchi and 48 500ml jars of sauerkraut yesterday. Still have the plums, figs and quinces to do - plus some more apples!!!! Busy weekend!! Very satisfying though. I think looking at productivity that we are about 35-40% self sufficient for food. Should be 100% for root vegetable if we can get them to keep over winter. To get to a 100% overall is beyond us from a time or necessity perspective but think we probably could if we needed to - but it would be hell.
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shinester
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Post by shinester on Mar 12, 2017 15:18:47 GMT 10
Nice one BCE. I did 18 jars of pumpkin soup yesterday. Going to do another 30 in the next couple of days.
If you work, it sure would be. The numbers aren't too horrid, in peak season if you're only growing veggies [most KJ for any given space] then in the peak season you're planting about 10sqm a day. THEN, you have to water, weed, plow, preserve the produce, cook, eat of a similar sized area per day. I can see the great value of tractors [and fuel] and water pumps in labor saving! There's some people on here who live that lifestyle to an extent, doing it all of a sudden will be very painful, though I've grown plenty of veggie patches, doing a new one every day to my mind is doable, just mind numbing.
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Post by doomsdayprepper4570 on Mar 14, 2017 6:34:11 GMT 10
Been so hot this summer, we have had to cut back production as pumpkin vines got cooked in the heat. We have articokes (israli), peanuts, grapes, okra, pineapples, citrus, macadamias, pecans, nectarines, guavas, ambrollia, basil, dragon fruit, apple cactus, lolly berries, shallots, lemon grass, monsterio,
bananas, etc etc.
Takes a bit of water and care.
Speaking of pumpkins wife and I were shopping yesterday and a large pumpkin was $24 in the local shop!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Are they kidding?
$10 plus for a white cabbage as well.
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Post by Peter on Mar 14, 2017 9:23:03 GMT 10
Damn that's expensive. Are there other local alternatives? A few weeks back one greengrocer had quarters of watermelon for $6, while the IGA a couple doors down - but still in the same shopping centre - had whole big watermelons for $2 each. The crazy thing is that people were still buying the $6 quarters. Maybe they couldn't deal with the whole one, maybe they thought the greengrocer's product was better quality.
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paranoia
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Post by paranoia on Mar 14, 2017 12:00:05 GMT 10
Damn that's expensive. Are there other local alternatives? A few weeks back one greengrocer had quarters of watermelon for $6, while the IGA a couple doors down - but still in the same shopping centre - had whole big watermelons for $2 each. The crazy thing is that people were still buying the $6 quarters. Maybe they couldn't deal with the whole one, maybe they thought the greengrocer's product was better quality.
Whilst this is a fairly extreme example I'll admit to doing the same thing, not just with watermelon but all produce. IGA isn't as bad as coles/woollies but I don't buy fresh produce from the supermarkets as a rule. Their purchasing strategies force a style of farming I disagree with so I don't support it. They cannot by their very nature purchase from small local suppliers and you end up with large businesses at all links in the chain.
I know my greengrocer very well. Just one town over he knows all my children by name and when I ask where the produce has come from he can tell me the farm it came from and the name of the farmer. To me, this is worth paying a lot more for.
It also comes down to long term food security, large single crop farms managed with huge machines is a very fragile system. Many smaller producers with short travel distance and minimal logistics creates resilient communities.
This morning I went down to my local community garden and picked up a couple bags of apples, pears, zucchinis, potatoes, tomatoes & capsicums for a $6 donation. This is on public land and staffed completely by volunteers, I occasionally help out but not as much as I should... Programs such as this help spread the knowledge and show the value of local food production to the community. Another big step in building resiliency.
This post got a lot longer than I anticipated but I'll summarise it as; The extra you pay for locally produced food can be seen as insurance against community collapse. The more reliant we are on big supermarkets and mega farms the harder the fall will be if things ever go bad.
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Post by SA Hunter on Apr 26, 2017 23:13:59 GMT 10
Did a big cleanout of the summer crops - except for the chilli & capsicum bushes - they will stay for another 2-3 years.
Added more compost and manure.........
Planted Carrots, Spring Onions, Peas, Broad beans, Radish, Kale, Silver Beet, Turnips & Swedes.
Also having a crack at growing tomatoes in the hot house - got Siberian Tomatoes - cold resistant - planted the seeds and will see how they go.
Going to add more compost and manure on the remainder of my small patch in the morning.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Apr 28, 2017 10:45:06 GMT 10
Hi all, Down here in Vic with winter approaching the garden is slowing down, even though my zucchinis keeps flowering I don't think I be will picking any more this year.
The Passion fruit, pumpkin, water melon and strawberry guava are all producing well. Celery & garlic seem to be good all year growers here for for me. I put in some carrot and parsnip seed a few weeks ago but I'm not seeing any results so might be too late.
Besides the veggies I have a lemon, bay, two naval orange, two apple trees, peach, nectarine, almond, two blue berries, currents, red seedless grapes, white seedless grapes, rosemary, tyne, strawberries and five varieties of mint.
I have never listed everything I grow, so I'm surprised at the length of this list. The scary bit is I would need to do about twenty times more to even start to come close to feeding myself.
happy prepping
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gasman
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Post by gasman on Apr 28, 2017 11:49:30 GMT 10
Hi all, Down here in Vic with winter approaching the garden is slowing down, even though my zucchinis keeps flowering I don't think I be will picking any more this year. The Passion fruit, pumpkin, water melon and strawberry guava are all producing well. Celery & garlic seem to be good all year growers here for for me. I put in some carrot and parsnip seed a few weeks ago but I'm not seeing any results so might be too late. Besides the veggies I have a lemon, bay, two naval orange, two apple trees, peach, nectarine, almond, two blue berries, currents, red seedless grapes, white seedless grapes, rosemary, tyne, strawberries and five varieties of mint. I have never listed everything I grow, so I'm surprised at the length of this list. The scary bit is I would need to do about twenty times more to even start to come close to feeding myself. happy prepping We also grow a lot of produce but are nowhere near self sufficient A difficult time consuming goal At least we have the infrastructure and expertise to ramp up production post shtf |
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Apr 29, 2017 15:42:23 GMT 10
Hi all
gasman, just reading your post along with the others struck a chord with me, it is only through buying local and growing some of our own food, and being able to ramp up production that we as consumers have any power over the big food chain suppliers and growers. We all know the price of produce is always set to what the market will bear unless they are trying to improve market share.
If we allow ourselves to fall into the trap of buying cheap produce from big food producers, once that purchase starts to turn into a dependency you are at their mercy. I would hate to put a dollar value on my water melons I have grown this years, because it is way cheaper to buy them at Coles, but coles prices only reflect the short term price, the real price of food dependency if we loose our own abilities to grow produce does make my water melons look like good value.
I guess what I'm saying is there are hidden values in this gardening which is not obvious on paper.
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