MyGardenPal Blog

You can now click the link on the left of this page under bookmarks to view all the plants we have purposefully introduced to our farm.
All of their planned purposes are described when you click in the details of each plant.
I am currently working on My Garden Pal to be able to search for plants by the permaculture uses but it’s a few months away as yet.

With the earth surgery finished the real work has just begun.   over the Christmas/New Year period it was quite wet here in South East Queensland, and our property received its fair share of rainfall.  As such it was important to get leguminous cover crops planted on the new swales as soon as possible to prevent erosion and start the process of generating usable soil.

I had cow pea on order for a few weeks to use for this, but being the end of an old year and start of a new, most businesses were still in go slow mode.  So I only just got the cowpea last week.  I didn’t want to wait though so I threw a bag of parrot feed over the swales which had a mix of all sorts of things in there such as sun flower seeds, millet, corn and other grains.  After a few days things were sprouting and already the swales have a green tinge to them.  Although, it has now been a while since rain and the swale mounds have gone back to being as concrete as the ground they were dug from.

For mulch I sourced four Lucerne ’rounds’.  These are those big round hay bails you see if ever you drive inland.  I am told they are the equivalent of about 14 of the normal lucerne ‘squares’ but it is much more economical to buy them this way.  Cost was $55 delivered where the cheapest square bales I could find were about $10/bail.  Three of them were enough to cover all the swales with one left for mulching around trees when we start planting.  Of course one can never get enough organic material so I emailed a bunch of local lawn mower guys asking them if they would dump their clippings here rather than pay to take them to the dump.  So far no response, but I’ll keep trying to find someone willing.

The (innoculated) cowpea, buckwheat (oh, yea, I also through down some millet, just because I had it) were all just scattered sown.  Literally just grabbing a handful of seed from the bucket and throwing it out like feeding the chooks.  We then raked this in a little and through the lucerne over it.  I also through down a few bags of gypsum which acts to de-flocculate clay (sold at Bunnings as Clay Breaker) but not sure on how that will go.  I guess time will tell.

A few days on I have picked up a heap of different plants from Justin at Urban Edens on the Gold Coast.  We spent last couple of days getting these into the ground.  At this point I need to mention that my profession is in IT, so I’m not really used to digging holes dawn to dusk – any volunteers to give me a massage?

Although it is quite exhausting (and I still ache all over!) I am getting a great sense of contentment from this.  I feel much more connected to my property now, and nature in general.

Some of the things I have been planting are:

• Cassava
• Sweet potato
• Lemon grass
• Vietiver grass
• Galangal
• Ginger
• Cana edulis

I’ve also potted HUNDREDS of nitrogen fixing and other trees that I am growing from seed.  These include:

• Agati
• Tree Lucerne
• Cassia multijuga
• Albizia lebbek
• Tamarindus indica
• Moringa (miracle tree!)
• and plenty of othes

I’ll give a full species list soon as a downloadable attachment rather than fill these posts with long lists of plants.  Suffice to say there are lots of seedlings growing and lots more holes to be dug once they are ready to be transplanted.

Below is a mud map of our property and a very rough idea of where things are being planted.  You should be able to click on it to get a larger view.

Note that we have donated the top half of the property to ‘Land for Wildlife’, so it will remain native bush for now.

Mud map of property