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Fernglade Farm – Early Summer (November) 2012 Update (Australia)

Writing the article series about Food Forests has made me aware of how much interest there is in them and how they can vary from region to region, but it also highlighted to me just how difficult it may be for people to actually visit a food forest.

However, thanks to the wonders of the internet and YouTube, people have the opportunity to take a virtual tour of a food forest and see how it progresses over time without leaving their chair!

To this end, I’ll post semi regular updates with video here. The updates will be warts and all, meaning that I’ll discuss the things that are working as well as those that aren’t. It should be an interesting journey and I welcome dialogue, constructive questions and observations about the developing food forest and other activities here.

As a bit of background about the farm: It is located in the cool temperate mountainous region of South Eastern Australia at an altitude of about 700m above sea level. There are over 300 fruit trees within the two food forests. There are also 14 raised garden beds, plus berry beds and herb beds. Apart from the local wildlife which is an integral part of the food forest, I have a dozen chickens which provide eggs and fertiliser.

The fruit trees are split into two food forests which have different shading from the surrounding forest and the land aspect to the sun. This is because the growing seasons here can vary from quite wet to quite dry and you never really know in advance what the growing season will bring. Chaos seems to be the norm and I’ve seen snow, drought, floods and even a tornado. It is a challenging environment!

I hope that you enjoy the series.

3 Comments

  1. Great stuff Chris, nice to see it all growing so well and for keeping everyone updated and inspired.
    Make sure you come and visit me at Mudlark sometime, you are very welcome and so is everyone else for that matter.
    Keep up the great work.

  2. Hi Chris,

    I was wondering, you mentioned that some of your plants were going flowering and if you wanted them to go to seed you would have to transplant them. How come they will not go to seed in the raised beds you have?

    Thanks for the video!

  3. Hi Carolyn,

    Thanks for the lovely offer. Next time I’m in the area, I will drop in (I’ll contact you first though). I hope you get some rain down your way over the next few days too and that all your swales and dams fill to over-flowing. It is still reasonably green here despite the heat (it’s another windy 34 degree day today).

    Hi Alexandra,

    Fair question. I’ve got a lot of space and are working towards spreading the vegetables and herbs through the flower / cottage garden.

    This cottage garden is a little bit harder to access than the raised vegie beds which are just outside the door. I like to keep the raised beds in a state of high productivity, whereas with the cottage garden the plants can establish their own cycles with little work on my part. I should do a video walk through the cottage garden to see what has self-seeded. It is a good back up source of vegetables and herbs and it is a confusing place for insects.

    Regards

    Chris

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