Paul and Hannah return!

So much has changed since we were last here with Julian at Imago Forest, firstly, everything seems to have grown and grown!
The fruit trees located throughout the Mandala garden are looking taller and wider, they’ll soon be providing more shade and some delicious fruit!
We’ve also been enjoying lots of healthy (and very tasty) leafy greens including Silverbeet, Tatsoi, Kale and Endive which are all popping up around the garden. It’s also nice to see tall bright-yellow sunflowers poking their heads up in the sunshine, the chooks are loving their seeds.
The next major change is the soil, there’s been a big improvement (it’s softer, moist and darker in colour), which makes bed preparation a lot easier. I’m sure the Italian Garlic we planted yesterday will do very well in such healthy conditions.
We were last here with Julian back in September/October 2007 and between then and now we’ve been busy WWOOFing up the coast towards Queensland and living with friends for 14 months down in Melbourne. Although we’re only here for a very short time (5 days), it’s wonderful to return to such positive sights and sounds around the farm.
Some of the other things we’ve noticed include:
• the dam is full to overflowing
• beds all look so much healthier after so much rain recently.
• Julian showed us the garlic he produced recently

Horn Manure

It's that wonderful time of year again, when the earth is cooling down and the sun is getting lower in the sky. It's a time to rejuvenate the earth after the intense spring and summer growing season.
At Imago Forest we have been putting lime, certified organic fertiliser and biodynamic horn manure concentrate out each spring and autumn to improve the soil.
The amounts of lime and fertiliser have been carefully calculated to bring the soil up to horticultural standard over a period of around 3-4 years. This makes sure that we don't "shock" the soil and natural processes have a chance to increase in sync with our activities.
The horn manure we put out is a special biodynamic preparation that is used much like a homeopathic remedy to bolster the overall strength and energy.
This process has been seeing great results and each season we notice the beds become richer and easier to work.

Scrumpers Delight

Years ago, I started to notice just how many fruit trees there are overhanging the streets of Sydney. I started marking them down so that each year I could go back eat some fruit and keep the streets clean at the same time!
Recently I realised that Google Maps could turn this into a joint community project, where anybody anywhere could place fruit trees onto the same map and allow anybody to find food in their area.
This is an untapped resource going to waste... by making the trees easily found we can help utilise the abundance that already exists in the community.
If you are interested, have a look at http://imagoforest.com.au/rs_ev.html

From just a seed...

We've previously written about how the mandala garden makes some things easy. In this case we've got a picture of giant sunflowers that have gone completely to seed. Not only were they beautiful to look at, but now they will provide some welcome variety in the chooks diet. One thing that we didn't quite get around to was to also grow beans up the sunflower stalks as a natural bean pole.
Similarly, here is a picture of a carrot gone to seed. Carrots have been a bit recalcitrant until lately... i think the soil must finally be at a point to support carrots as some of them have been magnificent. What has been interesting to learn is just how huge the flower and resulting seed heads are from a single carrot. I'll be expecting many many carrots next year from this one plant!

Beautiful Borders

Although it seems like an impossible task to keep the wallabies out of the garden, we're on a long-term mission to make it harder for them to see and get in. The concept is to plant a tall screen plant around the outside of the mandala. In the picture you can see baby arrowroot that have been propagated up from just three plants two years ago. In the second picture you can see that we have also planted comfrey. When large, both of these can be controlled by slashing down and will make great additions to a compost heap as well as providing an attractive screen.

Celebrity Citrus

I've been very pleased wandering around the mandala lately to see that the citrus have really got a good flush of growth on them and some are even beginning to bear fruit after only two years in the ground.
Up at Mt Royal it can get pretty cold in winter, and the young citrus weren't faring very well. I thought that it was possible they may not make it through. However after a couple of years of settling in, they seem to be about to thrive and should weather the cold much more easily.

Besides being tasty and able to store longer than stone fruit, the citrus are evergreen and so are located in the southern most parts of the mandala. This prevents them from shading out the garden in winter.