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.

Wallabies revisited

With the ongoing devastation caused by the wallabies, I've put some serious thinking towards the problem... and realised the obvious, which is I need to make inside less attractive, getting in harder and outside more attractive.
So we pulled up the electric mesh fence and mowed the grass under it very short to reduce the amount of grass touching the wires and then put it back up straighter and taller. Just to make sure, I also set up a highly visible two-strand electric fence just in front of the other.
Then to provide more fresh young grass shoots outside the garden I slashed the paddock around the garden.
And finally, on days when i'm in town I leave Perra inside too.

A few days on, the number of wallaby droppings inside appears to have dropped and outside increased. And even better, the silverbeet seems to be growing whole, untouched leaves. Fingers crossed!

Frosty reception

Only a few weeks ago I noticed that it was cooler and now we've had our first frost! I'd better get out there and pick the tomatoes that are left after the wallaby had it's feast!
I put Perra (my dog) to work for the first time in her life last week. While I was in town on Tuesday, she patrolled the inside of the mandala garden, or at least that was what she was meant to be doing. Either way, it seemed her presence helped to keep the wallaby out as it has obviously decided that the electric fence is worth braving for the goodies on the inside.
Today I got out the lawn mower to get the garden in some semblance of order in preparation for the field day in three weekends time. Unfortunately it won't be a scene of abundance following the wallaby, but at least it will be neat.
I hope you've been enjoying the flowers in your box, the picture is of a stunning flower that blossomed in time for me to see it when I got back from my travels.

Passing of seasons

Here I am looking proudly at all my tomato seedlings, thrilled that i've managed to get so many to grow at last, and now the season is over!
I've put as many in as possible, but I know from last year that up here February is the last chance to get them in the ground and have a hope of getting fruit from them before the cold stops them from growing.
Similarly I'll stop putting zucchinis in the ground.
So onto thinking about the winter vegetables... broccoli, onions, garlic, cabbage, turnips and leeks. hmmm, not all my most favourite things to eat, but good sturdy food none the less. And that much tastier than the shop bought ones!
Thankfully, I'll be able to continue with salads, greens and spinach for quite some time. And of course I look forward to pulling beautiful bunches of dutch carrots.
Enjoy the warmth while it's here!

Why Mandalas?

Having decided that I wanted to start a small organic farm, I had to work out how I was going to design it... no straight rows for me!

I'd toyed with ideas of having a large chook pen in the centre of concentric rows of beds. These would be divided into four so that the chickens could have access to each quarter, each season. This seemed interesting, but impractical.

Fortunately I remembered a book, "The Permaculture Home Garden" by Linda Woodrow in which she fully describes a mandala system. Re-reading it I was hooked.

I loved the way she integrated chickens, vegies, fruit, flowers and water into one very efficient and beautiful design.

I thought to myself, if I'm going to spend my days working on a farm, then this is the sort of farm I want to work in.

Besides being full of circles, and therefore interest and mystery, the main feature of the design is that it ensures that the wastes from one area of the garden becomes the food for another part. Not only that, but that they are right next to each other so there isn't much carting around of heavy items.

The other attraction to the design was that in full swing it should be able to feed at least 20 people, all their fruit, veg and eggs for the entire year!

Tremendous transformations

by Hannah Parsons

This week has been amazing…

Suddenly, almost as if by magic, the Mandala has become a mass of green. We’ve seen our first zucchini of the season with their beautiful orange flowers beaming to the sky. Our beans have gone haywire, spiralling skyward up their blue string trellis and popping out little baby beans left right and centre. The potatoes look so happy that they’re almost smiling and the nectarines and other fruits have plumped, reddened and look good enough to eat…I just want to pick them all now!

Sitting out in the garden yesterday I couldn’t believe the change. All the work we’ve been putting in over the last few weeks has really paid off. We’ve all spent so much time weeding then mulching the bare soil, transplanting our lovely little seedlings into beds and watering until it seemed we could water no more! But what’s most amazing to me is that all this prosperity in the garden has suddenly occurred following Julian spreading BD501 (horn silica) and seaweed solution over the mandala. Although I don’t know much about biodynamics, looking down into the garden I can see there is proof behind all the theory.

So with all this success under our belts (fingers crossed!) Julian and I have been out in the garden admiring our work and planning for the coming week. We have plans to plant a huge circle of sunflowers around the mandala which will create a border between the garden and the now flourishing orchard, and also look attractive we hope! With the mandala looking good we have plans to create a big map which can be used for tours of the farm, and also for our own personal record of how things are coming on down there. And in the lovely rain we’ve been getting, and expect to get for a few days (hooray for the vegies!), I have the exciting indoor project of painting signs to be placed on the property to direct our visitors.

I can’t wait!

Watery Work

by Hannah Parsons

This week I return to sunshine at Imago Forest…a little brighter than all the rain of last week. Everyone’s had a relaxing weekend, so we’re ready for an action packed week.

Again work in the Mandala takes up most of our time, and we decide to weed all the beds and thickly mulch around existing plants to stop our soil drying out in the returning heat. Our seedlings have continued to grow in their little trays and we are able to plant some out into a new bed as well as to fill in some gaps in old beds where the lack of rain has stopped seeds from shooting. Having had little success with lettuce due to the heat and lack of water we make a new plan for growing seedlings, omitting lettuce and trying out some more herbs and flowers for in the Mandala.

Our ponds continue to take shape and this week we have three successes so far…we knew we’d get there eventually! We take pleasure in lining, then arranging old pieces of wood and rocks around the edges…we were going for the natural look, but they have ended up looking like something out of one of our English gardening programmes! We’re obviously still very proud indeed and can’t wait for the frogs to make their way over from the dam.

With the Mandala electric fence now around the orchard as well (little wallabies keep nibbling at the grafts!) we give it some attention and plant out some small grafts that have been growing in a pot near the yurt for some time. We carefully dig holes, treat the soil with lime, dolomite and phosphorous and transplant the little babies. After a big drink of water we mulch around each tree to stop evaporation. Good luck little apples and pears!

King Henry VIII, Sun Rah and Pratt

With four of us now working in the garden, we've divvied up the mandalas between us. This means that we take responsibility for our particular beds and chooks. To make it more personal, Hannah Parsons has named her rooster and chooks King Henry VIII and his wives. Hannah Lawrence has named her rooster Sun Rah and the chooks are called The Spooky Kids. While Paul has called his rooster Pratt and the hens Barbarella 1-9.

Following on from last week's success with the hand sprinklers. Two movable micro-jet systems have been set up which allows us to put a decent amount of water onto the vegies, but in a gentle way.
So we're expecting some good growth out of the gardens now that we can keep the water up to the plants and have a system to do it regularly.

Champion chooks keep count

Week two at Imago Forest and I’m really starting to settle in. The chooks are getting used to me and have stopped pecking me quite as much! This week they have laid fantastic amounts of eggs…and I feel quite proud!

Monday we collected Paul from Singleton who is coming to help us on the farm for a few days. We get stuck right in and sow a bed Monday afternoon and I’m pleased to find I remember enough from last week to be able to explain to Paul the reasoning behind the planting patterns we use in the Mandala Garden.

Tuesday the weather is perfect and we plan to plant 36 trees in the newly cleared orchard area. Morning is spent grafting several types of apple tree to root stock…Julian cuts and joins each piece in a clever fashion which will hopefully ensure successful grafting, while Paul and I use grafting tape to bind and label each new tree…Cox’s, James, Sauvages and Esopus etc all heritage varieties. After some hard digging by Paul and Julian, and once again the mixing in of lime and dolomite, the gentleman kindly allow me the best job of planting the trees! Our production line works well and we finish just in time to quickly admire our day’s work before dark falls.

Wednesday, Julian and Paul head off with the deliveries while I remain on the farm. Perra follows me around as I see to the chickens and collect the morning’s 15 eggs…that’s my girls! With some time to sit I add to and alter our farm operations flow chart as we keep having brainwaves on how to better it, and we can see how it’s developed in just one week. Following this I do my first small stock count in the Mandala Garden and realise I need a lot more practice at recognising what’s what! The cool of the afternoon is spent planting 2 more new beds, and this time I do one on my own…cant wait to see if it turns out well…I did put a lot of love into each and every seed!

Thursday arrives, not a cloud in the sky and another day ahead of us in the newly created orchard. We rake up all the grass from the clearing, put a good amount of manure around each tree leaving space around the trunk, and then cover the manure with straw for protection. A job well done, the orchard now looks like a mass of huge nests with sticks sticking up in the middle! After a day in the sun we shower, relax, read our books and look back over what we’ve achieved this week.

Getting easier?

The chook domes have finally done a full circuit of the mandala! This means each vegie bed has had a chook dome one it once for two weeks sometime in the last six months.

This is making getting the beds ready for planting much easier as most of the pasture grasses, bracken and blackberries have been dug out of the beds. It also means that the beds only need to be cultivated to just below the surface and therefore the soil structure is less disturbed... good for the worms and other soil life... and so make healthier vegies!

The intention is that after the next six month complete rotation, the soil should have improved to the point where transplants are put straight into fertile and friable soil -- a no-dig market garden!

What is a Mandala Garden?

Imago Forest is set up using a mandala design, biodynamic methods, good business practices and a home delivery model to demonstrate that small-scale farms can be supply local communities in a viable, enjoyable and sustainable way.

Mandala Garden

Imago Forest is based on the mandala design developed by permaculturalist Linda Woodrow in her book "The Permaculture Home Garden".

It is a circular design that when fully operational will feed 20 people their fruit and vegetable needs throughout the year from only one sixth of a hectare. The mandala at Imago Forest contains:

• 42 vegetable beds (4m diam)
• Three chook domes (10 chooks each)
• 31 different fruit trees
• Seven ponds
• Many compost piles
• An increasing number of perennial plants such as lavender, rosemary, arrowroot, asparagus etc as a border.