Imago - October 2011

Well this is the first post in a very long time!

Headed up to the farm with Danielle, Persephone, Mum and Perra. It's a beautiful time of year to go up and it's the first time we've been up as a family for about five months!

It was a bit rainy to begin with but Danielle and I put out the fruit fly traps and the codling moth traps, as well as got the last (third) section of the electric fence removed. On Day 2 we uncovered the maple trees and protected them as well as the pomegranate, cherries, and maple trees. Danielle did a whole lot of weeding! Sussed out the irrigation situation to prepare for getting a trench digger. I'm wanting to install pipes between the dam, yurt, garden and yoilet. On Day 3 we ook it a bit easier and walked down to the picnic spot. I took Persephone for a swim in the dam... bit chilly! But she enjoyed it. And we put up a prototype of how we'll put the foil insulation up in the yurt. I also sprayed some seasol onto all the leaves of the trees. Mum spent a lot of time looking out for Persephone while all this was one... so great and helpful.

September 2011
Last month I headed up to the farm with Peter Hagerty. It was the first time in three months so I was a bit trepidatious as to what i'd find. Goodnews everything was pretty much in order.
And with Peter's help we got a good section of the electric fence pulled out. Slashed the whole mandala, put out the first codling moth trap, fixed the dam end of the siphon and tied down the second layer of the nashi. And importantly we put out lime, dolomite and chook pellet around each of th etrees.

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

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.

Skin Cream for Trees

This week I got inspired to put out some Biodynamic Tree Paste. It's made of cow manure, clay and crusher dust, and it is smeared onto the trunks and stems of the trees. Ideally I would have put it on before the trees had started sprouting again, but better late than never.
Practically speaking the paste is good because it fills in cracks that insects and fungus can hide in. It provides some nutrition to the plants. And gets you to pay some up-close attention to each plant which is easy to let slip! In particular I noticed that one of the trees had been damaged by the high winds a while ago and so i taped it up and smeared some paste over to let it heal.

Painting Prefered

By Hannah Parsons

Following one hugely successful week came another week of change and growth down in the garden. Having had the weekend off, relaxing with a couple of Julian’s friends, swimming in the dam and eating far too much, come Monday the Mandala was once again like a new place. Frogs in the ponds, an array of lettuce and beans ready for harvest and our first sunflowers. Beautiful!

This week I’ve been working on my favourite project…road signs for around the property and a huge mandala map. Not having painted for quite a while I had forgotten how much I loved being creative…and getting paint all over me! I have spent as much time on them as humanly possible without neglecting all the other duties on the farm, as I’m pretty sure Julian wouldn’t be too pleased if I just spent time painting away when there were beds to cultivate and plant and propagation to be done!

So of course we’ve both been busy with many other tasks on the farm. Having fallen a little behind with bed planting due to rain last week we’ve been extra busy transplanting our seedlings into beds with our new system of mulching first, then making little holes for individual seedlings to be planted into. It seems to be working well, keeping down unwanted weeds and helping the soil retain some of its moisture in the heat.

We’ve transferred small apple grafts from the mandala down into the orchard, which seem to be getting bigger by the week, and propagated some daisy cuttings for Julian’s cottage garden, which will soon be starting to take shape at the front of the yurt. The only thing I wish is that I would be around to see even more changes take place, but as it’s my last week here next week I’m afraid that I won’t. Looks like I’m going to have to visit next year when everything’s blooming…Julian won’t get rid of me that easily!

So, I’ll finish writing and get back to some work…it’s raining outside…what a shame…that means I’ll have to do some more painting!

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!

Fowl Tales

I arrive back to Imago Forest to reports from Julian that the chooks have been letting standards slip a little in my absence and not so many eggs have been collected over the weekend. So Tuesday morning I head down to the domes to have a little chat to them and give them a bit of encouragement for the coming week….they weren’t being very attentive but I’m pretty sure they got the message! The rest of the day is spent in the vineyard planting another 31 fruit trees. This time we put in Nectarines, Peaches and Nashi (a delicious type of Japanese pear that I’ve never heard of before!) so now we have a good collection of different fruits.

Of course on Wednesday is delivery day again so we’re up early to harvest bok choy and pack the boxes. While in Singleton I get some much needed time at the library to continue on my ‘Farm Instructions’ for planting a bed and also moving chook domes…and I try to remember all the details. Lucky that the weather is beautiful as our car breaks down and we spend half an hour at the side of the road waiting for a kind neighbour to pick us up. When we eventually get home I go out to the chooks to find a total of 19 eggs…see, I told you they were listening!

Thursday we’re up early and talk about Mandala layout over a cup of tea. We identify an area to cultivate and get straight to it with the broad fork, loosening all the old roots from the ground (slightly back breaking I must confess!). As usual we add lime and dolomite and dig through, removing weeds as we go along. With the chooks watching from the nearby dome (shouldn’t they be hard at work laying those eggs?!), we finally get to plant our Asparagus, and all before lunch. Our afternoon is spent planting 2 more beds, making a grand total of 6 since I arrived just 3 weeks ago. Hopefully I’ll be quite the expert soon!

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.

Pruning the Fruit Trees

Well, it was well and truly time to prune the fruit trees by the time we got out there with the secateurs. The peaches and nectarines had their leaves starting to show already... naughty naughty!

So we sharpened the secateurs, and went to each of the trees and cut it back to vase shape. It seems a bit drastic cutting off so much material, but the theory goes that you set the shape in the early years, and reap the benefits in the future. I'm after a vase shape here to maximise fruit on each tree. Whereas a central leader shape maximises fruit production per area (if you pack in lots of trees). Also a vase will work better with the domes that come in quite close.

Paul and I kept the "scion" wood that we cut in readiness for grafting it onto rootstock when it arrives.

Budswell

It's amazing the flexibility of some plants. The Tatsoi (chinese leafy green) grow right through the year, the scorching heat of summer and even the severe cold and frosts of a mountain winter. What's great though is that the plant grows completely differently throughout the year. In summer its a vigorous upright vegie, while the winter versions are flat to the ground and very distinctively show off their rosette.

Not too long now though before we go back to the tall versions! The daffodils are poking their leaves up and the nectarine's leaves are starting to emerge from their buds. Better enjoy the cool weather now before it's gone!