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Kapiti Community Food Forest

kapiti coast and island

Inspired by Geoff Lawton’s Establishing a Food Forest, a group has got together to explore the potential of food forest gardening on the Kapiti Coast. Our vision is to build a community food forest garden for Kapiti.

Planned, planted and maintained by the community, the forest garden will serve as an education resource, plant nursery, seed bank, outdoor community centre, meeting point and food bank. Accessible to all, the area will become an edible landscape with walkways and glades, natural in look but designed with our needs for sustenance and play. A living repository for the future, in the heart of our community.

We’ve been doing a lot of talking, thinking, researching and come up with a document that we think encompasses the project’s heart. Now, we need some input and some support from you.

Have a read of the Kapiti Community Food Forest Proposal
Please do send us an email answering the following questions:

1. Do you support in principle the establishment of a community food forest in Kapiti?

2. Would you be willing to be part of a group of volunteers that is responsible for the establishment and maintenance of a Kapiti community food forest ?

3. Do you have any resources (land or money) you would be willing to donate to help to establish the Kapiti community food forest?

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Food Forest Gardening Intro

First in a series looking at wonderful world of food forests, or forest gardening.

A food forest, also called a forest garden, is a productive and organic garden modeled on the ecosystem of a forest. Species are selected to create a stable, functioning environment that fulfill the needs of the gardeners by producing fruits, berries, vegetables, herbs, seeds and other useful plant material.

Each plant performs many multiple roles within the system – promoting growth of other plants, inhibiting weeds, shelter, mulch, pest control, bird food, cross-pollination, attracting beneficial insects and of course providing food, medicine and utility plants for community use.

Food forests are:
– consciously designed using permaculture principles which mimic natural systems;
– multi-layered – trees and shrubs grow surrounded by a herbaceous layer, root crops, vines;
– perennial – plants grow every year without replanting;
– highly productive;
– biodiverse;
– beautiful;
– self-renewing;
– self-fertilising;
– once established, can be low-maintenance.

Diagram by Graham Burnett via Wikipedia

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Rocket Farming

rocket farmsNow that I’ve managed to make it successfully through winter, I can look back and say yes, it was a breeze! Truthfully, I’m not a fan. Living in temperate climates, I’m sure you get more colds, flus and generally nastiness than you do elsewhere. It’s these middling bits where one minute you’re warm, the next you’re freezing. Bug central.

One thing that keeps me happy over winter are my bonsai rocket gardens. Leaving the house for work when it’s dark and getting home in the some disposition, doesn’t allow time for garden therapy. So I’ve been bringing it inside. I spread them on to paper towels on an ice cream container lid, sprinkle water over it once a day and here in winter it usually takes 4 – 6 days to have yumminess. Then I just use them in everything.

High in nutrients and vitamins A, B, C and E, rocket (Eruca spp.) rocks over winter. The sprouts add a nice bit of warmth to any vegetable dish. I use them as a side vegetable for just about anything, sprinkle them on my tomato soup, add them to cheese sandwiches.

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Worming

Entrachyadid wormsOur permaculture worm tower seems to be working well. But we have just noticed that lots of the thin white worms that were in the bin have gotten out and gone wriggling around the garden. There seems to be a heap of them. Thanks to the wonders of the internet, we instantly knew what they were and what to do.

Entrachyadids are a type of earthworm, and not a nematode as I first feared. They are a sign that the soil is too acid which is a result of putting in too many kitchen scraps. Although, the entrachyadids don’t do any damage, we will be adding lime to the beds to reduce the acidity.

Watch the short video on permaculture worm towers.

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Permaculture Design Certificate with Bill Mollison & Geoff Lawton

mollison_lawtonSeptember 21 is my birthday. It’s also the start of a 2 week PDC course with two of the godfathers of permaculture – Bill Mollison & Geoff Lawton. Which would mean 2 weeks in Melbourne around my birthday. Can I combine all these elements? It would be dreamy. But then so would this one in Jordan…  Oh decisions I wish I could make if only I had some extra coin. Dear Universe, please provide – I promise I shall do good with it!

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Emilia Hazelip’s Synergistic Gardening

Emilia Hazelip Synergistic garden bedsI’ve taken procrastination to whole new levels on this one and for that I apologise. We showed the Synergistic Garden video by Emilia Hazelip at the May Seedy Sunday.  Finally, I manage to get the notes up and a couple of links for your edification.

I have to admit, I’ve become a little obsessed by these beautiful beds, all curved and mounded in sweeping lines. I also love the very way they are constructed, in sort of gentle sweeping movements. Due to my terrain I’m not able to do them at my house, so I’ve been eyeing up other people’s gardens to work on.

Anyway, here are notes on the video including links to some other pieces on Emilia…

 

 

 

 

Emilia Hazelip – Synergistic Gardening

 

Based on work of Masanobu Fukuoka, The One Straw Revolution. 1978. Rodale.

 

 

 

Need to modify systems to our own location. Want to get high-yields whiile maintaining the soil’s own fertility.

 

No cultivation

 

No chemical or organic fertilisers

 

No chemical treatments

 

No compaction of the soil

 

Set out beds with sticks and then clear paths for your feet, mounding the soil into beds. Mounds should be 4 feet wide with 20 inches for the path. 10 – 30 inches for the beds deeper the beds the more room for the roots. Give them any shape you wish but make sure you can reach the centre of the beds easily.

 

Sheet mulch – cover the ground with cardboard. A good way to clear ground and you can grow potatoes at the same time.

 

Plants synthesise from light. Plants only take 2.5% of their mass from the soil. The rest comes from air and light. Plants give back much more to the soil then they take out.

 

Use marigolds all through the garden.

 

Beans and peas are legumes and fix nitrogen into the soil. You can use ash, which contains potash, to help grow your beans. This provides free fertiliser for your soil, the bacteria providing many benefits to your plants. These plants will also provide a living mulch between your plants. After harvest, the plants can simply be cut off, leaving the roots in the soil. the plant matter can simply be left on top of the beds. providing further mulch.

 

Synergistic gardening uses compost in the greenhouse or flats to start the plants – it doesn’t ‘force feed’ your soil with it.

 

Onions, garlic and leeks can be planted on the side of the garden beds. They function as pests controllers as well as being nutritious. They can be intermixed with other plants like lettuce or swiss chard.

 

Many plants reseed themselves – an advantage of letting plants finish their life cycle.

 

Mulching the mounds – Newspaper, cardboard, straw, leaves, wool. You can use grass clippings as mulch, but make sure you cut it and let it dry before it starts to seed. The first year the soill will be eating the mulch but as the organic contents in the soil improves, the amount of mulch needed will reduce. You will still need to weed, but it will gradually reduce – it’s all part of the evolving cycle.

 

Ducks (Indian Runner ducks), some birds, hedgehogs, lizards all eat slugs. Copper cuffs, or ones made from coke cans can protect plants from slugs.

 

When harvesting plants like lettuce, cut above the ground allowing the plant a chance to regrow, or providing dead matter for the soil to feed on.

 

Don’t stand on your beds! this will damage and compact the soil

 

Flowers are very important as they may attract beneficial insects, secrete chemicals to protect other plants (eg marigolds), or have edible, medicinal, or economic benefits as well as looking very attractive.

 

 

 

Diversity = a healthy, rich soil. Plants lots of plants with different root structures and leave those root structures in the soil when you harvest. Emilia says that force feeding your soil will create an imbalance or indigestion – let things work naturally – synergistically.

 

 

 

In nature, nothing happens in exactly the same way twice in the same spot. Diversify.

 

 

More information

The Synergistic Agriculture of Emilia Hazelip at the Fukoka Farming website

Watch Emilia Hazelip’s video on Synergistic Gardening

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Permaculture worm tower

I love simple, cheap and appropriate ideas that make gardening easier and fun. At the first Seedy Sunday we showed three videos with this philosophy in mind.

My two previous attempts at worm farming had ended badly with the bins being overrun with nasties that killed off the worms. But I so love the simplicity and ease of this idea I’m going to give it another shot. This is a great way to get nutrients straight into your garden.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scUTrypzyY0&hl=en&fs=1]

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Growing food: How long do I have to wait?

Borlotti beans: wonderfully tasty and homegrownGrow your own food! But be patient – this is how long it will take. The chart looks at how long you can expect to wait for your vegetables to grow from seed. These are estimated times – climate, soil conditions, water supply, different cultivars, farming methods can all give different results.

There’s no time like the present to start growing food, especially when you see how long it takes for veges to grow. The economy is going insane, nobody knows what’s going to happen… you need a little security in your life. Being able to grow food to feed your family is really the best security you can get. Then you know that if you lose your job, or the supermarkets run out, or your country goes bankrupt you can eat.

It’s a baseline to work from – you need to eat. If you grow your own food (or even just some of it) :

—  it will save you money;
—  it will give you mana, strength, self-worth;
—  it will give you better health, keep you active, help you lose weight.

Read more

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Notes from US Biofuels Expert David Blume – Growing Your Own Fuel

Last week, I went to the most inspiring talk. None of this doom and gloom the world is ending stuff that you’d expect from any talk concerned with Peak Oil. Instead, David Blume described how we can take control of our fuel needs by growing it ourselves, or with the help of neighbours with Community Supported Ethanol.

David stresses that almost everything that can be made from oil can be made from plants. This stuff is pretty near and dear to the hearts and minds of the LovePlantLife team. We’ll be doing lots of follow-up on this one.

Notes on David’s talk on how Alcohol can be a gas, why biofuels don’t steal food from hungry mouths, how we can grow our own fuel and other additional benefits after the jump. Read more

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Food not Lawns – Heather C. Flores

Heather Flores is a green garden goddess. She has a vision – for lawns to give way to gardens and those gardens to feed and sustain communities. And she’s written down the blueprint for this garden revolution in Food not Lawns: How turn your Yard into a Garden and Your Neighbourhood into a Community.

Food not Lawns starts by putting you in the right headspace, a good non-preachy ‘why you should’. Flores then kicks into a really sound overview of the practical elements – how to gain ground, the water cycle, the living soil, plants, polycultures and seed stewardship. All this in a really friendly, engaging style. Then we go beyond the garden, reaching out into the community and working together, for and with the next generation.

More review and lots of links after the jump…

Read more

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