Pleasant Sense Farm
Sustainability. Therapy. Connect.
Pleasant Sense Farm - Food Forest Journey
Tanya Harry
2nd Nov 2023
Welcome to day 1 of documenting my Food Forest journey! So what exactly is a ‘food forest’? A food forest is a gardening system that mimics the structure and function of a natural forest ecosystem. So it’s arranging various layers of plants in positions that compliment and support each other, minimising weeds and pests, reducing maintenance and providing us with a rich food source variety!
When we moved to our property 3 years ago, there was already a small selection of young fruit trees planted. Up until this point, not a lot has been done to this area, apart from the odd prune here and there and a few vege plots. We’ve always talked about redesigning this area and creating a ‘peraculture’ garden where our chooks can roam freely amongst the fruit trees. But to have this, it involves a fair bit of excavator work, a new chook shed built, and an area flattened for wicking beds, which all takes time. Something we haven’t got a lot of. So we weren’t getting anywhere. Until a couple weeks ago….
This is the area with the established fruit trees
Now there is a back story here, the reason that led to me taking action and starting a ‘food forest’. On 21st October, a sneaky fox took my favourite rooster ‘Chicky’. I have never been so upset over the loss of a chook. He was so special to me as he was hand-raised in our house after being hatched under a duck! As a fully-grown rooster he used to snuggle his head underneath my chin and go to sleep. He was so beautiful.
My Chicky
Anyway, the day I lost him, I went to the fruit tree area and started to dig in my compost, just to get my mind off the morning’s event. That digging then led me to designing a path, which led me to laying down edging bricks, which led me to tilling the soil, which led me to….
So was my motivation to get this area created that day, a message from my ‘Chicky’ to create a safe space for his chickens to roam freely, and have an abundant supply of nutrient rich plants to feed from? I like to think so.
After researching online about permaculture and using chickens in the area, I came across the ‘food forest’ term and it was exactly what we had in mind! So over the past week, Adrian and I have been staking an area out where we’ll build the new chook shed. I’ve started creating paths that wind their way through the fruit trees, which I might add, is highly addictive!
Here’s a few pics of our progress so far…
16th Nov 2023
Landscaping has begun! We’ve now decided to incorporate a big greenhouse into our food forest area. So before that even begins to happen, a crazy amount of dirt needs to be moved. We knew of an amazing man with a bobcat (Jarrod) and this week he spent hours digging out the side of the hill for us. A lot more excavating needs to be done yet but this has given us a rough idea on where the greenhouse can fit, along with the chook shed and extended fruit tree area.
Meanwhile, amongst the fruit trees we have herbs and plants growing! To our ‘shrub layer’ we’ve planted rosemary, lavender, scented geranium, lemongrass and marigolds, all of which produce strong smells in the hope to confuse pest insects. Those that produce flowers will also attract bees and other beneficial insects.
For our ‘herbaceous layer’ we’ve planted silverbeet and a variety of different herbs including three varieties of basil, chives, mint, oregano, parsley and lemongrass. The silverbeet will be mainly fed to our chickens and the herbs will be used in our cooking!
At the ‘ground cover’ level we’ve added nitrogen-fixing plants. The nasturtiums under the apple tree will help enrich the soil and attract pollinators to our garden.
13th Jan 2024
The bird nettings have gone up, the trees are fruiting and the plants are all growing. We have pears, figs and peaches almost ready for the picking and the almond tree has quite a crop.
We had quite a lot of rain in December following a very dry November, so this certainly helped the growth of the new plants.
31st March 2024
Today we had a creature of a different kind hiding amongst our fig tree: a grey-headed flying fox! Not the typical furry animal I was expecting to see on Easter Sunday. How she got under the net, well I’ll be damned! Ashton and I successfully lifted the net up and over her and watched her spread her huge wings and fly away. She was rather cute, but I hope that will be the last grey-headed flying fox to visit our food forest!
7th May 2024
Well our plans keep getting bigger and bigger, and call for the job of some serious earthmoving equipment! So this weekend our mate from Cristo’s Outdoor Solutions spent 4 days moving a serious amount of dirt. We needed to extend an area below the fruit trees to accommodate more fruit tree area, but because of the slope we’re on, required a lot of dirt to be built up. Cristo’s machinery certainly did the job and you can see from the images below just how much dirt was needed!
We also made use of the many concrete blocks we had on our property, by creating a retaining wall for the greenhouse area. These blocks will eventually be painted to blend in with the surrounding environment. With the remaining blocks left over we created another retaining wall just above the food forest.
We had hoped to create a small dam below the food forest area but we ran out of dirt, so that may have to wait a bit longer. It may have to be a small pond which is totally fine still! Now that we have the main excavating work done, it’s now given us the landscape to work with. Our next job is to buy some extra fruit trees so we can get them planted out in the area we’ve just created, and begin planning out the greenhouse area.
2nd June 2024
Now that we’re finally beginning to get some rain, the ground is a little easier to dig. So I decided to begin another compost area to get some goodness back in the soil. I used an old garden bed frame we had laying around in the food forest not being used. I’m using the lasagna layering technique which consists of alternate ‘brown’ and ‘green’ layers. To the existing dirt, I first added a good layer of cow manure (green layer), followed by broken up pieces of cardboard (brown layer). Next I added a good amount of flooring from our chook shed which contained chook poo, goat poo, food scraps and old partly decomposed nesting hay (green layer). Then for the final layer I used leaves and husks from under the almond tree (brown layer).
I have included a link here to a helpful resource I found online that explains the lasagna composting technique really well
3rd September 2024
Spring has officially begun so it’s beautiful to see the fruit trees begin to blossom and the plants loving the sunshine. The lovely weather has enticed the local kangaroos to pay us a visit each morning, with the occasional cheeky roo crossing the fence to check out what we’ve been up to in the food forest!
Our food forest is expanding. Last month we planted six extra fruit trees to the south of the area. These were lemon, dwarf peacherine, mandarine, gala apple, apricot and navel orange, including a raspberry bush. With these new additions in place we can continue with creating the paths and planning the next fruit tree guilds. The ground within this area had been quite compacted following the excavation work, so a bit of soil preparation needs to be done prior to these guilds going in. In the meantime we’ll be working on the section around the new gala apple tree (tree with blue tag in first pic below). We plan to extend the path just below this new apple tree then use this section to plant out some veggies.
8th October 2024
This last month has seen a lot of changes in the food forest. That path I was talking about earlier is almost complete and those vegetables have gone in! The fruit trees in this section are the gala apple tree and ruby blood plum tree, so we’ve selected vegetables that would complement these trees. This includes snow peas, tomatoes, chives, iceberg lettuce and capsicum. I had planted cucumbers but unfortunately the frost we got a couple weeks back killed them. So I planted the tomatoes in their place. Then we’ve planted nasturtium under each tree to boost the nitrogen in the soil.
We got hold of some cheap hay bales that were too far gone to feed to the cattle, so we’ve been using it as ground cover and also on the paths, which have worked a treat!
The herbs and plants we planted last November are doing really well and the nasturtiums under the pink lady apple tree are growing like wildfire! Even the ‘everlasting’ seeds I scattered around the feature pot last year have flowered to bring in some added colour to the food forest. I’m pleased with the progress we are making in our food forest and I’m not shy to admit that it’s addictive! I love every minute I spend out there. Hands in the soil, breathing in the fresh cool air and getting those good nature ‘feel-good endorphins’ running through my body. I wouldn’t have it any other way!
Pleasant Sense Farm acknowledges the traditional Custodians of the land on which we work and live and recognise their continuing connection to land, water and community. Pleasant Sense Farm pays respect to Elders past, present and emerging.
