Thursday, April 1, 2010

Some snippets from my permaculture course last weekend...

It was our third Friday evening and full day Saturday of our permaculture course... we are all still enthusiastic and keen to share experiences which is great.

We visited three different properties on our field trips on Saturday... here are some photos...

Many discussions were had around the strawbale house

What a front verandah....

Then onto the property Toulon to check out an electric 2 tonne farm ute.....

Checking out the engine or lack of it!

and the local watercourse...

Our final stop was the permaculture garden at Rahamim Ecological Learning Centre.  This is heritage building set amid established grounds, perched on 'St Josephs Mount', overlooking Bathurst city. It is run by the Sisters of Mercy and is the home of the Chook Chapel....


I have found it great sharing ideas and exploring some of the teaching of permaculture .. I am keeping a notebook of ideas of what I could do in our suburban yard .. and the list is growing....

Some of my ideas include to plant more native bush tucker type plants into both our "native plant" section of the garden and into our "food production" part of the garden.  In particular a couple of the ideas I would like to try is a row of wattles to harvest edible seed from - which would act as a wind break for a mini orchard as as well.  The wattles would also put nitrogen into the soil as they are nitrogen fixing plants... being on the uphill side of my proposed orchard maybe the nitrogen in the soil would move downhill with the rain to all the trees? 

Another idea I would like to try is planting the native Hardenbergia violacea (Happy Wanderer) as an understorey in the orchard - it also fixes nitrogen.  I would like to grow and cut it for a nitrogen rich mulch for the garden.

1 comment:

  1. I like the planting Acacia for edible seed idea...and your orchid would look lovely with a Hardenbergia understorey.

    Looks like the course has been fun.

    ReplyDelete