In my previous post on this topic I talked through the design form my ultimate fruit and vegetable garden. Well it turns out that that wasn’t the ‘ultimate’ design after all, because I found a few improvements I could make to it and, frankly, I found more fruits and vegetables than I could squeeze into the old plan. So here is the ULTIMATE-er fruit and vegetable garden plan – update!!
If you haven’t read my previous post you may want to read it before or after this one, just click HERE.
Have a quick look at the pictures of the new design and what’s going into it. Then I’ll explain what’s changed in a little more detail.
So What’s Changed?
- For Starters, the Picture has changed – To squeeze more into this plan I needed to be more accurate with measurements, so I’ve created a 1metre square grid to work on.
- The Circle Gardens are no longer so central – There were a number of additional plants that I wanted to grow and I couldn’t fit them all into the circle gardens.
- Raised Beds – My knees and back convinced me that some of the plants that would need a bit more care and attention would best be raised up to my height. Sure I could plant them on the ground anyway, but the likelihood of them getting neglected when their care is more physically onerous for me is going to be higher. Additionally something that’s not marked on the plan is that the rest of my property features hundreds of trees, particularly palm trees, that are growing like weeds. Rather than having to take them to the dump, I intend to use the hugelkultur method to make these trees, or their remains as I progressively thin them out, into a source of food and nutrition for my gardens by placing them into the bases of the raised garden beds. Which of course also reduces the amount of soil I’ll need to fill them.
- More trees – There are just too many fruits that I’ve decided I can’t live without! When I made the first plan, I was on the north coast of PNG for 4 months helping the PNG Defence Force with their COVID-19 response, and my subsistence on tin-fish, rice, bananas and coconuts caused me to forget about many of the awesome fruit available in Australia. When I got back home I soon remembered, and my list of fruit-tree-needs grew. Although I added coconut trees because not a day went by on PNG’s north coast when I didn’t have coconut in come capacity – I decided I’ll need more in the future!
- No more ring-road – It didn’t fit and it had to go. I can still get the ute into the middle of the garden to reduce the distance of lifting and carrying, but there is going to be some reversing and 3 (4 or 5) point turns required. So driving in there will now require careful consideration if it’s wet.
- The Kitchen Garden – This isn’t on the plan (Map) but it’s on the list, this will go right at the back door step of the house, for all those herbs that you can step out and grab when you need to add them to your cooking.
- Clucking-ham Palace aka: The Poultry Pen / Poultry Run – I decided that occasionally letting the chickens into the garden was probably going to be more like never, because I’d have to watch them to make sure they didn’t dig up too much. Also I just didn’t like the idea of cutting the garden in half with a fence. I felt that it’d be a mental barrier and would see me getting back there less often. Also it’s another obstacle to mowing, and I’ve added enough new obstacles as it is. The result of this rumination was that the chickens will now get their own run, a really really big run, that’s connected to their pen. The Pen and Run have been moved off the boundary fence due to council regulations, and having the chickens kept to a set area means that I can make better use of their poo. Rather than having said Chicken Poo spread liberally around the yard it will be in a more concentrated area and I’ll be able to gather it to incorporate it into my composting plan. PERFECT SEGUE!,……
- The Compost heaps – In the previous plans the only compost heaps I has were those in the middle of the circle gardens, (which I’ll still do, but these are more end-destination compost heaps) however; now I will need to create compost and move it to various gardens beds elsewhere in the yard. As such there are two compost heaps planned. They are located, relatively, central to the garden and close to the Poultry pen/run as a proportion of the compost heap’s contents will be processed through there.
What HASN’T Changed
The answer there is simple – The permaculture principles are still applied, that is: the more care and attention plants need the closer they are to the areas that I will frequent more often and vice-versa. Additionally there are little symbiotic / economical ‘quirks’ like having the mulberry tree overhanging the chicken run. The tree loves the chicken poo and the chickens love the fallen Mulberries. I won’t list them all, but as much as possible everything about the plan supports the smart + lazy + environmentally sustainable mantra.
Farewell for now.
