Nitrogen fixers

So far what I’ve been doing at Alconasser could not really be called permaculture, more gardening with the odd permaculture twist, such as composting brush rather than burning it, mulching and not digging.  To the eyes of a Mallorquin camper it’s just lazy land management, although some have admired the veg garden and even said the fruit trees were doing OK.  The next stage, aiming at overall soil-improvement, is to do some serious planting of nitrogen fixers.  So far, other than in the veg garden, these have been confined to broad beans: edible, but annual, labor-intensive, and they don’t produce a significant amount of organic matter.  I need mulch as well as nitrogen, so perennial shrubs would be more useful.  There are a number of options available.  First of all, there’s carob.  I’m fortunate to have quite a few carob trees, and their effect on the soil beneath is striking: it’s covered in a layer of rich, black organic matter, in contrast to the stony reddish soil elsewhere.  There are a number of self-seeded carobs which I’m using for chop and drop mulch, but the tree has its limitations: it’s slow to get established and, more importantly, it does not appear to be a very efficient nitrogen fixer.  The main native leguminous shrubs are spanish broom and spiny broom, particularly the latter.  I know it can have its uses as a living fence but, after getting a thorn of this extremely spiny plant in my eye, I’m less keen to have it growing profusely around my trees.  Then there’s the introduced Sydney wattle, Acacia longifolia, which seeds itself readily wherever it appears.  This is a possibility, but I’m wary of its invasive potential and there is another tree which, in the long term, sounds more useful and just as suitable to the conditions here; the first problem being to get my hands on some seeds.

Commonly known as tagasaste or tree lucern, Cytisus proliferus is well known in Australia and New Zealand. It is a small leguminous tree providing fantastically nutritious forage (up to 30% protein, dry weight), but also useful for firewood, as a wind-break, and a soil-builder.  It is drought-tolerant, with roots are capable of extending 10 metres down to reach water and nutrients inaccessible to most plants.  It can withstand temperatures from -9 to 50˚C, so suited to vast swathes of country in both hemispheres.  Given that it is native to the Canary Islands, and would probably be as useful in much of the Iberian peninsula as it is in the southern hemisphere, it is oddly unknown in Spain.  It was a Spaniard, Dr Perez, who in 1870 tried unsuccessfully to get the Spanish authorities interested in its potential outside the Canarias.  But it found its way to Kew, and from there to the Southern hemisphere.  The rest is history.

That was getting on for a century and a half ago, and I have not managed to source seeds of this plant anywhere; a google search in Spanish only comes up with seeds in Argentina and Uruguay.  Last year I got some seed from Australia, which came with a little bag of inoculant to supply the seeds with rhizobacteria; without that the plant would have to make do with whatever rhizobacteria are present in the soil, which it may or may not be able to utilize.

Getting these shiny, black little seeds to germinate requires a bit of tough love.  The notes which Green Harvest supplied with the seeds suggest boiling or scarifying the seed, then soaking it.  I tried both techniques, the scarifying by rubbing the seeds between sandpaper, and had a more or less equal germination rate, which was not very high.  I had gone to the trouble of sourcing some sandy soil from a garden center to get these plants started and that, it seems, was a mistake.  All the tagasaste which germinated, as well as some pigeon pea, shriveled and died within a few weeks.  Meanwhile, a citrus and a sapote potted up in this stuff grew like crazy, so I come to the conclusion that this soil contained a not insignificant quantity of chemical fertilizer and was just too much for those tough legumes.  I had started late on the seeding, and by this time it was July and I figured I’d missed the window for getting them started last year.  So, 2015 and a new lot of seed and inoculant, let’s have another go.  This time I’m using soil from the ground, I reckon it’s quite free-draining enough, mixed with a bit of leaf compost.  As the brilliant Angelo Eliades writes in deepgreenpermaculture.com (check it out if you’re interested in what can be done in a tiny Melbourne back yard), people have been growing plants from seed way before bagged potting compost was around.  Time I stopped using that stuff too.

Travels in Bunyaland

Last northern winter I finally got to do a permaculture design course.  Not that there is any shortage of courses nearer home, but I'd also been wanting to make a trip to Australia for some time.  So, with my trusty Bike Friday, I set off for south-eastern Queensland and north-eastern New South Wales, a region with a subtropical climate, locally high rainfall, and high biodiversity.  In addition to both temperate and tropical biota, the region also has a high degree of endemism.  What it lacks is a punchy name, as Eastern Australian Subtropical Zone isn't it.  So, in the manner of early explorers, I hereby propose the name Bunyaland, after the magnificent bunya pine, whose giant pine nuts provided the peoples of the region a periodic abundance of food unmatched in pre-European Australia. Here are a couple of fine examples next to a piece of real-estate with renovation potential, near Uki, NSW.

I spent two months in Bunyaland, first of all doing the PDC, then travelling the back roads, visiting permaculture sites, meeting a lot of intersting people, striking up innumerable conversations by the roadside and even increasing the girth of my thighs.  Australian roads tend to follow ridge lines, and this makes for relentlessly up and down riding.  Do this on a bike loaded up with camping gear, food and, at least initially, Bill Mollison's Permaculture Design Manual, and it's hard work.  In a fit of optimism I had even brought a travel fishing rod on board; eventually I did manage to catch my dinner with this, but for a long time it seemed like excess baggage.

The Permaculture Design Course

Maungaraeeda, Kin Kin http://permaculturesunshinecoast.org/ .  Tom and Zaia, fourteen students, representing every continent except Africa.  Zaia plus three WOOFers holding theplace together while Tom was occupied teaching, as well as producing superb food for all of us.  What a fantastic, mind opening experience this was.  What I think I remember most vividly are the evenings in the dining area between the two buses, talking about all things permaculture. That's when there was no "permie TV": a brilliant collection of video material viewed in the cinema bus.  Many thanks Tom and Zaia and all my fellow students and the support crew.  After my experience working with groups, there seemed to me something really special about the group gathered at this spot, in a small valley backed by rainforest covered hills, under the southern cross.

Tom Kendall, framed by a banana leaves, infront of turmeric plants.  These stabilise a bank and produce a valuable crop of rhizomes.

And with pigeon pea and arrowroot.

Gardens at Maungaraeda

With the new biogas generator, now in operation and supplying gas for cooking.

Another fantastic meal, in terms of both food and company, in the dining area between the two buses.

On the road

After this, back on the bike, seeing everything with new eyes.  All those lawns and paddocks crying out to be turned into gardens and food forest.  A steady supply of fallen mangoes on the road, while mangoes in the supermarket come from Bowen, a thousand kilometres to the north.  After the delicious blue java bananas at Maungaraeeda, supermarket bananas from even further north tasted pretty insipid.  All of this improved somewhat on crossing the border into New South Wales, where roadside honesty boxes were much more frequent.  Accommodation was my trusty Macpac tent, completely water and insect proof.  Apart from a bit of guerilla camping in Queensland, it was all campgrounds; free camping seems to be impossible in the "Rainbow Region" of north eastern NSW.  Sites ranged from the Hare Krishna community near Murwillumbah to the spaced out YHA at Nimbin and the secluded Maccas near Mullumbimby, where macadamia nuts lay thick on the ground.

The greatest highlight would have to be a private tour of Zaytuna Farm, home of the Permaculture Research Institute - many thanks Tulakh.  Another was the Mullumbimby farmers' market, which stood out as the best of all the markets I managed to visit.  It was great to see Bundagen again after landing up there by chance thirty years ago.  The beach north from Bundagen headland still ranks as one of the most beautiful in Australia, and great to know that now, unlike back then, the hinterland is protected as a national park.

All in all, a great experience and and a fantastic trip.  I come back to Alconasser full of ideas about how to take the project to its next stage.

The Friday, on a back road at the border, crossing from Queensland into NSW.  People were surprised I actually managed to ride this overlaoded bike with undersized wheels.  Looking at the pic, so am I.

Mount Warning and the hills of the caldera region from Cape Byron, most easterly point of mainland Australia.

Looking north from Bundadgen Head, NSW.  I had ended up here, quite buy chance, thirty years earlier.  It´s just as magnificent as I remembered.

Community gardens, Bellingen

Morton Bay fig tree overgrown with the biggest dragon fruit cactus I have ever seen, near The Channon, NSW.

Palm grove in fragment of original rainforest near Maleny, Queensland.

Real estate ad with unintended double-entendre, Sunshine Coast, Queensland.