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.

Early Summer

Peach trees in their third year are starting to bear fruit.  

I've been away more than I've been here, with the result that all the work normally done in spring has been crammed into a few weeks.  It's also been an unseasonably cool spring, which is not a bad thing as, while there has been some rain, it's been a little below average.

Trees are all looking good.  Had some fruit from the loquat, and a number of the others (kaki, peach, plums, apples, figs) are setting.  The citrus is still a little yellow; it's a pity the septic tank is all done and drains deep into the rock (and eventually to the sea?).  The citrus orchard would be the perfect place to run a buried drain to water and feed them at the same time.  This, of course, would be illegal; rather pollute the groundwater.

Ground cover: after removing some of the Oxalis in winter, when I was here in late April the area where it had been pulled was covered with barrel medic, Medicago truncatula. This is interesting, as the barrel medic is ground-covering legume, a bit like clover, but presumably better adapted to these conditions.  In Australia it is used as a fodder crop.  It is quite low, so you can strim the grass without cutting off its flowers.  By now, beginning of June, it is all dying down.  One disadvantage is the spiny seeds if you work in sandals!

Veg garden: from this year adopting a complete no tillage approach.  For plants like curcubits and legumes which like a little looseness to the soil, I have quickly gone over with the two-handled fork before seeding, giving a slight levering action just to aerate the soil without moving it.  All weeds, other than those with seed, are laid onto the mulch, as is all cultivated plant material.  An example of how this reduces work is planting leeks after broad beans.  I cut the hava plants down to form a rough mulch, and planted the leeks in between.  They are not only ready mulched, but shaded until they start growing.  Once they've put on a little more height some straw goes on top to make a really nice thick blanket of mulch.

Drip lines: After trying a few methods, I'm currently laying them over encina (holm-oak) leaves (and whatever old mulch is still there, as long as it allows the tubing to lie flat).  The idea is that the encina leaves spread out the flow from the holes in the tubing.  I then put straw on top, covering the tubing.  This means that if you have to water during the day for some reason, the plants do not get a dose of hot water from black tubing lying in the sun.  I assume it also prolongs the life of the tubing, although HDPE does seem to be fairly UV resistant.

Last but by no means least, mulch.  With three dozen fruit trees between 0 and 3 years old, plus the veg garden, plus the herbaceous gardens, getting enough mulch is quite a challenge.  This year I found a large heap of carritx (tall, clumping grass) which had been cleared and piled up, about five minutes walk from the house.  I know it's not going to be used for anything, so I schlepped most of it.  This did for most of the pip and stone fruit trees.  For the citrus I used cypress litter and branches, from when I thinned the windbreak last autumn.  For the figs I've gathered whatever litter (mostly pine) was available nearby, and topped it off with rough mulch of whatever I've lopped to make space for the figs (pine, encina, lentisc, oleaster, carob).  For the veg garden, I collect encina leaves whenever I drive to Palma via Valldemossa and, as mentioned above, top them off with straw.  Straw is the ultimate convenience mulch for the veg garden, as it stays nicely in place (my beds require more walling up).  Six bales cover all the beds, (about 60 square meters) laid over about a dozen sacks of encina leaves. As for the non-edibles, I have quite a bit of disintegrating pine wood, which serves this purpose nicely.

By the way, if it sounds like I'm stealing leaf litter from the forest well, I am.  However I try confine my collecting to places where the leaves collect and eventually run onto a road, and then never to collect more than just the surface leaves.  What does end up on the road collects at the verge.  Here it would be very easy to pick up, but it is full of cigarette buts and discarded tissues, to say nothing of pollutants from cars.

All mulched up and ready for the heat.  The branches on top are to discourage wood-pigeons and the cat.

Looking from the veg garden up to the stone fruit and, beyond, the micro wilderness zone.

Just Garden

A minimum of effort has gone into growing things which are not of any immediate value (how much rosemary can you actually use?), but which nonetheless have a purpose.  If every element should have at least two functions, then the decorative gardens have at least four: erosion control, supression of grass, attracting pollinating insects, and looking good.  Yes, why not?  I would never put effort and resources into something that just looks good, but aesthetics do count.  These plants also have the great advantage, unlike most edible plants, of not being palatable to sheep and goats.  Many are there already, such as Cistus albidus and Arbutus unedo, and it's just a case of encouraging seedlings by weeding around them and maybe a little mulching.  Others, like Lavandula dentata and Hypericum balearicum, are native (H. balearicum is endemic) but do not grow naturally on-site.

Most of these I've propagated from cuttings, a few I've bought from garden centres.  Some, like the lavendars, I trim to get them to grow dense and in the process produce some cut and drop mulch.  Here are a few pics of the outside the fence garden in February.

Chasmanthe, which forms large corms and dies down completely int the summer.  Helps control the spread of grass.

Santolina, lavendar and Artemesia.  All are mediterranean natives and of course tolerant of summer drought.

In the foreground, the amazing giant bulb Urginia maritima which dies down in summer, also helping to control grass.  In the dryness of late summer it sends up a great spike of white flowers.  When I started "gardening" here I did not realise it was present because it was all hidden by a tangle of grass.  Since clearing some of the grass it has thrived.  The clump of grass in the background is Ampelodesmus mauretanicus, which is ubiquitous in this part of Mallorca.  It is traditionally used for basket work and improvised bedding if you sleep rough.

Winter 2012-13

Another tree-planting push, this time almost all figs.  Fortunately several of the places were prepared last year, so didn't have to dig all of them.  Mostly they went in along a rocky ridge, using natural pockets in the rock, building mini-terraces where necessary.  The hard part was protecting them against sheep - proved very necessary last summer.  In most places there was not enough depth of soil to simply drive the stakes into the gound, so I ended up with some rather crazy staying, using lengths of wire attached to rocks, pine trees or anything else reasonably solid.

Also put in a couple more oranges: a canoneta, originally from Soller, and a de la sang (blood orange), plus another hass avocado to replace one that died.  The blood orange is supposed to be a Balearic variety but, according to the label, this one comes from Sicily.  I'm having another go with that cyprus-lined lower terrace, and will try to give the trees extra food and water and just see what happens.  I suspect that my problem with citrus there might have something to do with not watering frequently enough, not feeding enough, and sheep attack.  I hope they are now properly protected against the latter.

The veg garden was this autumn was an interesting experiment in just leaving it, as I was away for most of October and the whole of November.  Rainfall was good; frequent but not torrential, and temperatures mild. In December I still had cherry tomatoes and chillies, nice fat leeks, salads and lots of bok choi.  The bok choi is amazing.  Some was planted where it gets no more than an hour and a half of sun, and it still grew back from cutting to a re-cuttable size in five weeks.  Admittedly the temperatures continued to be higher than average right through December, but I was really surprised at the growth rate given the lack of sun.  Havas also coming along nicely, seeded before departure in October and left to their own devices.

The amazing bok choi

As mentioned in the previous post, the veg garden, which is usually the scene of rather more activity, was pretty much left alone this winter.  Star of the show really has to be the bok choi; I had not realised just how much of this vegetable you can get from just one sowing.  The trick is to cut it off above the main growing point, about 5cm above the ground.  If you cut lower, it will grow multiple heads instead of one new head.  In this case it was sown in September, first cut five to six weeks later, then again in December.  To my amazement, despite being in a spot where it received barely a couple of hours direct sun at that time, it grew again in a few weeks.  A third cut in January was just as tasty as the first two.  Then, on a brief visit in February it was all flowering: lovely, tender, broccoli-like flower heads.  The stems have a rather fibrous skin, but once is removed, it is similar to stem lettuce or water chestnut.  So, four harvests from one lot of plants.

In this particular instance, I think the success is due to giving the plants a nitrogen-rich feed after each cut, repeated after heavy rains may have leached out the nitrogen.  The fertiliser in question involves zero carbon footprint, minimal effort and is sterile: human urine, diluted about 1:5 in a watering can.  Application about 1 litre (urine) per square metre.  I follow it with some plain water, but don't know if this is necessary.  I always made sure that the soil was already moist, as a potential disadvantage of urine is that it contains some salt.  It has to be less than 24 hours old, otherwise it acquires an unpeasant ammonia smell.  I never noticed any odour after using urine, either on plants or on the compost heap (it acts as a compost accelerator).

I must confess that the variety in question here is mei qing, which is an F1.  Another F1, joi choi, was far less successful and anyway less tasty (I think this one does better if it's really cold).  For this year I have a couple of open-pollinated varieties to try, bought from the Real Seed Company.  If you're curious about what to do with bok choi in the kitchen, I'll be posting some recipes on the companion blog over the next day or so.

Oxalis pes-caprae: friend or foe?

I knew that this plant, known as vinagrella in Mallorquin, was not a native but an introduction from South Africa, but I did not realise that in California and Australia it is regarded as one of the most invasive and problematic weeds.  I was also labouring under the illusion that it was a nitrogen-fixing legume, which it is not.  In Majorca it is often seen forming a dense covering under citrus trees, and seems to be encouraged by autumn ploughing.  It grows on my lowest terrace, and appears wherever the ground has been disturbed, particularly in the damper, shadier spots.

It is regarded by some as a good thing in orchards, presumably because it competes with invasive grasses.  Now that I realise it's not a legume, clover would be preferable, but probably very difficult to establish once Oxalis is there.  According to this paper,  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2802929/ , based on  field research in Menorca, Oxalis pes-caprae can increase the availability of phosphorous, which certainly sounds like a good thing.  It also appears to be a poor competitor of rye grass.  So, in the case of my land, these are the conclusions:

1. I probably can't get rid of it from where it is already established, except by solarising or sheet mulching,  so just accept it where it is growing for the moment.

2. Don't encourage it to spread to other areas, rather work on establishment of leguminous ground covers such as Medicago truncatula (already present in places) and white clover.

3. Don't do autumn ploughing.  Actually, I don't do any ploughing anyway and don't intend to.