Summer 2015

The huerto in July.  Tall plant is Kerala red amaranth, self-seeded.  I love it's appearance but the kangkung growing at its feet is far more appetising.   

As with spring, summer continued warmer than average.  No real heatwaves, but temperatures were, until mid-August, consistently two or three degrees above average.  In the vegetable garden the only thing I suspect is correlated with these higher temperatures is a poor yield of beans.  Of the three varieties seeded, only one, blue lake, was any good.  Cobra, which has been very good in other years, was a flop, as was argus (bush).  Of the latter, the photo below shows the crop of plants in half shade on the right, and in full sun, on the left.  Soil could well be a factor here though, as the shadier spot is also partly under a very productive olive tree, and much of the crop falls onto the ground.  On the other hand, it's not that common for a bean variety to give such a skimpy yield, so I think it's quite possible that twelve hours of full sun with the afternoon temp in the low thirties stresses the plants.

I did not put in any snake beans, as in the past I've found the harvest to be very short, while the French pole beans produced much more evenly.  With the heat I suspect they would have done better than the French beans.  Apparently, snake beans are the traditional summer bean in Mallorca, particularly in Soller, though I have never seen them either in the market or in gardens.

For the tomatoes, I tried using a cage rather than stakes, so the plants can grow more naturally and branch.  This seems a good system, involving less work than the traditional staking, as you don´t have to tie any of the plants.  Also put in a dozen roma bush tomatoes, which produced quite well, with a peak in July.

Tomato cage in June

A warm spring and a hot summer should have meant masses of aubergines.  They started really well then, one by one, their leaves shrivelled and dropped off.  I have a nasty feeling it was verticillium wilt, no idea where it came from.  Next year I will try grafted aubergines.

Some of the fruit trees are starting to produce a nice little crop.  This is the prune fresa, an autochthonous plum which fruits late June to early July.

And this is a non-autochthonous nectarine of unknown identity, which is the only peach which is staying in the ground - the others are not doing so well and I plan to replace them with other Mallorca plum varieties.

Maybe this two-tailed pasha was a bit drunk on fermented fruit; I managed to get unusually close to it to take this photo.  This species has been around more than I remember in past decades, and it's not like it's hard to notice, with its large size and powerful flight, unlike any other butterfly seen here.  The larva is pretty striking too, but I have yet to see one. It feeds, among other plants, on Arbutus, but I have seen little evidence of larvae of any sort feeding on its leathery leaves.  

Spring 2015

Spring got off to a good start with abundant rain in March, which gave way to warm, sunny weather in April.  Then it got weird.  At the beginning of May the temperature reached into the thirties, breaking the all-time May temperature record for Europe in Sicily.  Barely two weeks later, on 14 May, a mass of hot, dust laden air from the Sahel, blown round the bulge of Africa, came blasting across the Iberian peninsula.  That all-time May record was broken again, with 44C recorded near Valencia.  Here in Mallorca, Alcudia topped 40C, pretty crazy given that the sea is still below 20C at that time.  At Alconasser it reached 36C, with a strong wind making for conditions in which you hope not to see a fire starting.  Fortunately the whole event was short, over in a day, without the damage to olive flower that can occur with prolonged spring heat.

That unsettling foretaste of climate change notwithstanding, spring produced its usual floral glory. Here is Cistus albidus, a plant which has re-colonised an area which had been completely covered by rubble a few years ago.  It flowers over a long period, from March into June, with the peak around May.

The iris has got to be one of the greatest garden plants for this climate, producing a magnificent display around the same time, and requiring absolutely no care at all.  What I haven´t established is if it has any use; I have read some claims of medicinal properties, but remain sceptical of their scientific basis.  It is widely grown in gardens in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco, where folk do not normally go in for suburban fripperies, but I did not have the persistance at the time to find out what it was grown for.  It forms a dense mass of rhizomes which may be effective at preventing grass cover but, unlike Chasmanthe, it does not die back in summer.  Here it's growing around vines, which do not appear to be bothered by it.

And of course at this time of year we're looking forward to lots of lovely fruit.  Well, lots of is still a bit optimistic, but trees in their fourth and fifth years are producing a nice little crop. This blossom is on one of the Menorca apple varieties planted four years ago, which have been slower growing than the stone fruit, but seem to be doing well. 

The citrus which I have dug up and potted are thriving, while those still in the ground are barely growing.  I think think the cypress trees along the edge of their terrace are to blame, their roots coming up below the irrigated citrus trees.  The pots are in the same location, so it can't just be the spot that doesn't suit them.  I have a few gigantic containers, but the effort required to fill them is considerable and not particularly back friendly, so I´ve only done one so far.  I filled the bottom with half rotten pine wood, partly to fill the space, partly as an experiment in container hugelkultur.

Pigeon pea and Tagasaste - take two

Beginning of June, and after las year´s failure using excessively fertile potting mix, another attempt with these two this year using a mixture of sieved soil and leaf compost, from under a pile of cut brush. Both germinated fairly readily, the pigeon pea quicker and with a much higher rate.  Here's what it looked like after 18 days.

The tagasaste germinated much more erratically, but started off looking healthy.   The differences really happened after planting out in July.  The pigeon pea, mostly planted around the outer drip-lines of fruit trees, grew and thrived, reaching head-height by teh end of summer.  The tagasaste, well, it just didn´t grow much.  By the end of September the tallest had gained a height of, cue drum-roll, 25cm.  Maybe it simply does not like this calcareous soil.

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.