Today i want to share with you a small breakdown of our recent work in one of the swales on our property here in Natural Bridge on the east coast of Australia.
The main focus of this post is to dive right in, explain a few ways of working with the land AND of course share inspiration and some photos.
For those of you who dont know what a swale is check out this image from Living permaculture
In short, a permaculture swale is a technique that captures water in the landscape for passive irrigation and for slowing runoff thereby increasing the ability for your land to grow fruit trees, gardens, cover crops and in general greatly increase the fertility and productivity of your soil
Lets start with some before photos - the swale has been left alone for some time and is crowded with plants that we dont want there... however they are great for now because they create a sort of "placenta" for native trees and food... we will chop them down but never remove the roots as we constantly use them for returning all of the goods to the ground, nitrogen boosting, carbon locking etc... everything has its place in the system!!
the first step in our system is to spread a bunch of cover crop...
Rupert Faust, the founder of the Grounded Permaculture Action Party spreading a mixture of brassica, native shrubs and legumes
The view from the top of the swale... lots of biomass to chop through!
Next we begin the big hit... chopping down all of the existing plants, brushcutting and pruning our chosen trees, returning their branches to the ground and opening up the swale for the new plants we will dig in.
now that the first part is done we begin to mark it out... we choose lines based on the type of plant and begin to lay them out, four of us will make easy work of this!
Everything is nicely laid out
among the plants selected we have......
cassava, canna, cocoyam, mulberry, citrus, banana, avocado, plum
AND a bunch of natives... wattle, eucalyptus, macaranga
and along the way we will be spreading various seeds such as pumpkin, brassica and nitrogen fixing legumes
So many goodies from another swale on the property! lets do this...
Me tucking in a Eucalyptus... get those roots deep yo!
Along with being delicious the Banana, canna and cocoyam will be a vital chop n drop over the next two years... they are all super juicy and when chopped up will bring so much water and nitrogen back to the ground as well as create cover for the other plants
reintroducing the natives should always be a priority as over time they will host a number of local flora and fauna!
Here is the final shot, all done! it doesnt look like much yet... but now its time to wait... within 6 months the entire thing will change and i really look forward to sharing the outcome with you all.
Stay dirty fam!!
and thanks for the follow 😉
