Thought it was time to do a garden post and share a picture story of our attempt at creating a permaculture garden.
So… what is a permaculture garden? The Permaculture garden is a system that is focused on bringing together the fertilizer process by using waste, and reducing the dependence on inputs by creating healthy soil and diversity of produce.
This is a view of the side garden – 2010. These trees are over 40 years old. Some are dying off and last year 2014 I learned the technique of air layering – which allows us to continue the delicious variety of citrus that grows in our garden hopefully for years to come.
This picture was taken the next year in 2011 the view is from the pasture looking out to the main road we fenced in the property as well as added 5 olive trees and 4 pecan trees. If you move your sight towards the fence line you can notice that there are a lot of open pockets or areas – the older citrus trees have died. Prior to learning the air layer technique we had purchased over 40 trees to hopefully fill in the empty spots but that year was a learning year for us since for the first time after being in Central Florida I learned the worries of the one day frost that torments Florida gardeners… it killed all but 5 of our new citrus trees.
Now here we are five years later and the vision is becoming clearer in my mind… it was in 2012 when my dad showed me how to grow bananas so they can fruit and after experimenting with the bananas as edible landscape around the house in 2014 we decided to create a permaculture garden on the side yard.
Look at the above picture (click on picture to enlarge)- notice the area to the left you can see the diversity of banana trees and orange trees – the right side of the picture shows the orange trees and grass growing through-out. The left side shows the future vision of the permaculture garden. The banana leaves provide a light canopy over the orange trees and the temperature is about 5 degrees cooler in this area.
Working the design is at the pace of Mother Nature since all the banana trees come from the one little banana plant we bought back in 2007 and brought it to this site in 2010, it had never bloomed until my dad taught me the technique to get bananas to produce fruit. Each banana tree puts out pups I would say between 3 or so every 3 months.
George built this lovely bench for me from a frame that our friend Cathy Tallacksen gave us… looks at home in this little space. It is rather peaceful to sit out there in the morning with a cup of coffee and listening to the birds.
I’ve come to conclude two things… one: mowing around orange trees can be a waste of time and dangerous. two: the ‘real estate’ around the orange trees can be more useful than just for grass – and that is how the birth of permaculture garden made sense.
Perhaps you can pick out the different goodies growing in this area? Aside from orange trees and bananas, we also have yucca (cassava), a mango tree, cinnamon tree, pineapples, mint, Florida pine trees, sweet potatoes, some herbs like mountain mint, basil and some jalapeno peppers.
Hopefully you’ll come back and visit my site… and see the progress.
