7 Dec 10

Planning for the future

After going on the Permaculture course at Sunseed I've been all fired up about getting some fruit trees started on the land. I know we should be concentrating on getting the 'ship finished but what's another day in the grand scheme of things?! And as Kirsty says, trees can take years to establish and start fruiting so the sooner they go in the better.

We think that pomegranate, fig, carob and chumbo will be good ones to start with. So today we made a start with pomegranate and chumbos.

Pomegranate

One of my favourite fruits.

Maria from our local supply store has given us some prunings from her sweet pomegranate and said to plant them upside down with about 6" above ground (I know, seems strange but I'm going with it). They're fair sized prunings - about 4' long and wide with loads of twigs. I trimmed them a bit but the hole still had to be huge - doesn't look like it in the pic, but believe me, it was big and took ages to dig. We've decided we wouldn't make very good grave diggers - how do they do it so quickly in films?!

The first hole we started was going really well until we hit what we think is bedrock. We've planted a smaller trimming into this one - hope it works.

Chumba

We used prunings from our chumbas at home for this. These are hardy little fellas that grow wherever they're thrown it seems. So no big holes to dig - phew.

I think they root from the spine nodules so we've tried laying some flat so loads of the nodules come in contact with the ruffed up soil (technical term!). And we've tried others on their sides part dug in.

Seeds and cuttings

At home I planted seeds and made hard wood cuttings. Oak (the one with edible acorns), carob, strawberry bush and Yellow Bird of Paradise seeds. And the hard wood cuttings using the trimmings from the pomegranate, plus carob and bougainvillea from our garden. I've never done this before, well apart from sticking a few stalks of rosemary in a pot once, so I've no idea if they'll work, but it's worth a try.

I've had to put the tray in our chicken nursery because Tizzy thought the sticks were her toys.