My Food Forest Journey Begins.

On March 26th 2020 when lockdown started my life and mindset changed.

For all my adult years I had been interested in, and dabbled with self sufficiency and an organic way of living and growing food.

A food forest had always been up there on my to-do’s list, but I never seemed to feel I had the right sort of property, the amount of knowledge I thought was needed to create one, or the know how, how to start.

I remember buying a book on How to Start a Food Forest and it was just a daunting read  with sketches and plans that I couldn’t even understand!!

Last September we retired up to Coromandel onto a small 650 square meter property. The smallest property I had ever owned. 

On it along the back fence was a hedge and 4 fruit trees. That was it. A blank canvas of the rest all in lawns.

I loved mowing lawns and always got immense pleasure standing back admiring my neat cut and manicured edges, perfectly straight mow lines - only to have it all undone in a few days to start the process all again. I have an electric mower so never felt bad about leaving carbon footprints or noise behind, but I began to question why do I spend so much time aimlessly mowing lawns when this area could be growing food!

Now my real story begins.

Lockdown came and I discovered a page on Facebook called Food Not Lawns.

My blinkers were off and my eyes were opened wide! 

Why had I not seen this years ago??  I then discovered so many more pages on Permaculture and Food Forests and a link to a free year long permaculture course online.

I signed up for this course and this got me going.

We had had a round swimming pool out the back up over summer for the grandkids to swim in.  When I took it down in March, it left a big circular dead area on our predominantly Kikuyu lawn. 

I looked at this for a couple of days and thought that I could make a nice circular garden out of it as it was bang in the middle of the lawn. 

I had been reading up on Hugelkultur beds, and decided to go for it and make a horse shoe shaped one around the circle. 

This completed, it seemed natural to make another opposite it to even it up and then the Food Forest Garden seed was sewn in my mind.

I COULD do this. I WILL do this.

My husband is not well, and spends most of his time inside, so this was a solo project but I was determined not to fail. 

The rest is just history really. I bought 10 cubic meters of arborist mulch which I spread thickly everywhere. I didn’t have enough cardboard to cover all the area first and I don’t spray, so I am hoping so much that the depth of mulch is going to knock the Kikuyu back, and what comes through I will hand weed out. Being realistic, if the worst comes to the worst and it starts to take over out of control in the spring and summer I have decided I am going to paint the sprouting stalks of Kikuyu with a paintbrush dipped in roundup as a last resort. It will be direct contact and this will be a first for me but hoping it won’t come to that. 

The area out the back in mulch for my Food Forest ( Stage 1 lol) is about 10m x 20m  

I purchased 4 13 week old chooks when lockdown 2 was announced and they have a good sized area they are fenced into which in time when they have scratched it all up and manured it, will be mulched and be part of the Food Forest. 

So far planted out the back is a Plum tree, 3 apples, 1 nashi pear, apricot, banana palms, tamarillos, lemonade, mandarin, dwarf peach and nectarine ( the last 4 trees were here when we brought the property )  These will become my top canopy in time and dotted around these I have got Tagasaste, rosemary, lemongrass, chamomile, strawberries, asparagus, rhubarb, day lilies, garlic, turmeric, blueberries, raspberries, parsley.

I have 2 more orders of plants arriving in the next week or 2 so that is going to fill in more gaps.

I have also got a lot of seeds started inside that I can plant out in a few weeks when they are bigger.

Last week I planted my first lot of vege plants in the first Hugelkultur bed. I can't wait to watch their progress.

A Food Forest definitely isn’t an overnight wonder- but over the next 5-10 years I expect my back yard to be full of birds and insect life and a tranquil subtropical food producing Greenhills Paradise.

I have just started a Facebook page to document daily my progress if you are interested in following this. https://www.facebook.com/greenhillsparadise/