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Mini Food Forest

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Commenced:	01/11/2005
Submitted:	10/04/2012
Last updated:	07/10/2015
Location:	200 Dingo Lane, Mullumbimby, NSW, AU
Phone:	+61 408 66 2468
Website:	www.trustnature.com.au
Climate zone:	Sub-tropical

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Mini Food Forest

Project Type

Residential

Project Summary

Create a food forest around six existing fruit trees, incorporate a vegetable garden understory crops and increase diversity in perennial crops to provide food for the household.

Project Description

Mini Food Forest, fruit trees, vegetable garden and support species

Property is one acre in size (4000 sq.m.) the existing fruit trees occupy approximately 250 sq.m. in area. We built a 6 meter diameter garden with Geoff and Nadia and introduced an additional 100 perennial plants into the system as well as support species such as pinto peanut, comfrey, and pigeon pea. We added kaffir lime, Thai ginger, lemongrass and turmeric to be able to make our favorite Thai dishes. Any further spaces will be taken up by infill species such as papaya, blueberry, acerola cherry etc. these species add to the diversity of table food even if they are eventually over shaded as longer term species develop.

At the end of the 3-year period for developing Food Forest we achieved an impressive diversity that met our needs and required almost no maintenance other than harvesting.

The Food Forest now includes 2 mango trees (Bowen and Strawberry), ginger and galangal, a macadamia nut tree, 3 varieties of papaya, strawberries as groundcover, pinto peanut as a legume groundcover, comfrey, a variety of vegetables, a Tahitian lime, Valencia orange tree, several rose apples, turmeric, blueberries, a mulberry tree, 2 species of banana and much, much more on just 250 sq.m. of land (approx 2500 sq.ft).

Diversity of species is key to supplying abundance of food for the table.

Once the Food Forest was established with this impressive diversity it required far less maintenance and increased the health and productivity of the fruit trees. The value of food harvested from this 250 sq.m. area exceeded $200 per week, management was largely by composting and applications of soil Pro-Biotic (specialist compost tea). This not only served as the basis of our food supply but as an example of what you can do using the Bio Vital system empowering our ability to GROW FOOD FOR FREE using compost from household and yard waste as our primary nutrient source.

Plant seedlings in 40% compost every 2 weeks for continuous supply.

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