Tag Archives: propagation

The Fifth Annual Tree Planting Extravaganza

25 Sunday Jun 2017

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“Trees are the poems the earth writes upon the sky” said Kahlil Gibran. Pete, Shani and Sophie prepare to plant.

This year is our fifth on Yarnauwi, and this June saw our fifth annual tree-planting extravaganza. Over the last five years, our amazing community of tree planters and supporters have planted 5000 trees and other plants on Yarnauwi as we work to restore woodland, stabilise and repair erosion and plant trees for future timber, forage and food. Following the last four years of observation and experimentation, in 2017 our main focus was planting carefully selected species into some of the more challenging areas of the property. Each year we’ve propagated and planted trees sourced from both Trees for Life and our own seed collection. In addition to their generous labour and time, we’re honoured that Yarnauwi regulars Richard and Marg have now immortalised the annual tree-planting tradition in a musical saga, published below and sung to the tune of Loudon Wainwright’s The Swimming Song. The lyricists also pre-emptively apologise for any character assassination contained within.

Putting in soil-stabilising groundcovers around the shed.

A week or two following the tree-planting extravaganza, we were delighted to host the Permaculture Association of South Australia for a walking tour and lunch, sharing our property planning process and how we’ve approached the landscape restoration through a permaculture lens – of which these plantings are a central element. Thank you to Tree Team 2017: Anthony, Pete, Shani, Arlo, Freya, Jeremy, Claire, Innis, Sal, Mary, Branny, Richard, Marg, Nat, Jess, Oliver, Gillian, David, Geoff and Andrew.

One of the electives at this year’s tree-planting fiesta was making plaster casts of animal tracks. Here we have a collection of fox tracks from the dam’s edge.

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Planting for the future: exploring tree time

30 Sunday Aug 2015

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Present-day badlands, future cloud forest (?!): Sophie and Annika take a break from planting.

After three months, our tree planting activities are finally finished for 2015. The pattern is always the same. Sophie does her best to moderate my impulses, but when the opening rains come I always seem to get a rush of chlorophyll to the head and end up with boxes of seedlings more than we could ever reasonably plant. That said, with the support of our community of family and friends, this year we planted 1000-odd trees, shrubs and ground covers, 300 grasses propagated from seed collected on the property, and still had a few boxes to give to neighbours.

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Asher inspects a red gum seedling only a few months younger than him.

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From badlands to woodlands: The Third Annual Tree Planting Extravaganza

15 Monday Jun 2015

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The day one team, still smiling after 350 holes

In early June we hosted our third annual tree-planting fiesta. Through the generosity of our friends and family, we planted another 800-odd trees, forming shelterbelts and habitat corridors along the southern and western boundaries. As in previous years, the trees are mostly local provenance with some propagated through Trees for Life, and others from seed we’ve gathered. This year, we’re also experimenting with enhancing seedling resilience by inoculating them with beneficial fungi and mulching each planting, in addition to protection with roo-thwarting tree guards.

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Jumping into the mulch pile

We hope the annual planting is becoming a tradition. Despite the aching muscles and brisk breezes, there’s great pleasure in working among friends beneath a big sky. For the brood of kids, there are gullies and mallow thicket cubbies to spend days leaping into. There is great pleasure too in the sense that this future, hoped-for woodland is an enduring legacy of the companionship and generosity of our community. Continue reading →

Planting and preparing trees for El Niño

09 Tuesday Jun 2015

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A baby, or a nest, are not essential for tree-planting, but they help.

We’re in our third season of tree planting at Yarnauwi now, working to revegetate sections of the property for habitat, shelter and timber. We’ve planted about 1,000 plants a year, from groundcovers to future woodland giants. Once they were guarded from marauding roos, we’ve necessarily had a philosophy of leaving the plants to survive without too much intervention. Even in a dry year such as 2014, we had a modest 60ish percent survival rate, but with El Niño tipped to recur in 2015, we’ve tried to further refine our approach to give our trees an improved chance of survival. Of course, there are absolutely no guarantees it will work, or will work for everything, but it’s worth a shot.

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The bunyip water level: bringer of contoured joy to young and old alike.

This year, we’ve also planted our first, experimental, woodlot of river oaks (Casuarina cunninghamiana) in an awkward corner of the farm. The paddock was too small and inaccessible to deep rip, so we began by marking contours with a bunyip water level, an essential DIY tool for measuring and marking slope (see Brad Lancaster’s guide to bunyip construction and usage here).  Continue reading →

Fleurieu Foliage: River red gum (Eucalyptus camaldulensis)

19 Monday Jan 2015

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After shedding two-thirds of its branches last year, one of our giant red gums is now a forest of new shoots.

As the two remnant trees on our farm, River red gums (Eucalyptus camaldulensis) hold a special place in our hearts. Our red gums are bent and stretch up the hillside away from the prevailing winds. Red gums are not unique to the Fleurieu however, in fact, their high level of adaptability means that they have a distribution across Australia, most commonly occurring on floodplains and waterways as well as throughout higher rainfall regions.

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Not dead yet! After apparently dying in an unusually dry winter and spring, this year-old red gum seedling has re-sprouted from its base after receiving about 10mm of rain over several weeks.

With red gums as a significant species in the past ecosystem of our property, they’ve been a clear choice for revegetation. When planting, we’re constantly inspired by their resilience. I’ve heard it said that red gum roots grow at a centimetre a day, which puts them at over three-and-a-half metres a year. If it’s true, then it’s an indicator of their startling ability to find water and nutrients. We’ve been amazed by some of our red gums that have shot to almost 1.5 metres after a couple of years in the ground, but also by their apparent capacity for dormancy. Some seedlings will sit in dry, cracked clay soil for months on end, leaves green but not growing. Then, with a decent rain, they burst into new growth. Likewise, others appear to have died, leaving nothing but a dry stick until the opening rains of autumn when they reshoot from the ground, sending out a profusion of leaves and spindly branches. We’ve noticed some other plants behave similarly – the occasional melaleuca or acacia for example – but none so consistently and successfully resurrect themselves as the red gum.

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The Farm Year in Review: 2014

18 Thursday Dec 2014

Posted by in events, livestock, planning, regeneration

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2014 was a year where the dry season came early and stayed late. It seemed as if the rain barely had a chance to soften the ground and throw up some soursobs before our clay soils began to crack again and the pasture browned off. Despite this, after two years observing the rhythms of this patch of ground, I feel like we’re becoming more resilient and optimistic: where previously we despaired at every lost seedling, now we celebrate every survivor.

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Summer: a shingleback lizard soaks up some sunshine.

In the spirit of permaculture, this year also marks a transition from our observational period towards beginning to implement infrastructure for a sustainable farming enterprise. With fencing and water infrastructure for livestock, our appreciation of the need for water only deepens, and despite its challenges, we’ve learnt to stop worrying and love winter.

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Regeneration: Two years of practising patience

16 Sunday Nov 2014

Posted by in ecology, planning, regeneration, trees, waterways

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Some might consider Shark-mesh overkill for allowing rushes to regenerate.

In our first year of working on the farm, we really tried to practise the permaculture principle of long and thoughtful observation, but it always competed with our own impatience to see change. In that first flurry of clearing gullies and planting seedlings, I remember trawling the internet for before-and-after shots of other people’s reveg projects: something to help imagine a future for the block. Seasoned tree-planters told us we’d see real change in five years, the optimistic suggested three, others, fifteen.

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Self-regenerating golden wattle (Acacia pycnantha) after two years, and protection from kangaroos. This wattle was one of four trees present on the entire property in 2012.

Now at the two year mark, we are noticing change. Removing cattle and fencing sensitive areas has allowed a fuzz of groundcover to begin growing over the barest of gullies. Fences have reoriented deer and kangaroo movement and grazing patterns. Some seedlings planted in the cold, soggy winter of 2013 appeared to die, but then surprised us by resprouting and growing at a cracking pace the following autumn. Other plants that were repeatedly pruned back to their tree-guard height by roos have invested their growing energy into roots and woody stems.

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Fleurieu Foliage: Scented sundew (Drosera whittakeri)

21 Monday Jul 2014

Posted by in ecology, exploring, propagation, regeneration

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This is the first instalment in an occasional series celebrating different plants of the Fleurieu, particularly those that we spot or try to reintroduce to the farm. It’s also a way for us to map and share our research and discoveries as we observe the regeneration of our property.

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During our recent winter tree-planting extravaganza, Sean, one of our dedicated tree-planters, discovered a patch of Scented sundews (Drosera whittakeri), in the damp, mossy undergrowth around the gullies. With its distinctive white flowers, once we’d spotted one cluster, we discovered more in similar damp pockets. Continue reading →

Propagating Oaks 1: Germination

02 Wednesday Jul 2014

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An English oak seedling (Quercus robur) reachers towards the winter sun.

An English oak seedling (Quercus robur) reaches towards the winter sun.

Back in autumn, we gathered freshly fallen acorns from the base of a row of massive old English oaks (Quercus robur). Inspired by the dehesa agroforestry systems of Spain and Portugal, we’ve often pondered how a livestock-grazed oak plantation could work on the property. Acorns for pigs, and perhaps even human consumption, timber for the use of our great-great-grandchildren, and in the meantime, a carpet of fallen leaves offering organic matter for composting and mulch. So, with some bags of acorns and few containers of the topsoil and leaf litter from around the parent oaks, we set to propagating them.

We mixed the leaf litter and gathered topsoil in with our potting medium, hoping to inoculate our own medium with beneficial fungi, and then planted the acorns. We planted some close to the surface, and others about an acorn-width deep. After about eight weeks of being kept damp and left in the late autumn-early winter sun, they began sending their first shoots upwards, red furry things with a cluster of jagged leaves at the top. The depth of the acorn doesn’t seem to have had any bearing on their readiness to propagate. Once they’ve all emerged and are about 8-10 cm tall, we’ll carefully thin them, planting out excess strong specimens to their own pots until we have one decent plant per pot.

Grow little seedling, grow!

Grow little seedling, grow!

Propagating feijoas

26 Thursday Jun 2014

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The take-away container propagation method. Place cleaned seed on a damp cloth, replace lid, and leave in a warm place.

The take-away container propagation method. Place cleaned seed on a damp cloth, replace lid, and leave in a warm place.

The feijoa (Acca sellowiana, aka. Feijoa sellowiana) is one of those underrated suburban fruit trees that is often (perhaps unwittingly) grown around Adelaide backyards and little eaten. The varieties I’ve come across most often have offered grey-green torpedoes with a sharp, pineapple tang and a somewhat gritty texture. In the height of feijoa season, we were given a paper bag full of a variety I’d not encountered before. The skin was thin enough to bite a chunk out of and the flesh silky(ish) and smooth. Continue reading →