our forest garden escapades

here's our little journey of growing food with nature (in New Zealand on the island of Aotea) that began in April 2020.

as you can see we started out with containers inside the house we rented (which we ended up buying !), then emigrated outside to a small patch...then began creating our forest garden with terraces for fruit trees...

and the adventure continues ! this article is really a 2.5 year catch up on what we've done and there's SO much to say which we'll share in smaller articles about specific lessons we've learned :)

we have tried to grow all heritage plants, all organic of course, and in (just about) everything we do, we dowse and ask nature / the plants / the creative energy behind it, what is the best thing to do !

giulio dowses with his pendulum, and me i just stand up and use my body (lean forward yes, lean backwards, answer is no)

sometimes just simple questions like 'do you need more water ?' (that's how we realised why the shield beetles and aphids came and attacked our tomatoes !) or 'would you like to be planted here?'

sometimes i just get an intuitive thought, or a visual on what to do, before i've even asked a question.

it's all a fun experiment, to become more in tune with nature, with our intention to go with the flow and eventually flow into whatever kind of food forest develops !

we have now planted around 50 fruit trees from march 2021 onwards and we are continually monitoring them, their soil and their water and nutritional needs <3

olives, figs, cherries, peaches, mandarins, plums, nectarines, lemons, limes, grapefruit, apricots, yellow raspberries, boysenberries, red raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, feijoas, avocados, oranges, oak, almond, bananas, coffee and macadamias so far !

giulio worked the terraces intensively before adding the fruit trees, spreading mulch (pampass stalk), seaweed and cow poop, cardboard and then LOTS of wood chip, then we sprinkled our own 'lasagne' compost six months in, seaweed and comfrey teas, innoculants containing beneficial fungi and bacteria, all according to intuitive/forest garden principles (which we are contiually learning about) ~ which helps us ask the right questions too for dowsing :0)

....and then we have our veggie garden attached, but fenced in so the free roaming ducks (and often chickens too) cannot get in and stampede all of our creations. we are lucky in our subtropical climate to be able to grow all year round here.

we did have to fence everything to protect from roaming wild pigs and rabbits, but we have also been experimenting with placing things outside ~ which, if initially protected with rabbit wire seems to work a treat

i hope you enjoy the beauty nature paints for us, and are just as inspired as we are, to create an abundance of food for ourselves ~ and our community in these crazy times ~ simply grown, in harmony with nature 🌱

xx sim and giulio