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I love those satisfying resets too. I'm so happy you're inspired and motivated! And thanks very much Sharon, great feedback on the course so far and some beautiful results 😊💚🌱

Thanks very much Wendy! This method has really transformed my soil. So much worm life now, whereas before the soil was quickly drying out and going hydrophobic 💚🌱

Welcome! Thanks for watching and subscribing and I’m glad you like my garden.. it brings me so much joy. Happy gardening, Alex 💚🌿

Thank you! 💚🌿

I hadn’t thought to do this with leeks.. thank you! And I’ve been wanting to explore your neck of the woods for years now.. I’m looking forward to a road trip soon. Glad you enjoyed the video & thanks for watching! Alex 😊🌿

You're welcome! 🌱

Thank you! Sometimes slugs can be a problem, I’ve used beer traps in the past. But I’ve found I’ll get slugs sometimes over winter too even if I haven’t mulched? I’m sure Huw Richards addressed slugs in one of his videos.. not sure if that might help as he’s in your climate? For us in the subtropics evaporation over the hotter months is one of our biggest problems so it’s mulch, mulch, mulch! Luckily the slugs haven’t been an issue this time round 💚🌱

Thank you, I’m a big believer in letting nature do its thing.. as long as I can find things! The wildness around the ordered beds has definitely helped insulate the metal.. and I don’t have to water it like the raised beds 💚🌿

Thanks Darryl! It was a scorcher here too, we were lucky to have a storm cell come through and dump 20mm on us. We’ve had such a great run of rain when we really needed it so fingers crossed for you! 🤞💚🌿

@ yes got to enjoy the rain. We have had an ok year, but everyone around us has had a lot more.

It depends on the weed, vining weeds are more resistant. A layer of cardboard is usually enough to get rid of most weeds until new seeds come along.

Thank you! 💚 Great question, it depends on the weed! Stringer, woodier weeds you can pull by the roots and chop up, more delicate weeds the newspaper smothers them and the don’t grow. Eventually as the newspaper breaks down you may get some weeds but usually by then it’s time to reset the beds again 😊🌱

Thank you kindly Martin.. we were blessed after a blistering 44 degrees today that we had a summer storm.. 20mm of rain in about half an hour. Things are nicely cooled off and rehydrated now! 💚🌿

Thank you! 💚🌿

Thank you very much! 💚🌿

Thank you! Happy for the exercise haha! Seeing all the growth has been so rewarding 💚🌿

Thanks very much for your lovely comment. This is a big beef and dairy area, the town of Casino down the road is the beef capital of Australia. But after reading your comment, I looked it up and the largest camel farm is just across the border in Queensland too! Alpacas are also a great option and there are alpaca farms in the area also 💚🌿

Oh wow Sharon, thanks for your beautiful comment. That’s crazy to have 50 degrees! It was a tough time for sure. The shade makes such a difference. I definitely appreciate just how lush and green things are now and am very grateful for all the rain we’ve had this season. Enjoy your tree planting!! 🌳💚🌿

Great question. We started with cattle to fertilise and get the grass down. Then we removed the cattle to let the paddocks rest, decompact and be able to plant trees. Once the trees get bigger we’ll look at reintroducing livestock, potentially a few steers, but we’ll reassess our options when the time comes. 🌿

Thank you, it’s been such a rewarding journey, seeing the land transform. 💚🌿

Thank you, this is so true. It’s definitely a much more welcoming space now ☺️🌳

Oh it’s so great to hear from you, I tell everyone about your Switchel! I held a food forest course here a few months ago and made up a batch with frozen mulberries from our tree to show what you can do with excess fruit.. it was an absolute hit! I’m so sorry you had to go through Hurricane Helene.. I watched many videos of brave individuals going into remote areas delivering supplies. The utter devastation brought me to tears. I’m glad to hear you are okay, but I’m sure cleanup must have been an arduous task. It reminded me of the Lismore floods a few years back. The strength of the community was incredible, anyone with a boat was out there rescuing people off roofs, we had no communication and whole sections of roads collapsed in landslides, many people tragically lost everything. While we were cut off for many days here in Kyogle, we are fortunate to be on a hill. Yes in the third year things have really started to take off, especially with all the rain this spring which is unusual.. I’m also excited to see the progress over the coming years, it feels as though all the trees are supporting each other now, and things are starting to thrive. And you raise a great point about the gulley. The steep section is on a neighbouring property however on our section I would love to install some gabions. The gulley turns into a raging river during flooding rains so I’m thinking the gabions would be strong enough to withstand the force of the water. I’m looking forward to that project! And the snakes.. yes, lots around this season so we definitely have to be careful where we walk! Take care and sending you strength, Alex 💚🌿

@@dreamsofgreen Glad to hear that the Switchel is so well received. Hopefully, we'll be able to bring it back into popularity and get folks off the modern "sports drinks" that are full of so many noxious chemicals! The hurricane damage wasn't too bad for me. I lost one giant pecan tree that was at least a century old and 3' thick at breast height. Sad to see that giant toppled in the wind, but at least it didn't do any damage to buildings and such. Just a mess to deal with. Around me, though, it looks like something out of a war movie with all the devastation. Everywhere you went, there were roads blocked and all our big "generational" trees toppled. Real sad to see. Up in North Carolina, I'm hearing that the area impacted is the size of Belgium. A good way to give folks a sense of scale. Millions of people without power, water, sewer.... and in a lot of cases, they even lost the ground their homes were on as the rivers changed course. Whole mountainsides have had their trees toppled by the winds, creating a tangle that'll be a serious fire hazard for years to come until it's cleaned up somehow. I wouldn't recommend stone-filled gabions for the gulley. That's a lot of hard work and heavy lifting when you have wood that can help the process along. The key is starting small and not trying to stop the raging torrents. Providing speed bumps that slow the flow a little bit will give the sediment a change to drop out of solution and build up the floor's height. Most of the water can just keep on going, taking a ton of pressure off the structures you're using them slow the flow. There are a lot of good vids on the science behind building channel-spanning structures for erosion control as it relates to the BDA's. Turns out that just having that pond of water behind the dam acts as a cushion for incoming water, stealing some of its power so it can't just blow through the beaver's hard work. Smart critters, them guys! The way I look at it, beavers have a million years of expertise on the matter, and if they can hold water back using nothing but small branches and some mud, surely us humans with our opposable thumbs can do the same using the same materials. Makes for relatively light work, all told. Now it's time to get some yard work down before the sun goes down for the night. I'll lift a glass of Switchel to your health when I'm done!

Thanks so much for your lovely comment.. I’m so glad I took those before photos, I had forgotten just how bare it was a few years back! 🙏💚🌿

Yes I know of Elaine Ingham’s work, all fascinating stuff! Thanks for the reminder, a friend of mine does soil workshops based on her methods and has achieved incredible results on her farm 😊🌿

Thank you! And this is a really beautiful vision. I hope you find your land and are able to put this into practice.. I’d love to see the progress of this system in action. Wishing you all the very best with your dream.. this is inspiring stuff! Alex 💚🌿

There’s too many to mention here, but if you check out my other videos, I take you on a walk through the food forests and show you exactly what I’ve planted. I hope this helps! 💚🌿

Thank you!! 🙏💚

I hope so! And it’s absolutely amazing how much more water this system retains too!! Our paddocks used to dry out so quickly without the shade.. such a difference now 💚🌿

Thanks Doug! Yes, we’ve been so lucky with the rain this year. We haven’t had that much rain, but still a lot compared to other years! And love that, shade is life. I definitely didn’t understand that until observing the difference between a bare paddock and what we have now. It’s made a huge difference! 💚🌳

Thank you for watching! So glad you found it inspiring 💚🌿

Great question and suggestion. We have 2 small dams and access to the creek but they can go dry in a bad drought.. I would definitely love to do more of this though, especially with some fish. The ponds are great for bringing in more wildlife too 🦘🌿🕊️

If you make a sequence of ponds down a slope you can see if any stay wet. It was used in medieval times in England by monks to supply food.Better than losing water to next property.l lived by ‘Fishponds rd’, south London. As you say it creates bird homes etc.

@@jamespeatling7660 this is really interesting! I didn’t know the monks did this in medieval England. There’s another very gentle gulley onsite that doesn’t turn into a raging river during flooding rains. I’ve always envisage a series of smaller ponds down this slope, it would also be better to keep fish. Thanks for this, I think or would be a really exciting project for the future! 😊🌿

Glad to be of help. A digger could create several ponds in an afternoon,you just need it to be on water route.Possibly connect by gutters as overflow down slope. Canals here have ‘pounds’ on the side to store and refill locks in sets - works on same idea. Probably help keep temperature down too?

There is a TH-cam film ‘farmdemoeuro’. that talks about benefits of ponds.

You are so welcome! Thank you 💚🌿

Thank you for watching! 💚🌿

Thank you! Not just yet but hopefully in the future we’d love to get animals back in the system once the trees get bigger 😊🌿

Thanks very much 💚🌿

Thank you! 🙏🌿

Thank you! If you check out my other videos I show you how I propagate mulberries, mango, bush lemon, guava and others. Hope you enjoy and thanks for watching! Alex 💚🌿

Oh that sounds wonderful! Thanks for sharing what you’ve done, sounds like you’ve created such a beautiful garden. It’s so rewarding to look back at old photos and see how things have changed. Enjoy your garden! Alex 💚🌿

Thank you for your kind words.. I’m lucky to be able to follow my passion 💚

I would have loved to have added swales but the hillsides are too steep and there’s a fibre optic cable running underground through the property..so I plant and mulch on contour to help slow the flow of water runoff 💚

@@dreamsofgreen Maybe you could dig out the dam and use the spoil to make small swales on some of the mulch swales. Gradually making the dam larger and the swales bigger?

This is a great question. I put the plastic cover on in winter, but I found it must have the option to roll up both ends completely as well as many side windows to allow heat to escape on a warm day. Then I take the plastic off in Spring and replace with a large piece of shade cloth that I secure with clips. In your case if the polycarbonate is fixed, just make sure there’s really good cross ventilation for summer and you could put some shade cloth over the top of the polycarbonate in summer. I also have mulberry trees next to the polytunnel that I can easily prune to size that will let in winter sun but provide shade in summer. My plants seem to be coping okay in the shade house in winter but also I’m not growing tropicals like you are.. it’s definitely making a difference now all our gardens are getting established to moderate extreme temperatures. Best wishes, Alex 💚🌿

There are actually some already planted on the other side of the driveway.. they are just getting big enough to flower. I didn’t realise they flowered at the same time. Will be beautiful!😊🌿

I’ve studied finance, worked on super yachts for many years in the Mediterranean and Caribbean, worked at yacht marinas and a garden centre, have done gardening work, tutored students in maths and home schooling.. now I’m starting to offer food forest courses and plant packs.. I guess I adapt to the work that is available and we live very simply 💚

@dreamsofgreen A Jill of all trades! Love it!

@@M.i.k.e. haha yes, not exactly a conventional career!

So much more life now that the trees have taken hold. It's amazing to see the impact of planting! 💚🌿

Thank you! Yes, we are definitely curious to see what happens with the microclimate as the trees mature, we’ve already noticed a big difference in the tree rows with the shade 😊🌳