I've only just worked my way backwards to this video. I'm thinking it must have been your first one? You had already done so much back then, and my, how far you have come since! Your onscreen confidence has grown alongside your garden and farm. So much to be proud of and rejoice in.
It was my second video - there is a short intro to my farm video before this. Yes very nervous in front of the camera but found so many supportive viewers out there making lovely comments, so shyness disappeared and confidence grew. Thanks Ruby!
Thanks Jennifer. I used steel mesh panels (6m x 1.1m) that you can get from rural supply stores. In the US I think they’re called cattle panels. Very useful!!
Yeah awesome Swales, you had a great machine operator. I've found ex pasture land very difficult to pull back under Swales in particular, I think it has to do with the soil biology favouring the grassland of the previous succession. Using grains like barley and oat in winter and millet and sorghum in summer has worked really well to compete with existing pasture, and overtime more of the nitrogen fixing cover like vetch, clover and pea has started to establish itself. If you have access to woodchips, dumping these on the Swale berms seems to bring up the fungal biology and restart the rhizosphere so more biology relevant to the trees and groundcovers you want established can take hold and work out the pasture grass. I reckon the chickens are the go + woodchips, otherwise I know from experience you'll never keep up whipper snapping the grass back to get the covers going!! You seem like a similar climate and area to me on the far SE coast, you'll find particularly now there's a lot of native ground cover that once you start getting the grass back happily volunteer themselves with a beautiful array of meadow flowers, many of them seem to respond to cool season burning, whether that's from smoke or heat or that it knocks the grass back I dunno, but it works well here, our pastured areas are now almost entirely native grassland from burning and then mowing in winter, most of this diversity dissapears in the grazed areas though and it becomes dominated by grasses because the donkeys love all the little native peas and groundcovers so the tussock and kangaroo grass dominates through instead. Sheep definitely love the native forage so that's something to consider if you want more of that, rotational and timed grazing seems to help keep more groundcover diversity happening, but some things just can't handle the introduced animals on it. I'd love to have enough land to channel graze Roos through terraces between Swales on the native pasture and see how much they effect the diversity... Anyway apart from all that, my best advice is just keep chucking out seed everytime it rains well, buy a big bag of cheap seed from the ag store, mix in heaps of those grains you can buy 20kg feed bags of, and eventually it starts to win out, daikon radish, turnips, mustards, wild fennel can handle grass if it's fertile enough, and aswell as fennel you can get all sorts of great naturalised flowers and herbs off the side of the road, just watch for council poisoning them... If you can be bothered making them, clay seed balls work awesome!! Looks awesome though, once you get ontop of the grass you are going to have an AMAZING forest of food, well I'd say it already is, but for my mind it's not really a food forest until I've got strawberries growing EVERYWHERE!! So you gotta turn that grass into straw and grow some berries!! Happy living
Wow!! What a comment! Thank you so much for sharing all of that with me. Yeah my dam man did a great job although he did take a bit of convincing with the swales. I've put down heaps of seeds in the grasses and nothing seems to get going so I have resorted to attempting to plant out sections fairly thickly (probably not thick enough though!), and trying to manage these areas well, in a hope that the trees and shrubs will start to shade out the grass a bit. I have a couple more videos on my attempts!! Maybe I should heavily seed these planted areas a bit more and see how that goes. I do have an awesome trimmer with a blade that works like magic, although it does exhaust me!! I have started to plant strawberries hoping they will take hold in places - I do love strawberries also!! Happy living to you also and thanks again for such wonderful feedback :)
@@huttonsvalleypermaculture no rush at all! That's the beauty of gardening and Permaculture...things are always changing and evolving, and we just roll with it and enjoy🥰
I've only just worked my way backwards to this video. I'm thinking it must have been your first one? You had already done so much back then, and my, how far you have come since! Your onscreen confidence has grown alongside your garden and farm.
So much to be proud of and rejoice in.
It was my second video - there is a short intro to my farm video before this. Yes very nervous in front of the camera but found so many supportive viewers out there making lovely comments, so shyness disappeared and confidence grew. Thanks Ruby!
@@huttonsvalleypermaculture
We all love you and can't get enough of your videos
@rubygray7749 well I love you all too 😘
Looks like a little slice of paradise. Thanks for sharing!
Thank you so much - it’s certainly a slice of paradise to me 😊
Just found your channel, it's very inspiring. I was wondering what wire panels you used to make your polytunnel?
Thanks Jennifer. I used steel mesh panels (6m x 1.1m) that you can get from rural supply stores. In the US I think they’re called cattle panels. Very useful!!
Yeah awesome Swales, you had a great machine operator. I've found ex pasture land very difficult to pull back under Swales in particular, I think it has to do with the soil biology favouring the grassland of the previous succession. Using grains like barley and oat in winter and millet and sorghum in summer has worked really well to compete with existing pasture, and overtime more of the nitrogen fixing cover like vetch, clover and pea has started to establish itself. If you have access to woodchips, dumping these on the Swale berms seems to bring up the fungal biology and restart the rhizosphere so more biology relevant to the trees and groundcovers you want established can take hold and work out the pasture grass. I reckon the chickens are the go + woodchips, otherwise I know from experience you'll never keep up whipper snapping the grass back to get the covers going!! You seem like a similar climate and area to me on the far SE coast, you'll find particularly now there's a lot of native ground cover that once you start getting the grass back happily volunteer themselves with a beautiful array of meadow flowers, many of them seem to respond to cool season burning, whether that's from smoke or heat or that it knocks the grass back I dunno, but it works well here, our pastured areas are now almost entirely native grassland from burning and then mowing in winter, most of this diversity dissapears in the grazed areas though and it becomes dominated by grasses because the donkeys love all the little native peas and groundcovers so the tussock and kangaroo grass dominates through instead. Sheep definitely love the native forage so that's something to consider if you want more of that, rotational and timed grazing seems to help keep more groundcover diversity happening, but some things just can't handle the introduced animals on it. I'd love to have enough land to channel graze Roos through terraces between Swales on the native pasture and see how much they effect the diversity... Anyway apart from all that, my best advice is just keep chucking out seed everytime it rains well, buy a big bag of cheap seed from the ag store, mix in heaps of those grains you can buy 20kg feed bags of, and eventually it starts to win out, daikon radish, turnips, mustards, wild fennel can handle grass if it's fertile enough, and aswell as fennel you can get all sorts of great naturalised flowers and herbs off the side of the road, just watch for council poisoning them... If you can be bothered making them, clay seed balls work awesome!! Looks awesome though, once you get ontop of the grass you are going to have an AMAZING forest of food, well I'd say it already is, but for my mind it's not really a food forest until I've got strawberries growing EVERYWHERE!! So you gotta turn that grass into straw and grow some berries!! Happy living
Wow!! What a comment! Thank you so much for sharing all of that with me. Yeah my dam man did a great job although he did take a bit of convincing with the swales. I've put down heaps of seeds in the grasses and nothing seems to get going so I have resorted to attempting to plant out sections fairly thickly (probably not thick enough though!), and trying to manage these areas well, in a hope that the trees and shrubs will start to shade out the grass a bit. I have a couple more videos on my attempts!! Maybe I should heavily seed these planted areas a bit more and see how that goes. I do have an awesome trimmer with a blade that works like magic, although it does exhaust me!! I have started to plant strawberries hoping they will take hold in places - I do love strawberries also!! Happy living to you also and thanks again for such wonderful feedback :)
What great swale systems you have...and I love your kitchen garden! 🌱🌼🐝
Thanks! Yes I love all my swales. Lots of work still to do there to really be able to call them a food forest, but hey, whats the rush!?
@@huttonsvalleypermaculture no rush at all! That's the beauty of gardening and Permaculture...things are always changing and evolving, and we just roll with it and enjoy🥰
Great video Linda.
@@cazaitken3285 Thanks Caz xx
How many acre is your garden? Very beautiful I would love to do the same thing. Thanks for sharing..
It’s around 5 acres. I wanted that size to run some livestock but you could go amazing things with much less! Good luck - hope you get there one day 😊