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The most effective means to control invasive species has to be taken on a case by case basis.
The use of herbicide was quoted by a local bush regenerator as amplifying the effect of human interaction one hundred fold.

A person working with the health of the system in mind can effect a huge change, this is sometimes necessary when an over dominant species has halted the natural phasing of the forest.
However;
Indiscriminate spraying of herbicides has a massive environmental cost it can destroy fertility in the soils and undermines the natural processes. Persistent herbicides remain and are concentrated up the food chain. Run off can pollute water ways. Particular products and additives, such as the surfactant used to stick round-up to plants has known toxic effects on frogs.

Plant identification and understanding are the greatest of assets. Knowledge of the land and its history can give a clear perspective on whether the regrowth is beneficial for soil re-balancing or if needs intervention.

This was the focus of our ABT.
Plant identification is an art that notes the features. Many plants do not differentiate enough when young (and most easily controlled). Leaf shape and colour, flower, fruit, structure, smell, root system and location are all used to make a positive identification.

If you are unable to identify a species, a pressing is made, details are noted and can then be sent to a herbarium for them to catalog.

A very effective and efficient way of identifying plants is to find someone that already knows a great deal. Plant varieties and species can be very localized, so the more experience your assistant has in the same area, the more likely you are to get a positive identification.

Some Jargon
Native : These are plants that are indigenous to the country
Endemic : This is more specific, plants that are indigenous to a particular area.
Naturalised : These are species from elsewhere that have adapted to a new area and made it home.
Successional Phasing : A forest develops in phases, first come the grasses, then fast growing woodier, taller species. Then pioneer trees.

One of the critiques of Permaculture is that it encourages the introduction of new species to an ecology. The ramifications of bringing in new species are often far-reaching and little known. Many out of control species are garden escapees.

This is Yarrow, used as a superb compost activator.

Some topsoil was bought and trucked in to the trust without seeing the source with it came a whole soil seedbank that contained some of the most noxious weeds to the area.

Nutgrass and Castor oil plant are two that once established will run and are next to impossible to fully eradicate. We heard stories of nutgrass seed being introduced in the tracks of hired machinery.

This is a native tobacco bush, often regarded as a weedy species it actually acts as a nursery plant for the next phase of successional growth.

There are many different grass species in the area. The local rule tends to be if the cows, roo’s or horses won’t eat it, it is a weed.

One of the techniques for plant control taught to us was the cut, scrape and paint.

The Cut!

The outer layer of bark is quickly scraped away revealing the green layer where the plant transports the nutrients around

It is then painted with the herbicide. Once the plant is cut, the vascular system shuts down very quickly. It is in this time that poison must be painted on to be effective.

This particular species is on a government list that controls the most noxious weeds. Land owners are obligated by law to control it on their property.

The permaforest trust is on a 100 acre title, only the top 10 acres are certified organic where plants are controlled by hand. The remaining 90 acres are controlled with the use of Round-up (Glycosulphate) a relatively benign, short lived and extremely widespread herbicide produced by Monsanto.

Our share is very sandy and prone to erosion. To slow the hill from creeping onto our driveway, and to provide a flat bed for planting we decided to build some permanent stone retaining walls.

The sand makes digging is made easy. The downside is the only stone we have on site is patchy sandstone. It is quite soft and at one time many millions of years ago I am told it was the bottom of the ocean.

Without a suitable building clay available on site and new terraces in need of support. The rocks for the wall would have to be trucked in.
We are lucky, we have a good road to the top of the ridge. So everything is down hill. I ordered a full truck of unseen basalt from near where we sometimes work in Corndale.
It was a large pile. And I didn’t really know what to do with it next. I had ideas and moved 10 – 20 barrow loads around the place but the pile remained massive.

At the same time, at the top of the creek, A friend had been collecting the rocks that occur naturally and abundantly near his home was learning the art and craft of dry wall rock stacking.
After doing some wood work he invited me home to see the result. He has built a beautiful wall, and on the strength of that we asked him to do ours.

He begins work at 7:30am and goes with 2 5 minute breaks till 12. Stacking rocks. Every rock is different. Every rock had a face.

Our friend has completed his third half day of dry rockwall stacking. In the final stages aided by Robin who collected rocks trucked them down and sorted them in front of the wall. All together almost 13 tons of basalt moved by hand and wheelbarrow.

When building a dry stone wall it is very important to get the foundations right. They need to be flat and level. The idea is that they are dug deep enough that the bottom rocks don’t roll out from below as the earth moves.

Once you have dug the foundation, rocks are then stacked on top of each other with the flattest face looking outwards. Try to fill in all the gaps with smaller rocks. There should also be a slight lean back up the hill, this is called the “batter”.

Once the rocks are stacked and secure, back fill in with smaller rocks to assist with drainage behind the wall. Finally cover them with dirt and plant.

The new beds have been created; all the aloe that was removed for digging the footers and laying the stone was replanted. It was then mulched with leave matter collected from the gutters.

Bamboo mulch and topsoil from under the ice cream bean was also collected, it is very rich in nitrogen. Pineapple was planted with purposeful design to stop people walking on top of the drystone wall and fruit production down the drive.

The stone walls are beautiful and durable.

Word of Caution

Lifting rocks can be very hard work on your back, use care and leverage at all times. Back injury can happen quickly and take a long time to recover from.

These walls are dry stacked, children can unwittingly pull the rocks from top of the stack on top of themselves. If you are going to be building a wall somewhere that there might unsupervised children, you must cement the rocks together for public safety.

There are many crevices for snakes and lizards to live in – we must be very aware of this, especially at night.

On Tuesday the 16th of October the Permaforest trust visited the Holy Goat Ranch intentional community in Dorroughby.

We were hosted by the beautiful and dynamic Graham Jordan. It was awesome to have a guided tour of the past 25 years of his Life’s work. His insight and understanding of his home showed us the potential fruits of living in harmony with ones environment. He is a natural fit for his stewarded landscape.

Graham has a strict policy on acceptable fruit tree behaviour. If a tree doesn’t flourish and fruit under its own initiative it is quickly removed and replaced with one that does. Managing a property with the particular characteristics of this one means that he doesn’t have the free time and energy to baby anything that doesn’t want to seize it’s chance at life.

He used pioneering acacia’s and eucalyptus to establish the soil and recover it from paddock. After 10 years the acacia’s began to die off, falling over and damaging a lot of the fruit trees that he had planted around them. The eucalyptus were now getting too big, so he also removed the ones that he could but many still remain.
However despite the difficult end transition, they succeed in their initial purpose. Life was returned to the soil and the animals to the ecology.

The site was changed.

The return of wallabies marked a new phase in the life of the orchards. Small pioneering shrubs that once were free to thrive like pigeon pea were now heavily browsed. The ground-cover under-story was now seeded to grasses and other green manures. Several introduced species went rampant, and now are his work to remove for example Dollarweed and wandering jew. This meant that he could also increase the amount of work done by machine, the ride-on mower replaced the hand scythe.

Just recently scrub turkeys have moved into their regrowth rainforest;

This meant another change. As well as having to fence vegetable gardens, they also need now to use only rough mulch around fruit trees so the turkeys don’t scratch it away to their giant compost piles of nests.

The slope in some parts is incredible; but handbuilt stone steps; guiding around the massive fig tree roots mean we all make it to the house sites safely.

Graham spends 5 days of his week working in and around Lismore as a contract builder. He built most(all?) of the stunning structures on the community. The other two days he works on maintaining the community.

Thankfully on a site like this; his other forte is rock retaining walls.

It is an inspirational environment.

He is aware of the tripartite division of energy within systems. This concept is of a third going to metabolism, a third to maintenance and repair and a third for production, construction and expansion.

The community is spring fed, they also collect their rain water.

In exchange for his time we did several hours of Rainforest Regen on the south slope of the property.

Here is a view from where we are working across the valley to the north face.

We worked to clear privet, groundsel, kaffir and lantana to allow young seedlings dropped by birds some light to establish. This was the third sweep of this area.

At the end of it all; Graham took us to a private water fall for us to all have a swim and cool off.

Then we were free to hang around the lounge until we wanted to leave.

All of us from the trust would like to thank Graham and the Holy Goat Family for opening their doors to us and sharing the wealth they have built over the last 25 years of living here. It was an amazing experience.

Today we visited some urban Permaculture systems.

One of these is sustainability and community education centre in Byron Bay called the Island Quarry.

It is based on the site of an old bluestone quarry that hit a spring and closed down. The spring now fills an amazing body of water.

Owned by the commonwealth it is managed by a not for profit in trust an experiment that is quite unique to the world as far as they can see. This means at this stage there is an incredible amount of work that must go into integration of the council approval and applications processes.

It has been a long road for them, and they are building for the long term. A 25 year management plan is in place. Slow, small solutions have allowed this place to continue progressing through considerable challenges.

Now they are an avenue for considerable energy through work for the dole schemes, dept of corrections programs, and mutual obligation agreements.
The ongoing community work is done by volunteers, where it serves as a place to foster connections and meet likeminded people. Several projects have seeded and germinated there and then been planted out in other places.

Interesting to see a charcoal maker in place to convert their considerable store of salvaged trees into a usable product. I’ve spoken a little bit about this biochar process before.

Expect to hear more about it – lots of potential in our context.

Changing the Pace:

We also visited a home scale garden that has been grown and tended by Wally for over 25 years!

He is over 90 now and still gardens six days a week (he takes a day off from work for the Lord). Growing beautiful broccolis, luscious lettuces, pineapples, tomatoes and more.

Enough for his wife, himself and most of his neighbours too in their ¼ acre block.

In a twist to the conventional home garden he fertilises it with his own composted humanure. A fine example of the principle of using biological resources.

Here is his composting chamber:

Giving amazing growth really considering the salty coastal sand that is the soil around his place.

He credits persistence in the garden, there is no lack of challenges on his block but he keeps at it and the results shine through.

This year birds have been a particular problem for him when he is out the front they duck out the back.

Gavin is an absolute inspiration, a testament to good design. In seven years he has completely regenerated the once paddock of his steep north easterly aspect block to a vibrant, massively productive Permaculture paradise. He has also built a beautiful house, travelled and worked internationally on numerous projects including tsunami relief and rebuilding in Aceh and is raising three kids.
Fruit trees of all shapes, sizes and stages of maturity fill his designated zone he said he had to contain himself or it would have kept going down the hill.
His home absolutely inspired me to check out Daily’s nursery in Kyogle. Fruit trees suit my kind of investment style, a lot of energy at the beginning and then consistent returns for a long, long time.

On the way home from dropping Robin and Jo at the airport, I called into a tender auction in Murwillumbah.
There stacked in the corner was 5 camphor and 3 red ceder slabs. I put my bid in and cross my fingers.

And I Won!

With our parents coming up at the same time for a big lunch here – I wanted to make a beautiful table for us to all sit around.

A friend supplied some of the tools I needed, and the energy.

We worked without breaks from 9am till 2pm. Some custom legs were made from a hand shaped sapling trunk. The table is so low – the legs are properly dowled in and give enormous strength + stability.

The results at the end of the first day. Help will return on Monday morning to finish. We still need to join the pieces together with the other leg unit, grind the edge to a smooth finish and sanding.

It is a very beautiful wood, very hard but also quite light.

We have already had our first cup of tea on it!

The trust maintains two main gardens; the commercial garden and the kitchen garden. These are both located on northerly slopes in the top ten “certified organic acres”. The soil is a heavy clay. They are both well fenced to keep out kangaroos and the bandicoots.

There are extensive systems in place for their management.

“Images Removed at Request of Copyright Holder”

We worked on the top bed of the commercial garden; a green manure crop of lab lab had begun to flower and now was the time to turn it into the soils to prepare them for garlic which is to be planted in shortly.
It was raining very heavily, but after just hearing the importance of sticking to a crop schedule we weren’t going to let that stop us.

We worked three pitchforks until the clay got too much for one of them and slowed our pace to just two.

While someone was turning it in, others with hoes pulled the beds back together. They have a tendency to want to slide down the slope. Terraces have been built in the kitchen garden to stop this and allow the topsoil to build without being washed away.

Once this was done, some dynamic lifter was added in the form of chook poo.

This raised an interesting point of disconnection for me. In the theory classroom we were told that the true store of enduring wealth is in the soil. To then actually go in the field and spread the cheapest, battery hen sourced, uncertified manure around felt a little out of touch.

As with all the things I hear, I pick out the gems, the bits that I know are special and apply them. We faced a similar issue on my own share when we had the opportunity to buy very cheap, high quality compost from the Lismore tip to build up some beds the caveat was that it had plastic through it.

I made the choice then to stick to my gut and not jump at the cheap fixes and lures along the way. We have been building our soils at home slowly, from natural organic, happy and healthy inputs. We know that the food that grows has its foundation that, which to us is priceless.

Update: Tryton Waste Services has been improving it’s processes and is now delivering excellent compost that is virtually free from plastics. We have bought some to try on our place.

After the beds were prepared we were shown the irrigation technique used. Three cut dripper pipes are run along the bed and mulched over. The cut faces up so the water spills over the sides. This is attached to a tap so each bed can be watered independently along the main line based on its needs. The new plants need shallow, regular watering. As they reach maturity, less frequent but deeper soaks are needed.

There are several other growth experiments going on at the trust. One that seems very successful is the banana guilds. They are a working model of sustainable companion polycultures.
A large hole is dug in the ground.

Around it an arrowroot boarder is planted and banana plants and papayas. The bananas only do one season before suckering off a new baby.

These are all big biomass producers and their output is thrown into the middle where it breaks down into premium, soft, fertile soil. Here you can plant watermelons, pumpkins, warrigal greens or other similar ground crops. After 10 years when the hole is full a fruit tree is planted and thrives.

They form a beautiful protected and lush microclimate.