Growth of the Swale Based Orchard

About one year ago, the swale orchard started taking development. I had previous started the top SE swale/trench and planted two Small Leaf Jaboticabas and a Lemon Myrtle. I also planted other useful plants such as Pigeon Pea, Rosella, and Egyptian Spinach. Since that time I extended the start of the swale so that all the overflow from the rainwater tanks flow through it.

The next picture shows the lay of the land before development of the future swale orchard.

The future swale locations were mapped out using a spirit level, old wooden ladder, and lots of grass clippings. For some reason I neglected to take any pictures when the contour lines were first set out, but they were a maximum of 4.8 m apart, but often merging much closer as they aligned with the contours. Below are some pictures taken around the beginning of May 2010 after planting had been started.

This picture is taken from the main path through the centre of the orchard looking towards the start of the driveway. In the foreground one can see a Bignay or Red Currant Tree (Antidesma bunius). At the next swale to the left is a Black Sapote. As well in the background, there are a Spanish Cherry or Bakul Tree (Mimusops elengi), Hawaiian Guava, Asenia triloba, and Jakfruit (Blackgold).

This picture is taken from the start of the driveway looking through the orchard towards the north east. There are Jakfruit, Vietnamese Mint, local feral Guava, Loquat, Saba Nut or Malabar Chestnut (Pachira aquatica), and Taro planted out.

This picture is also from the same location, but looking towards the east. The Asenia triloba are in the pink protective plant guards and the Hawaiian Guava is to the right.

While it can be seen that many of the plants raised about the "natural" ground, I since found that with settling this was not nearly enough. So I know put much more effort into raising the level for the planting of each tree.

So how do things look now...

This is now the view from the top of the main path down the centre of the orchard towards to the start of the driveway. Note incredible growth of the Red Currant Tree. (Yes the neighbouring bloodwood tree continues to shed branches during heavy winds.)

Next is the view from the start of the driveway looking north east. Note the growth of the feral Guava and the Vietnamese Mint on the far left. The Cassava blocks the view of most of the rest of the orchard.

This time we are looking towards the east from the same location. Note the growth of the Hawaiian Guava.

Now for the overall view.

I have found that the effort in making the swales out of compost, using on-the-spot composting techniques, has been extremely successful. The plants are really responding to the nutrient rich soil. For some trees it is a bit much, such as the Custard Apple and Spanish Cherry. These trees suffer from scale attack and the usual associated problems. The Spanish Cherry is particularly vulnerable to scale.

As I have been building up the swales over time, I have had problems during some heavy rain events with low points on the swales being washed downhill (although not off the property). This was particularly the case when a number of uphill swales were only partially completed. This problem has almost been addressed now, with only a few swales not completed and there are no longer multi-swale gaps.

As the plants get settled into their places and the soil life builds up, I have been seeing trees such as the Carambola (Averrhoa carambola) putting on huge amounts of growth. Our unseasonably wet spring and heavy rain periods have been great for the growth of the trees. None have had any problems with root rot.

As for fruits, I have been enjoying some Acerola Cherries. This tree is simply amazing in its output. It has only been in the ground for about 4 months and has been supplying a trickle of fruit for the entire period. But now it is really starting some serious production. Goodbye vitamin C tablets!

Solar Power

I figured that this is a post worthy of stopping a drought (at least relating to MG posts). Solar power was installed this month and the system has been doing its thing, and that means it is generating power for us.

The solar panels are not very visible (at least when I tried to get them in a picture). Driving up to the shed and walking around, you would have no idea that they are installed. However moving to the north of the shed, soon reveals their presence. A number of neighbours have commented on the panels, with one in indicating that they too want to go down this route. Nothing like flying the flag. :)

We went with Local Power for the installation. They are a Brisbane based solar power buying group. I chose them as they are price competitive and I knew I could trust their choice of solar panels and the associated inverter.


I had a 1.5 kW system installed and upgraded from the inverter to a Xantrex 2.8. This will allow me to add up to another 1.5 kW of panels in the future with no additional wiring required (other than hooking the panels in). On installation day, the Local Power mob turned up with a small army and installed the system in about 2 hours, despite the rainy weather.

The system was operational at the beginning of May which turned out to be quite fortunate as the REC price I received was $42. It has since fallen. If you are curious about the current retail REC pricing reference http://www.greenenergytrading.com.au/rec-prices.html. There is also wholesale information available (http://www.greenmarkets.com.au/index.html) which provides a graph with the historical REC price.

I did not change electricity retailers as AGL currently provides the best feed-in rate for Queensland. If you want to find out about the best feed-in tariff for your state, reference the Australian Feed-in Tariffs wiki.

The new Energex electricity meter was installed a couple of weeks after the solar panels went in. It is completely digital and allows different tariffs to be recorded using the one meter. At the time of this post, the amount of energy put into the grid was 33 kWh and the amount used was 109 kWh . Ideally I want to get a 1 to 3 ratio or better, so things are going fairly well. Given that we use power to pump water and treat sewage and our hot water system is electric, we are using very little power relative to our basic needs. We plan to install solar hot water in the near future, so this should assure that we hit the 1 to 3 ratio.

Tracking weather

I generally like to know what the weather is about to get up to. As I am effectively a small scale farmer, the weather forecast, and rain forecast in particular, is valuable information. However the Brisbane forecast is for a large region, complicated by all the mountainous/hilly areas and the impacts from the coast. For the most part, I am interested in what is happening around the Maculata Grove property, not so much about what is happening in the Brisbane CBD or other locations.

The Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) has a fantastic web page which shows output from the Mt. Stapylton Radar site. This includes information about current rain and even wind. If there is rain forecast and I need to do an outside activity which is best not done in the rain, then I will visit the following web page:
http://www.bom.gov.au/products/IDR664.loop.shtml?looping=1&reloaded=0&topography=true&locations=true&range=true&waterways=true&roads=true&rail=true

The above link is for the 64km range from the radar site and has a number of map features enabled. The 64 km range from the Mt. Stapylton Radar site gives me greater detail than the 128 or 256 km web pages. The enabled map features allows me to better see where the property is located and also allows me to see the impacts of things like the D'Aguilar Range on rain.

There is also a link for the Doppler wind data. I have not used this link much as I only recently realised it existed. However the next time we get a strong westerly I will make a point of having a look. This link is for a 128 km range from the radar site (I am not sure how I can change the range) with the same map features enabled:
http://www.bom.gov.au/products/IDR66I.loop.shtml?looping=1&reloaded=0&topography=true&locations=true&range=true&waterways=true&roads=true&rail=true

Hopefully this information will be of value to those living in the SEQ region. For those living in other areas of Australia, you will find that the additional map feature information in the link address (i.e. ?looping=1&reloaded=0&topography=true&locations=true&range=true&waterways=true&roads=true&rail=true) will work for other radar stations. You can disable map features by changing the true to false, or removing the "&=true|false" completely from the link.

First taste of home grown bananas

After close to 8 months since the first banana bunch started to appear, I have been able to taste some ripe fruit. The winter months obviously caused such a long time from flower to ripe fruit. Since the weather has warmed up, the bananas have been filling out quite quickly. But I was not sure that I would even get any fruit after the Blue Java plant collapsed due to the weight of the bunch.

Interestingly the first banana to become ripe was one in the middle of the bunch. Normally they ripen from the top of the bunch down to the bottom. Blue Java bananas are small and plump, similar in size to Lady Finger bananas. Nicely snack sized for small children.

This is the first time I have ever tasted a Blue Java banana. It is described as the ice cream banana as it is supposed to have a slight vanilla taste. However I was not able to discern that flavour. I found it to be a very pleasant sweet and creamy banana, although the centre of the banana was a bit hard. This is where seeds would have been produced prior to bananas becoming sterile. The hardness in the centre might have been due to the bunch having to be cut from the plant sooner than it should have. I had planned to allow the bananas to ripen on the plant, before the plant fell over.

I will try various recipes with this banana, assuming that my daughter Felicity allows me to have any more (she loves bananas). Banana smoothies with cinnamon, banana sorbet, frozen banana covered in desiccated coconut, and various baked banana recipes are in store. We'll see how the Blue Java banana holds up to the relentless tasting.

Meanwhile there are four other banana bunches coming on; another Blue Java bunch and three Lady Finger bunches. Two of the plants have been propped up. The other two seem to be holding their own for now. Hopefully this is the start of self-sufficiency in bananas or, at the very least, seasonal self-sufficiency.

Google Earth/Maps Imagery Update

After about 3 years of no updates, including requests by government, Google has finally updated the imagery in the great Brisbane for Google Earth and Google Maps. So now instead of seeing shipping containers where our veggie garden is, you actually see the veggie garden.

The big white shed can still be clearly seen to south of the property. At the south eastern side of the shed, the new off-white rainwater tank is now visible. The veggie garden, banana pit, and possible makings of the chook house are also visible to the east of the shed.

To the north west of the shed, the citrus grove can just been seen bordered by other trees to the south and north. One can also see that some of the grass to the west is a bit brown. This is because it has been allowed to go wild. Although the grass in the north eastern paddock was cut by a neighbour.

The pond is not present in this photo, nor is the swale. I also think that the chook house was not completed at this stage. So I figure that the picture was taken around the mid June to July timeframe (EDIT: as it turns out it was taken on 2009-07-27).

Hopefully we will not have to wait another few years until we can see an aerial view of the pond.