We planted a small orchard more than five years ago, mainly to citrus and stone fruit. Two years after we moved in we started a veggie patch and decided to net over the stone fruit and the veggies (we have a healthy population of bower-birds and fruit bats, possums and brush turkeys and we were not getting much if any of the produce). We also started keeping chooks for eggs, and the whole system is slowly starting to come together. Our design was based on The Permaculture Home Garden by Linda Woodrow which we found very useful.
The chooks have the run of the stone fruit orchard and are periodically allowed into one of the six round veggie beds, via a moveable chook dome and a system of mesh tunnels. When we have finished with the veggies in one of these beds we throw some horse manure in, put the dome over it, and open tunnel doors so they can move between it and their shed as they please. They do a great job of digging over the earth, eating up any weeds and seeds, and in about a week the area is reduced to bare earth, ready for another crop. We still occasionally fork over the soil after the chooks leave and add a bit of gypsum, but its getting better all the time, and we suspect we will be able to avoid this step in a few years.
The garden is producing most of our vegetables, and Helen (who is the brains of the outfit) is getting better at the timing especially for winter planting, which led to gaps in production in the first year. I think we are also having fewer problems with pests than in the first year; for example broccoli was demolished by caterpillars in summer. Apparently it takes some years to build up a healthy population of predator insects, so we are hopeful this will get better over time. The little pond in the middle of the veggie patch has already attracted a good population of frogs.
We also have a small worm farm which ends up with any organic scraps which the chooks won’t eat. Finally the bits which the worms don’t handle well end up in the compost bin.
