Hi I’m Alex. Welcome to my subtropical paradise! I share with you my story of turning degraded cow paddocks into thriving food and timber forests using permaculture and agroforestry systems. My goal is to help you propagate and plant thousands of trees for free so you can set yourself up for long-term self-sufficiency. Everything I’ve planted was by myself, by hand, with simple tools. I don’t have a tractor, I don’t have irrigation or swales and I grew most of my trees from seed and cuttings. Here in Northern NSW, Australia, we get floods, frosts, drought and searing heat. So everything I plant has to be super tough. Feel free to reach out if I can help you get started. I’d love to connect with you! 🌱🌿
Hi and thank you so much for the class I learned a lot I was successful for the first time in my life with growing a mango plant, by the way I was wondering by any chance have you ever encountered any black Bears their in Australia?
That was quite the scientific approach and explanation. Are you a biologist? Also, I'm stunned that you have 'rainforest' species planted in a sub-arid climate region.
Hi Alex, your videos last year were so wonderful and so inspirational. I keep checking back but nothing since. Are you ok? Is your dream of green still on track? Please let people know!
interesting video, looking back at my families history we planted a lot of wattles or eucalyptus, its true they are vigorous growers and can withstand the harsh climate without additional irrigation, but I'm not sure they've been great in building the top soil or holding moisture. they are basically arid plants, they don't drop a heap of leaf mulch and they don't provide a tonne of shade to keep the soil moist. i'm not sure what the solution is maybe in a native plant sense.
On chicken feed - have you ever tried growing teff? It's a cereal grass with very small grains native to eastern Africa, it seems like something that would grow well intercropped with pigeon pea or other legume and be a good animal feed. It's good people feed too but idk how much work it takes to thresh and process. The small grains do come loose very easily so it often seeds itself, which might be a problem if you only wanted to use it as a cover crop though.
Hey me and my partner are moving to Eden creek in May. She is a herbalist and I am a soil scientist. Would love to do a worker bee weekend for you for some propogation material to get our place started!
Hey Alex, Awesome videos love watching them. I think I'm at the point you were years ago. I find I am surrounded by alot of materialistic things and views and find i am only happy in the garden even if it is hard work at least a plant can show you there appreciation for the blood, sweat and tears you put in. Quick question can you remember where you ordered your poly tunnel from?
Thanks for watching! The grass is the existing grass in the paddock, very similar indeed to vetiver. You are so right, attracting bees was really important. The trees rows are buzzing with bees due to the diversity of grasses and flowering plants around the property that all flower at different times of the year which is beautiful to watch. Sadly not only are koalas super cute but they’re now endangered.. so if we can integrate wildlife corridors into our designs it’s a win-win. Alex 🌿
Do you know how long it takes to produce a flower if it was grown from seed? I understand that it takes up to 15 years, I don't know if I can wait that long. Do you know if it can be reproduced in any other way? cutting or root esque? And if you soak the seeds in a kind of mesh bag and the garlic under a stream of water, with the purpose of removing the hairs? thank you
Luckily the previous owner planted these trees from seed. They took around 8 years to flower and produce their own seed. I don’t bother with other methods of propagating flame trees as I’ve had great success with seed and this way you allow the tap root to develop which makes them much more drought tolerant (they survived a very severe drought as young trees with no irrigation). But I say it’s always worth conducting your own trials and doing what works for you. If you want flowers earlier, you can try your hand at grafting. Hope this helps! Alex 💚🌿
Hi Alex Do you know the exact name of that variety of mulberry? There are several types of dwarf black mulberry Is it possible that yours is the Thai one? which is also sometimes called brice, or best world, or ty black With the names of the mulberry varieties it is easy to get confused, sometimes they give up to 20 names to the same variety and it can get you into trouble. By the way, do you know how many varieties of mulberry are circulating in Australia, with the Australian designation? I recently planted a variety called canmberra mulberry and I don't know exactly what it could be. It has black fruit. Does that name ring any bells to you? thanks, good job
I’m sorry I don’t know the exact variety, it was just labeled dwarf black and tastes amazing! Very interesting research you’ve conducted, thank you. Alex 💚🌿
Just discovered your fantastic channel. Out of curiosity, what type of grass do you use for your swale break and did you need to do anything special to establish it?
Thanks so much for watching! It’s just the existing grass in the paddock, it grows like crazy during the wet season so we just maintain the rows with a ride-on mower. Alex 💚🌿
