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Grow Great Fruit [Member] [CASE STUDY] Hi everybody, As we make the transition from one season to the next, we like to take the opportunity to bring you a case study of one of our Grow Great Fruit members. Introducing ... Clare and Win. They are passionate gardeners and keen permaculturalists, and have risen to meet some pretty tough challenges in their lives with grace, dignity, and lots of bloody hard work! We hope you enjoy their story, and find their experience inspirational. Katie & Hugh After the Fire Clare and Win have been members of the GGF program almost from the beginning, joining in April 2013 and earning Life Member status (for being long-term members) in late 2015. We’re excited to present them as a case study because they are a terrific real-life demonstration of how the principles and topics we teach in the Grow Great Fruit program work in practice in a home garden. A bit of background about Clare and Win… Clare and Win have a property in central Victoria, where they moved almost 30 years ago. They are active leaders in their local Landcare group, and experts in the collection of indigenous seed. They are keen Parelli Natural Horsemanship people and carriage drivers, and Win is a retired farrier. Clare used to work in Rural Community Development. Planting their vegie garden was the first thing they did when they moved to the property, even before they unpacked any boxes. They also put in their first orchard immediately. © Mt Alexander Fruit Gardens 2016 Grow Great Fruit Program 2 grow great fruit program topic: Plan for success eople have many different motivations for growing fruit, and understanding them can help you plan your garden to meet your needs, whether it’s self- sufficiency, having fun in the garden, creating a beautiful space for your family to enjoy, planning against climate change and potential food shortages, or just Pcreating a shady place for your kids to play. Clare and Win are deeply committed to growing their own food, which Clare attributes largely to her childhood spent in Africa. We always bought our food at the local market, Europeans might think it doesn’t look hygienic, but those markets are a riot of colour; the vegies are strongly coloured, very fresh, not anaemic looking. When I think now of what’s good for you, I want food that’s strongly coloured and very fresh. Time spent in Papua New Guinea, many years’ experience growing her own vegies, and then the advent of permaculture has given Clare an almost spiritual approach to food growing and a desire for a diet that hasn’t been “interfered with”, which includes a huge variety of different foods, and is as fresh as possible. I’ve been growing veg for 30 years, fruit is a natural complement. I LOVE to eat, and I’ve always been particular about what I eat, it’s part of valuing my body; it’s important to only put stuff in my mouth that’s good for me. Food speaks to spirituality for me, even to the extent that this season when we had very little water, we chose to put the little we had on the fruit trees and put the vegie garden to bed under straw for the year. But very quickly Win said ”you’re going to be impossible without a vegie garden” so he built me two wicking beds, and we fed ourselves all summer out of them. Gardening gives me enormous pleasure, it soothes my soul to go down the garden and fill my basket with food. When my spirit is troubled, I go and pick a basket full of food for tea and come back with my spirit calmed. I’m devoted to food. © Mt Alexander Fruit Gardens 2016 Grow Great Fruit Program 3 grow great fruit program topic: Feeding your fruit trees and building healthy soil hen Clare and Win first sprinkler on the pile as well. There’s no point moved to their property, trying to make compost unless you make it wet enough. their sedimentary soil was very acidic with a pH of Clare and Win also have a large worm farm, and use Wjust 3.9, however as a result of the the worm castings in the vegie garden, and add the castings to fruit trees as well. The worms are fed organic soil improvement they’ve been with horse manure by clearing out the horse float practicing, it’s now neutral, around 7.0. whenever it’s been used to transport the horses. They keep the worm farm moist with grey water Clare puts their soil improvement down to a few diverted from the house. things, especially their home-made compost. The worm farm is a big one, it’s fabulous, it allows us to be really generous with worm castings. It’s We’re great compost makers; it’s at the side really good not to have to scrimp with them. It of the orchard so it’s not too far to carry it. We means we can be a bit slacker with the compost. make it out of anything that was once organic, plus we wee into buckets of sawdust, and when If they have enough worm castings they also scatter we build the pile we use that as an accelerator; some around their paddocks. They practice cell it adds extra nitrogen. grazing (constantly moving their livestock onto fresh pasture) and as a result have dramatically reduced They make a hot compost, and first stockpile the the pH in the paddocks as well as the garden. ingredients, which may include, In addition to the constant soil improvement • garden and kitchen recyclables, program through the addition of compost and worm • recycled paper and old phone books from the castings, Clare and Win also use foliar sprays of house (stored in a bathtub near the compost seaweed and fish emulsion on the trees each spring, pile, and 24–48 hours before they make the right up until they become too busy with horse compost they fill the bath with water, then activities in summer and run out of energy and time. put the wet pulp through the mulcher, which They recommence the foliar sprays in autumn before blasts it into pieces), the trees go to sleep for winter. At the moment • old hay from their hay supplier who gives they don’t have a way of fertigating (i.e., putting them old rotten bales, supplements directly into the irrigation system), so • sawdust from a friend who’s a sawmiller, Clare describes their (less than ideal) process: • green grass mown on the day they’re making the compost so it’s fresh and green We can’t put these additives in our irrigation • horse manure—the horses are locked into the system, so we assemble 12 buckets, we use water yard overnight to supply nice fresh manure, we get from the community bore in a big shuttle • straw bedding and manure from the chook tank on the trailer. We slosh some seaweed and pen, and fish emulsion into the bottom of each bucket, then • fruit tree prunings use the fire pump to fill each bucket, and run • how could I forget, blood & bone too backwards and forwards tipping a bit at the base of each tree. We try to do it when it’s raining, or Clare describes how they build their compost piles: just after, so it soaks into the soil. We build a pile with nice thin layers. Everything In spring they also sprinkle a handful of blood and goes through the mulcher. We have a big bone and scatter some extruded seaweed pellets mulcher, the biggest nonindustrial size you can around the base of each tree as well. get. We put everything through the mulcher, In our opinion Clare and Win have a top-notch we have the hose on while we’re mulching, just fertility program; Clare reckons the results speak for gently trickling through at the same time, then themselves: when we go and have morning tea we put the Our trees grow like topsy! © Mt Alexander Fruit Gardens 2016 Grow Great Fruit Program 4 grow great fruit program topic: Pruning for success lare is the first to admit that before the Grow Great Fruit program, pruning was not her strong point. It’s been one of the hot topics during our regular Ccatch-ups. QUESTION FROM CLARE: My Greengage has very bare branches in its centre because I haven't kept the pruning tight enough. My question is, now that the fruit is finished, would you think it a good idea to prune it now to open up the centre and shorten both the leaders and the side branches right up? Or would it be better doing such a comparatively hard prune in winter? I was wondering, if I do it now will the tree have the opportunity to make fruit buds on the remaining wood, so we will get some crop? It isn't a huge issue for us, cos now (with over 80 trees!) we have fruit coming out of our ears. But I am just curious. Also, when you summer prune (i.e., when there are leaves on the trees), if you cut back to a bare section of branch will it stimulate the tree to produce leaves there, or are you essentially cutting off the trees' lungs, if you see what I mean? I really need someone to discuss this all with—I am going round and round in my head, and when I ask Win, he always just agrees with me (about fruit tree pruning.

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