Although we are halfway through the calendar year, for plants it is the start of a new year as the wet season slowly brings its life giving rain. The farm looks great, and has produced well, even though its full potential will not be realised for a while, until the tree crops mature. I don’t think that will be very long though, given the speed that things are growing there.
Accustomed as I am to the rampant growth of the tropics, I can still say that I have never seen anything like the growth rates achieved on Fair Earth Farm. Though I am not a great advocate of composting (preferring the easier option of sheet mulching), I suspect that enhanced microbial activity from Jeff’s excellent compost mixes may be a significant contributing factor, though good management, favourable base soils and climate are clearly also at work here.
Mulberry, moringa and tamarind stand out at this stage as star performers amongst the trees. Some mulberries that were planted in November are already several metres tall with good solid trunks. Though a little slower, I suspect that macadamias and avocados also have great potential. The most exceptional perennials have clearly been pigeon pea and lemon grass, both useful in their own right, but worth planting in bulk for their ability to quickly and repeatedly produce biomass for mulch and compost. I expect that the lemon grass will also help confuse and repel many insect pests. Every effort should be made to get ahold of and trial comfrey which has many excellent properties including its value in making liquid manures.
While slow to establish, Pintoi’s peanut (Arachis pintoi) is shaping up to be a good long term nitrogen fixing ground cover, but the sweet potato is second to none when it comes to weed and grass suppressing ground cover. The cassava, of course is a ridiculously easy plant to grow and a ready source of carbohydrate available on demand. Amongst the annuals, sorghum has performed outstandingly with its ability to grow in unimproved soils with little care and yet produce bulk organic matter as well as heavy crops of high food-value grains. Initial trials of water chestnut in the rice paddy show great promise, and this high value, low maintenance productive crop could possibly be intercropped with rice.
Although this is a very new farm, most of the hard work has already been done; many trees are in and well established; most of their roots will already have reached the water table, so irrigation should not be an issue. The control of climbing weeds will be the biggest input they require from now. All the major earthworks have been done and are doing what they were designed to, and have now only to be consolidated and maintained. There is always room for a little fine tuning, such as building up some of the low spots in the annual beds which flood when the canal system is at capacity. Alternatively these spots could be utilised to grow water loving plants such as taro or water chestnut.
As always, management of livestock is a challenge on the farm. Unfortunately it is not just the farm’s animals to contend with but the neighbours’ as well. Perhaps in the future there is potential to develop extensive trellis crops of passionfruit or other climbers, which can also serve as fences. So far the ducks have been the most productive, beneficial and easiest to manage animals; ideal companions to rice.
If there is an area of vulnerability in the farm I suggest that it is in its reliance on the adjoining public canal for its dry season water supply. For this reason it would be prudent to increase the water storage capacity and to try to keep it full, especially in the dry months. This would also create greater potential for more aquaculture yields and the beneficial effects when it is integrated with other aspects of farm production. Possibly one of the sections of rice paddy, which is too high and dry to be ideal for rice and too low and wet for annual vegetables, could be converted to a chinampa like system. Soil could be excavated in rows to create water-filled ditches then piled up to make raised beds. Apart from the beneficial edge effects, the canals would be easier to manage intensively for fish, especially when it came to excluding predatory snakehead fish or marauding chickens.
In my opinion, an additional very important area for research and development is trials and development of improved and locally adapted varieties of plants, especially annuals. Given the extremely disturbing current trends of genetically modified crops, (check out: http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-world-according-to-monsanto/ if you want to be really shocked and frightened), seed saving of a wide range of ‘heritage’ crops is a duty of all ethical farmers.
