[Pil-pc-oceania] Urban wild food and small gardens

[pacific-edge]

Hi Joel...
Your contribution to this conversation really show how it is possible to
utilise underutilised food sources in cities. I agree that these will become
more important, whether through energy deficit, as you say, or through the
continues growth of the trend towards local/seasonal food.

Wild-growth foods are already utilised to a very limited extent - I recall
people harvesting mushrooms from NSW Forestry Dept radiata forests - and the
idea of wild harvest and harvest of neglected home garden fruit trees was
one we taught when we ran PDCs. Perhaps the mapping of such trees would be a
good project for a community association, using existing street maps or, for
more precision, GPS terrestial coordinates. I recall CERES in Melbourne once
did a project to map the location of underutilised fruit trees in home
gardens. It would be good to see that written up as a report and available
online.

I understand your comment about 'how little of my household's food can
really be supplied from our small back yard'. That's a factor in Sydney,
too, and is the reality for a great many people who really would like the
land to have a vege garden and small orchard - even some chooks. It is a
good argument for community gardens, community orchards and chook teams. I'm
quite interested in the question of food security and high-density suburbs
as Fiona deals with this in her sustainable urban living courses for
Randwick Council. The municapility has 48 per cent of residents living in
apartments, town houses or other medium density dwelling, making it typical
of many other cities. In Permaculture design terms, there is no separation
of domestic zones one and two, rather, they are amalgamated. It is this,
too, that is behind my ideas on the discussion we had on hydroponics on this
listserver.

Local permaculturist and social justice advocate, Jill Finnane, has a
compact, inner urban home garden complete with a few citrus, pawpaw and
chooks. I described it last year in an article in ABC Organic Gardener. Last
week, sitting on Carolyn Nuttall's verandah in Brisbane, I looked enviously
at the huge home gardens in the houses on the hill opposite. You could do a
great deal more with them than grow the lawn that is the dominant crop.

You're right about there being differences between growing fruit in
Melbourne and up north. How we northerners look enviously at you
southerners, with your ability to grow stone fruit free of fruit fly - and
apples, plums and pears too. But, then, you might find it challenging to
grow pawpaw and custard apple.

I'm surprised that - as you describe - there are gardens beside train lines
in Melbourne. I think that would be  hard thing to so in Sydney on any
reasonable scale but, like you say, a simple fence to segregate gardeners
and their children from trains is a simple solution. Less simple would be
convincing the rail bureaucrats.

Good to read your ideas.

...Russ


.........................
Dear Penny (and Russ etc),
Wild and neglected fruit trees make up a large proportion of my
household's diet. We bottle, dry, ferment and freeze a year's supply of
fruit mostly from such trees, and many from inner city Melbourne.

The problems you have with neglected trees are only an issue while our
society's priorities are out of kilter. As the reality of or energy
deficit begins to kick in this wild harvest will be an important boon
and will not be left to rot on the ground.

Still your problems up North are very different to ours down South
(Melbourne), perhaps when global warming facilitates the arrival of
fruit flies on out door step I might be more inclined to your way of
thinking.

Still when I consider how little of my household's food can really be
supplied from our small back yard I realise how important these
"disused" spaces are/will be.

Russ, in Melbourne there are loads of gardens both official and un along
train verges. I think the risks are actually quite low, and a simple
wire fence closer to the tracks could provide enough of a barrier where
children might be involved.

And there is of course all of the space currently given over to cars
that we can claw back bit by bit as cars become less and less
viable/socially acceptable.

Joel Meadows
Inner Melbourne - Where the stone fruit have just passed their peak -
peaches and a few late plums to go, the olive crop is shaping up very
well and my own banana crop is plumping up nicely.

-----Original Message-----
From: pil-pc-oceania-bounces at lists.permacultureinternational.org
[mailto:pil-pc-oceania-bounces at lists.permacultureinternational.org] On
Behalf Of P Ferguson
Sent: Sunday, 21 January 2007 10:46 AM
To: pil-pc-oceania at lists.permacultureinternational.org
Subject: [Pil-pc-oceania] Roadside plantings etc


Russ wrote:   As for road verges, there is also potential as the
examples of 
the use of macadamias as
> street trees in Brisbane and bush food trees in Sydney demonstrate. A
> number
> of gardeners in Sydney have made use of their footpaths for growing
food
> while leaving plenty of space for pedestrians.

I am opposed to street plantings, which may become neglected.  One
person 
with good intentions may plant fruit trees, then move away and there is
no 
one to then look after the trees.  Some residents are so negligent that
they 
cannot even keep their grass mown.

First up there is the dreaded Queensland fruit fly.   Neglected trees
become 
a breeding ground for these pests which have left Queensland behind on
their 
missionary journey to infect all fruit and vegetable crops
Australia-wide.

Even Macadamias with their tough shells are not immune to insect attack.
I 
had both a pecan and a macadamia trees at Coalcliff on the south coast
of 
NSW, and was astonished to find the macadamias were attacked by a minute

insect capable of boring through that tough shell.

P Ferguson
Illawarra NSW 

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