The idea
Permaculture goes far beyond organic farming. Permaculture is about growing the right plants and putting the right elements together so the plants benefit from each other and the system as a whole becomes naturally balanced, productive and self-sustaining. Permaculture is about observing and learning from natural processes and using them to our advantage to design a resilient system to produce nutritious, wholesome food and many other products.
Permaculture is about cooperation and so are we combining different plants and crops in our food forest that do well together. A food forest is a man/women made forest mimicking a natural woodland with the difference that the food forest produces mainly edible crops.
Our tree planting
We started with tree planting. We have coconut, mango, orange, lime, soursap,
cashew and also a few timber trees.
The trees have a special function in our production system. Not only provide
they a light shade and create a more balanced climate, but they also help
collecting water and make sure the water seeps into the ground, so that it is
later available to the roots of all plants. The deep roots of the trees also
bring nutrients from lower soil layers to the top by shedding their leaves and so
helping to feed the other plants. And we see it clearly: it is not only our
workers and visitors who love the cool environment the trees create: we also
observe a big range of birds.
Our shrubbs & vines
The passion fruit is a vine that can climb other trees or needs to be provided
with support. Before the great tasting passion fruit matures the beautiful
flower has to be pollinated by wind or insects. By the way, have you thought
where the name of this fruit comes from?
Another climbing plant we have started growing is black pepper. We hope to
offer this very soon also on the market. Then we also grow various shrubs a bit
of papaya, guava, banana and plantain and also miracle berries.
Our perennial and annual crops
We count our most important crop, the pineapple.Besides this we also produce
physalis and of course ginger. For the farm and factory kitchen we have also
chilli, cassava, cocoyam and some maize. We even tried rice, but the birds were
quicker with harvesting than we were.
Our animals
We also keep sheep, chicken, pigs, cats and a dog on the farm. In the ponds we
have mudfish and tilapia and very soon ducks will join us.
The animals can make use of left over crops and provide very valuable manure
for our plants. In addition we also get eggs and meet for our farm and factory
kitchen. The pigs help us with the land preparation. When we want to plant
cassava or vegetables in a portion of the forest, we fence it and leave the
pigs to work the soil. Within a couple of days they have ploughed everything
and have also eaten up most of the weeds.
The way we produce
In our food producing forest we are trying to create a balanced and self
regulating forest. We don’t use synthetic pesticides as the pests are
controlled within the system by competing beneficial insects. The same
competition happens between diseases and beneficial micro organisms. It is not
that we don’t lose any fruits to pest and diseases, but usually the damage is
limited as nature regulates itself. The same applies to fertilizer use. We use
manure, compost and plant mulch to provide the crops with nutrients. We don’t
need to add synthetic fertilizers.
All this will make our products better for your and extra wholesome.