Food glorious food forest

DURING the past nine years, Di Tod has converted 15 acres in Koorooman into a food forest, with more than 500 trees including 100 avocado trees, 40 carob trees, 30 fig trees and many more.
Di was a professional musician for 30 years, playing flute and clarinet in the Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra.
“I knew nothing about trees, I didn’t really even have a garden in Melbourne,” she said.
Di’s interest in sustainability and concern the world was becoming too reliant on limited resources helped her make the move from suburbia to South Gippsland.
She purchased the property in 2006 and moved there in 2008.
“I strongly felt I needed to learn to become a bit more useful and self sufficient,” she said.
A food forest usually has at least five layers, including the canopy, low tree layer, shrub layer, herbaceous layer and ground covers.
Di said she has serious doubts about the practicality of the food forest idea, due to the fact a lot of fruit and nut trees don’t like shade.
“Especially in Gippsland, where we have wet winters and spring rains. So, what I have done is split the property up into six orchards with wildlife corridors in between, extending the concept of an edible garden,” she said.
The property has a four acre wetland area, where Di has planted around 4500 native trees over the years.
The native wildlife corridors are also an important part of Di’s layout.
“If you can keep a sizeable area shaded, when it is hot it does a good job of keeping the temperature down,” she said.
In Di’s orchard there are citrus trees, including oranges, mandarins, lemons, limes and grapefruit. She has olives, pomegranates, persimmons, berries, a bunya bunya pine, pistachios, pine nuts, chestnuts, hazelnuts, walnuts, pecans and edible oaks.
“The only nut I don’t have is almonds because the birds eat them all,” she said.
She also has some feijoas, wampee, longan, mulberries, carob, figs, apples, pears and avocados.
Di also has plans to put in some white sapote trees soon.
Carob is a fantastic survival food that doesn’t need many inputs.
“Once picked, the carob pods survive dried with no refrigeration for about 10 years. They are very high in protein,” Di said.
“Citrus trees grow well here. Once people try my oranges, they don’t want to eat store bought again.”
Avocados do really well in Gippsland. Because everything Di does is on a small scale, 40 are producing fruit at the moment, but by the end of 2016, all 100 trees should be productive.
“I can’t keep up with supply with the avocados. Mine don’t taste anything like the ones you buy in the supermarket,” she said.
“They are the perfect tree. They don’t require high soil nutrient levels, you can harvest them 10 months of the year and they don’t ripen until you pick them.”
Di has five different varieties of avocado. The fruit take a year to mature on the tree and then they will hang there for another six to eight months. Di just picks to order.
“I think things just grow well in Gippsland, we have good soils. But I do think mulch is everything. Feed the soil rather than feed the trees,” she said.
“People find that hard to get their heads around. There are millions of microbes and organisms in the soil that do the work so much better.”
She puts around 50 truckloads of mulch on the orchard each year, mainly during summer, autumn and into winter.
For Di, the orchard is still a learning curve.
“When first started in 2006, I tried a permaculture design, which didn’t really work,” she said.
“For the first two years, I was experimenting and feeling my way with what was going to grow and what wasn’t.
“I’d say most of the trees are just coming into peak production now, so in the next 12 to 24 months, it should really take off.”
Di mainly wholesales her produce, however some goes into Grow Lightly’s weekly veggie boxes and she does several farmers market’s with them as well.

Vitamin C: citrus trees grow really well in Di Tod’s Koorooman orchard, as demonstrated by this overflowing mandarin tree.

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Posted by Sarah Vella on May 26 2015. Filed under Rural News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry