Silva

árboles frutales, de nueces y de forraje, cortar leña y almacenar para combustible,

injertar, vivero de árboles

dominio:

todos ÁRBOLES y ARBUSTOS

click on picture for her personal page
Ali
December 2006 to January 2007

Silva

fruit trees, nut trees, forage trees, wood cutting

and storing for fuel,grafting, tree nursery

domain:

ALL TREES & BUSHES

Observing

  One of the principles of permaculture is to observe (a lot= before doing anything; so I spent the first week observing the trees. This is part of what I noticed:

There are LOTS of almonds on Finca Luna. Older ones that have been cut too hard a couple of times, with a lot of stumps and dead wood. Then there are a lot of younger trees as well that haven't been pruned at all and would need a uppbygnadsbeskärning (you prune them so there will be only one stem in the middle and strong branches from that in all directions. All to build a stronger tree that will live longer and with less dead wood in the end).

The middle generation is missing though. So once all the older trees are dead, there will be no really big trees for a couple of years.

There are also a couple of pears, three oranges, one lemon, an apricot and lots of figs, some big nisperos and lots of plums.

Mapping

To understand the finca a bit better I decided to make a map.

Here is my office.

Click on photo to see the maps I was making.

Pruning

I came here in December 2006 to prune the almonds. When I arrived it showed that they were about to bloom (I had heard they bloomed in February, but apparently they don't bloom in the military style, all at once…) and some of the buds where really loose, which means its not a good time for pruning…

Anyway I decided to take the chance and prune some of them carefully, since I had travelled so long to do it.

Click on the picture to see picks of before and after, with comments.

Pruning class

I had a pruning class with Sarah and Karlos.

They did really well.

One good thing with teaching is that you learn to appreciate your own knowledge, it reminds you of the good things you have that you take for granted.

Highly recommended!

Click on picture to see what I taught

Fungus

There were different kinds of wood living fungus that I had the chance to study while here.

Click on the picture to see what I thought about them.

Propagating.

Propagating is a way of cloning different plants. It works well with many trees.

In short, you cut a branch, put it in soil and wait for it to grow. But there are a lot of tricks that will help the propagating to succeed.

  Click on picture for more information.

Beautiful Flower

This is a callas - they are great for cleaning up grey water.

Sara, me and Karlos

New plants

We planted a lot of trees (about 20), and even more (another 20) arrived one of my last days.

This is a Noni.

Click on photo see pictures and names of them.

Climbing

Secateurs care

Maybe you´ve got an old rusty unusable secateur like this one, but don´t give up hope,

  Click on picture to see how to get it in shape, step-by-step