6. Good Organic Gardening - November-December 2016 AvxHome.in

Sean Morrow | GARDENING FOLK
Broccoli, lettuce, kale and cabbages
Sean makes sweet chilli sauce
from the not-so-hot bell chillies
Japanese parsley
Self-sown perennial coriander
The garden supplies the family
with vegies year round
To create his raised garden beds, Sean
uses soil excavated from his landscaping jobs
and adds cow and chicken manure, blood and
bone, NatraMin and 5IN1. “The animals that
visit our gardens are an essential pest control,
so I value their input,” says Sean.
The quarter-acre (one-tenth-hectare)
garden supplies Sean and his family with all
their needs for leafy vegetables year-round
and a variety of other produce in season.
At the time of writing, there was lettuce,
cauliflower, snow peas, beans, parsley and
other herbs. Two interesting herbs are
sawtooth coriander and Japanese parsley,
both self-seeding.
Sean suggests, “If you want to add nitrogen
to your soil and an abundant protein supply,
grow Madagascar beans. They produce big
pods with purple seeds high in protein. We
make mad bean patties from them.”
Sean has planted several varieties of tropical
and subtropical fruit trees, including jackfruit,
banana, mango, white and black sapote, star
apple, starfruit, three varieties of mulberry, two
varieties of passionfruit, ice-cream bean, carob,
jaboticaba, grumichama, pineapple, mandarin,
orange, lemon, Acerola cherry and macadamia.
He allows his passionfruit to climb up trees, as
this simulates fruit production.
As a keen bushfoods cultivator, Sean is
always learning about new varieties as he adds
them to his garden. Some of the plants include
Davidson’s and Burdekin plums, lime berry,
midyim berry, lemon myrtle and milla milla vine.
In the past 14 years, Sean has planted
a melaleuca forest, a bunya forest, which
will eventually provide bunya nuts, and a
bamboo grove from cuttings, which is now
huge and harvested for construction.
Water is supplied to Sean’s dams from
eight acres (three hectares) of neighbouring
properties, which is then pumped up into tanks
and gravity fed throughout his land. When the
rains come, Sean and his 13-year-old daughter,
Luna, bodyboard across the property.
Sean is mad about seed collection and
cultivation. He always collects seeds from his
trees and grows them in his nursery by the
hundreds, which he then sells or gives away. His
property is full of all kinds of interesting plants,
such as cycads. “As I do landscaping, people
always give me plants or ask me to get rid of
plants for them. I rehome them here,” he says.
Wildlife haven
With a passion for wildlife, Sean is always
creating habitat for various creatures. He
has installed 36 frog ponds in total, most
permanent but some ephemeral, filling up
with water only when it’s raining. “These
ponds attract only certain species of frogs,
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