Luke Grainger

Thank you all for your advice!

I suspect red wigglers would die in this scenario.
I will try to find some worms locally on the land, there is a corner with well established trees and natural leaf cover resulting in good black soil. So then I will move them and some nice dirt to the area I'm trying to improve and then put the dirt and worms under the mulch. Hopefully the transplanted dirt keeps the worms happy and the biodiversity in that dirt spreads to the dirt and composting
mulch to create more good black dirt!

A lot of my land has highly compacted dirt so I'm not sure the worms in the corners would ever travel over to where I'm creating the good soil, swale, nitrogen fixing trees
and fruit forest.

Hi all,

I'm thinking of adding some worms to my soil. I am trying to rejuvenate the soil and have mulched it and dug in a swail behind it.
We all know that worms improve soil.

What I'm wondering is if there is any danger to the eco system if I introduce earth or compost worms. Obviously worms that are
native to the area are ok but I was thinking of adding some of those small red compost worms used frequently in earthworm compost bins.

Once worms are introduced it would be impossible to remove them obviously so I thought it best to ask the question. I don't know if there could
be any unforeseen consequences.. or am I free to add any worm species I like? Thoughts?

Hi all, would love your advice!

I'm after some advice on how far to space my swails.

I have already dug one swail, fairly shallow and small, it is approx 50cm wide, 20 cm deep on high side of hill, 15cm deep on low side of hill.
The site is on a modest slope. I have trees a metre from the swail cut edge just on the edge of the metre wide mound of dirt. I plan to put
veggies in as well.

What I'm trying to get an understanding is basically "soak" ie how much top soil is going to get how much water and how quickly the water is going to sink.

How far from the swail can I plant veggies (which of course have shallow roots and are vulnerable when young) before the permeating soaking water no longer reaches that
top soil due to sinking too deep into the ground?

I know that if you could cut the hill in half and then look at it from the side, you could see basically a curve from where you added
water to the swail, going down hill soaking into the hill but getting dragged by gravity into the hill away from the surface and top soil..

What would be the smartest space/gap to leave before I did the next swail? I was considering 5 metres down the hill but is this a waste as top soil would
already be sufficiently damp? 10 metres? I should add that I have heavily mulched the downhill side of the swail and will continue to do so.

Should I back fill the swail with woodchips/mulch to reduce evaporation?

Should I plant plants on the high side of the swail? How close to it's edge? Which plants?


Temperature and rainfall stats in detail further below, average rainfall 1016 to 1100 mm, Annual mean maximum temperature for 2014 = 17.4 °C.
The swail is really needed during the hot spell Nov to Dec where it is possible to get very little rain and a string of hot days (25 degrees average these months) but up to 38 degrees when hot. It's possible to get two weeks of 35-38 degrees and no rain worst case scenario.


The soil seems to be a fairly highly compacted clay/red loam. It is a red soil quite dry despite being in an mountain area
that gets fairly good rainfall higher which suggests it doesn't soak easily and the water runs off before really penetrating enough.

It took a lot of effort with the rotary hoe just working and working and really having to lean over the hoe to stop it skipping even
on a shallow setting, death by a thousand cuts to get the soil chopped up. It did produce a fairly nice friable soil for the mound
heap after all the work.

If perfect soil takes 1 effort with a mattock then this would be more like 7 effort to dig I guess.

The site is in the Dandenong Ranges, Melbourne Australia (near Cockatoo).

Rainfall Jan-Dec annual average rainfall

http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/ncc/cdio/weatherData/av?p_nccObsCode=136&p_display_type=dailyDataFile&p_startYear=2010&p_c=-1488341787&p_stn_num=086261
Information about climate statistics
Statistic Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Annual
Mean 65.4 60.9 70.6 81.0 87.5 88.8 87.2 95.3 99.3 100.0 90.4 81.0 1016.0
Lowest 2.5 0.0 13.7 20.1 15.8 17.4 27.3 34.8 44.0 33.2 0.0 0.0 589.1
5th %ile 22.2 7.2 17.8 30.2 24.5 31.4 34.2 37.5 48.0 45.3 29.2 5.0 712.6
10th %ile 30.0 7.9 27.4 34.6 30.0 45.3 40.4 50.5 51.9 49.1 42.4 18.2 802.6
Median 65.6 43.8 64.6 71.4 90.6 84.2 76.9 95.8 86.3 102.0 93.0 80.8 1030.2

Temperature (using highest temperature each 24hr period)
Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec
Highest daily 38.6 37.9 30.6 29.3 19.1 14.0 14.2 17.4 21.4 27.1 29.9 28.9
Lowest daily 13.3 15.6 13.6 11.8 9.9 6.8 6.5 4.1 10.3 10.5 12.1 13.3
Monthly mean 25.0 25.6 21.8 16.9 14.5 10.7 9.7 11.5 14.6 18.1 19.8 21.1

Thanks all much gratitude for advice

I love you guys, the community help hear is really great for morale. I'll have to digest all these ideas. I do have comfrey that I'm currently harvesting seeds from.
I have a version of fenugreek that came from Bangladesh that I have seeds for.. I have some growing just cause was curious what it looked like. I'd never heard of
Queen's Lace I'll have to look it up and look out on the sth eastern. Mushrooms in the swail in the woodchips is an interesting thought, I think it might work right down the bottom of the hill where it's cooler.. or maybe a few years into the future. The soil is fairly compact but I know from experience now how great a job wood-chips do as a ground
cover in creating nice crumbly aerated living textured soil. It's amazing.

I'm thinking of pruning the tops of the fruit trees to sculp them a bit so the branches don't get too high and ladders aren't required..
I saw this done with the garden of eden garden. Is this wise?

Thanks for the response! Good advice!

The swail I have is only 24m long.. so I guess I'll have to plant some trees a bit further down the hill.
The swail I'm thinking of doing is only perhaps a foot deep as someone mentioned the prospect of the swail ending up damaging the hill and also
in the dandenong ranges there is only a few periods of summer where rainfall is rare and the swail provides irrigation insurance.

I may play it by ear and possibly add a spillway later. It's a north west facing hill will get plenty of sunlight.

I'm really wondering how close to the swail each of these plants should be. Is two feet two close?
I've heard citrus don't like wet feet yet they like plenty of water for all that fruit.. how close should they be?

I'm also wondering just how far down the hill the water the swail is catching will soak into the ground. I mean will the topsoil say five metres
down hill from the swail be benefitting from the swale and if so how much? How about ten metres further down will it be any more moist than it
was before or will gravity have sunk the water beneath it passed on by below and not soaked it?

Should I consider digging a second swail?

On another note, it was a good year for blackberries this one, harvested 4 ice cream buckets and going to delay hacking the rest till they are done cropping!

A bunch of great replies and working solutions, thank you kindly.
I think I'll give the heating up idea a go, after-all that's how they used to fit wagon wheels steel/iron treads and also barrel fasteners!

apologies couldn't find a forum section appropriate for this one!

Best way to permanently fix a loose mattock head??

Thanks for the replies people!

Re the blackberries, I purchased a cordless makita brushcutter for $109 and wholeheartedly recommend it. My mattock head is loose atm.

I'll have to look into the gradient and the suitability of swales, I think it's not quite steep enough that the swales would fail though
rainfall is quite good in the dandies as you say.

Hi all,

I'm hoping for some advice on a food forest project, specifically the layout I should use with the plants that I have.

The location is a NNE facing slope in the Dandenongs, Melbourne, Aus. Occasional strong northerly winds. I have a water tank up hill and I'm thinking of putting in a relatively small swail as rainfall is more abundant in the hills. I'm also considering backfilling the swail with woodchips to prevent mosquitoes..

I have a bunch of plants that are itching to escape from their pots and I'd love a wiser more experienced person to help with intelligent layout and spacing, what should be higher and lower on the hill, how the shade will work etc. Can anyone advise on this?

Here's the list:

chestnut
hazelnut
orange valencia * 3
unidentified citrus
orange navel
blood orange
grapefruit * 2
mandarin
lime talutian * 2
fejoia
avocado * 5
peach / nectarine
pear

Also.. where can I get cowpea? What other nitrogen fixers would be good?
What conditions does lucerne like to germinate because my seeds seem to be duds.
What other plants would be useful with this food forest and why?
What plant would be best to try to atleast compete with blackberries regrowth, to slow them down and be mowable and easily maintainable itself?

Thanks for reading!
Luke