2025 report and harvest results

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Garden helpers at The Centre in downtown Seymour

I decided to step up and focus more effort into food production in 2025. Of course, putting more effort in and seeing the results takes time. The effort has been in making better use of the marginal garden beds, by making use of the 3 cast iron baths I've had sitting around for years, getting seedlings in regularly / early and revisiting soil mineralisation - which was last done in 2012, not long after we moved in. The wicking sleeper beds have been performing well, and I decided to separate the produce results from our home garden so we can keep track on how that's going as well as have a easy way to determine how our home garden is going compared with results from previous years.


David Arnold didn't run a PDC (Permaculture Design Course) in 2025, something that I'm normally involved in. Instead I decided to put our home on display once again (after a long break) for Sustainable House Day / Permaculture Day, followed soon after with a half day tour with Benella Permaculture. Again I got lots of great feedback by the enthusiastic participants - which makes it all worthwhile. Like this one: 
So many ideas my brain is in overload! Thanks so much for your sharing of lessons learnt and gains made. Horray, a working permie site is always a great visit. - Deb

Benella Permaculture Facebook post about the tour at our place.

There was a close call later in the year that was a bit of a reality check. My garden mentor Brian was looking after our chickens while Kunie and I went for an outback trip to Broken Hill. He texted me to apologise for not feeding them while he was recovering in hospital from a heart attack. Fair enough! The chickens we fine, but Brian was out of action for a while. I stepped up to help out where I could, taking on some of the work he was doing at the 'The Centre' community garden in Seymour - managing to get some others involved to help out too. Great day! Brian has been getting better slowly, needs to take it easy - not such and easy thing to do for him!

Brian back into gardening after a spell in hospital

The redesign of the 'kitchen garden bed', which has been unproductive, into a dual bathtub wicking bed come raised detachable bed was a great way to use up some materials that I had lying around. I might write more about this in another post, but here's a pic anyway. Great to finally find a good use for those baths!

Bathtub wicking beds with detachable raised bed behind

Beyond the boundaries I've been planting a few more trees, and maintaining others. I let the blackberries get a bit out of hand near the railway line. I wanted to clear them back before they consumed the walnut that I'd planted. It's been booming ever since. More planting to come in the area during Spring.

Blackberries being cut back using hedge clippers, pruners and dabbed with a little Glysophate to kill them (that didn't really work - probably not enough).


Towards the end of the year I decided to delve deeper into investigating getting a battery system for our house. When most people do this they throw out their old system and replace it with a new one. I didn't want to do that, doesn't seem very 'green' to me - which was part of the reason for getting them in the first place. I think there's still plenty of life left in the 1.5kw solar system that we got installed in 2011 - especially since we got the inverter replaced with a Fronius in 2017. It's been producing about During this investigation I called up Oliver Holmgren to see if he needed a hand with his installation of second hand panels at his place. Kai and I fixed about 50kW to railing over a couple of days during very hot weather. 

Oliver lining up panels before we fixed them in place.


Soil remineralisation

Back in 2012 I got a soil test done and analysis by Steve Solomon. I thought it was about time to get another test done, and to see how I was travelling. I discovered a bout that Steve wrote with Erica Reinheimer called "The Intelligent Gardener - growing nutrient dense food" that I bought and read with the aim of doing the analysis myself. I found the process quite complicated, mostly because I found it difficult to get my head around Imperial / American measurements, being solidly metric myself. But, there was also understanding chemistry that challenged me - something that a hadn't previously taken an interest in.

Awesome book, helped me realise the importance of getting our garden soil minerals balanced

This book and the results I discovered has opened up a world to me. I now understand that I've been doing things I shouldn't in the garden - because I've got a massive excess in Zinc and Iron, most likely because of the wood ash and chicken manure I've been adding. I'm also super low in Manganese and Sulfur, which was also an issue in my original test, 13 years previous. I haven't been doing the mineral maintenance that is required, I haven't tested frequently enough, I've been ignorant of many things. That's changing. I'm on a big journey into how I can rectify that, and potential help other people not make the mistakes I did. More about that later...

2025 Harvest 

The harvest for 2025 was a BIG improvement on the previous year, up nearly 50%. I separated the harvest from the neighbouring garden beds and our home garden this time, which should make things easier to compare. 
  • Total 707kg. Home beds were 543kg / Whiteheads Creek Garden was 164kg
  • Eggs = 532 (lower than last year)
  • Vegetables = 245kg + 162 kg from the 24m2 Wicked Sleeper Beds
  • Fruit = 243kg + 2kg from fruit trees managed at Whiteheads Creek garden.
  • Herbs = 3.6kg
  • Other = 27kg

See detailed spreadsheet results below, use tab at base to change the year. Updated with new results as the become available. Use the tabs at the base of the spreadsheet to the year you want to view - it automatically displays the most recent spreadsheet.

See our 2024 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019 and 2013 food harvest result post here. 


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