Bill's food garden

Bills an 80 year old gardener living in strarford Cairns. He has a wide variety of fruit and vegetables on a relativly small amount of land. Easily enough for him and his wife and some for the people around him.
Looking around one of the things that drew my attention was the banannas. Bill grows a couple of varieties including cavendish and williams. i asked him why the fruit goes into a bag and he explained that if they were just left the fruit flys would get them and they would be full of maggots without the bag. One variety that fruit fly don't touch are the sugar banannas but bill has a bad knee and they grow too high for him to cut down. The other varieties he has grows are low to the ground.
Once the bananna has fruited they don't fruit again so are cut down to alow the suckers or small plants around the root to come up. The old tree is then chopped up for compost (pic 1) (pic 2).



His Paw Paw trees looked great and loaded with fruit, he just leaves them giving them no water even if in dry times they look stressed they always come back.



Bill has some nice Bok Choy in containers growing in just compost, he uses vegetable dust to keep the leaf eating bugs at bay.
Rotenone the active ingredient is a contact and stomach poison which paralyses the heart and respiratory system of the insect.
The product usually remains effective for 7 days except that after rain it is necessary to dust again.
Based on a natural plant root extract.
The Withholding period on edible crops only 1 day.
Almost non-toxic to humans, bees and wildlife (except fish).These claims come from the maker I've never used it myself prefering to let the grass hoppers have their share, another good option if practical where your are is to keep ducks?
he covers his containers to stop the brush turkeys from ripping them all up (pic 3) - they particularly like the compost containers as that's where the worms are concentrated.
He also watches his garden closely to ensure the cockatoo's don't make a meal of his mandarines when fruiting.



Bill say's pinapples are easy to grow if you just cut the top off a pinapple you've bought and plant it. like banannas once they fruit the plant is taken out for the suckers to come up and fruit.(pic 4)
Bill also has squash and sweet corn. Bill say's he only grows his sweet corn in the winter, however I thought it was possible to grow in the summer has anyone tried in the Cairns summer? let uo know how they do?
His passionfruit vine grows on a trelis over the top of the garden toward the back.
He's also got a dragon fruit growing on a trelis but it's new and hasn't fruited yet.
Bill feeds his soil with his compost (pic 1) chopping up everything to small bits and letting it compost down over a year once it's near black humus he put it on the garden. He also adds some potash and lime to his compost say it seems to give better results.
I don't add anything to my and it seems Ok, but I do have chickens and worms which goes a long way to building soil that plants thrive.
If there's one thing that is becomming clear as i do this project is the ease which anybody can grow food in their back yard without the addition and cost of fertilizer. Just by saving scraps from your kitchen and throwaways from around the garden you can build a garden which plants can thrive.