Here is Dr. Margret Rueffler’s latest creation, a herbal spiral. Up to now, it has been quite challenging to grow western herbs in our tropical climate, at Jiwa Damai in Bali. Here we choose a place half sunny and half covered. After mixing generous amounts of earth with our hot compost, various herbs were plated and then covered with saw dust.
We have White sage, Melissa, Thyme, and many others. If you are passionate about permaculture and want to learn more, let us know!
At Jiwa Damai all plants, grow at an extraordinary speed. Kadek, our gardener and Mariano, our Spanish volunteer and Koko our Japanese volunteer are cleaning the area, to be mulched and prepared for ginger, garlic and other plants.
Our Garden Lumbung from Jiwa Damai, which has housed many volunteers so far was badly in need of repair. We had to remove the beautiful alive cover of passion fruit. It was embedded in it and we had to remove the old wrotten pieces. Phillip, a German carpenter is undertaking the renovation now. The termites had eaten much of the structural posts. Since the last violent storm we had, several trees had fallen and after being cut properly they came in very handy to replace the old posts. We will keep you updated on the progress.
At Jiwa Damai, we love to explore and experiment and we are very open to new ideas. We encourage learning by doing in our permaculture garden.
Cedric was volunteering for a 6 month period. While completing his other volunteer responsibilities, he had an opportunity to research cacao beans and cacao fungus. He also experimented with different mixtures of chocolate and sugar: 90% , 80% and 65%. We all loved the 80% best! Read Cedric's full research paper --> Cacao production at Jiwa Damai
Look carefully between the green leaves and you'll see this beautiful, nearly unrecognizable, lizard climbing in the Jiwa Damai garden. It has a wonderfully long tail and can jump from branch to branch.
This is the time to bag our
Jackfruit.
When they are small we will hide them in big bags, and they will actually grow to the size of the bags. This is done in order to avoid insects from hosting inside. The next photo shows the grown jackfruit. When green we use it as a vegetable, when ripe, it is juicy insides and can be dried and also eaten as a fruit.
jiwa damai fruits
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At Jiwa Damai we offer different products. You can see more
At Jiwa Damai we take care of our garden. A team of 12 people strong began to clean out the area next to our meditation place in order to create a field of vegetables and other edibles. We collected the initial growth of greens, bushes and plants and made them into a large compost heap, which, after a while will be used to cover the earth and render it more fertile.
Garden at Jiwa Damai bali
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Our 7 day introduction to #Permaculture through the Heart in October began its third day hands on with a close encounter with our compost production, the heart of our #permaculture garden.
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Passion fruit and pineapples are looking beautiful. Jiwa Damai has about 100 pineapple plants which come to fruition at different times. Once the pineapple is eaten its green top cut of, this top will be right away replanted and a new pineapple will grow there. Passionfruit is a beautiful vine which has by now covered our wooden Lumbung in the garden and give is it a very enchanted touch. The fruit is slightly accede and very refreshing.
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Jiwa Damai is a hands-on, socially responsible organic garden and retreat center.
We are located amidst lush tropical vegetation in the heart of Bali (20 mins from Ubud).
