Today was a huge family bonding day, although we didn’t all spend it together.
Megan and Grace went up to Sydney with the Peterborough school for the Rotary Club of Turramurra and Pathfinders Jumbo Flight. Qantas donated the use of a jumbo jet, pilots and cabin crew donated their time, and Rotarian volunteers provided ground support in the terminal to allow a plane full of disabled kids and their carers to enjoy a 90-minute flight/party over Sydney.
Meanwhile, Darren took Sarah and Hannah to the Ss Peter and Paul Catholic Primary School fete.
As if that wasn’t enough, Darren and the girls then went up to Glengarry Cottage at Kembla Grange for their gala day.
Sarah still wasn’t done when we got home (Hannah had fallen asleep by this stage), so we then had to make a scarecrow.
On a personal note, there’s something strangely satisfying about making a scarecrow from your mother-in-law’s clothes!
The idea is for 120 households across the Illawarra to spend the next 12 months moving towards a more sustainable lifestyle. Sustainable Illawarra provides participants with information, workshops, guidance and resources (as well as some nice discounts and freebies from local businesses!) to help them achieve the goals they’ve set for themselves. In return, Sustainable Illawarra will learn what the issues are for local families, and they’ll also get some stories and case studies they can use in getting the message out to the wider community.
To keep track of what our family is doing and how far we’ve come, we’ve set up a new blog: Green-Change.com. Feel free to have a read, leave some comments, and send us suggestions!
A wicking garden bed uses a waterproof container or layer below the soil surface to form an underground reservoir of water. There is enough soil above the reservoir so that the plants don’t get “wet feet”. Plant roots then draw up this sub-surface water via capillary action.
Because they are watered from below, wicking beds lose very little water to evaporation. They are reportedly extremely water-efficient, and so are very well suited to low-rainfall areas (isn’t that most of Australia?!). You can also leave them for a week or two without any watering, and your plants will be fine.
This page aims to collect links to information on wicking beds:
Easy-Grow Vegetables: A spin-off site of WaterRight specifically about wicking bed technology.
Scarecrow’s Garden: Documents one person’s experience and experiments with wicking beds in very dry inland Australia. There are several follow-up stories here documenting some great results.
Wicking boxes are an adaptation of the wicking bed design to container gardening. Here are some links:
Easy-Grow Boxes: A really good explanation of how to build wicking boxes from common materials like broccoli boxes, and getting worms to help you fertilise them.
In July I took my trailer up to the mushroom farm to get a load of mushroom compost. It was $2.60/bag, and I got 16 bags for $40. I was really just thinking of using it on the garden as a mulch layer at that stage.
When I got home, though, I realised there were actually a lot of mushrooms on top of the bags. I picked them off and put them in the fridge. I wasn’t really ready to use the bags just yet, so I thought I’d put them under the house and see if any more mushrooms might sprout.
And sprout they did!
I kept a tally of how much mushrooms I got from the bags. All weights are after trimming stems for use:
25-07-2008: picked approx 750g of mushrooms off the top of the compost bags after picking them up in the trailer
28-07-2008: picked 150 g (total 900 g)
30-07-2008: picked 235 g (total 1.135 kg)
31-07-2008: picked 348 g (total 1.483 kg)
02-08-2008: picked 482 g (total 1.965 kg)
03-08-2008: picked 649 g (total 2.614 kg)
04-08-2008: picked 1703 g (total 4.317 kg)
05-08-2008: picked 699 g (total 5.016 kg)
06-08-2008: picked 841 g (total 5.857 kg)
07-08-2008: picked 442 g (total 6.299 kg)
08-08-2008: picked 177 g (total 6.476 kg)
09-08-2008: picked 660 g (total 7.136 kg)
10-08-2008: picked 326 g (total 7.462 kg)
14-08-2008: picked 348 g (total 7.810 kg)
16-08-2008: picked 407 g (total 8.217 kg)
17-08-2008: picked 369 g (total 8.586 kg)
20-08-2008: picked 510 g (total 9.096 kg)
21-08-2008: picked 540 g (total 9.636 kg)
23-08-2008: picked 415 g (total 10.051 kg)
24-08-2008: picked 275 g (total 10.326 kg)
30-08-2008: picked 206 g (total 10.532 kg)
The mushroom compost bags are now starting to be overrun by some kind of fluffy white fungus. It’s killing the mushrooms, so I think that’s pretty much the end of the harvest. Time to get the bags out from under the house and into the compost heap.
So, 10.5 kg of mushrooms plus 16 bags of compost for the garden. Not bad for $40!
An updated version of this post is available over on my suburban green living blog, Green Change: Chicken Ark Plans
When thinking about a coop for our chickens to live in, we wanted something practical, non-permanent, and space-efficient. Looking around the net, the ‘chicken ark’ or ‘chicken tractor’ concept seemed the best for our needs.
To get some idea of the number of variations on the basic chicken tractor, check out this chicken tractor gallery.
There are heaps of resources for building chicken arks:
Of course, none of these were exactly what we wanted :-). There were lots of good ideas, though, and we got a good sense of the features we wanted in our own ark. After a few nights spent researching and sketching, measuring and planning, we came up with our final design.
It might sound daggy, but lately I’ve been watching the old BBC series The Good Life (a friend at work lent me the DVDs). Megan thinks I’m getting old.
You’ve got to admit, though, that there’s something about Barbara Good (Felicity Kendal). It never sat right with me that that Tom guy wound up with her!
Watch a few clips at the BBC site to refresh your memory, and then listen to Emma over at The Alternative Kitchen Garden podcast. Is that awesome or what?! Same subject, same voice, same accent, same vocal mannerisms – I could listen to her all day. And there are seventy-odd back issues for me to work through! I wish I lived further from work so I had a longer commute.
Another great video series from Milkwood, this one explaining how to make compost without too much effort.
Don’t these videos have great music? I also really like the way they use the “Benny Hill effect” of speeding up the video, so you get a good idea of what they’re doing without needing to sit around and watch someone turn a whole pile of compost. Nice opening and closing credits too.
The web pages for each of these videos are worth visiting, as they have a lot of useful info:
analyse your compost components using the Milkwood Compost Calculator to make sure you have the C:N ratio right
if you get the C:N ratio wrong, your pile will either fester and go rank (too much nitrogen) or take too long to break down (too much carbon)
need at least a cubic metre of stuff for the compost pile to work properly
water the site of your pile before starting
layer your ingredients like a lasagne to make sure things are nicely mixed
water each layer as you go: the bacteria and fungi need water to do their thing
cover with a tarp – stops it drying out, getting too wet, blowing away, etc
Making Compost – Part II
turning the compost pile
squeeze a handful of your compost – you should get one drop out of it – water it if it’s too dry
peel the outside of the compost pile to make the beginnings of the new pile, then dump the inside of the old pile onto the outside of the new pile
mental note – next time, shred paper rather than leaving it whole!
white powdery stuff is anaerobic bacteria, which is not really desirable – just keep turning and watering and it’ll sort itself out
the pile should reach about 60 degrees Celcius around the 4th day, then cool down a bit more with each turning until it’s just warm by the time the compost is ready
urine is a good compost activator if your pile is slow to heat up!
Making Compost – Part III
this compost method is called the Berkley Method – it’s fast and easy
ended up with nice dark compost – a little more sticks and lumpy bits than she’d like, but still pretty good
wow, in January Kirsten was planning to starting a new compost pile every week!
Michael is also well known for his coining the phrase and writing the first paper ever on the Soil Food Web titled ‘Soil Ecology and the Soil Food Web’ in 1974
sugar maples, drop leaves to provide a protective mulch
we are told we need to change our soils from their natural alkaline state to a more acidic pH
but the organic matter dropped by the maples hasn’t changed the pH of the soil where they grow
the organic matter is turned into humus
topsoil under the maples is very thin, with only a thin layer of humus
so we don’t need to make a huge change to soils in order for them to support our plantings
these forests provide an example of how we can use permaculture to alter a landscape without a huge amount of effort – we don’t need to completely change the soil in order to be successful
More videos about soil can be seen at the Soil Secrets web site.
You’ve got to admit, though, that there’s something about Barbara Good (Felicity Kendal). It never sat right with me that that Tom guy wound up with her!