Garden

Our Permablitz Garden on BH&G

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Jo's Permablitz Permaculture Inner City Home Garden on Better Homes & Gardens with Jason Hodges
Jo's Permablitz Permaculture Inner City Home Garden on Better Homes & Gardens with Jason Hodges

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better homes and gardens australia
segment on community gardens featuring
our inner city permaculture garden


For anyone who missed it here’s a link to the Better Homes & Garden’s episode featuring our inner city permaculture garden! (We’re on second, third if you count the ad) I was away hiking at Wilson’s Promontory so missed the whole thing and came home to a whole inbox of messages from friends saying “you have bees?!?! what….why????”, they obviously haven’t tasted homemade honey before, or been frustrated with unpollinated pumpkins (we permaculturists have slightly left of centre concerns don’t we?)

Here at the Desert Echo we like to spread Permaculture 1.5 minutes at a time. hee!

Easily digestible in length, I hope this segment showed people that a beautiful, productive edible garden is possible for everyone, no matter what their budget, no matter their level of inexperience. Stay tuned to see our latest design for a garden in Pascoe Vale on a tight budget that aims not only to produce enough food to keep the cash strapped host fed, but also create a lovely garden for them to relax and entertain in!

If you want to help spread the word about Permaculture send BH&G a message that you’d love to see more of it on their show!

Check out the behind the scenes photos of the filming.


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Garden, Recipes

BUILDING AN EARTH OVEN PART 5 – LOOKS LIKE A COCONUT ROUGH

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earth-oven-insulation-layer-rendering-seat-superadobe-bag

looks like a coconut rough

building an earth oven part 5


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pizza-preparation-ready-for-oven

This is the stage we affectionately call the coconut rough, it’s not that attractive but inside it holds unexpected delights!

Forgive the delay between stage 4 and 5, it is oh so tempting to put your feet up once you’ve made a basic earth oven. You can cook a most mouthwatering pizza in it, so you can get lazy, putting off the insulation layer. But if you attempt to cook pizza for the masses, your first pizza and maybe your second will cook like a dream in under 5 minutes, but by the time you get to your fourth or fifth the oven cools and you start getting nasty doughy uncooked centres.

Time for the next stage! Let’s make an eski out of this mudpie!

STEP 11: MIX IT MAKE IT

Make a sludgy mix of equal parts clay and sawdust and add water until you get that nice mudpie consistency, use a shovel to chop up any clay lumps. Apply it just as you did in stage 3, no need to pack it down too hard, you want all those air pockets made by the sawdust to trap the heat inside.

STEP 12: FIRE IT BAKE IT

Then all that’s left is to light a fire to dry it out and once it’s hot enough, why not push the burning embers to side and cook a delicious wood fire pizza!? There is nothing like it! Although warning once you try it you might become a pizza snob and those second-rate takeaway ones will never do! Perhaps a good thing for the health and the hips!

STEP 13: DO IT DOOR IT

Of course if you want to get into sourdough bread baking you’ll need a door. Pizza’s cook merrily fast in a super hot oven with the door off, but bread needs too cook more slowly and evenly so you’ll need a door. The bright sparks among you would have made the door first and then built the oven around it so it fits like a dream, but that’s not how we roll here. We just grabbed some timber off-cuts and banged them together then carved it to fit. Hey, it does the job! The bread needs a cooler over so remove all the fire embers before you bake it, once the dough is in shut the door and return in 15 minutes for a mouth watering delight! But don’t be too greedy let it cool a bit first, it’s still cooking once you take it out!



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making-earth-oven-timber-door

bread-making-wood-fired

bread-earth-oven-baking-sourdough-homemade

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Garden

spring harvest

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flemington-dover-garden-permaculture-true-spring

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september – october 2012


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orange-nasturtium-alaska-variegated-leaves

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crimson-broad-bean-flower

With the thawing of the weather came a rush of lush green growth and flush of unfurling petals, but that’s not all, something momentous was happening. We could hear it, a great whirring, a low hum that ebbed and flowed, but was growing in intensity. We opened the door to a great commotion, a great whirling, tornado of bees overhead. They were swarming. The bee man Martin had said that Steiner thought that a swarm looked like the soul of a human being that has left its body…to me like ash caught in a whirlwind. They carried on all day and then as suddenly as they had appear they vanished. With unease we approached the quiet hive.

The hive has become too cramped for the growing colony and its ostentatious monarch.

The old queen, feeling like a change of scenery and a more spacious castle, ups and leaves without so much as a thank you, taking the majority of the flying worker bees, along with a huge amount of your honey! You’re left with a ragtag crew of young flightless cleaners, nursers and only a scattering of workers. But all is not lost, the old queen in her benevolence has left some virgin queens developing in their queen cells (much cushier than those hexagonal ones for the plebs!). The nursers feed the larvae up and when they emerge the fight is one! If one gets out earlier enough, the sneaky minx will just sting the others to death as they doze. If she is too slow there is a fight on our hands, its a death match, winner takes all. If you are unlucky then the victorious queen may be so injured she dies, the remaining colony will suddenly find itself on radio silent and listlessly will buzz around with no real purpose, it is doomed. Well, unless you go and order a new queen online, they come by matchbox I’m told.

Luckily for us our new queen was a warrior princess, the next day everything seemed back to normal. Even better she seemed a good sort and no surprise stings were to be had. A friend of ours had a particularly nasty queen, with a short sharp temper. If you get a feisty one the whole colony takes on her snitty ways and can be quite aggressive.


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artichoke-flower-heart-silverbeet-celery-bronze-fennel

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bottle-brush-broccoli-flower-climbing-rose

THE HARVEST

COMPANIONS

coriander
fennel – sweet, bronze
lettuce
silverbeet/chard
rosemary
beetroot
lime balm
lemon balm
mints – peppermint, orange, spearmint, common, basil mint, vietnamese
edible chrysanthemum
violas
nasturtiums
artichokes – purple
angelica
marjoram – golden
calendula
chamomile
bay leaves
strawberries
raspberries

BRASSICACEAE

roquette
broccoli
kale

UMBELLIFERAE

celery
carrots
parsley

SOLANACEAE

chillies

AMARYLLIDACEAE (ALLIUMS)

spring onions
chives

LEGUMIONOSAE

broad beans

OTHER

eggs

INEDIBLE CUT FLOWERS

sweetpea
california poppies
salvias
lupin


nasturtium-yellow-flower

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Garden

double-decker poly wicking bed.

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tomato experiment preparation




recycle-reuse-rubbish-plastic-bottles-polystyrene-boxes

Whenever I passed the Queen Victoria Market there was always a mound of polystyrene broccoli boxes so impressively high that it reassembled a hot weather igloo palace. It was kind of sickening and ever the innovator the powers that be came up with a solution to this spectacle pointless waste – hide them out the back and crush them out of sight and out of mind.

I could only reduce those insatiable mountains of foam by 20 boxes, but if you feel inspired to make a double-decker wicking bed too too dear reader, perhaps we can get something started! I have a concrete driveway beginning to be filled with poly wicking beds for my tomato experiment.

Tomorrow we’ll work our way up to lofty heights of Everest, today let’s start local!

WHY A WICKING BED?

On those exhaustingly hot weeks you just don’t want to find yourself hose in hand every night after a long day in the office with mosquitoes buzzing around your ankles.

Wicking beds have a water reservoir at the bottom so you have to water less often – about every two weeks. The water is down deep so it encourages deep roots, so stronger plants, more resilient to a bit of sunburn. They offer a more constant water source too, so in theory it should be perfect for things like tomatoes that split and carry on if their water supply is erratic.

WHY POLY BOXES?

There is so much embodied energy and money that goes into making a regular wicking bed, what with the pond liner, the brand new poly pipe, agi pipe, shadecloth, etc, it doesn’t seem the right fit for the home garden. A poly wicking bed however is entirely made of unwanted materials, so you can feel smug while you make it! Ha!

WHY DOUBLE-DECKER?

I’ve seen single poly wicking beds before, but I wanted to make them for deep rooted plants like tomatoes, so why not simply make them stackable?






INGREDIENTS & METHOD:

1LEVEL GROUND – a level surface allows water to be evenly distributed. Concrete driveways and paved areas often have a slight fall to them which could lead to water pooling down one end. Cans and pots of varying height can be used to elevate the boxes off the ground and create a more level base. A builder’s level is accurate but unnecessary, you can simply fill the container with a little water and see if evenly covers the bottom or pools at one end.

2SEALED CONTAINER – no plastic pond liner or staple guns required, a broccoli box has no holes and is well insulated against temperature extremes. I simply snap the top lip off and place it on the can/pot base.

3WATER DISTRIBUTION – another chance to raid the recycle bin. 7x600mL bottles with their bottoms cut off instead of the usual PVC and agi pipes. Wide mouthed ones are best because a standard hose can fit in the top, but otherwise just cut the tops off. On such a small scale, the gaps between the three bottles laid on the bottom will be enough to ensure even water throughout the reservoir. The remaining four stacked will allow you to deliver water right to the bottom of the wicking bed.

4WATER RESERVOIR – no more than 30cm deep to avoid stagnant water. Can be filled with scoria, gravel, broken terracotta pots…anything that allows big pockets of water between and can become saturated to encourage the wicking/capillary action up into the soil above. Nothing too fine as it will clog the plastic bottles. Fill with water to level out the scoria, then use a sharp stick to make 1 or 2 holes at the opposite end to the filling end. These act as overflows to prevent flooding when it rains.

5SOIL SEPARATION – something to prevent the soil from getting into the resevoir, but that allows water to wick through. Hessian or old sheets can be used, they will eventually need to be replaced, but in such a small wicking bed that’s no big deal. Use shadecloth if you are looking for something more permanent. Fold the hessian up the edges of the bed so no dirt gets through and so it is easy to remove should you want to take the wicking bed apart.

6NUTRIENT STORE* – high nitrogen poultry manure mixed with high carbon straw or dried leaves will make a most delightful reward for plants that grows nice deep roots. Then fill this to the brim with homemade potting mix.

72ND STOREY – cut the bottom out of the second broccoli box leaving a lip for it to sit on the one below. Fun fact: in a moment of despondency when my scissors broke in two I found that a half scissor works a treat at sawing through polystyrene, don’t throw them away!

8PLANT POCKET/SUPPORTS – As I have mentioned before it is best to prepare any garden bed at least 2 week to a month before you plant out plants that hate transplant to avoid soil settling crushing delicate roots . That is why I made a cardboard mould the size of my plastic bottle greenhouse so I can fill the wicking bed with soil and get the companion plants established before the tomatoes are ready to plant out. It is then as simple as pulling out the mould and slipping the tomato in the hole. Add stakes/supports now to avoid disturbing roots later.

8POTTING MIX – fill in the gaps with potting mix, plant some companions plants and mulch thickly. Voila, now it’s ready to plant out your tomatoes when the temperature reaches a consistent 10C+.

*TOMATO FACTS
Although tomatoes love nutrient rich soil do not spoil your tomatoes by over fertilising the soil with high nitrogen manures! They will become brattish – soft and lazy, shallow rooted plants that appear green and lush but require constant watering and attention susceptible to disease with thin skinned tomatoes prone to rot.
Additional nutrients should be delivered in the form of compost/seaweed teas ONLY once a plant has already started fruiting to extend cropping and overall yield. An even better idea is to bury poultry manure out of reach 20-30cm nearby or under your plants so their roots will access it only when they have grown deep and their fruit is ripening.





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