SPRING HAPPINESS PARTY – PART 1

September 23, 2013 1 Comment

SPRING HAPPINESS PARTY

PART 1
Come celebrate with us!

honey-comb-newspaper-recycled-sphere-ball-decorations

In a week of downpours and plummeting temperatures the weather saved up its sunshine for Saturday, and well it should for it was the Spring Happiness Party at our sharehouse! We bade people leave their winter blues at the door and dress in their spring finery for a very special garden warming party. Almost two years since our Permablitz our garden was filled with laughter and the delicate scent of climbing roses and savoury treats. No one came dressed as a squirrel or possum, but a very busy bumble bee fairy made up for it.

I’ll be the first to admit that this was an outlet for a full blown girlish childhood relapse for the three of us, crochet flowers and jasmine wreaths and all, but despite this, even the gentlemen of the house had smiles on their faces, but this might have had more to do with the icy beers than the colourful paper lanterns. And a lapse of a day into shenanigans can be endearing, where as a lapse into hello kitty bedecked bedrooms would be far more alarming. Let’s all be greatful for small mercies people!

It was the perfect place for a party.

I was proud and delighted to see earthbag garden beds, so carefully crafted to create intimate spaces, being so happily used for a myriad of little catch ups and introductions. I hope a lot of new friends were made on the day and old ones strengthened.

Jess and Carly has to be shooed from the kitchen to enjoy the day, but their efforts were appreciated by the masses. Mini quiches were washed down with pineapple punch and every inch of the house was decorated with flowers that looked amazing next to rainbow fruit skewers. My carefully monitored, food intolerance based diet, took a major fall when a chocolate mousse, dairy filled, sugar fueled, gluten glistening delight arrived, but if your going to fall you might as well fall gloriously like that! I’m only human!

More photos tomorrow, there were too many lovely ones for one post, stay tuned!

Garden, Recipes

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

May 30, 2013 1 Comment

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

looks like a coconut rough

building an earth oven part 5

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!

Garden, Recipes

PRE-SPRING 2012 HARVEST

November 19, 2012 No Comments

I feel like our garden has finally settled into the right rhythm. Last October we pulled almost everything out to start afresh. After we finished all the earth bag garden beds, we felt overwhelmed. We were confronted with bare earth and spring already over, beans leaves crisping from summer sun and snails nibbling every snowpea to the ground. Pansies were pretty to fill the gaps in the herb border over winter, but proved a ridiculously perfect home for snails to procreate, but now our first spring is approaching. Now finally our garden in producing a quality and quantity of produce we can be proud of,

something for every lunch and dinner.

Soon when the fruits begin perhaps for breakfast too. The perennials are really starting to flourish, bare earth is a distant memory.

So I thought I’d start documenting what we are harvesting each season, it should be interesting to see how it changes not over the months, but if I am dedicated enough, to see how it (hopefully) grows over the years. Who would have thought that we would be picking the last of the capsicums this late in the year!

Companions:
Snowpeas – Oregon Dwarf
Lettuces – Rabbit Ear
Beetroot – White Blankoma
Silverbeet – Fordhook
Chard – Bright Lights
Chives – Common
Chervil
Parsley – Continental
Dill
Rosemary
Oregano – Greek
Marjoram – Golden
Mint – Common
Mint – Orange
Savory – Winter
Thyme – Lemon
Thyme – Common
Coriander

Brassicaeae:
Mustard greens – Mizuna
Pak Choy – Red
Chinese Cabbage

Umbelliferae:
Celery – Stringless
Carrot – Red Dragon

Solanaceae:
Chilli – Pepper Fish
Capsicum – Mini Sweet Yellow
Capsicum – Mini Sweet Chocolate

Alliums:
Spring Onions

Garden, Recipes

HOMEMADE POTTING & SEED RAISING MIX

September 8, 2012 4 Comments

Potting mix ingredients: worm castings, coir, compost, coarse sand, cow manure

Pre-Spring, creeps up on you gently.

My mornings are still painstakingly timed to allow maximum cuddled up in bed time, the train becomes my breakfast nook and hair salon, all for a few more precious hours in my warm feather cocoon. But with the first few days that hit 20C, the first fruit trees bloom and the warm breeze brings sweet perfumes wrapped up with nostalgic memories of jasmine wreath crowns and daisy chains. Birds are stealing straw and string for nests and parakeets play court jester in the leafy canopy above.

I’m just itching to get planting, but gardeners beware for this is a “False Spring” one day of glorious sunshine can be followed by a freezing one with a real nasty bite to it. It’s going to get busy when True Spring arrives next month so I might as well get the nursery ready before the babies go in! Ha! It’s time to start preparing the Solanaceae garden bed for planting out when the weather is warmer, any planting is better done inside or under glass to protect it from the chill. I’ve been reading up on how to make your own seed raising and potting mix and am excited to share with you the recipes, once my seedlings taste the goodies I put in, they won’t be able to go back to that icky commercial stuff.

Coconut coir after being soaked

Coarse river sand

Seed Raising Mix

Seeds are a neat little packages, with enough nutrients to send stems and leaves skyward towards the light. That means that seed raising mix doesn’t need to be particularly rich in nutrients, but it does need to be friable (crumbly texture, not sticky like clay, easy for root grow through)

Seed Raising Mix Ingredients:
2 parts sifted compost
2 parts soaked fine coconut coir
1 part sifted cow manure
1 part coarse river sand

Potting Mix Recipe

When seedlings have developed their first set of adult leaves they need a little boost, so I add some worm castings to the mix. I am careful not to add too much nutrient rich material as this can lead to weak, leggy growth seedlings susceptible to disease and pests.

Homemade Potting Mix Ingredients:
2 parts compost
2 parts soaked fine coconut coir
2 parts worm castings
1 part cow manure
1 part coarse river sand

Garden Bed

Annual roots are as delicate as cobwebs and plants like tomatoes that suffer badly from transplant shock need to have their garden beds well settled before they go in, at least a month beforehand so I recommend anyone starting from scratch with a no dig garden get it ready in the next few months.

I have heard that when looking through a microscope settling soil looks like little “earthquakes” around delicate roots. No wonder it results in stressed unhappy plants!

Infrastructure

If stabilising soil is like a mini earthquake, then a stakes slicing into established roots may be like a meteor shower. I planned the location of my tomato stakes carefully so I could put them in now, rather than after the plants have already been planted out.
As shown in my plan I have placed hardwood stakes, offcuts from Agroforestry, in three hexagonal patterns around central stakes. Each tomato will have its own triangular enclosure, supported by string horizontals as they grow.