We’re currently getting up to 5 zucchini every day:

Little wonder that our fridge’s crisper looks like this, then:

So, on to the dehydrating. First, I cut the zucchini into slices about 5mm thick. It’s fairly important to get the thickness uniform, so the slices will dehydrate at the same rate. A mandolin slicer is very handy for this, but be careful! I cut my finger quite badly a few weeks ago on this one.

You generally need to blanch vegetables before freezing or dehydrating. This is done by boiling or steaming them for a short time, then quickly chilling them in cold water to halt the cooking process. Blanching destroys the enzymes that cause vegetables to develop off colours and flavours and get tough, and also kills off most of the microorganisms that can cause vegetables to deteriorate.

I’ve found the microwave to be a very convenient, precise and non-messy way to blanch vegetables. I spread them in a single layer in a microwave steamer, steam them for the recommended time, and then plunge them into cold water. About 2:30 seems to be the right time for zucchini slices.

At this point, Hannah likes to help me by arranging the slices in the dehydrator trays.

We then pat them dry with a clean teatowel, and put the trays into the dehydrator.

We run the dehydrator on the front deck. There’s a power point out there, it’s under cover and protected from the elements, and it keeps the noise and warm air out of the house. After about 8 hours, the slices have dehydrated.

All that’s left then is to bag up the zucchini chips, and store them for the soup-and-stew-making season!

What do you have a glut of at the moment? How are you dealing with it?

Related posts:

1. Hand-Pollinating Zucchini Flowers
2. Planting Out Fruit Trees

We eventually found the nest fairly low in a gum tree. It contains two cute little chicks:

Willie wagtails are great birds to have in the garden, so we’re happy to leave them in peace to raise their babies.

Adult Willie Wagtail (CC BY 3.0 image courtesy Duncan McCaskill)

Related posts:

1. Organic Fruit Fly Control and Hatching Chicks
2. Chicks Taken By Predator!
3. Hatching Chicks

Potatoes are also amazing for establishing new garden beds. They break up the ground, attract lots of worms, and leave a lovely rich soil behind.

I use the standard potato-growing technique – dig a fairly deep trench (up to a foot deep), put the seed potatoes in the bottom, and cover them with an inch or so of dirt. As the shoots start coming through, keep backfilling the dirt around them. Keep hilling and mulching them until you can’t go any higher, then leave them until the tops start to die off. Finally, dig!

The girls gave me a hand pulling up our most recent potatoes last weekend.

It’s like a treasure hunt! Every time I turn over the soil, the girls rush in and try to outdo each other. There’s always a bit of competition to see who can collect the most potatoes.

These were the biggest two, although they were all pretty uniform:

After they’ve all been recovered, we brush the clods of dirt off the potatoes, sort them (use any damaged ones first), and let them dry a little in the sun.

Look at that lovely rich soil left behind! There were heaps of worms all through the garden bed.

The end result – a big tub of potatoes. We collected about 12 kg, having started with about 1 kg of sprouted potatoes from the cupboard. Not a bad return! They were all a lovely big size too – sometimes you get lots of little ones, but not this time.

And of course, the girls were proud to have gotten their hands dirty helping Dad!

We’re fortunate here on the South Coast. Our climate is mild enough that we can plant potatoes pretty much any time of the year. Gardening web sites tell you to plant them between August and October; that may give you the best yields, but really they’ll grow anytime the soil is above 10C (50F). If you have potatoes sprouting the cupboard, you’ve got nothing to lose by planting them out!

Do you grow potatoes? Do you have any special techniques to share?

Related posts:

1. Potato Harvest
2. Potato Harvest
3. Mulch Delivery

This post follows on from Kiama Primary School Garden Opening.

This drawing shows the original design plan for the Kiama Primary School permaculture garden, put together by Aaron Sorenson. It’s not exactly how the garden worked out (they never are!), but the general placement of the elements is pretty close. It gives a good overview of the site, buildings, access paths and roads, etc that Aaron had to work with.

You can click on the photo to see a larger version, big enough to read the writing.

I really like looking at these kinds of permaculture designs. They’re full of ideas to borrow, and you can see how the designer has placed things relative to each other, using site properties (slope, aspect, views, winds, sun, access, etc) to their best advantage.

When looking at a plan, I like to imagine how the various jobs would get done in the garden (mulch delivery and application to beds, watering, composting, harvesting, cooking, relaxing, planting out seedlings from the nursery area, and so on). How far would you have to walk, and is it uphill or downhill? How long would hoses have to be to water every plant? Is it far from the regular-picking plants to the kitchen? Would you have to barrow compost very far, and could a wheelbarrow get through to every area? How far would you have to carry tools?

It’s also useful to think about rain on the site, where water will flow, and how it will interact with swales, paths, and other garden elements.

With all that in mind, lets get on with the tour!

First, the top entrance. This is where people enter from the school. Just to the left of where I took the photo is the car park and an access gate. That area serves as a mulch drop point – nice, since you only have to wheelbarrow it downhill! The entrance invites you to enter and follow the path down to the main seating circle.

The path down from the main entrance is gently sloping, built as a switch-back down the side of the hill. Besides being easier to walk up and down, it slows water flow during rain and prevents erosion. And how about that ocean view!

The paths/swales across the hill have been lined with lots of comfrey. This is a hardy, deep-rooted and fast-growing plant, so it stabilises the banks. Because it has such long roots, it “mines” nutrients and minerals from deep down and brings them to the surface, storing them in its leaves. The leaves are regularly harvested for compost and mulch, and it can also be used to make “comfrey tea” fertiliser or fed to livestock.

You can’t see it very well in this photo, but there are banana plants and other fruit trees in amongst the comfrey. These are mostly shallow-rooted plants, so the comfrey doesn’t compete with them for nutrients.

And that brings us to the seating circle, about half-way down the slope. This is a large level area, with enough seating for a whole class and plenty of room in the middle for demonstrations. Being central, you can also see most of the garden from this vantage point. What a great learning area!

The next three photos are from a display board at the school, to show a bit more detail about how the seating circle was constructed.

It started off with earthworks to level the site, and construction of retaining walls (which provide additional seating if needed).

Next, a base was put down and tyres were put in place as the structure of the seating circle. The tyres were filled for structural strength and stability.

Boards were fixed to the top of the tyres as a base for the decking timber of the finished seats.

Back to the tour…

This area between the schoolhouse and the seating circle is a north-facing slope, but is protected from southerly and easterly winds by the buildings. That makes an ideal environment for south-east Asian vegetables. Below this area is the Mediterranean area, also a north-facing hot area.

Don’t you love the signs the kids have made? They were dotted around the garden to identify various features, plants, microclimates, etc.

About half-way down the slope is the public entrance to the garden, leading in from the footpath. This also serves as a secondary receiving point for mulch, compost, etc.

In a little from the public entrance is the main composting area. Being a large flat area right near the entrance, it would make a good place for stacking bulk materials like hay bales and garden stakes, before distribution around the garden.

Near the composting area were some striking rainbow chard plants. You can see the huge curly kale plants in the background too. Doesn’t everything look super healthy?

Dotted around the garden at the end of swales are these compost bins, dubbed the Daleks by the students. You’re never far from one of these, making it very convenient to get rid of prunings, dropped fruit and other waste while working in the garden. They are the Gedye compost bins that are available from Kiama Council.

Moving further down the slope, the kids have planted a wind break to provide some protection against the salty coastal breezes coming in from the east. There are a few windbreaks around the garden, mostly either bana grass or sugar cane. Both grow quickly to about two metres tall, and can be cut for mulch or composting.

The bottom of the garden (the northern edge) is bounded by the school’s service road. This would reflect a lot of heat on a sunny day, being light-coloured concrete, so the lower part of the garden needs to be planted with species able to handle it. The kids have designated this bottom swale the citrus mound.

Looking back up the slope at the schoolhouse. The main garden is to the right in this photo, and there’s native gardens continuing along the slope to the left. These swales have been planted with bananas and other fruit trees, and also provide a pathway back up to the schoolyard.

I hope you enjoyed this tour as much as I enjoyed visiting the garden!

Please let me know what you think in the comments.

Related posts:

1. Kiama Primary School Garden Opening
2. Permaculture Design Certificate Scholarship!
3. Sydney Water “Love Your Garden” Review

Remember I was awarded a Permaculture Design Certificate scholarship by my local council? One of the other recipients was Maria, a teacher from Kiama Primary School, and she’s been heavily involved in getting this garden up and running. I’m helping to get a similar garden (although perhaps not quite on the same scale!) going at Jamberoo Primary School as the community project aspect of my PDC scholarship, so it was a great opportunity to gather ideas.

Here’s Maria (in the checked shirt) speaking at the opening ceremony:

During the ceremony, all the school kids were lined up along the swales to watch:

Costa Georgiadis (from Costa’s Garden Odyssey on SBS TV) was the celebrity guest and keynote speaker. What a great guy! He was funny, informative, and has an incredible way of relating to kids with irreverent humour and infectious enthusiasm. Here’s Costa with our mayor, Sandra McCarthy, and Vanessa John (Environmental Strategy Officer at Wollongong Council, and coordinator of the PDC scholarship programme) presenting students with some fruit trees for the garden:

I’ll write a follow-up post in the next couple of days to give you a tour of the garden.

Update: Here’s the promised follow-up: Kiama Primary School Permaculture Garden Tour.

Related posts:

1. Kiama Sustainability Expo 2011
2. Costa’s Garden Odyssey – Tonight 8:00 on SBS
3. Backyard Veggie Patch Workshop in Jamberoo

I was pulling weeds out of an overgrown garden bed on the weekend, and noticed some carrot leaves among the mess. Megan had just harvested the last of the carrots (about a kilo worth) from the bed before I got started, so I figured she missed one.

Needless to say, I got a bit of a surprise!

In case you can’t read the scales, it clocked in at 894 grams – almost as much as the small bucketfull Megan had spent half an hour picking!

Does anyone else have any monster vegetable stories?

No related posts.

What is a swale?

• A perfectly level ditch, following the contour of the land.

(diagram from Toby Hemenway’s excellent book, Gaia’s Garden)

What does a swale do?

• Water harvesting: captures surface water flowing downhill during rain.
• Slows the movement of surface water across the landscape, putting it to use rather than just letting it flow off.
• Spreads the water evenly along the length of the swale. Water will naturally flow into gullies and away from ridges – swales redistribute it more evenly.
• Holds water for some time (usually days, up to a week) after a rain event, allowing it to slowly infiltrate into the ground.
• Hydrates the slope below the swale, storing water in the soils and sediments underground.
• You won’t need to water even the most fussy plants on a swale for a few weeks after a rain event – more hardy plants won’t ever need watering.

How do you build a swale?

• Start by marking out where it will go – dumpy level/a-frame, clear hose, builder’s level on plank, laser level. Use little flags or pegs to mark the uphill edge of the swale.
• Dig a trench along the marked line, piling the removed soil on the downhill side of the trench to make a mound.
• Think about what will happen if the swale overflows – plan a spillway that won’t erode during high flow, and ensure that the water that exits won’t cause problems downhill.
• Make the bottom of the trench level.
• Crack/chip the bottom of the swale to aid water infiltration.
• You can completely fill the swale with mulch (leaves, sticks, wood, bark, etc) (good for smaller swales) or leave a trench/gullly that will fill with water.
• Mulch the swale mound well to prevent weeds and erosion.
• Plant legumes on the mound (pigeon pea, cow pea, clover, tagasaste, wattle, etc) to build soil nitrogen and act as nursery trees for your crop species. These can be “chopped and dropped” as mulch during the life of the swale.
• Plant fruit and nut trees on the top of the mound (for plants that like drainage) and below the mound (for plants that like moisture).
• Build successive swales down a slope, giving consideration to how they overflow into one another.
• Space neighbouring swales widely on shallow slopes, closer together on steeper slopes.
• Important: Plant out and mulch the swale immediately after construction so you don’t have to fight with weeds later!

Potential problems with swales

• If you don’t get the levels right, you can get a heavy flow of water along your swale and concentrate it to the overflow point, which might cause problems downhill. Even worse, it might burst through the mound somewhere along the swale and erode it out.
• If you don’t plant trees below the swale, you’ll cause waterlogging by infiltrating more water than grasses and small plants can absorb.
• High evaporation can cause salt buildup. You need to ensure the base of the swale is not sealed like a dam, but allows slow infiltration of water. Trees help take up the water and shade the trench to reduce evaporation. Water lost to evaporation is water not used!
• Get the overflow point right! Make sure it won’t erode during high rainfall (e.g. line a sill with rocks or pavers, or use buried overflow pipe through the mound). Plan where you’re directing the overflow water, and ensure a heavy storm won’t cause downhill problems.
• Don’t allow plants to grow thickly and clog up your overflow points.

My backyard swale, planted with taro, bananas, mango, and sweet potato.

More swale ideas

• Make swales a generous width, fill them with wood chips or green waste mulch to level the surface, and use them as access paths. Water will be held in the mulch, reducing evaporation and encouraging beneficial fungi (mycorrhiza), but the top layer will be dry for walking on.
• Similar to above, dig ditches on contour in your vegetable garden beds and fill them with mulch as access paths.
• Create crescent-shaped mini-swales for individual trees. They’ll collect water (possibly from a wide area) and concentrate it for infiltration just uphill of the tree.
• Direct swale overflows into water features, dams, rain gardens, banana circles, or (if you don’t have any other options) stormwater drains.
• Direct greywater (from laundry, outdoor showers, etc) into a slotted irrigation pipe that runs along the bottom of a swale. Cover the pipe with lots of wood chips and mulch, so the greywater won’t sit at the surface.
• Road or driveway runoff and rainwater tank overflows can also be directed into swales.
• On rocky ground that can’t be dug (or if you don’t have the time and energy!), place fallen trees, branches, sticks and rocks along contours (across the slope) and fill behind them with mulch, compost, dirt, rocks, etc. When it rains, more silt will wash down the slope and build up behind the branches, creating a swale-like mound.
• Plant water-loving plants (taro, rice, kangkong, lillies) in the swales, and moisture-loving plants (asaparagus, mints, blueberries, bananas, ginger) just above the swale flood level.
• In large swale systems, small dams or pools can be created by deepening and widening the trench at intervals. This would create a string of ponds that link up during rain events, much like billabongs along a river.
• Swales are starting to be used in urban planning to reduce water flows, nurture street trees, and reduce the amount of water going into stormwater systems.
• Aim to keep all the water that falls on your land, on your land!

Related posts:

1. Mulch Delivery
2. Swale And Banana Circle
3. Sydney Water “Love Your Garden” Review

Well, an Australian TV show in a very similar vein debuted on SBS last year, named Gourmet Farmer and starring Matthew Evans. Like Hugh, Matthew once made his living as a chef. He then worked as a food critic for The Sydney Morning Herald, before packing it all in to move to a 22-acre small farm near Cygnet, in Tasmania’s Huon Valley.

One of the highlights of the first series for me was when Matthew’s mum came to visit, and she asked him if he was planning to breed his new sows. “Nah,” he replied, “I was thinking of getting a boar in to do that.”

Gourmet Farmer comes across as a bit of a lifestyle show with magnificent scenery and delicious recipes, but it has more depth than most and touches on some important food issues – preserving heritage breeds, free-ranging animals, use of sow farrowing crates, the economics of family farming, the excessive restrictions of our “food safety” regulations, etc.

The new series started last week – you can still catch Episode 1 on the SBS web site if you missed it. The second episode will air on SBS tonight (Thursday) at 7:30 pm.

Here’s the promo video of Gourmet Farmer Series 2, to give you a taste of what’s coming up:

So what do you think? Is Gourmet Farmer Australia’s answer to River Cottage?

Related posts:

1. Podcast Interview With Gavin From “The Greening of Gavin”
2. Keeping Cows In The City?
3. Joel Salatin in Australia

I went to an all-day workshop with Joel Salatin (of Polyface Farm, brought to fame by Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma), right here in Jamberoo. I was there with a bunch of friends from around town and from further afield, I met some interesting new people, and I finally got to meet Kirsten and Nick from Milkwood in person!

My head is spinning with all the ideas I heard today, and working out ways to scale them down to work on our acre. I’m going back over my notes, and I’ll be watching more of Joel’s videos on YouTube, and reading his books, to get even more ideas.

But most importantly, Joel’s enthusiasm just fires you up to get out there and try stuff. One of his sayings that struck a chord with me was “if it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing poorly first”. There’ll be plenty of time to refine and get it right as you go. He actually used the example of a fox eating all your chickens as just a setback, something to learn from and move on from.

I was hugely impressed that both the Mayor and Deputy Mayor of Kiama were there today. I think that shows the level of commitment they have to supporting localised and sustainable agriculture here. I’m sure they can’t have missed all Joel’s points about government regulations and bureaucracy getting in the way of producing and selling food on a local scale!

I even got to try raw milk for the first time in my life, from a local dairy farmer. It was really good, like bought milk but better. Too bad I’ll probably never be able to have it again!

I’ll post some more of my notes over the next few days, as I get it all straight in my head.

Related posts:

1. Joel Salatin in Australia
2. Jamberoo FutureCare – My First Meeting
3. Jamberoo Community Growers Launch

(Note when I say “pumpkin” here, I’m using Australian usage – North Americans please substitute your term “winter squash”.)

The key is in understanding what factors lead to deterioration of your pumpkins, and addressing those factors in your storage system.

Vermin like rats and mice also love pumpkins and have been known to dig a tunnel into the center and set up a home inside!

Harvesting Pumpkins For Storage

Leave a long piece of stem attached to each pumpkin when you pick them. Don’t carry pumpkins by the stalk, and handle them carefully to avoid cuts and bruises. If the stalk is damaged or falls off, seal the attachment point by melting candle wax into it.

Leave the pumpkins in full sun for a couple of weeks before bringing them in for storage (cover or move them if it looks like rain). This will toughen the skin and improve their shelf life. The chook shed or dunny roof is the traditional place to harden off pumpkins!

Storing Pumpkins

The best storage place is somewhere cool, dark, dry and well-ventilated. A shed or garage, under-house storage area, or covered verandah can be excellent. The ideal storage temperature is around 12 C (about 55 F).

Pumpkins should be lifted off the ground to improve airflow around them, and should not be touching each other. Place them on newspaper or straw, on top of chicken wire or timber slats. Store them on their side, so that moisture doesn’t accumulate in the hollow around the stem.

Don’t store pumpkins near apples, pears or other ripening fruit. The ethylene gas the fruit gives off will hasten the deterioration of your pumpkins.

Check your stored pumpkins regularly. Remove (eat or discard) any that start to soften or rot, or have become damaged.

Over time, your stored pumpkins will get lighter as they lose moisture content. That’s not a bad thing though – they become sweeter and more richly-flavoured the longer they’re stored.

Best Pumpkin Varieties For Storage

Other Ways To Preserve Pumpkins

• cut them up and dehydrate them
• cook, mash and freeze (good for curries, soups, pumpkin bread, pumpkin scones, etc)
• make pumpkin soup, pumpkin pie, or pumpkin bread and freeze
• Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s pumpkin achar (pickled pumpkin)

What Can You Do With The Pumpkin Vines After Harvest?

Do you have any pumpkin storage tips or favourite recipes? Please leave a comment!

Related posts:

1. Why Grow Your Own Pumpkins?
2. Hand-Pollinating Pumpkin and Squash
3. Home-Grown Pumpkin Soup

Besides better taste, better nutrition, lack of herbicides/pesticides/fungicides, and absence of chemical treatments to prolong storage life and/or hasten ripening, there is still economic value in growing your own vegies.

Pumpkins (squash to North Americans) are one of my favourite crops, simply because they don’t ask anything of you for the whole growing season. If you start them in a nice patch of nutrient-rich compost, you won’t need to revisit them until picking time!

All 13 of the pumpkins below (plus a 14th that we ate a couple of weeks ago) came from a couple of vines that self-seeded out of a pile of compost.

I weighed one of the average-sized pumpkins, and it was 6 kg. So 14 pumpkins add up to about 84 kg. This type of pumpkin is currently selling in the supermarket for $2.49/kg (I’m using commercial produce prices, not the higher organic prices).

So that was over $200 worth of pumpkins that just popped up out of the dirt by themselves and waited for us to pick them!

These will last us for months, making lots of beautiful soups, stews and roasts through the winter.

Other low-effort crops I love include sweet potatoes, snow peas, climbing beans, sugar-snap peas, cherry tomatoes, chokoes, potatoes, Jerusalem artichokes and rhubarb, plus herbs like bay, parsley, mint and rosemary. They all seem to thrive without any need for care from sowing right through to harvest. Some even cut out the sowing step for me, and propagate themselves!

What are your favourite low-effort/high-payback crops?

Related posts:

1. Dinner From The Backyard
2. Potato Harvest
3. What Is Lunar Planting?

Last week we had a truckload of mulch delivered from the Dunmore waste depot. It cost about $115 to have them deliver 9 cubic metres (12 cubic yards, or 4.6 tons), which I think is money well spent. Apparently you can go and fill your trailer with the stuff for free, but look at my trailer compared to the pile. I think it would have taken at least 10-15 trips to drag home that much mulch, and I would have had to do all the shovelling myself!

Can you see the steam rising out of the top of the pile? It’s partially composted, but still pretty hot.

And here’s a close-up to give you an idea of the structure and composition of the mulch. It’s made up of all the municipal green waste, shredded and partially composted. There’s a good mix of fine compost and larger chunks in it. There’s also more plastic and bits of painted wood than I’d like, but not enough to be a big concern. I can pick most of it out as I use the mulch.

So what am I going to do with all this mulch?

I’ve been digging some new garden beds, and in between them I’ve dug deep paths on contour. The paths are about a foot deep, and I dug that soil onto the beds to make them a little higher. In the bottom of the trenches I’m laying down cardboard (to smother any kikuyu grass that tries to grow back), and then filling them with this mulch.

Because the paths are on contour, they hold water when it rains and act like swales. The mulch soaks up the water and forms a reservoir, but because it’s loose and chunky the surface is still fine to walk on. The water will then be released to the surrounding garden beds slowly over the following week or two, reducing the need to water. As the plants in the beds get bigger, their roots will seek out the moisture in the paths and hopefully grow nice and deep and strong.

Normally you’d shy away from putting so much woody matter on garden beds for fear of locking up nitrogen in the soil. But the paths are between the beds, so the soil in the beds will not be affected. In addition, mycelium (fungi) will colonise the mulch paths. Plant roots and soil microorganisms work together with the mycelium to feed each other, for the benefit of the growing plants.

When the mulch in the paths eventually breaks down, it can be dug onto the garden beds as a rich humus dressing, and new mulch can be laid in the paths again.

Rob over at One Straw has a great explanation of the concept, which he calls pit and mound gardening.

It’s kind of like a mini swale/hugelkultur – garden paths don’t have to be unproductive!

I’ll post some photos soon. Hopefully I’ll get to do some more work on the garden beds over the weekend.

Related posts:

1. Jamberoo Community Growers – Don Cairns Talk
2. Rotary Hoe Advice?
3. Backyard Veggie Patch Workshop in Jamberoo

As I was showing them around the garden on Sunday, something about her mother was familiar. Then she mentioned winning a garden award a couple of years ago – turns out it was the Sunshine Coast Council’s 2009 Living Smart award for the Edible Landscape category.

Ah, that’s it!

Her name is Rosina Buckman, and there’d been an article about her and her garden at the Permaculture Research Institute web site.

Image credit: Craig Mackintosh, Permaculture Research Institute of Australia

We had a cuppa and a great chat about gardens, permaculture and everything else. Rosina mentioned that she’d had people at her home recently doing some filming of her in the garden, which was a lot of fun.

That night, I sat down at my computer and one of the first items in my RSS reader was this: Rosina Buckman’s Chop Chop Compost. What are the odds?!

Here’s a clip from the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzQva2H735I

So of course, the next day I had to get out a plank of wood and my meat cleaver and give it a go! We had just picked the remaining pumpkins off our overgrown vine (14 big pumpkins from the one vine!), and I needed to clean it up and put the scraps in the compost.

I can vouch that Rosina’s “chop chop” method works great!

Oh, and here’s another video that she did a while ago on raised bed gardens:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saP_Dcgtg5w

Related posts:

1. Chop and Drop
2. Free Permaculture Downloads
3. Backyard Veggie Patch Workshop in Jamberoo

What can I say – it was an excellent event! Really well-planned and promoted in the runup, and very smoothly executed on the day. I helped out on the Jamberoo FutureCare booth until midday, then had a quick look around the Community Garden before heading home to prepare for the afternoon’s Jamberoo Community Growers meeting on backyard beekeeping.

Below are some photos I took on the day…

Green Box is a cooperative based in Gerringong, aiming to source produce for members from within a 100-mile (160 km) radius. They want to support local farmers and producers, and even source some stuff from local backyard growers who have a surplus. I’ve had a bit to do with them in various sustainability initiatives, and they’re all very committed and passionate local foodies. Interesting coincidence – Fiona from the Inner Pickle blog, who I finally met in-real-life the day before the Expo, is on their committee.

Chrissy (in the headband!) from Eco Manifesto, a Gerringong company supplying eco-friendly products for the home. It’s worth signing up for their newsletter at their web site to get notice of new products, specials, and eco-living tips.

Another Gerringong company, Fresh By Nature provides services and equipment for hydroponics, aquaculture and aquaponics. The owner John Burgess has also helped out Jamberoo Community Growers, delivering an excellent presentation on backyard aquaponics.

Evelyn from Nappiness, showing off her range of eco-friendly reusable cloth nappies, nappy covers, and baby products. She also has a great blog about choosing and using cloth nappies. Don’t you love the funky designs? These aren’t your mother’s cloth nappies!

Edwin, owner of Kiama company NetSense Computers, is a member of Kiama FutureCare and was one of the organisers of the Expo. They offer good quality computer services at very reasonable prices, as well as parts, upgrades, peripherals and new systems. They have a very interesting range of low-energy-consumption computers.

South Coast Organic Fertilisers are based at Tomerong (just past Nowra), and supply worms, worm castings, and worm liquid for your garden.

Deputy Mayor Ben van der Wijngaart was one of the presenters of a variety of talks on sustainable living issues. I wasn’t able to attend any talks, but did hear positive reports from others that attended. In case you’re wondering, Ben’s not headlining a 5-year-old’s birthday party – the talk was in the room normally used for a creche by the Leisure Centre.

Costa, of SBS’s Costa’s Garden Odyssey fame, lent a little celebrity flair to the Kiama Community Garden’s workshops and information sessions. He was extremely popular with the kids, and gave a ton of information to the adults as well.

This shot was taken from about halfway up the slope of the Kiama Community Garden, looking back down at all the Council activities taking place. I got a lot of great ideas from the garden (it was the first time I’d had a good look around it). It was good to see how they’d used the slope of the block, and I’ve now got a lot better idea about how I’m going to develop the growing areas on my sloping block.

All up, the Expo was a really good experience. I saw a lot of people there I knew (including Ally from HappyEarth), and met a few new friends as well. Everyone was really friendly and seemed to be having a good time, the weather was great, and the turnout was excellent.

Did you go? What did you think of the day?

Related posts:

1. Kiama Sustainability Advisory Committee – First Meeting
2. Kiama Show 2010
3. Shellharbour Solar Expo A Huge Success

We still had some of Fiona’s sourdough left over on Sunday morning. What better way to enjoy it than under home-grown and home-cured bacon, and home-grown eggs?

What’s your favourite Sunday morning breakfast?

Related posts:

1. Home Made Bacon
2. Broad Bean And Bacon Fettuccine
3. Home-Grown Pumpkin Soup

To top it off, Fiona brought a beautiful loaf of her sourdough bread (wrapped in a cool tea-towel bread bag!), a block of home-made butter, and a jar of home-made yoghurt. Yum!

Oh, and her kids loved the flying fox. I think a project just got added to Dad’s list .

After they’d left and thoughts turned to dinner, we looked at the wind outside and the sourdough inside and said, “mmm, soup”. So I whipped up another batch of pumpkin soup using an immature pumpkin that we had to pick early after it got damaged. It tasted good, although the colour was a bit pale. But who cares about looks when you’ve a meal like this!

I made this soup a bit differently to the last one.

I diced the pumpkin, splashed it with a little oil, and roasted it in the oven. While that was going, I sweated down an onion and a few cloves of garlic with olive oil in a big saucepan. Once the pumpkin had caramelised a little (the corners of cuts had just gone brown/black), I tipped it in and added about 3 cups of chicken stock (substitute veggie stock if you like).

The herbs I added this time are the easy ones to remember – just like the old song – parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme. You can’t go wrong with those four! All fresh from the garden, chopped up fine, and thrown in the pot. I also put in a bay leaf.

Once the pumpkin was soft, I took out the bay leaf and whizzed the soup with a stick blender.

I served it with a dollop of home-made yoghurt (substitute sour cream if you like), and a side of sourdough and home-made butter (there’s no substitute for those, unfortunately!).

Yummo!

Related posts:

1. Home-Grown Pumpkin Soup
2. Duck Egg Yolk Pasta With Pesto
3. Dinner From The Backyard

You can listen to the podcast episode directly from Gavin’s site or download it as an MP3 file here: Episode 20 – Interview With Darren (Green-Change.com). If you’re into podcasts, I highly recommend adding his feed to your list.

If you’re interested in any of the things we discussed in the podcast, here are some links:

• Jamberoo, and the Illawarra Shorthorn cattle breed.
• My old blog (mostly dormant now!) – pool-room.com – if you’ve seen the Australian movie The Castle you’ll know where the name came from .
• The Sustainable Illawarra web site (what remains of it). Most of the content was moved over to the KiamaSphere web site when the Wollongong and Shellharbour councils refused to continue funding the original site beyond the original 3-year program.
• An Inconvenient Truth’s home page, and its Wikipedia entry.
• Food Inc’s home page, and its Wikipedia entry.
• The Power Of Community’s home page, and its Wikipedia entry.
• David Holmgren’s Future Scenarios book.
• Jamberoo FutureCare.
• Jamberoo Community Growers.
• My article about using a chicken tractor to create garden beds.
• My article about bird nets for the garden.
• My article about our recent fox attack.
• My series of articles about raising pigs, and in particular, the cost breakdown of home-grown pork.
• Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall‘s wonderful River Cottage home page, info on the UK Channel 4 River Cottage TV series, and the LandShare initiative.

Whew! I think covers pretty much everything.

As always, feel free to post questions and comments below!

Related posts:

1. My First Podcast Interview
2. My Podcast Interview Is Live!
3. Interview And Photos

When we pick broad beans (fava beans) in spring, I blanch and freeze a lot of them. They’re great to add to soups and casseroles through the winter, and you do get a bit sick of fresh broad beans in the spring if you’ve grown a lot.

I freeze them in muffin trays, then once they’re solid I transfer them to a freezer bag. It keeps them in individual portions that are easily separated, without the waste of wrapping them all individually.

Anyway, on with the recipe…

First, get your water boiling and get the fettuccine on. It takes about 12 minutes to cook, which is just enough time to get the rest of the dish ready.

Drain the pasta and return it to the saucepan. Tip the broad beans and bacon in and toss. You can add chopped parsley at this point if you like (I didn’t this time, but sometimes do). Serve into individual pasta bowls and top with freshly-shaved parmesan.

The whole thing only takes about 15-20 minutes to make, and tastes great!

Do you have any favourite broad bean recipes to share?

Related posts:

1. Home Made Bacon
2. Duck Egg Yolk Pasta With Pesto
3. Home Made Pasta

First, Megan made another batch of meringues for the Jamberoo Community Growers meeting on Sunday. This uses egg whites, and she uses duck eggs when we have them – it makes the meringues hold their shape better, without cracking and collapsing. Duck egg whites are especially good for pavlovas too!

So I had a bunch of duck egg yolks.

Then at the JCG meeting, our friend Cathy brought along a heap of basil for the swap table. We’re “between harvests” of basil at the moment, so that was very fortuitous.

The pasta is dead simple to make. I use a recipe I saw on a Jamie Oliver show – it’s just one whole egg and 100g of “type 00″ flour per person. Type 00 is a finely-ground flour especially for pasta making. When I have leftover yolks, I use three of them instead of one whole egg. It makes for a richer, creamier pasta with a lovely golden colour to it.

You just mix the egg and flour together until you get a ball of dough. Knead it a bit until it’s silky and a bit stretchy, then wrap it in plastic wrap and sit it in the fridge for an hour to rest. Then take it out, knead it a little more, and start passing it through a pasta machine.

Mine is a simple manually-cranked pasta machine. It works great. Break the dough into small batches (I would break a 2-egg/200g dough mix into 4 pieces), flour it up so it’s not sticky, and pass it through on the widest roller setting a few times. Then pass the dough through once at each thickness, dialling it down to about the 2nd or 3rd last setting. I find it doesn’t come out very well if you go all the way to the thinnest setting. Keep flouring to keep the dough manageable.

Finally, pass the sheet of dough through the spaghetti/fettucine cutter. If your machine doesn’t have one of these, just flour up the sheet of dough, roll it up lengthwise, and cut it into thin sections so it unrolls into fettucine strips. I find it helps to toss the pasta in more flour at this stage so it doesn’t stick together while it waits for you to roll the other batches out.

Pesto sauce is also dead easy. Before you start, though, put a big pot of salted water on the stove to boil. You’ll need this to cook the pasta shortly.

Throw a heap of basil into a blender with some olive oil, garlic cloves and pine nuts, and whizz away. You can substitute parsley or other green leafy herbs for basil, and things like macadamias, bunyas, pecans, walnuts, cashews, etc for pine nuts. Just go with what you have! Then throw in some grated parmesan cheese (proper stuff, not the stuff that comes in a yellow can!).

If you want the pesto to taste and look really special, chop it by hand instead of blending it. Or smash it in a mortar and pestle. It’ll look a bit more rustic, with a nicer texture, and there will be more definition between the ingredients. It’s worth a go if you have the time.

By now the water should be boiling. Drop the pasta in, and boil it for about a minute or so. It really doesn’t need long. It helps to have lots of water, so it stays hot when the pasta goes in.

Drain the pasta, put it in a big serving bowl, and stir the pesto through it. Serve with a bit more shaved or grated parmesan on top, and maybe even some more pine nuts for decoration.

Yum!

Related posts:

1. Home Made Pasta
2. Home-Grown Pumpkin Soup
3. An Assortment of Duck and Chicken Eggs

Pumpkin soup is great for impressing visitors. It’s so easy to make, it’s easy to grow all the ingredients you need, and it tastes amazing compared to the bought stuff.

The recipe is very laid-back:

I like to oven-roast the pumpkin before adding it to the soup – it gives a richer, more interesting flavour. Just peel and dice the pumpkin, and roast it on a tray in a moderate oven until it browns a little.

While the pumpkin is roasting, dice one or two onions. Gently heat some olive oil and butter in a big saucepan, and add the onions to soften.

Add the chopped garlic to the onions, then tip in the roasted pumpkin pieces and give it all a quick stir.

Add enough chicken or vegetable stock to completely cover the pumpkin – you can add more to stretch the soup further if more guests turn up unexpectedly! If you don’t have stock on hand, you can use salted water.

Add the bay leaves whole, and chop the rest of the herbs finely before adding them. Simmer for a while to let the herb flavours develop.

Just before you’re ready to serve, remove the bay leaves and use a stick blender to puree the soup. Keep going until there are no pumpkin lumps left.

As a last touch, season to taste with salt and freshly-ground black pepper.

Serve into soup bowls and dress with a dollop of sour cream or natural yoghurt and a garnish of parsley. Sorry, but I forgot to take a photo of the finished product!

If you have the time, some fresh-baked bread rolls go really well with a soup like this. A nice sourdough from your local bakery is lovely too.

Related posts:

1. Hand-Pollinating Pumpkin and Squash
2. Home Grown Pork
3. Home Made Bacon

The rotary hoe was a Krieger (have you ever heard of them?), 6.5 hp petrol motor, 50 cm width, self-propelled – as seen in the photo.

These things sell for about $600 new (plus $100+ shipping!) on eBay. The one I was going to bid on was the same thing, used only once, and ended up going for $340. It was less than an hour’s drive away, so would have been an easy pickup too.

So while I look for another used rotary hoe for sale, I’d love to hear your advice and feedback.

I want to hoe up a largeish area of kikuyu grass in my yard, to turn it into vegetable gardens. It’s on a slight slope, with an area of about 200-300 square metres (but not in a square – it goes in a big ring around some raised beds and a citrus grove).

My plan is to hoe the whole area, then dig paths through it on contour, shovelling the dirt onto the new beds. The paths will be filled with wood chip as a moisture reservoir and fungi haven, and the beds will be mulched with straw and planted out with herbs, vegies and other beneficial plants.

My first thought was to hire a rotary hoe for the day, but rental costs $150/day. Ouch! I don’t expect to have an ongoing need for a rotary hoe once the gardens are set up, so I thought hiring would be better than buying. But if I could buy a second-hand one for a decent price, use it to set up the garden beds, and then sell it again, I’d probably be out of pocket less than the $150 and would have all the time I need to do the job properly instead of rushing it all in a single day.

Have you tried anything like this before? Does a rotary hoe kill grass effectively, or will I get grass shoots coming up through the garden beds? Do you know anything about the Krieger brand? Is there anything in particular I should look for in a used rotary hoe?

Even better, do you live near me and have a rotary hoe that I could borrow, hire or buy?

Any and all advice appreciated!

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Herbs have been with us for as long as humans, or our predecessors, have walked the earth. The use of herbs has been proven to predate the agricultural revolution of roughly 10,000 years ago. Herbs, used by our hunter gatherer ancestors, provided nourishment, medicine, even contraception. Medicines today are often derivatives of those ancient herbal remedies – willow bark for example, which produces the drug salicylic acid, or asprin.

The herbs gathered in the wild places made soothing drinks,  balms and poultices, and in cooking many herbs provided gastronomic benefits that today we assume only chemical additives can emulate.

Salads, a staple of the Mediterranean diet, are in fact an excellent precursor to any meal. The bitter herbs contained within them stimulate the neurological hormones responsible for appetite, stimulating gastric juices which in turn facilitate the efficient absorption of food. Bitter herbs (including salad herbs like rocket, lettuce and spinach) have also been linked to the regulation of endocrine pancreas so have an important application to hypoglycaemia and late onset diabetes.

Today, herbs are something reserved for the occasional dish, as functions of a culinary nature. I’d like to reverse that trend. I’d like to add to the food pyramid a myriad of herbs to be taken every day.

It has been difficult for me to tease out those herbs that are the most useful. We can’t all be herbalists, growing and preparing our own herbal remedies in the kitchen from the garden, but we can all include a few basic herbs in our gardens, sometimes with beautiful and surprising outcomes, with absolutely no trouble at all.

And so… I hope my humble list of garden “must haves” helps you to take charge of your own health and gain a beautiful garden, a herbal pharmacy and a sense of wellbeing right in your own back yard.

My Garden Heroes are:

Aloe vera – Not only a great heal all for cuts grazes, sunburn and insect bites, aloe vera also calms allergic rashes, is a stimulating laxative for sluggish bowls, and is a urine stimulant.

Celery – Excellent eliminator of uric acid and therefore a good aid in arthritic conditions, gout, urinary infections and surprisingly to stimulate milk in new mums. The crushed seeds are the greatest source of healing but the vegetable, fresh from the garden is a superb alternative.

Chilli – Anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, antiseptic and decongestant. Also a plant that speeds up metabolism. Chillies contain capsaicin and the heat factor is also well known for its ability to fight the common cold.

Chickweed – Mashed as a poultice chickweed is an excellent external application to sooth inflamed, erupted and especially itchy skin conditions.

Corriander – Packed full of beta-carotene, folic acid and iron, coriander can assist us with its anticarcinogenic and antioxidant functions.

Dandelion – The leaf is a very gentle but effective diuretic, it is a hepatic and assists in the healing and function of the liver. Both the root and leaf can be used for a wide range of problems, including gallstone and biliary problems, hepatic and posthepatic jaundice, constipation, general joint and skin inflammations. And the white sap can be used for the long term reduction of warts.

Garlic, the super herb. Allicin, the substance that gives garlic its trade mark smell, inhibits the growth of bacteria and assists in immune function, protecting cells from damage and lowering cholesterol. Sulphur compounds keep the blood healthy and helps to combat bacterial and fungal infections.

It is particularly effective for infections in the lungs and gut, notably for bronchial conditions, as  a long term treatment for cardiovascular problems, high blood cholesterol and a predisposition for thrombosis, transiently lowers blood pressure, and as a warming remedy is useful for counteracting colds and chills. Garlic has a notable reputation for healing wounds and reducing pain and inflammation of stings, in an oil for earaches and conjested middle ear problems, and as a digestive aid and a stabiliser of blood sugar levels. I have used it myself on a wart and although the process produced a rather painful blister, it removed it entirely in a matter of 2 days.

Ginger – Full of B vitamins, magnesium and zinc, ginger can help us through its antioxidant, antiseptic and decongestant function. Its warming properties can help with colds and flues and with general healing support.

Marigold – Possessing multiple anti-infectious and antiseptic properties, marigolds are more than excellent garden companions. They fight for us as well! Marigolds are an excellent non-tannin astringent, anti-inflammatory, antispasmodic, and local tissue healer. In a mouth wash they fight ulcers, gum disease and throat infections, locally a poltice of crushed petals can be used for haemorrhoids and fissures and make an excellent eyewash for tired sore eyes.

Mint – contains beta-carotene, folic acid and vitamins C & E. It has strong antibacterial, anticarcinogenic, antioxidant and antiviral properties that make it an invaluable ingredient in convalescent teas. It also provides an excellent pep-me-up role and can easily be included in the daily diet.

Parsley – Also contains betacarotenes, folic acid, vitamin C, iron and magnesium. Apart from being anticarcinogenic and a great general antioxidant, parsley has an amazing effect on bad breath neutralising the pong. It isn’t used as a ubiquitous decoration on plates of food for nothing.

Rose (and rose hips) – The smell of roses are easily one of the greatest delights of a summer garden but the after effects, if you can stand the messy little flower heads after the rose has blown, are a gift on their own. Rose hips have been used for hundreds of years for their medicinal and nourishing value. They supplement vitamin C levels, are excellent used in a syrup for colds and minor infections of the respiratory and for the common cold, for gastric inflammation and enteritis with diarrhoea. They also make an excellent jam, used extensively in Eastern Europe and Germany. The syrup is easy to make by boiling the crushed and bruised hips in sugar and then straining the syrup through a cloth and bottling.

Rosemary – my personal favourite, can be used for so many purposes. It can be made into a rinse for hair, a gargle for the mouth, in cooking, in sprigs in toilets and pet areas to neutralise smells, in sprigs in containers of bread crumbs to impart a magic aroma, in the garden for both asthetic and culinary use, and it can be chopped, moved, pruned and neglected and will thrive and love you indefinitely. Rinse cuts with a tea of bruised rosemary and salt. Skewer kebabs with the stems. Its uses are endless. An excellent and ancient restorative tonic. Its smell is of health, happiness and healing. It has even been said to aid in hair regeneration!!

Sage – As a mouthwash and gargle sage can manage affections to the throat and mouth, to restore digestive and circulatory function in debility and convalescence, to assist in the treatment of night sweats and excessive perspiration or salivation and to soothe hormonal problems in menopause.

Spinach – This dark leafy green was well placed as the veg that gave Popeye his muscles. It has an awesome amount of phytonutrients and antioxidants including vitamin K, coenzyme Q10, folate, iron and carotenoids. The combination is dynamite for protecting against heart disease, cancer, brain diseases and the protection of DNA (and as an offshoot from mutations of the cells).

Tomato – Packed with the antioxidant lycopene it assists in the fight against heart disease and prostate cancer. Although the excessive sugar in commercial tomato sauce may be an issue, it is a great way to get that lycopene into children as it is best released on cooking.

Thyme – Also an excellent herb, thyme is packed full of calcium and beta carotines, providing an awesome array of antibacterial, antioxidant, antiseptic and antiviral properties that make its daily use, either as a chewing herb or in dishes a must.

All of the above herbs can be grown together in a beautiful herb spiral, a large strawberry pot or pots, on the deck in a variety of pots, or mingled in among the garden plants. There are no tricks, but in choosing your plants try to avoid ‘modern’ cultivars and look instead for their original ancestors (often marked as ‘heirloom’ or ‘heritage’ varieties).

Can we imagine what a daily dose of these herbs would give us?

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Then we had the pigs in a pen above the ditch, and I really didn’t want to waste the nutrient that was flowing downhill every time it rained. Over time, I dug the swale deeper and wider, and brought it back closer to level so it would hold water for longer and hydrate the soil around it.

Of course, I finished digging it and took quite a while to do anything more. Sometimes life gets in the way!

In the photo below, you can see how much the weeds had started to take over. You can also seed the comfrey I planted along the bottom edge of the pig pen, both to catch nutrients and as a feed supplement (and compost supplement when we don’t have pigs).

I then had a brainwave and decided to dig a banana circle at the lower end of the swale, where the excess water flows out of it. It’s basically just a big round hole, with the swale feeding in water on one side and an overflow point on the other side. I dumped some chopped up palm trunks in the pit, which should absorb plenty of water and release it slowly to surrounding plants. I’ll keep piling compostable materials (leaves, garden waste, etc) into the pit to keep up the nutrient supply to the bananas.

The mulch is made up of long grass from around the fences and a native grass plant (pennisetum alopecuroides, I think?) that I’ve been trimming back recently. I spread all the trimmings across the ground in the chicken run, and let the chickens scratch it over for a couple of weeks. Hopefully they picked out all the seeds so I won’t get weeds sprouting. It dried out like hay, and had a lot of chicken manure added to it. Then I raked it all up and spread it on the swale.

After just a few days, the bananas are already looking a lot happier! It looks much neater, too.

I’ve got six banana plants growing now and am looking forward to a harvest, hopefully towards the end of this year or early next year. I’m very envious of Ally and Rich’s huge bunch of bananas!

Related posts:

1. Sydney Water “Love Your Garden” Review
2. Jamberoo Community Growers – Don Cairns Talk
3. Chop and Drop

What I really needed was a dedicated chicken processing station.

I bought a second-hand stainless steel kitchen sink from a stallholder at the Dapto Markets for $5. You can also get these cheap from recycling centers, scrap metal dealers, the garbage tip shop, garage sales, etc. Sometimes you even see them being thrown out in skips when people renovate their kitchens. The best type of sink is one with drainage racks on both sides, and a single sink in the middle.

I had some 90mm x 45mm framing timber left over from some previous projects, so I used that for the frame of the station. To keep cost down, you could pull apart some shipping pallets or scrounge something suitable from a second-hand building supplies place.

I was really happy with the final result:

The nice thing about using a kitchen sink is that you can scrub it down with bleach to sterilise it before starting work. Cleanup afterwards is quick and easy too.

No sooner had I built the frame, and it was time to process the first chicken on it – our big rooster, who was starting to really hurt the hens with his size and strength, and the massive spurs he’d grown. I’ve got another rooster who is going to step into his place, until my Australorp chicks grow big enough to take over.

The processing station worked beautifully. The height was perfect – I had measured up our kitchen benches and built this frame to the same height. I hung a garden hose over the back of the frame, and put a large bucket under the sink drainhole. It was very handy being able to wash off parts of the chicken as I worked on it, as well as being able to keep my hands and the knife clean.

Even if you don’t butcher your own chickens, this kind of setup is very handy for quickly washing off vegetables from the garden before bringing them inside, washing out plant pots, and cleaning up your hand tools.

Related posts:

1. Processing Chickens
2. Plants For The Chicken Run
3. Chicken Tractor Lifting Handles

We moved our three pigs into a weed-choked area on Boxing Day (December 26). Here’s what it looked like when they moved in:

They rooted around frantically, tasting all the yummy new things they had to browse on:

Clearing land is hard work, so they all lay down for a snooze after exploring the new pen:

Now here’s a photo of the same area exactly three weeks later:

Pigs are dedicated, tireless workers, and much more pleasant than a rototiller!

If you want more reading, the Permaculture Research Institute also recently published an article on the use of pig tractors.

Related posts:

1. Where To Buy Chicken Tractors
2. Chicken Tractor Lifting Handles
3. Chicken Ark Plans