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

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

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

The idea was that they would provide funding for 4 people from each Council area to attend a PDC course of their choosing, and Council would pay the course fees (up to $1400 worth). The students have to pay accommodation, meals, travel, etc themselves. In return, the 12 students agree to share their new skills with others in the community, through whatever forms of community service interest them.

It sounded like a great opportunity, so I applied and was successful!

Because of work and family commitments, I couldn’t afford to be gone for 2 weeks on a typical PDC course. So I elected to do my course by correspondence, through local trainers Permaculture Visions. I met the owner, April, and toured their property a little while ago so I have full confidence that they offer a great course and have excellent knowledge of local climate, conditions, and resources.

I’ve wanted to do a PDC for a long time now, but could never really justify the cost. Most (all?) of the course content is available either free on the internet or in books from the library, and I’m the kind of person who enjoys learning from books. So I figured there wasn’t enough extra value in paying for a course.

But doing the PDC course brings all that disparate knowledge together into a structured curriculum. It also puts you in contact with other students and experienced instructors, so you can get information and advice on specific issues you have. And you get the certificate at the end, which demonstrates your qualification to others and gives you the right to use the term “permaculture” in a business name (likely not a big deal to me, but you never know what the future may hold!).

I’m hoping that by the end of the course, I’ll have at least the bare bones of a permaculture design plan for our property here. I’ll be able to pick the brains of the students and instructors, and hopefully get feedback as I develop it. So that will be a huge tangible benefit.

I’ll be able to use the skills I learn from the PDC in my activities in various local groups – Jamberoo Community Growers, Jamberoo FutureCare, the Kiama Council Health & Sustainability Advisory Committee, etc. Jamberoo Primary school is just starting to get a school garden going, and I’ll be involved in that too. Plus I’ll be blogging about the course as I go. So, plenty of opportunities to share the PDC goodness with other people!

I’m just waiting on the paperwork from Council so I can enrol and get started. I’m super keen!

Related posts:

1. Free Permaculture Downloads
2. Video: The Permaculture Concept – Bill Mollison
3. Permaculture Chicken Mansion

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

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

If you pull up weeds, you disturb the soil and give new weed seeds an opportunity to germinate and take hold. By chopping, you kill the weed without disturbing the soil. And by dropping you mulch the soil, suppressing further weeds, helping to retain moisture, and returning nutrients to the soil.

It’s often the case that a plant has as much biomass below ground as above. When you kill it without removing the roots, that underground biomass will die and rot in-place, opening up little channels through the soil for air and water to penetrate and promoting microscopic soil organisms.

Not all plants will die off when cut. In theory, if you keep cutting them back as soon as shoots return, you’ll eventually exhaust the stored energy in the root and the plant will die. In practice, though, it takes a lot of persistence to beat weeds this way. If you find some weeds keep re-shooting, pull them up and deal with the soil disturbance by mulching heavily with other chopped weeds.

Make sure to chop your weeds before they flower and set seed, otherwise you’ll have even more growing back. Any old saying says, “One year’s seeds, seven years’ weeds”.

It’s also good to use this technique on spent vegetables. Plants like broccoli, corn, beans, peas, etc can be cut off at ground level after the harvest, and the following crops can be planted around the stumps. It’s a great way to keep the soil open and aerated, while introducing organic matter under the surface with zero effort.

Related posts:

1. Green Manure Crops
2. Sydney Water “Love Your Garden” Review
3. Backyard Veggie Patch Workshop in Jamberoo

This post is about the geese that patrol the garden, and the straw yard where they live when not out on patrol.

Here’s a closer look at some of the geese. While ducks and chickens are very useful in the garden, they are susceptible to attack by dogs and foxes. Geese, being a bit larger and louder, deter dogs and cats and help protect the other poultry during the day. They still need to be locked up at night, though. I’ve read from other web sites that geese are good watchdogs as well, noisily warning you when strangers enter your property. They’re probably a little scary to any intruder not familiar with them, too!

When they’re not out patrolling the yard, the geese live in this straw yard. They have shelter, water, and feed, as well as a bit of green pick to browse on. The fruit trees drop food on them too.

The straw yard is divided into two halves by a fence, and the geese can be let into either side. While the geese are on one side, the other side is rested. It can be sown with grain or green manure, and once it is going well the geese are allowed in and the other side of the yard is shut off. This gives them regular access to greenery in their run, while also allowing the ground to recover after heavy grazing and not turn into the typical chook run moonscape.

Have you ever kept geese? What tips do you have to share?

Related posts:

1. Water In The Garden
2. Sydney Water “Love Your Garden” Review
3. Garden Planning

This post is all about the fantastic chicken coop, dubbed the “chicken mansion”, that April showed us.

It’s a little hard to see inside the coop, but the floor is a raised metal grid with gaps of about 12mm (1/2 inch). It’s strong enough for a person to walk on, and allows manure, dust and broken down pieces of nesting material to fall through to the ground below. The mesh prevents rats from getting through, and the material that falls through simply rolls down the slope below the coop. On the left, you can just see the water barrel that collects rainwater from the roof gutters and provides drinking water for the chickens.

From the side, you can see how the whole coop is raised off the ground. Good use is made of the natural slope of the land, so you can walk in at ground level from the top side. The nesting box lids lift to allow easy access for egg collection from the outside, and the mesh side ensures good ventilation.

Looking at the chicken coop (on the left) from the rear, you can see the fox-proof ladder that allows the chickens access. The ladder is wide, and has wide spacing between rungs, so that foxes will not be able to climb it. By giving the chickens a ladder, you don’t need to lock them in each night and let them out each morning.

You can read more details about this chicken coop from the Permaculture Visions chicken mansion page.

What are the best chicken coop features you’ve seen? What would your “dream chicken coop” include?

Related posts:

1. Chicken Ark Plans
2. Free Permaculture Downloads
3. How Do You Make A Chicken Go Broody?

Today’s ideas are all to do with using water in the garden.

A half wine barrel makes an excellent raised pond for balconies or hard surface areas. In the photo above you can see that rainwater is captured and directed into the barrel. Plants are grown in pots submerged in the barrel and azolla, an aquatic plant, grows on the surface. A couple of goldfish can be released into the water to keep mosquitoes under control.

Dotted around the garden were various small ponds and water features. The ponds provide a source of drinking water for helpful animals like lizards and birds, and a home for frogs and beneficial insects. In return for the pond environment, these animals will provide you with free pest control.

Water in the garden also helps to moderate temperature swings through the day. It can reduce frost in the area around the pond, and also has a cooling effect during very hot weather.

The pond in the photo above is a larger one, made from ferrocement. A downpipe from the house roof delivers water into the pond, and the yard has been designed so that any overflow travels down towards the garden. If the overflow is significant, it will collect in the pit underneath the trampoline (pictured below). From there, it slowly soaks into the surrounding garden beds over the following weeks.

As you can see, there are lots of ways to incorporate water into your garden design. Doing so brings life and beauty into your yard, while also helping to reduce your workload in pest control and garden watering.

How have you used water in your garden?

Related posts:

1. Sydney Water “Love Your Garden” Review
2. Wicking Beds – Water Efficient Gardening
3. Baseline Water and Electricity Usage

The first idea I really liked was to use discarded bird cages to protect seedlings from pillaging wild birds and roaming chickens.

One thing I’ve noticed a lot is broken birdcages. They’re often a little rusty, or the bottom has fallen off, or the door hinge no longer works. What a great idea to rip the bottom off and place them over plants that need a little extra protection!

They look kind of cool dotted around the garden, too.

What tips do you have to protect plants from chickens and wildlife? Please share in the comments!

Related posts:

1. Bird Nets For Garden Beds
2. Backyard Chickens Soar In Popularity
3. Backyard Veggie Patch Workshop in Jamberoo

Comfrey around the outside of the pen will love the manure, and is great to feed to the chooks. Very useful around the garden, too. Comfrey grows very fast, so a relatively small patch will provide you with constant pickings.

Thorny raspberries around the pen will provide some additional protection from predators, some food for you, and leaves and prunings for the chickens. Bamboos will provide fast-growing shade and wind protection.

Make a bottomless cage out of a timber frame covered with chicken wire (1/2 inch is best, so the chooks can’t get their heads through it). Sow some seed (oats, wheat, or even just cheap bird seed mix) onto the ground, and place the cage over the top so the chickens can’t get at it. As it grows up through the cage, they can nibble it. You can periodically move the growing cage to start a new patch, and let them eat the old one down. Radish is also good, since it grows so fast.

Herbs in general are good for the chickens. Parsley, rosemary, sage, etc will grow well just outside the pen. You can occasionally cut a bunch of herbs and throw them into the run. They’ll provide the chooks with some greenery to eat, but also lots of minerals, micronutrients, etc.

Wormwood, rue, nasturtium, nettle and tansy repel some parasites and intestinal worms.

Marigolds look pretty, and feeding the yellow flowers to the chickens is not only good for them, but makes their yolks even more yellow. Chickweed, clover, alfalfa (lucerne) and dandelions are welcomed, as well, although you have to explain to people why you’re growing weeds!

Field corn and sunflowers are very good. Let the heads dry, and you can store them up for winter. Then just throw a head or two into the pen every few days, or as a weekly treat. Jerusalem artichokes, a relative of sunflowers, are pretty plants and provide edible leaves and tubers for the chickens (and tubers for you, too!).

Fruit trees can be planted inside the run, with 1/2 inch chicken wire cages around them to protect them while they’re young. The chickens will clean up any fallen fruit and eat any fruit fly larvae, and will enjoy the shade as well.

If you have a pond, you could try growing azolla and/or duckweed in it. These are surface plants that will thrive on the nutrients in the pond water and help keep it clear. They grow and reproduce very fast, and you can periodically scoop out handfuls to throw in to the chickens.

What have you tried? What would you recommend?

Related posts:

1. Chicken Ark Plans
2. Organic Fruit Fly Control and Hatching Chicks
3. Chicken Sellers In The Illawarra

The workshop was delivered by people from The Garden at North Wollongong, led by Aaron Sorensen. Aaron was a great teacher, very knowledgeable, and involved everyone (including the kids that came) really well.

I had a dual motivation in attending the workshop. Of course I wanted to learn more about starting vegetable gardens (we’re doing a lot of that here at the moment!). But I also have one child at Jamberoo Primary School and another starting next year, and I feel that outdoor learning and food growing are an important part of their education. This was a great opportunity to kill two birds with the one stone.

Aaron then led us though a site analysis, where we looked at where the prevailing winds come from, the direction of the sun and shadows, the expected water flows, the resources already present on the site (water tanks, compost bays, plants, chook house, shed, etc), the traffic paths through the site, and the surrounding buildings (providing shade, reflected sunlight, radiated warmth, and wind protection).

A neat and simple way to work out how wide to make the garden beds for proper access was to get two kids to kneel on the ground opposite each other and creep forwards until they could only just lean out and reach each other to shake hands. The distance between the knees of the two kids is the optimum width for the garden beds so that they would be able to reach anything in the garden without stepping or kneeling on the soil.

Related posts:

1. Backyard Chook Keeping Workshop – Wollongong
2. Jamberoo Community Growers – Don Cairns Talk
3. Jamberoo Community Growers Launch

I’m a big fan of US farmer Joel Salatin. He’s the man behind Polyface Farm, “a family owned, multi-generational, pasture-based, beyond organic, local-market farm and informational outreach in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley”.

You might recognise him from the recent films Food, Inc and Fresh, and from Michael Pollan’s book The Omnivore’s Dilemma.

One of my favourite articles by Joel is Everything I Want To Do Is Illegal (PDF). It’s an absolutely brilliant piece on how the rules and regulations that are introduced to try to curtail the excesses and greed of “big agriculture” are crippling family farms. It’s a hilarious story, and then you realise that it’s not.

Joel has been in Australia recently – there is some decent coverage on the ABC web site:

• The joys of being a ‘lunatic’ farmer (article)
• ABC Radio Melbourne on the Conversation Hour interview (audio)
• ABC Radio Life Matters interview (audio)
• Joel Salatin on Landline (video + transcript)

For those wanting to see Joel in person, he’ll be doing some Regenerative Agriculture workshops and talks in NSW in November 2010, thanks to Milkwood Permaculture.

(The photo above is from Dabdiputs, used under the Creative Commons license)

Update 9-6-2010: Added the link to the Landline interview above.

Related posts:

1. My Podcast Interview Is Live!
2. Jamberoo Dairy Farmers on ABC’s Landline

Don’t you hate it when you know you’ve seen something in a video (say, Bill Mollison talking about planting in guilds), but you can’t track it down again? By keeping brief notes alongside a rough timeline, I can search for those types of things and find them quickly. By posting my notes on this site, hopefully I’ll help lots of other people to do the same!

If you’re new to this whole permaculture thing, Wikipedia has a good background article on permaculture. In a nutshell, though, it’s a philosophy of land use that seeks to mimic natural ecologies so that land can be productively used indefinitely, without degradation or the need for external inputs.

The word permaculture was coined in the 1970s by two Australians, Bill Mollison and David Holmgren. It is a portmanteau (blend/contraction) of the term “permanent agriculture”, as well as “permanent culture”.

This first video is a great introduction to the concept. Bill Mollison explains the history, development and ideas behind permaculture.

In case it disappears from Google Video, a lower-quality version is also available at YouTube (broken into six parts):

• The Permaculture Concept – Part 1
• The Permaculture Concept – Part 2
• The Permaculture Concept – Part 3
• The Permaculture Concept – Part 4
• The Permaculture Concept – Part 5
• The Permaculture Concept – Part 6

Notes

• (00:00) we haven’t earned the right to go to the stars yet
• “You wouldn’t welcome anybody who’d laid waste to their house and wanted to live in yours.”
• some background/bio on Bill Mollison – was once a tree cutter!
• at one stage, Bill walked away from society “disgusted with the human race”, but he returned after a few weeks, having decided to fight to improve things in a positive way
• forest as a model of a working system
• diversity makes the system highly adaptable and at the same time highly productive
• “If we lose the universities we lose nothing. If we lose the forest we lose everything.”
• all political systems (and most kings) through history have moved their countries towards desert
• the ideas behind permaculture arose out of questions that had been asked by people in the 1890s, 1930s, 1960s about why society, with all its tools and resources, keeps falling into holes of its own making
• permanent agriculture = permanent culture
• we should build with living resources, not steel and glass
• (10:00) shows how to set up a productive permaculture garden on a small apartment balcony to provide 1/5th of the food required by two adults
• grapes grow well under the balcony above – no rain means no mould!
• “most cannibals only eat strangers”
• the rise of monoculture
• today, over half the world’s agricultural production consists of just four crops: wheat, rice, maize and potatoes
• over-simplification of nature (monoculture) gave rise to huge outbreaks of single pests, diseases
• (15:00) agriculture as a continuation of World War II
• since 1940, 70% of our soils have been destroyed
• 40% of the world’s water has been poisoned by agriculture
• permaculture design integrates plants, animals and humans into a living system
• every element of the design has many functions
• 1978 published “Permaculture One”
• began designing farm systems for other landowners for free for 2 or 3 years (hundreds of properties!)
• moved from designing to teaching others how to design – Permaculture Design Courses (PDCs)
• permaculture lies between disciplines, connecting them together
• permaculture groups started working to spread the word to the mainstream e.g. participation in agricultural shows in towns all over Australia
• “modern agriculture is not a system for producing food, but for producing money”
• “no-one yet pays for the damage at the end of the chain”
• (22:10) demonstrates the creation of a simple potato patch “the best use for a newspaper”
• “digging causes weeds, weeds cause work”
• planting is a lot easier than weeding, and if you have enough plants in there is no room for weeds
• untidiness in the garden is good, natural order
• (25:40) description of swales for water retention to avoid droughts
• 88% of Australia’s water runs off the landscape and is wasted
• an animal is a mobile part of the forest, not separate from the forest
• (28:00) guilds
• get chickens out of battery cages and factories, and back into the garden where they can work for you
• up to half of the system can be used to feed your animals, which gives much better results than buying external feed
• in terms of energy cost, food would be about 95% cheaper if it were grown in the city (transportation, processing, packaging, retailing, etc costs)
• we’re 3 days away from starvation at any time
• (32:00) shows a suburban home design along permaculture principles
• food and flowers all year long
• beehives in the yard
• lawns are a “green cancer”, completely unproductive, expensive to maintain, a waste of resources
• (35:20) mangrove swamps are the most productive environment on the planet
• rising sea levels are going to wipe out large areas of coastal cities (but maybe make them more productive!)
• TVs watching nature films, 4WDs taking people to the wilderness – we could have it all in our own yards
• Bill keeps planting seeds around the place like a “guerilla gardener”
• (38:20) discusses genetic engineering and its unknown effects
• scientists are basically sociopaths
• only 3% of the planet’s water is fresh, and most of that is trapped in ice
• 3 inches of leaf litter in a forest can absorb 1 inch of rainfall
• rainforest can be looked at as a lake
• forest evaporation forms clouds, forest bacteria become nucleus of ice crystals in clouds, so forest actually create rain
• (42:45) farm in Queensland, turned from infertile ex-farmland into a productive environment
• creating bush corridors to bring back birds and animals
• (45:00) work in the third world to help restore food production
• third world populations weren’t able to transition from hunter-gatherers to gardeners, leading to famine and desertification
• the people have all the resources they need, just lack the information and skills to do it themselves
• these third-world projects will become models that will need to be applied in the first world
• (47:00) housing developments designed along permaculture principles
• it’s time to stop calling permaculture an “alternative” movement, it needs to become part of the mainstream
• gardening and food production should not be regarded as a side pursuit
• (50:00) visits a garden that has been abandoned for about 3 years, yet is still productively growing plenty of food
• “Will permaculture work?” “Will plants grow?”

Related posts:

1. Free Permaculture Downloads

Meanwhile, we have a ton of work to do on our current house to get it ready for sale. The big red dust storm didn’t help – now everything needs a really good clean again! And we have the photographer coming tomorrow to do the photos. I hope it comes up OK!

Anyway, below are the promised photos of our new house, lifted from the real estate agent’s web site. It’s a fair bit smaller than our current house, but I think that will be a good thing. We have way too much junk, and we need to force ourselves to be more disciplined in accumulating and hoarding. It’s on an acre, though, with some mature fruit and nut trees and lots of established native trees and shrubs, plus a small dam.

Update: I thought an aerial view of the house from Google Maps might be interesting as well. Our property is the one marked with an A, and is bounded by the tree lines and the road. Up in the back corner you can see the shed, and down in the front right corner (just to the right of the A) is a small dam. The house faces pretty much due north, and the land has a fairly gently slope down towards the road. The surrounding countryside is lush dairy farms, so it’s a beautiful outlook.

Related posts:

1. Our House Is For Sale!

We’ll be listing with Dougmal Kiama.

Our house has 5 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, 2 living areas, double garage, rear entertaining area and a huge front deck, sitting on a 600 m2 block. It’s only about 400 m from the beach, with sports fields and a native garden reserve within 200 m. Kiama high school is within walking distance as well.

Sustainability features include a northerly aspect with passive solar design, ceiling insulation, new solar hot water system, established vegie garden and chook pen, and plenty of fruit trees. The rear and side fences are brand new, and both front and back yards are fully landscaped. Stainless steel security flyscreens on all external doors mean you can let the air flow through without allowing bugs or strangers into the house. They also mean small children or pets won’t push out all your flyscreens .

If you’re interested in more information, please email me at darren@pool-room.com.

Here are some photos taken this week:

Related posts:

1. Jamberoo FutureCare – My First Meeting
2. Magnet Mart Albion Park Rail – Closing Down Sale
3. Solar Power Information Nights – Jamberoo and Kiama

You can catch a preview at the show’s page on sbs.com.au.

Costa is a landscape architect with a passion for sustainable living. In SBS’s words:

Costa’s Garden Odyssey is a groundbreaking magazine style series that allows this unique Greek Garden Guru an opportunity to do what he does best – spread his green wisdom while communicating with people and celebrating cultures and community in a way never seen before on Australian television.

Costa’s Garden Odyssey shows us how to tread lightly – embracing nature’s cycles and seasons, investigating and championing our local produce from it’s source, and illustrating that in gardens, plants aren’t the only things that grow… people do to.

Costa will take you to the joyous, harmonious heart of the garden. It’s about gardening the soil and the soul.

Tonight is the first episode, covering:

• Northey Street City Farm community garden in Brisbane’s CBD
• fixing a major stormwater problem under a house
• watermelon growing and the Chinchilla Watermelon Festival
• planting a kitchen garden (and celebrating with a lamb on a spit)
• the spiritual and psychological benefits of gardening, through the eyes of a Buddhist Monk

Sounds awesome, doesn’t it? If you watch it, please post your comments below!

Update: If you missed the show last night or live overseas, you can watch the full half-hour episode online. SBS rocks! (thanks Mia for pointing that out!)

Related posts:

1. Backyard Revolution – 60 Minutes Story
2. Garden Planning

First we worked out what we wanted from our front yard:

• Level. We don’t have very much back yard (and what’s there is concreted), so the front yard is our grassy play area. The slope was terrible for the swings and trampoline!
• Some shade and privacy. Small- and medium-sized trees around the perimeter would be nice.
• Edibles. We wanted to incorporate some fruit trees and other edibles into the design, although Megan didn’t want it to look like a market garden.
• Containment. Our oldest, Grace (7), often tries to run across the road to her grandparents’ house. Having Down syndrome, she doesn’t really understand the dangers roads present! It would be nice to be able to sit out there without needing to be constantly vigilant. We also want to keep our kids and visiting toddlers from going too near the tops of the retaining walls.
• Aesthetic appeal. Of course, we want our yard to look nice from the street.

With all that in mind, we drew up some plans for a retaining wall and fence, allowing us to cut-and-fill to level the yard, and submitted them to Council. Despite checking our ideas were reasonably acceptable before lodging the application, the plans were rejected (by the same person who initially said they looked fine!). Apparently the proposed wall wasn’t in keeping with the rest of the street, despite just about everybody else having higher walls.

Oh well, such are the vagaries of local planning regulations. Instead of a retaining wall, the planning officer suggested we terrace the yard since that wouldn’t require approval. We would amend the development application to contain just the proposed fence.

So, on the 20th of December we called in a bobcat to level the yard! The lillypilly had to go – it had borers in it, and half of it had blown down in a storm (weakened by the borers). Sad, but it’ll soon be replaced by dozens of trees and shrubs.

I was allowed the Christmas off, and then Megan lined up 12 tons of turf mix to be delivered on the 29th, and 75 m2 of turf to be delivered on the 30th. We chose Sir Walter for the turf, since it is supposed to be drought resistant and does well in shade or full sun. It’s also nice and soft under foot. Oh, and before all that I had to start building the terraces so we could lay the turf right up to the edges.

I still had more work to do on the wall, though, and steadily got through that over the rest of the week.

We ended up with four terraces, each 600 mm deep. We’re planning to put some kind of fruiting shrubs and berries in the bottom two, then trees (avocado, white mulberry, fig, etc) in the third level, and more fruiting shrubs (blueberries and others) in the top level that can be picked by the kids from up on the grass.

Up the side along the driveway will probably go feijoas, guavas, peaches, nectarines, and others. Along the fence line we’ll plant citrus (lemon, plus early and late varieties of orange and mandarin). I’m hoping to fit in a few things like jerusalem artichokes, sweet potatoes, strawberries, etc in the beds underneath some of the trees.

For now, I’m preparing the garden beds. The soil is a bit of a mixed bag of clay, sand and little rocks. The terraces need another 200 mm or so of soil to fill them, so I’m adding lots of horse manure (free from the stables at Kembla Grange), mushroom compost and a layer of straw mulch on top.

The manure and compost will take some time to break down, so we’ll take our time planting out the terraces. I’m going to sow a mixed bird seed as a green manure crop (it contains millet, sorghum, corn, sunflower, barley and wheat) – this is a cheap way to get a lot of seed! Once the plants grow, but before they seed, I’ll dig the whole lot in. This is a good way to break up the soil and incorporate lots of organic matter.

I’m also going to try planting potatoes in one bed – the last lot of potatoes we grew turned a bed of stable sweepings into a beautiful rich soil full of worms. Hopefully they can do the same again.

If you have any suggestions to help prepare the beds, or advice on what else we could consider planting, please add a comment below!

Related posts:

1. Sydney Water “Love Your Garden” Review

There’s a printable PDF book on the Essence Of Permaculture, a desktop background image on the 12 principles of permaculture, and two printable posters on the ethics and principles of permaculture, and the permaculture flower.

On that site are also a number of permaculture publications for sale – books, magnets, and a 2009 diary and calendar.

I just ordered the calendar to hang on my cubicle wall at work.

Have a good look around the Permaculture Principles site. They also have some great permaculture videos, links to other online permaculture resources, a collaborative permaculture photo log (contribute some of your own photos!) and lots of articles.

No related posts.