Fixie's Shelf

Garden Planting dates for Spring & Summer 2012

Now is a good time for us (Melbournians) to start thinking about what we'll be eating from our garden gardens next spring and summer.  This calender follows on from the one I started in November.  Please refer to that post for how to prepare seed trays and garden beds, how to water and how to transplant.

These are the dates I plan to sow, transplant etc.  They pretty much follow the moon planting calender, with the exception that I sow my root vegies at the same time as my leafy/fruiting vegies, for simplicity.

March 12 or so: Make a plan for some sort of greenhouse for winter seedlings.  My greenhouse has died and I need a solution urgently.  If you have a nice sunny North facing window with plenty of space just inside for plants, that would be great.  Or you can make a cold frame from a few strawbales with a window on top.  Or you can buy cheap plastic-covered greenhouse shelves on ebay.  Decide on your plan.  Also order any seeds you'll need.  If you haven't got compost, make some.  (See my sidebar, how to really grow food in your backyard.)

March 15-22: Set up your greenhouse so it's ready to go.  Prepare a seed tray for carrots and onions.

April 10-11: Sow lots of onions and long season carrots.  Put the seed tray in your greenhouse and water daily until they germinate.  Onions and carrots are slow - it could take a whole month.  Note: if it's hot, you'll need to open or ventilate the greenhouse.  If you don't have a greenhouse yet, your seedlings will manage until May, but it'd be good to have one by then.

April 13-20: Prepare a garden bed for broadbeans.  Mentally divide this into four sections - you will plant one section a month, for nice staggered eating of broadbeans.  Prepare a seed tray for October vegies.  Prepare a garden bed for onions, carrot and garlic.

May 5-6: Plant out the garden bed you prepared, half with garlic, and the other half with alternating onions and carrots (ie one onion plant in the row, followed by a carrot, followed by an onion etc.  Space plants 7-10cm apart).  Note: depending on how quickly your onion and carrot seedlings came up, you might need to wait and do this next month.  In any case, get the garlic in now.  Sow the first lot of broadbeans into the bed you prepared.  Put the first sowing in the southernmost spot so the plants don't shade out newer sowings.  Sow cabbage, baby carrot and leek to eat in October.

May 13-20: Prepare seed trays for summer vegies (tomatoes, eggplant, capsicum, basil, silverbeet), and more for November vegies and December vegies.  Prepare a garden bed for potato onions.

June 2-4: Sow summer vegies: eggplant, basil, capsicum, tomato.  Sow vegies to eat in October: broccoli and cabbage. Transplant last month's October brassicas into second tray, 2 inches apart.  Sow vegies to eat in November: cabbage, baby carrot and leek.   Plant out potato onions (these are an amazing, hardy bulb that you plant on the shortest day, and then on the longest day of the year you harvest them, and there should be 6 or 8 bulbs in place of the one you planted.  They taste great and store well).  Sow the second lot of broadbeans.

June 11-19: Prepare seed trays for spring vegies - spinach and lettuce, and also for more December vegies.  Prepare a garden bed for October vegies.  Prepare larger seed trays for summer vegies.

July 1-2 (or on the 20-12, or the 26-30): Sow spinach, peas and lettuce for spring eating (November onwards).  Sow broccoli and cauliflower to eat in November.  Transplant last month's October and November brassicas into a second tray, 2 inches apart.  Sow cabbage, baby carrot and leek to eat in December. Transplant the October brassicas, carrots and leek into the garden bed you prepared.  Sow the third lot of broadbeans.  Transplant summer vegies 2 inches apart, into a larger tray.

July 11-19: Prepare a garden bed for tomatoes.  I place a small stake where each tomato plant will go, allowing at last 50-60cm for each fully grown tomato plant.  Since the tomatoes take a while to fill the entire bed, I plant in a ring around the base of where the plants will go, spring vegies that I can eat in the meantime: the spinach, lettuce and peas sown earlier in July.  By the time the tomatoes shade out these plants, the spring vegies finished and going to seed.  Prepare a bed (with trellis/fence) for climbing beans.  Prepare a bed for November vegies and another for December vegies.  Prepare a seed tray for cucumber and zucchini.  Prepare individual pots (or milk cartons) for tomatoes, eggplant, capsicum, basil and silverbeet.

August 2 or 23-26: Transplant spinach, peas and lettuce into the tomato bed, in a ring around each stake.  Fill in any gaps by sowing more pea seeds, but leave a clear 30cm spot for each tomato plant. Transplant last month's brassicas into a second tray, 2 inches apart.  Transplant the November vegies into the  garden bed for this purpose. Transplant last month's brassicas into a second tray, 2 inches apart.  Sow broccoli and cauliflower to eat in December.  Sow the fourth (and final) lot of broadbeans.  Sow your first lot of climbing beans direct into the bed, 10cm apart.  Sow cucumber and zucchini, seeds 2 inches apart.  Transplant tomatoes, eggplant, capsicum, basil and silverbeet into individual pots.

September 19-22: Transplant tomatoes into their designated places in the garden bed.  Transplant the December vegies into their garden bed.

October 8-14: Prepare beds for cucumber, zucchini, silverbeet, basil, eggplant and capsicum.

October 16-19: Sow second lot of beans.  Transplant cucumber, zucchini, basil, silverbeet, eggplant and capsicum into their garden beds.

November 14-16: Sow third lot of beans

December 13 or 16-17: Sow fourth and final lot of beans.

 

I've followed and tweaked the above plan for three years now, and this works for me.  However it depends on using good seed, and appropriate varieties.  A lot of seed you buy at garden shops is useless, and many seedlings are too (for instance, garden shop broccoli seedlings often have tiny heads and then bolt to seed).  I've had good luck buying seeds from New Gippsland Seed Company, but some of their varieties have also proven to be duds.  I can vouch for these varieties, which you can buy from New Gipps:

• Cabbage - canonball hybrid
• Cauliflower - mini white
• Broccoli - marathon hybrid
• Tomato - kelstar
• Carrot - tip top or all seasons (for long season variety), amsterdam baby for baby carrots
• Spinach - rotunda hybrid, also winter bloomsdale, though the rotunda did better
• Capsicum - hungarian sweet wax
• Eggplant - bonica hybrid
• Cucumber - green gem
• Zucchini - lebanese hybrid
• Leek - jumbo
• Onion - potato onion (a bulb), and red shine

Many of the above are hybrids, making them unsuited to seed saving.  Unfortunately I've been unhappy with several of the open pollinated varieties of seed I've bought from New Gipps, and am now trying Territorial Seeds (in the USA, in an area with a climate similar to Melbourne), in the hope that I can move to entirely open pollinated varieties, and save all my own seed.  I have not yet found a good pea seed - none of the ones at New Gipps have worked well for me, and ditto with corn seed.  The New Gipps bean seeds I've tried so far have not impressed me, but I found a wonderful bean, Frederico, which may have been from Green Harvest or Eden Seeds.  If you can get Frederico, it's well worth it - the taste is stunning, and it's very prolific.  I've done well, so far with broadbeans from a variety of seed companies.

As a rough guide, my garden beds for October, November and December eating are just over one square metre each, my tomato bed is two square metres (five plants), I allow a metre for capsicum, eggplant, basil and silverbeet combined, and another metre each for cucumber (6 plants) and zucchini (3 plants).  I have one metre for carrot/onion, and another for garlic, and another for potato onions.  Beans can use a thin strip against a fence, about half to one square metre of space.  All up, it's around ten square metres of vegie garden space.  This feeds my family of three very well (but only because the beds are well fed with homemade compost, dug to be light and airy, are kept well watered, and receive plenty of sunlight).

Chickens for meat update

Here's my chicks when they were two weeks old:





I took these photos just after I moved them out of the cardboard box, and into the wire framed rabbit cage. They had suddenly grown fatter overnight and looked like they could hardly stand up. While in the first week they scratched at the dirt and did nice chicken behaviours, suddenly it seemed they couldn't even stand on one leg to scratch. Their walk turned into an awkward waddle. I thought they'd need a bigger cage to make sure they got exercise and learnt to manouver their fat bodies around.

Unfortunately though, I think I moved them to the wire cage too soon. Being larger, it is also colder, even with blankets draped over it. They huddled together so tightly that two of the chickens got injured and died - trampled to death? I quickly moved the chicks to a wooden box instead, a bit larger than their original cardboard box. Since then, no more deaths, thank god. But I noticed that they tended to sit all day. If they were eating, they'd be eating sitting down. They'd only waddle the minimum distance they had to and collapse onto their bellies. I decided it was time for them to go outside.
 



For their first trip to the great outdoors, I put down a mini fence that is normally garden bed edging, and made sure I gave them a spot with both sun and shade. They were absolutely thrilled. Instead of sitting down, they all got to it, pecking around, exploring, testing out the plants and generally fossicking around.

After a few days of this, I was lifting them into the box to carry them back to the bathroom, when they suddenly worked out how to flutter their way out of the box. Clearly I was using a box that was too shallow. They were so happy, freeranging, that I let them go free for a few hours.



Today, they are three weeks old, I've let them go free in the garden all day, and guess what? They are doing all the things chickens should: standing on one leg to scratch, fluttering from one place to another, dust bathing, and pecking at everything... hooray! They seem very healthy. I think they were so bored in their cardboard box that they had nothing to stand up for.

For now they are hanging out in the box overnight, and I'll free range them in the garden during the day when I'm home.

They eat so much food I'm in shock. They whipped through my 5kg bag of starter crumble in the first ten days. The amount they eat increases every day. I've now worked out how to make my own food for them. It's more expensive and more work than starter crumble, but I'm sure it's far, far more nutritious.

Homemade starter crumble recipe:

4 cups grain, coarsely ground - I use a mix of wheat, corn, barley, oat grain - whatever I've bought cheaply in bulk.
1/4 cup flax seeds - I don't grind these as they go rancid quickly, and they are small enough for the chicks to peck whole.
1/4 cup seaweed - I collect my own from the beach, dry it in the sun for a few days, and grind it to a coarse powder. This provides minerals.
3 tsp salt - since I had washed the salt off my seaweed. If using unwashed seaweed, maybe just 2 tsp? Use unrefined salt to provide minerals.
2 tbsp cod liver oil - to provide vitamins A and D, and for general good health. I bought a big bottle of animal grade oil from a feed shop.
2 tbsp fat - I use the tallow that we scrape off the top of stock when we cook it.
1 tbsp molasses - provides vitamins.
1 cup protein - eggs, fish, meat....

Mix everything together and feed to the chicks.

Apart from the protein, I only had to buy the cod liver oil and flax seeds specially. These are both optional - I include them because I want the chooks to have optimum nutrition, and hence to provide very nutritious meat for me to eat. I buy grains and salt cheaply in bulk for my family, so it's no drama to feed some of our supply to the chooks. The protein, however, has been a bit more challenging, since I want to get it for free. I got some fish carcasses from the market, ground up the meatier bits in my food processor, and then dried them in my dehydrator. The result crumbled into fine "pellets" that mixed well with the rest of the feed. When that ran out, I fed them scrambled eggs fried up with greens from the garden. The fish shop will have more free fish for me tomorrow, but in the meantime I'm not sure what to do for protein. I've got a bucket of snails that I picked off the garden last night - maybe I can crush them? There's also worms in my worm farm - maybe I can pick out a handful for the chooks?

So far, at 3 weeks, the chicks have eaten their way through a 5kg bag of starter crumble, and 5 batches of the above homemade recipe. Yikes! I can see why eating a lot of meat is not good for the environment - they go through SO MUCH grain!

 

Garden planting dates for winter eating 2012

To stay on track with growing food, I jot down everything in my diary, on the date it needs to happen. I've just worked out all my planting details for the coming months, to make sure there'll be food to eat in winter. I'm often asked what to plant when, so here's a guide. It's relevant for Melbourne, Australia, only, and the dates given take into account moon planting as much as possible, though I had to fudge things a little to get things sown at the right time of each month. But if you are busy on the relevant dates, don't worry about getting them exact - just plant when you can around that time.

This planting guide will give you carrots, beets, cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli and lettuce to eat from April, right through winter and into early spring.

Nov 19-24: Prepare trays for sowing seed. Mix compost and/or worm castings with soil, and make sure you have a nice, fine, moist mixture. Make sure the trays are several inches deep. Put your trays in a sheltered spot where, ideally, they get some morning sun but are protected from hot summer afternoon sun. Up on a table is good, out of reach of snails and dogs. You might want some netting or shade cloth to protect from birds. Set up an easy method of watering - a watering can nearby, with an accessible tap? Or a hose with a gun nozzle that has a nice fine spray? Also organise a labelling system for your plants - a packet of icypole sticks and a permanent marker will do the job.

Dec 1, or 4-6: sow brassicas (broccoli, mini cabbage, mini cauliflower) to eat in April. Sow seed one inch apart.

Dec 14-15: sow brassicas to eat in May. Transplant April brassicas into a fresh, deeper tray, 2 inches apart. Sow them deeper, so that their first two leaves are at soil level. To transplant, use an ordinary kitchen knife. Cut a 1 inch square around the plant you are moving, and lift it out gently with the knife. Hold the clump of dirt/roots in your hand, and insert the knife into the new tray. Pull it towards you, opening a hole. Lower the seedling into the hole, and use the knife to scrape a bit of soil around the roots.

Dec 18-21: Prepare some more trays for seed. Each new seed needs to go into a fresh tray that has lightly aerated soil, and is comprised of at least 1/3rd fresh compost or worm castings. Prepare a garden bed for the April brassicas, and one for the carrots and beets. Dig it to a depth of 24 inches (twice the length of a garden fork), spread over an inch or two of compost, and water very well. If the ground is hard, water well the day before you dig. Spread some mulch over the top.

Jan 1-2: Plant out April brassicas in their garden bed, 30cm apart. If you like, sprinkle some lettuce seed at one end of the bed. Transplant May brassicas into second tray. Sow brassicas to eat in June.

Jan 10-11: sow heaps of carrots and beets in seed trays. Sow the beets 1 inch apart. Sprinkle carrot seed thinly over a section of your tray and sprinkle a tiny bit more soil over the top. You'll be able to start harvesting them around April or May, and over winter they'll gradually fatten up. You'll need to finish them off before they go to seed next spring.

Jan 16-22: Prepare more seed trays. Prepare garden beds for May, June and July brassicas.

Jan 23-24: Plant out May brassicas in their garden bed, 30cm apart. Sprinkle some lettuce seed if desired. Transplant June brassicas to second tray. Sow brassicas to eat in July and August.

Jan 28-29: Transplant beets to garden bed, 10cm apart. Transplant carrots 7cm apart - they will be very small seedlings so handle them gently, and protect them from animals, snails and hot sun.

Feb 7-8: Plant June brassicas into the garden bed. Sprinkle lettuce seed if desired. Sow September brassicas. Transplant July and August brassicas to second tray.

Feb 24-26: Transplant July and August brassicas to garden bed. Transplant September brassicas to second tray.

Mar 15-23: Prepare garden bed for September brassicas.

March 24: Transplant September brassicas to garden bed.

Keep everything well watered - about 9 litres of water per square metre, most days (every day if it's hot, and twice a day if it's scorching). If you're not sure, poke your finger into the soil and check it's moist. During a heat wave, take your trays of seedlings indoors to protect them. Go out a few times during the day and spray your garden beds with water - it won't burn the plants, and they'll appreciate the cooling off. Before it gets really hot, pile some straw gently around and right over the top of young plants that are inthe garden. Go back at night and uncover them so they don't suffocate. This will protect them from the worst of the heat.

You'll need to work out how many of each plant you have space for, and plant accordingly. Even if it's just a cabbage or two a month, you'll be rapt when they are ready. Always sow twice as much seed as what you need - many seeds don't germinate, and sometimes you'll plant out, only to have some critter gobble up your seedling. In that case, it's good to have some spares on hand to replace them with. Once you know your seedlings are established, give away any extras you don't have space for. Or plant them into unlikely spots in the garden just in case they manage to flourish there afterall.

Happy growing, everyone!

Raising chickens for meat

Yesterday my chickens arrived! They are a special meat breed of bird which apparently fatten quickly and make delicious eating. I was vegetarian for 20 years, but in the last couple of years I've started to eat meat again for health reasons. I've never had anything against people eating meat, though I've always thought it would be most ethical to raise the animals yourself, and probably kill them too. Since I started eating meat, I've been trying to gird myself to actually live according to my principles, and raise my own meat.

There are other reasons why I believe it's good to raise our own meat. The meat industry can be pretty cruel. I only eat meat from local farms where I'm pretty satisfied that they raise their animals well and kill them humanely. But even so, surely I can give them a better life in a suburban backyard than when they are raised on a commercial scale. Afterall, our home-produced eggs are so much better than the most expensive organic free range eggs we can buy. Like the eggs, I'd expect the meat to be more nutritious - though who can really know. Also I am concerned about the amount of wastage that occurs. Despite repeated requests, I've never been able to obtain chicken heads or feet for soup. What happens to them all? Are they chucked out? Recently, watching a fisherman fillet a fish, and waste all but the very best bits of it, I realised that it's probably the same in the meat industry. We are in the habit of eating the muscle meat but not the organs (though they are very good for us), and in our society it's rare to make stock from bones these days.

I also want to really understand how much food I can produce in my backyard. I already produce 80% of my family's fruit and vegies. Could I produce a good portion of our meat onsite too? I'd like to find out.

I am probably in for quite a journey, emotionally. The chicks that arrived yesterday are adorable. They are so cute I've already sat for ages, watching and watching them. To think that one day I'm going to kill them, with my bare hands, is quite astonishing. Somehow I'm going to have to gird my loins, toughen my heart and do it. I'm curious to see how I emerge on the other side of this.



In case you would like to consider raising your own chickens for the table, here's the practicalities.

I bought the chickens from a hatchery in Queensland, Australia: Peak Poultry Supplies. They cost $2 per day old chick, plus $30 for shipping (up to 100 birds in a carton). I would have liked to buy them locally, but despite researching for two years I've been unable to find a farmer in Victoria who will sell me meat chicks. If you know of any avenues for me to research with this, please tell me! I'm still looking, for my next batch.

I bought starter crumble for their food, though I'm hoping once they are a little older I can mostly feed them worms, insects and greens from my garden. Ultimately I would like to make my own food for them from day one, but I haven't found enough information to do this yet. I also bought a small feeder and waterer. I picked these up from a stock feed shop, where they were a fraction of the price they go for in pet shops. In an op shop I found an adjustable lamp, and I bought a 60 watt globe from the hardware.

For now I'm keeping them in a cardboard box. I lined the bottom with several layers of newspaper and a bag of well rotted sawdust I had lying around. When the sawdust has run out, I'll put dirt on the bottom. I'll compost all the litter when it's too dirty for the chickens to use any more. As they grow, I'll move them to my rabbit cage, which is bigger, and then I hope to put them in with my egg-laying chooks.

I've put the lamp quite low over their box, and in the coming weeks I'll gradually raise it. If the chicks are too cold, they'll huddle tightly together under the lamp. If they're too hot they'll fan out away from it. I'll use their behaviour to tell me how high to put the lamp.

All up it's costing me $6.40 per bird, though if I do this again it will be much cheaper since I'll already have the lamp, waterer, feeder etc, and maybe by then I'll be able to make my own food too.

With meat breeds of birds, because they fatten so fast, when they get to a certain age (weight), their legs may be too weak to hold them up, and they could break. In the industry they are slaughtered just before this happens - its cruel to have a chook live with broken legs. Thus the birds need to be slaughtered promptly at 6-8 weeks of age. My friend Roderick, who is joining me on this mission, and will show me how to kill the birds, tells me that home-reared chooks are much healthier and less prone to this problem - hence you can wait longer before slaughtering.  

Other people I've mentioned this to say I should get a breed of birds that aren't specifically for meat, so that I don't participate in this cruelty. However, regular chickens can take 4 months to be fat enough for the table, which means you need to feed them a LOT more grain, a serious negative, both financially and for the environment. Because of my touring, I've decided to go with meat breeds so I can do it as a quick project. However, I'm hoping Roderick is right, because then I can start slaughtering at 6 weeks, doing two birds at a time (one for the table, one for the freezer), and really spread the killings over a longer period. That way we aren't clogging up our freezer, and we can plan on eating, say, a bird a week.

If the birds are healthy, maybe we can even raise a breeding pair to egg laying age, get some fertile eggs, and then I can raise my next batch without needing to order from Queensland. Fingers crossed. Though I'm not very optimistic about this plan - I think a rooster crowing at 5am might do permanent damage to our relationship with our neighbours.

Well.. I'll keep you posted. Wish me luck! And feel free to send me your favourite chicken recipes.

 

Bees - a top bar hive!

 

 

I've wanted bees for years and years - and at long last I've got a hive in my garden! They came in the night last week, delivered by the lovely Martin O'Callaghan, who brought them round in the dark and helped to settle them in.

I have been very put off by the complexities of a box hive. I went to a workshop at Ceres, and while it might have been a good one, I was pretty confounded. I couldn't understand the teacher at all. I had a lovely friend who was trying to interpret for me, but when suited up in bee gear, it became pretty damned hard for her to sign. I couldn't make sense of it.

My hive is a top bar hive, not a box hive, and apparently much simpler to manage. You don't need as much training to look after a top bar hive, and the little training I will need, Martin is happy to provide. He communicates nice and visually, so hopefully I won't have the suited up interpreting problems I had in the past.

The wonderful thing about a top bar hive is that the bees live a much more natural life than they do in a box hive. The bees make their comb by building onto a little strip of wax along the inside of the "top bar". They build their comb downwards, in the shape that they like to make it. They make cells of different sizes, depending on what it will be used for. It could be used for the queen to lay an egg, which could become a worker bee, or a drone bee, or even a new queen bee, or it could be used for honey storage. The bees collect pollen from flowers within a 5km radius, turn that into honey, and store to use as food now and during winter.

The people who invented box hives, had this idea that they could force the bees to make more honey, by building the honeycomb for them. With a box hive, you put in a frame that has "foundation" wax on it - ie wax in the shape of honeycomb, with predetermined numbers of worker bee cells, honey storage cells etc. By doing this they could reduce the number of drone bees, considered redundant, since they aren't collectors of honey. They could increase the number of worker bees and honey storage cells. They eliminated the work done by bees to build the honeycomb, and hence freed up more worker bees to focus on collecting honey. With this arrangement, the bees DO create more honey. Vastly more. But the drawback is that the bees are more vulnerable to problems, and hence need quite a bit of management and looking-after.

With a top bar hive, the bees get to choose how to structure their colony, who will do what, how many bees are redundant and so on. With this kind of management, they can make sure they maintain a healthy colony with good resistance to diseases and pests.

So this summer, my job is to add a new top bar every time the hive is getting kind of full. Martin will drop by to show me how to do it. And later in summer, Martin will host a harvest at his home, and all the novices like me who have bought bees from him in the past year, will gather to watch him harvest the honey from his hive, and learn how to do it with our own. I can't wait!

Even better than the honey (apparently at the end of summer I should be able to harvest 10-20 litres), is the fact that the bees are already buzzing around, pollinating the blossom on my almond tree, and gearing up for some top-scale pollination in my vegie garden this summer. Hopefully I won't need to "diddle" by hand any more! :)

Handwoven Basket

 

After a stressful week of writing a funding application, today I treated myself to a day of making. I made this basket using a pair of secateurs and prunings from my garden. I love it! I think I'll use it as a harvest basket.

It's about 35cms across the bottom and about 30cm high, not including the handle.  Just the right size for a few broccoli, cauliflower, and a handful of silverbeet leaves! (Well that's what's in my garden right now.)

Food Preserving Update

This is my second year of putting up food for winter. It was SO MUCH easier this time, than last time. I was able to streamline my preserving tasks.

Our fruit lasted well through the winter last time - it was a treat. We discovered we liked better the fruit I bought at the farmer's market (peaches, apricots and cherries) than the plums I scavenged from local trees (very sour - needed heaps of honey to make edible). Since for now we can afford to, this year I just focussed on those three fruits. I also bottled the nectarines from our tree. Three simple fruit-bottling sessions (I did nectarines and apricots at the same time) felt very easy and manageable.

We LOVED the tomatoes last year - couldn't get enough of them, fought over them, were begged to bring them to dinner.... This year instead of buying 60kg, I bought 100kg. Ok, it was probably a bit too much. We did 100 jars. Now we should have two every week, three every other week, and some left over for early summer. Preserving them all when I had a lot else on was very tiring and challenging. But we did it and I'm glad. Paula also made a batch of tomato chutney and a batch of tomato ketchup. YUM. We love the ketchup - a new addition to our reportoire.

I dried some apricots but not enough of them. I ended up buying some apricots for a friend, the farmer ran out, and the next market the apricots had finished. Bummer. Next year I'll try to ensure I can order well enough in advance. I wanted to do sultanas but there were no grapes this year - not on my vine nor at the farmer's market. Humidity killed em.

Last year the dried zucchinis were great, but this year we didn't have a glut. I was trying out a garden idea that I would get more zucchinis from one plant if I just put in one per square meter. Since I only have one square meter to devote to zucchinis, I only put in one plant. Result: barely enough zucchinis. Next year I'm whacking three plants into the one meter, like I usually do.

We didn't make so many condiments this year. We really couldn't get through them all, though they were handy to have as gifts. Also this year I didn't have so many gluts - I managed my growing better, overall, to grow the right amount for us and more variety, so that was good. Just one batch of cucumber pickles as well as the tomato chutney.

This now feels integrated with how we live. Eating from the pantry shelves is fantastic - convenient, delicious, cheap... In fact I saw a jar of bottled fruit at the farmer's market recently. It was so expensive that I couldn't help myself from counting up the commercial value of all the fruit on my pantry shelves. By their prices I reckon I have $3000 sitting there in fruit alone. And I probably paid $550 to get it. Most of that was the tomatoes. I was perfectly happy with the workload - it felt minor compared to the results we get. Except maybe for the tomatoes, which I found hard. Maybe I need to get some help next year. Maybe 80kg not 100kg? I'll see how long it takes us to get through those jars.

Baskets and String

 

My next discovery in the life of a medieval woman is how to use the plants I already have in my garden to make string, rope and baskets.

I went to a great basket-making workshop at Ceres and it opened my eyes to a whole new world of sustainability-type things I can do. For example, did you know you can make string from a corn plant? I haven't tried it yet, but I've picked some corn leaves and hung them up to dry. Once they are dry, I can soak them in water, split the fibres, and twist them into string.

The teacher brought along some flax. I've always wondered what a flax plant looks like. Now I realise I must have seen it around plenty before - it looks very familiar. You use a pin to split the fibres into fine threads, and then twist a few threads together to make string. Jesse and I have been madly making string ever since. I don't know if I've enough patience, but I'm hoping to make enough string for my garden use next year, so I don't have to buy any. It should last about two years, out in the rain, then it'll turn to compost. In the photo below, on the left you can see a flax leaf (a bit curled up and dry now), in the middle are strands from the leaf which I split off with a pin, and on the right is the start of my ball of string.

The best thing about the workshop was that I made a basket for my bike! It's a weird hodgepodge of vines that our teacher brought along to the workshop, but most of it is made from a vine that was growing outside the wall of the room our workshop was in. Every time I needed some more I wandered outside and pulled a bit more off the vine. Now that's what I call natural and sustainable!

I'm going to experiment with the vines I have at home, but apparently I can make baskets with grape vine, jasmine, passionfruit and black berry, all of which I have. I'll try string from corn. And I'm going to see if I can buy a flax plant somewhere. Flax makes really strong thread.

Aquaponics

I've been looking into raising my own fish to eat. I have bumped into the idea of aquaponics before, but I thought it was a very high tech arrangement that needed heaps of electricity, a special greenhouse and so on.

I've discovered that you can do it simply with the amount of electricity it takes to run two pumps, and they need only run intermittently. One aerates the fish pond, and the other pumps water from the pond into a vegie garden bed, and it flows from there back into the pond. The vegie garden bed has no soil in it - instead it has gravel or clay pebbles. As the water runs through it, the plants take up the nutrients in the water - so any fish poo and wee is cleaned out, and what returns to the pond is nice, clean water. Meanwhile, apparently, the vegies grow fantastically, with all this water and nutrition.

A system like this is particularly handy if you live in a very dry place (we get shocking droughts here, though the last one has just broken, thank god), because you can grow a significant amount of vegetables and fish, using just a bucket of water a week (to top up the pond). That's pretty good, if you ask me.

Unfortunately, the systems you can buy seem to be very expensive (you'd need to grow and eat a hell of a lot of fish to payback the price of most ready-made systems), and extremely ugly. This is what put me off in the first place.

However, I got newly inspired when I saw this gorgeous pond (photo above) made by Ecolicious. The vegie beds, instead of being hideous plastic trays on stands, are recycled bath tubs from the tip, surrounding a pretty timber deck. Rather than installing an expensive plastic fish tank, the Ecolicious crew dug into the ground and used a pond liner and rocks.

The garden in front of our house, which we look at every time we look out the windows, is quite pretty, but it's taken years to work out which few plants will tolerate growing there. I'm not sure what's wrong - the soil must be absolutely shocking, though I've added compost from time to time. it's shady, and almost everything I put in there dies. It's a very inefficient use of space, considering that I'm managing a very high level of food production from most of the rest of my garden. However.. now I'm dreaming... what if I dug it up, put in a fish pond (it seems we humans love looking at water - look at our obsession with buying beach front and river front properties) and some recycled bathtub grow beds?

Jesse assures me he'll be happy to go fishing in our pond to catch our dinner. There's another great bonus to this idea. The front garden is home to our rabbit cage, and we let the rabbit hop around sometimes. But her angora fur gets rather damaged by all the dirt and mulch. A rock garden with pebbles instead of soil will be perfect for her - I could grow her food there, and she can self-serve without me worrying about her fur getting dirty.

But dare I take on yet another project? I'm always trying to slow down....

Onions and garlic

I pulled all my onions recently. They look so pretty here, hanging with my garlic! Couldn't resist a photo.