Compost Vol. 5

On left, dry heap that's been building up over the last 2 months, being turned into new heap, far right.  In the middle is our first heap, now fully decomposed and ready to be used

Empty dry compost lot in foreground, finished heap in the background complete with chimney

December Growth

What happened to our garden while we were away for 3 weeks:

Sprawl!!!

Tomatoes went berserk (which is a good thing).  We failed to anticipate the speed at which they would grow, so we didn't stake them properly.  And now they are doing their own thing...  Hopefully the little basil and oregano plants (in there somewhere) will get enough sunshine!

Spinach are growing into giants, beet is almost ready, parsely is rampant, nasturtiums need a bit of a cull...onions, garlic chives and radish doing well; just got to keep an eye on the cucumbers.

Rocket is up, marjoram and rosemary slips are growing well, as is the new cycle of spinach, and the wild flowers are still having no trouble seeding themselves

Coriander to left, squashes starting to creep and crawl... lavender slips coming along finally...

Mung beans are very slow growing things...but the climbing beans are reaching for the sky!  And nothing can stop the nasturtiums, it seems

Coriander, beans and squash shooting up and out!  Rosemary slips taking off, and sage growing steadily and surely

Our second cycle root bed has astounded us the most: beet, radish, coriander and lemongrass are already, well, ready!  The carrots seem to be happy, as well as the second round of chives, parsely and wild flowers.  Interestingly enough NONE of the marigold seed we've sown has come up yet.  Both Starke Ayres and Mayfair varieties have failed us.  Moral of the story: heirloom is best!

"Head gardener" Steph's little patch on the north side is growing too, though it's not in full sun like the rest of the garden so it is growing a little slower...

...but she's already harvested a full stack of bush beans!!

We have a new member in our garden, Mr. Woo a.k.a. Cous-Cous, a little stray that the ladies have been feeding...well, he's hung around and now he's a regular on the garden wall and in between the greens...

All in all the garden is looking wild and lush.  There is also, of course, plenty of wild 'weed' growth, including the ferocious grasses that have sprouted after the rains, to feed the new compost heap...

Two climbing beans in a pot plus some rocket, and parsely with an onion in the middle outside our front door

To the left, four yoghurt pots with a second variety of tomato - kept separate from the variety growing down in the garden to prevent cross-pollination - next to our little spekboom and portulaca plants, also outside our front door

Stay tuned!!

To Those With Ideas

For Tracy, who cornered me in a supermarket because she had an idea:

Watch this 6 minute film to see more about permaculture's transformative ethics being taught to a class in Hawaii.

There is a future for humans if we want one.  It does not exist within the current system of economics and bottomless deathtraps of consumerism.  It exists within the sunlight, within the soil, the water, the air, the trees, plants and animals, within ourselves as humans, and within the relationships between all these.  It is Nature.

Our Food Garden Thus Far...("before & after")

 From July...

...a wildlife corridor on a steep gradient of hardened soil, rocks and building rubble...

 

...to November

...a garden in the process of becoming established with climbing and bush beans, various squashes and gourds, tomatoes, onions, carrots, radish, beetroot, cucumber, potatoes, rocket, lettuce, various spinaches, wild mint and other herbs such as oregano, marjoram, parsley, garlic chives, rosemary, lavender, coriander, sage, and basil, banana, wild cherry and guava trees (among others), and a variety of flowers both wild (naturally occuring on the site) and sown from seed

___________________________

All you need is to start on your own doorstep...

 

spekboom

...do lots of walking around the garden, looking, thinking and loads of planning...

...decide what you want to grow and then obtain seed, seedlings and trees...

...start a compost heap and have a compost processing zone...

...an earthworm bin for castings (vermicompost) and nutritious earthworm wee

...you will also need a good pair of gloves...

...and it wouldn't hurt to have a herd of cows walk past your front door every now and then.

...If not, make friends with someone who has a farm and do a trade for manure.  And if that isn't possible you can just use your own kitchen scraps, weeds from the garden, cardboard, newspaper and water and create your own soil from scratch! 

YOU DO NOT NEED TO HAVE A HUGE GARDEN SPACE TO GROW FOOD.  YOU CAN LIVE ON THE 20TH FLOOR OF AN APARTMENT BUILDING IN THE MIDDLE OF THE CITY AND STILL GROW YOUR OWN FOOD.

For more information on how to become more self-sufficient in an energy-efficient and completely non-harmful way please consult any of the sites and organisations listed in our check OUT: box on the right

HOW TO DO IT - Guerilla Composting

watch guerilla composting

Posted on Facebook by International Permaculture Day

COMPANION PLANTING: The 3 Sisters

The ancient Native American technique of growing Corn, Beans, and Squash together in an arrangement called the Three Sisters is the ultimate in companion planting and helps increase harvests, naturally.

Corn acts as a support for climbing bean vines, the beans fix nitrogen in the soil for the high feeding requirements of corn and squash, and the squash provides mulch and root protection for the corn and beans. After cooperating beautifully in the garden, corn and beans form a complete protein when eaten together! How's that for a mutually beneficial relationship?

The Three Sisters are all easy to direct sow in the garden and are a great project for children, teaching them about the beauty of natural harmony while providing a fast-growing reward for their efforts.

The Iroquois believe corn, beans and squash are precious gifts from the Great Spirit, each watched over by one of three sisters spirits, called the De-o-ha-ko, or “Our Sustainers". The planting season is marked by ceremonies to honor them, and a festival commemorates the first harvest of “green” corn on the cob. By retelling the stories and performing annual rituals, Native Americans passed down the knowledge of growing, using and preserving the Three Sisters through generations.

Published by Grow Food, Not Lawns
Source: The Book Of Threes

So, Bill, What Is Permaculture?

see Tagari Publications

An excerpt from an interview with Bill Mollison, the co-"originator" of Permaculture:

Alan Atkisson: Let’s get back to permaculture. What’s your current best definition of it?

Bill Mollison: You could say it’s a rational man’s approach to not shitting in his bed.

But if you’re an optimist, you could say it’s an attempt to actually create a Garden of Eden. Or, if you’re a scientist, you could liken it to a miraculous wardrobe in which you can hang garments of any science or any art and find they’re always harmonious with, and in relation to, that which is already hanging there. It’s a framework that never ceases to move, but that will accept information from anywhere.

It’s hard to get your mind around it – I can’t. I guess I would know more about permaculture than most people, and I can’t define it. It’s multi-dimensional – chaos theory was inevitably involved in it from the beginning.

You see, if you’re dealing with an assembly of biological systems, you can bring the things together, but you can’t connect them. We don’t have any power of creation – we have only the power of assembly. So you just stand there and watch things connect to each other, in some amazement actually. You start by doing something right, and you watch it get more right than you thought possible...

Alan: How did you come up with the idea of permaculture? What led up to it?

Bill: I’d come into town from the bush – after 28 years of field work in natural systems – and become an academic. So I turned my attention to humans, much as I had to possums in the forests. Humans were my study animal now – I set up night watches on them, and I made phonograms of the noises they make. I studied their cries, and their contact calls, and their alarm signals. I never listened to what they were saying – I watched what they were doing, which is really the exact opposite of the Freuds and Jungs and Adlers.

I soon got to know my animal fairly well – and I found out that it didn’t matter what they were saying. What they were doing was very interesting, but it had no relation whatsoever to either what they were saying, or what questions they could answer about what they were doing. No relationship. Anyone who ever studied mankind by listeningto them was self-deluded. The first thing they should have done was to answer the question, "Can they report to you correctly on their behavior?" And the answer is, "No, the poor bastards cannot."

Then I sort of pulled out for a while in 1972 – I cut a hole in the bush, built a barn and a house and planted a garden – gave up on humanity. I was disgusted with the stupidity of the University, the research institutions, the whole thing.

When the idea of permaculture came to me, it was like a shift in the brain, and suddenly I couldn’t write it down fast enough. Once you’ve said to yourself, "But I’m not using my physics in my house," or "I’m not using my ecology in my garden, I’ve never applied it to what I do," it’s like something physical moves inside your brain. Suddenly you say, "If I did apply what I know to how I live, that would be miraculous!" Then the whole thing unrolls like one great carpet. Undo one knot, and the whole thing just rolls downhill...

Why is it that we don’t build human settlements that will feed themselves, and fuel themselves, and catch their own water, when any human settlement could do that easily? When it’s a trivial thing to do?

Alan: Perhaps because we’re so wealthy that we believe we don’t have to.

Bill: Well, I don’t call that wealth. You want a definition of wealth from Eskimos, the Inuit? Wealth is a deep understanding of the natural world. I think Americans are so poor it’s pitiful, because you don’t understand the natural world at all.

Alan: If you want to do permaculture, and there isn’t a teacher around, where do you start?

Bill: Just start right where you are.

Alan: I read somewhere that you’ve said, "You start with your nose, then your hands …"

Bill: "… your back door, your doorstep" – you get all that right, then everything is right. If all that’s wrong, nothing can ever be right. Say you’re working for a big overseas aid organization. You can’t leave home in a Mercedes Benz, travel 80 kilometers to work in a great concrete structure where there are diesel engines thundering in the basement just to keep it cool enough for you to work in, and plan mud huts for Africa! You can’t get the mud huts right if you haven’t got things right where you are. You’ve got to get things right, working for you, and then go and say what that is.

Read entire interview here

Taking Shape!

South End - a carpenter friend generously offered 4 large sacks of untreated saligna sawdust to line our garden paths

Suddenly the garden has sprung to life

Looking north - stones from the beach are still being collected to line the top of the garden; we're getting there!

Coriander is LOVING it here.  Behind it grows butternut and runner beans.  To deter monkeys we're trying a trick recommended by a friend - tie up old cd's so that the monkeys get bewildered by the reflected light

Lavender, squash, beans coriander and mint growing like crazy things.  Using cow manure also throws up surprises - whatever seeds were lying about within the manure start growing in the garden wherever the manure is applied!

This is demonstrated by this squash growing rampant in the lemongrass bed.  I plugged in 2 more squash seeds, since they like it so much here

The bottom of the garden is still taking shape, but we've built some steps around where the flowers are growing wild.  This is The Alyssum Stairs

Potato pit on the left is starting to take off!  And to the right, sprouting rocket and garlic chives with coriander doing well, and waiting for the onion, carrot and radish sproutlets to pop their heads up

  

Just look at those beautiful tomoatoes!  Here on the right is wild mint which needs to be pulled back quite a bit, also wild dandelion and blue flowers - forget-me-nots which are seeding themselves all over the garden - and a whole lot of other 'weeds' which we are leaving

New terrace to be made

Compost Vol. 4

First anaerobic heap on top (brown) is ready to use after 4 months!  Second slow heap at bottom of picture will just keep growing...

Applying compost to plants that need it (circle bed, where beet and onion seedlings will enjoy the help, and triangle tomato bed behind me too), as well as creating new raised beds ( rectangular bed underneath circle bed)