The winter planting

While there's still warmth in the soil I thought I'd sow direct these heirlooms into our newly revamped produce area. In winter it is a sun trap until about 2pm.

Row one (closest to the house).

Row two.

Row three.

Row four.

Row five.

Before I sowed I turned over the soil with dolomite lime and blood and bone

Before laying down some straw and watering it all in. Around two sides Meg planted broad beans which we can tie against the fence.

Now with our winter seeds planted, our autumn produce booming (to the left and all around the garden), our summer onions, garlic, artichokes and potatoes stored in the cellar, and autumn and summer's fruit preserved in bottles or sun dried, we're ready for the cold dark spell.

After four years

Our garden is really kicking on this year, and I'm here to tell you (nothing new) organic food gardening has everything to do with the soil and its diversity of inputs. We used sheep poo and blood and bone with our winter's compost this year and the fruit trees and veggies are loving it. We have also had unusually warm and wet weather for this time of year.

One of our hens went broody a month ago. Here are her joyous fruits (in a small ravin proof coop for now)...

 
This spring we've been eating from the garden the following: leek, onion, silver-beet, spinach, borage flowers, coriander, cabbage, broccoli, parsley, eggs, potatoes, broad beans, stinging nettle (pesto), asparagus, parsnip, fennel, lettuces, kohlrabi, sheep's sorrel, mints, peas, calendula flower, european sorrel, rosemary, carrots, mallow, mustard greens, wild radish, kale, and i even tried my first garden spider raw, which was quite lovely.

We don't actually require much animal protein to live on. Thanks spider, thanks chooks.

No Car! Suburban garden design (winter 2011)

NB: Driveway becomes an orchard, and eventually the continuation of the quarter acre food forest.

I did this little sketch coming back from Tassie a month or two ago to prioritise the jobs that needed doing before spring. We now have bud burst and most of these things have been done, although still waiting for the Nothofagus that we ordered a month ago.

Our 12 Months of Garlic

Today I harvested our garlic and bundled them into twelve portions, or monthly rations for the year ahead.

Then strung them up to dry in the 'cellar'.

My first home-brew of beer, a heritage lager, has been cellared for two weeks now. You can just see some of the caps of the 60 stubbies behind the drum of local olive oil.

Here's the cellar from the outside, which is still just one quarter complete.

Sowing and picking

We've had rain on and off today, which has come at a time just after I had added horse manure to the north bank garden and turned it over. It's also a few days after the full moon, so what better time to throw around some tree kale seeds and plant some broad beans, collected and dried from spring last year.

I then picked tonight's dinner veggies in the rain, which we'll have with brown rice and a light smatter of tamari.

To get decent rain in Autumn is a rare and welcome pleasure. Happy birthday Zephy.

Tom up Tom down

After reading Masanobu Fukuoka's The One-Straw Revolution I decided to conduct an experiment with our tomatoes this year. Fukuoka claims that no plant needs to be staked, pruned or manipulated in any way to give a robust crop. He maintains that just as with any natural farming or gardening system the quality of the soil is of utmost importance to improve productivity and keep pests at bay. He does add however that in the case of already pruned or manipulated plants and trees, such as orchard fruit trees, intervention needs to continue because the risk of disease is high. He is suggesting here, although this is only my interpretation, that one can not easily make wild the cultivated and civilised. I guess this is the problem with an anti-ecological, pro growth-capitalist school system. It churns out young cultivated adults disembodied from wild systems and free-ranging, where wildness is replaced with contained, overly supervised play. The rise in self-harming among young people is possibly one manifestation of this containment.

This year I am planting several varieties of tomatoes through the garden, in various soils and in various sun and shade positions. I'm also staking some and leaving others to grow along the ground at their own will. So far the two strongest plants with fruit already on them are one of each. Both are growing in reasonably developed soil, that are heavily mulched and semi-shaded by our large oak tree. Indigenous grasses, forest gleaned microbes and humus, and horse manure have been added to the environment. So far, between the staked and free-ranging, it's pretty even, however I have more than fifty tomato plants growing, of varying varieties, and will stake half as they develop. Stay tuned for the results later in the season.

Above. Tomato (Grosse Lisse) staked.

Above. Tomato (Grosse Lisse) free-ranging.

Summer Solstice Produce

This is what we are currently eating from the garden.


And these are what we are currently drying for replanting.


Broad beans are delicious, but they're also good as a soil improver (nitrogen). After I harvested all these beans I pulled up the plants and lay them across the garden bed. Then I raked wood chips over them (carbon). With this as one of our methods our soils are gradually improving season by season, making our garden increasingly productive.

A very merry solstice to you all.

Ripe red radish

6 fine-art steps for building a raised bed

Step 1. Construct a timber coffin-like structure to what ever size you require in what ever manner you like. Remember the timber will flavour your food so don't use timber that has been treated with chemicals. Level off and fix to the ground using stakes or star pickets.



Step 2. Break up and weed existing soil at the base of the bed. If your soil is clay add some river sand and lime, if your soil is sandy add some clay and manure.



Step 3. Using newspaper, cardboard or some twentieth century art, cover the soil in a thin blanket. This barrier will act as a weed mat and help lock in moisture, which also encourages worms. Wet down this layer with water to start the decomposition process and help keep it from blowing away.



Step 4. Add a layer of straw, fallen oak leaves or sugar cane mulch. This organic matter will slowly break down, fixing carbon in the soil. A good soil requires a balance of nutrients, carbon, nitrogen and diverse microbial life, which will mitigate pests. Never use synthetic fertilisers or pesticides, you want your soil to hum loosely, not fear life.



Step 5. Finish the layers with composted soil. I have used part mushroom compost here with my own home-brewed one. Lightly compress or flatten the soil with a board and sow your seeds.



Step 6. Protect your seeds from your free-ranging hens. Now it's time for a well deserved glass of Astrid's dark chocolate stout.

Harvest Swap Meet

If we must stop aggregate growth because it is uneconomic, then how do we deal with poverty in the SSE? The simple answer is by redistribution — by limits to the range of permissible inequality, by a minimum income and a maximum income. What is the proper range of inequality — one that rewards real differences and contributions rather than just multiplying privilege? Plato thought it was a factor of four. Universities, civil services and the military seem to manage with a factor of ten to twenty. In the US corporate sector it is over 500. As a first step could we not try to lower the overall range to a factor of, say, one hundred? Remember, we are no longer trying to provide massive incentives to stimulate (uneconomic) growth! Also, since we are not trying to stimulate aggregate growth, we no longer need to spend billions on advertising. Instead of treating advertising as a tax-deductible cost of production we should tax it heavily as a public nuisance. If economists really believe that the consumer is sovereign then she should be obeyed rather than manipulated, cajoled, badgered, and lied to. Herman Daly, A Steady-State Economy

Stake and Veg

Water

The proud gardener (or, multiple angles on a bunch of carrots)

Nothing more, nothing less

There is nothing more self-determining, anarchical, pleasurable, poetic, subversive, exhilarating and intensely rewarding than growing your food. Today I planted 6 varieties of Banksia, two Blackwood wattles and about twenty stalks of sweet corn in the free soil, now weeded and mulched, that council dropped off last week.

The garlic bed

July 2008


November, 2008

Compost & Cos

Today I killed Bill. She wasn't getting better with the garlic water and we couldn't justify the expense of a vet, nor the fantasy of industrial pharmaceuticals. I killed her as part of redressing the compost area, which looked like this at about 5pm. 

At 4.30pm I brought the black and white bins, full of kitchen scraps, back from Ben's cafe, laid Billy to rest at the base of the right-hand bay, tore up several cardboard boxes and placed them over her. I then wet down this elegiac layer and heaped on Ben's scraps, straw from the coup and Meg's day's weeding material, before covering up both bays to cook the compost.

The bay on the left (above), that I last turned here for Hamish Morgan – who today sent more reference humus: Katherine Gibson's 'The End of Capitalism' – is almost ready for use on the garden.

I picked our finest cos lettuce (above right) and returned Ben's bins, proudly presenting the first exchange of our casual gift-ecology.

Billy

We're a little worried about Billy. She hasn't been looking that great of late. Our friend Jo said it sounds like she has a respiratory infection – budding vets and other chook experts can see Billy's condition for themselves here. On Jo's recommendation we have put a solution of boiled garlic in their drinking water. If Billy has not improved in the next day or two we will take her to the vet. Cuba and Dirt on the other hand are fighting fit – as demonstrated by their day's joyous offerings.

Social Warming

Until today we have managed to live on our 1/4 acre without one single fence, with the exception of temporary guards around our vegetables to keep the chooks from helping themselves.



However our neighbour to the North has insisted we build one because he doesn't like looking at our water tank and 'unsightly' produce area. We agreed as long as we could design and build it and not have to pay for it, so this is the beginnings of our social warming fence.



The Cuban says, "grow your own food, catch your water, say hello to your neighbour" – a reachable suburban anarchy.

Produce area