30 September, 2011

Welcome!

Welcome to The Garden From Hell - my blog about turning a Sydney suburban yard full of weeds into a kitchen garden, based on Linda Woodrow's The Permaculture Home Garden.

The garden as it stands now (September 2011):
before: yard from hell


The Good
1. It gets sunlight.
2. Rich soil, although it's really a clay.

The Bad (Things we can change.)
1. Presently overgrown with weeds, especially wandering trad and morning glory creepers.
2. Lots of eucalypts around the area and a few palm stumps.
3. Plenty of bugs - spiders, slugs, snails, flies, etc.

The Ugly (Things We Can't Change)
1. The property has a steep slope - somewhere in the realm of a 30 degree incline. That's why it's nearly impossible to garden. There are no tiers, no terraces, nothing that might make it easier to manage.

2. The slope faces mostly south-west.

I have a table set up for planting and whatnot. I suspect it'll mostly be 'whatnot'. :)
planting table


But the first order of business is to build a portable chicken tractor (a.k.a. "chook dome") and set some chickens to work clearing out the weeds!

I checked the Local Council regulations, and it says that chickens can be kept onresidential properties, so long as they're not being used for commercial purposes. No fear of that!

Having read up on various 'chook dome' designs, I've opted to build
a geodesic chook dome rather than go with Linda's design.

First order of business: get hold of the PVC piping and glue and build a chook dome.
- 9 lengths of 6m PVC piping (may need to get 18 lengths of 3m PVC piping if that's all Bunnings carries)
- chicken wire
- tarpaulin
- blue glue for PVC piping

This is going to be an...interesting project!