summer planting planning

To plant on Friday-Saturday: ONIONS

I want ONIONS come next winter. But planting them now means planting them somewhere that I can be reasonably sure they'll last through the summer. Which means a wicking bed. Which means either the front lounge bed, or the large vegepod or the small vegepod.

Next leafy/fruity planting cycle: SILVERBEET and SPINCH (again) Probably in either the vegepod or the front lounge wicking bed.

I have several ROCKMELONS and some WATERMELONS that need planting out. I was thinking that I could perhaps dig out the soil in the metal frame bed of the triangle orchard, put down fresh chook poop and more new compost, then put the soil back over. The bluebird ollas I have in there should provide just enough moisture through the middle-of-the-summer heat, and I can mulch that bed pretty heavily. Then, at the end of summer, put some leafy greens in, before pulling the entire bed out come spring (perhaps).

IDK. I feel like my garden is miserable compared to the gardens I see on instagram and FB: I know - it's the way of things. They show only the best parts of their gardens, the successes, carefully curated. I have to remind myself that.

Yesterday, I did have a chat with a couple... my brain is saying 'Alison and Scott' and I hope that's correct because I didn't write it down in my neighbourhood book, dammit. Which has become increasingly necessary in order to keep track of who is who (I'm awful with names, but pretty good with faces). But, yes, a couple who've just moved into the next road up and were admiring my nectarine trees. They've got a few trees in their yard and they're just learning what they are now that spring is in. I hope they'll be back; I do need to chat with a few more people in the neighbourhood about gardens and growing things and neighbourhood movements... Gotta work out how to make contact.

Lockdown, Vaccinations, and Permaculture Thoughts

It's time to talk about vaccines.

Many people in permaculture have issues with the government, with corporate medicine, with pharmaceuticals. They feel that any mandates towards masking or vaccinations are railroading them, and they resist any and all control that any large-scale organisation brings to bear.

There's an element of rebellion in permaculture that is intrinsic to the worldview, which is, after all, a rejection of the capitalist economic system and the way it's seeped into our social values.

That said, there can certainly be a point at which rebellion becomes rebelling purely for the sake of rebelling. Basically, rebellion because that's what you do against corruption, and all governments and their works are corrupt. (Think: "I renounce the devil and all his works!")

I actually think this misses the mixed blessings of our society. That we are a society that does need to rely on big government in some things, on large-scale equalisers, because on the individual level a great many people are instinctively selfish. Me, mine, myself. I hold a balanced belief in both the ability of people to do great good, and the evils that lurk in our hearts. Finding a balance on these views is difficult, a delicate navigation, and I work to hold space for people of differing views. (I don't always succeed.)

The truth is that permaculture people are, well, people, with all the kindness and thoughtfulness, and issues and selfishness of the breed. Yes, there is certainly an encouragement to care for people and share fairly in permaculture, but these ideals can also be selfish when wrapped around with 'me, and those who think/act like me'.

On a practical level, the government is best situated to enact large-scale control and maintenance of situations which cannot be managed at the individual level in our modern society. Yes, there are individuals, family units, communities that have opted out of the capitalist economic system and that society, but the hard truth is that not everyone can do that. We have too many people alive and living in the world, many of them too specialised to their time and place and mentality to change on a dime. And in our modern world, many of us are alive and living the lives that we are because of the system that we exist in. We cannot "renounce the devil and all his works", because "the devil and all his works" are in us as well.

This is a hard truth to accept. Our mentality is so accustomed to painting ourselves as the hero, we don't always notice when we might become the villain - even if only in a scene or two. Such is the nature of humanity. One demon is another's angel.

Too deep, perhaps?

Let's s talk about the ethic of Fair Share.

The original framing of the ethic was surrounding the idea that our consumption should have finite limits. That we should - as far as is possible - endeavour to limit our consumption, such that the sharing of the earth and its finite resources is fair - or at least fairer.

On the surface: fairly sharing involves providing vaccines to our neighbouring countries who don't have the same wealth and opportunity to develop and manufacture vaccines as we do. But deeper and more relevant for the permaculturist, it involves being resolved and willing to take measures to ensure that we don't deplete future resources by our decisions today.

It's one of the reasons we have the principles catch and store energy (at the highest possible level) and use and value renewable resources . The memory phrase for produce no waste - "a stitch in time saves nine" - also builds in the concept of enabling better use of resources. If we can save time and energy and resources in prevention, isn't that far better than a cure?

A vaccine is prevention - as much as eating healthily is prevention, as much as a seatbelt is prevention, as much as hardhats on building sites are prevention, as much as designing a house for sustainability is prevention.

Originally, I was going to describe vaccination as 'the stitch in time that saves nine'. But I think that's an incorrect use of the paradigm.

Vaccines are not a cure-all or a fix, and nobody should be saying they are. However, in the overall scheme of our health, vaccination is one more brick in the wall of our defences against sickness, one more obstacle for the virus to get through, one more point on the scoresheet in favour of survival, of life, of opportunity and potential and second chances. They are one more layer in the 'swiss cheese layered defence' against the debilitating sickness that is COVID-19.

For an example of the Swiss Cheese Pandemic Defence, I recommend reading this article from the New York Times.

Vaccination is one more layer in the defence, alongside wearing masks in close quarters, avoiding close quarters where possible, not congregating in large groups, and keeping track of where you've been.

Acknowledging these as useful defences takes nothing away from permaculture ethics and principles, health and wellness, or our need to work at improving our resilience as individuals and as humanity. These things work together with vaccination to give us a better chance against the virus - individually, as people likely to get sick, and as a community, as a carrier and potential location for mutation of the virus into something more infectious and more deadly.

Using every defence we have against the virus is valuing diversity.

Taking the vaccine is also valuing the diversity of our population. Not just those who can grow their own food and afford to eat healthy, who have good immune systems, who can learn about lockdowns and testing and case numbers that are given in English (not even Auslan anymore), and have the transport to easily get to a vaccination hub, but those who can't.

The immunocompromised, the multi-generational ESL family, those with less money or living in a food, transport, or green spaces "desert", those from indigenous backgrounds who have far, far less historical reason and current experience to trust the government and medical experts - we don't see these people up here in the North side of Sydney that often, do we? They are people whose voices and experiences we often don't hear or see face to face, because they live and work and struggle a long way from the leafy suburbs and work-from-home and educated backgrounds that we experience up here.

But if they aren't our local community, they are still our community of Sydneysiders - of Australians.

And when one of them falls sick with COVID, it will put one more small weight onto the stretched health system.

What catching COVID-19 means is one more patient for the hospitals, one more pressure on our strained health system, one more person at risk of what is being called 'long COVID' - a long, debilitating recovery that has lasted for more than a year in some of the early afflicted. Once-healthy people now struggle to stay upright for a couple of hours a day; marathon runners now find themselves breathing heavily just to cross the street. They are likely to end up being unable to function at the capacity they once did, instead struggling along at life.

The vaccine is both one more layer of defence against catching the virus, and one more layer of defence against the debilitating results of getting the virus.

Now, catching COVID-19 is not a moral or ethical failing, and we should disdain to see it as such. But to be vaccinated in light of the consequences of catching COVID, is to act with the ethic of 'fair share' in mind. We are using an available resource in the now to take one step further away from something that will put undue burden on us, on our community, on our society in the future. We are "limiting" ourselves in the present so that we will not be burdening our society excessively in the future.

May I encourage us to make use of one more defence against COVID by getting vaccinated, and, in doing so, to value the diversity of our Australian community, the diversity of preventative measures against getting COVID, and to practice the ethic of Fair Share by reducing the likelihood of us having to take up valuable resources in the future?

have some flowers

I've always been about growing all the edible things! Succulents? Not really. Ornamentals? Pass. Flowers? Can I eat them? No? No.

It's only the last couple of years that I've started realising that I need to plant more bee-friendly plants, more meadow flower patches, more spaces for flowers of all types and kinds.

I mean, there's always been the roses in the lounge room bed (although they were much smaller when we moved in):

And nasturtiums in the orchard almost as long as there's been an orchard.

And in the last couple of years, I've planted an array of salvias, marigolds, lavender, and asian basil, as well as an elder bush. And the bees LOVE it.

There's always been freesias around in the lawn - they just spread and seed of their own accord. And I've planted tulips, daffodils, and jonquils, with varying success (but usually 'not much'):

I've repeatedly tried growing poppies - both the oriental and the california sort - anywhere and everywhere. Almost none of them took. In fact all the flowers that I planted intentionally never seemed to really take. (Salvias, Indian and Asian basil, and lavender don't count. They're the sort of plants that if you leave them alone they'll sit there forever, and then suddenly BOOM.) Even the sweet peas - which everyone said was super easy - didn't do very well for me.

Then this year, I decided I would try planting things in late autumn, let them sit through the winter, so that by the time spring and the rapidly warming seasons came around, they'd have their roots in.

Sweetpeas:

Asection of lawn under the frangipani tree where I spread a 'meadowflower mix' really thickly...

And right now, when the poppies are flowering...

So, yes, I can grow flowers. Sort of. In big tranches of planting. Sometimes. (I've planted a whole bunch of other flowers in clumps and often they haven't made it up. These ones were thickly planted on prepared soil and covered lightly with straw to keep the moisture in.) Other attempts at developing swathes of flowers will probably have to wait for next autumn, because I think it needs the winter to get their roots in without being burned to a crisp.

Welcome to Australia.

But just look at that last poppy. The colours! The powder blue pollen! The hot pink centre with green gills! The dark inner petallage that highlights the colours? So pretty! SO. PRETTY.

I haven't grown many flowers over the years, but I am loving this season.

slow sorting out spring

Trying to work out what to plant right now.

I've already done most of my planting, but there's some seeds that failed and others that could do with succession sowing. But this always brings up the question of how many and what.

Tomatoes? More tomatoes? How many more tomatoes? Corn? Glass Gem for the pretty (and popcorn and grinding), or sweet corn for the eating? Pumpkins? I really do need to work out my pumpkins: I want some for eating and some for storing, and zucchinis if I can actually grow them. It's touch and go some years. I'd love capsicums and cucumbers because we would eat them, and eggplant because I love cooking with eggplant. Melons? That would be the ideal, but I never do well with melons. It might just be that I've never grown them in rich enough soil and well-watered conditions. IDK.

Those are the annuals, the ones that get sown and planted out every year. I should probably plant more lettuce for when the current crop of lettuces & silverbeets & spinaches die off - I could stick them in the somewhat shady HEXABED, maybe? Except one of the reasons I was growing flowers and whatnot in the HEXABED is because of the high lead levels...

I also have to think of what to say about Use And Value Diversity, which is October's Permie Principle. Apart from sowing heirloom seeds, or having early-, mid-, and late- varieties where possible, or buying heritage breeds to mix with layer breeds so they'll hopefully last longer than a few years' cycle of chooks. IDK.

I stuck the chooks back on the CREPE-APRICOT bed after protecting the bush beans that were growing there, because I needed them to dig up and deal with the remainder of the brassicas. But after this, they're going to be stuck with the front yards, and that's about it. I'm still trying to grow some perennials along the edges of CHOOKYARD 2, because everything else gets scratched up something awful.

In the NORTH PICKET FENCE, a couple of 'Very Large' pumpkins have started growing from the seeds I dumped there. The sunflowers I planted out seem to be doing well, and the Elder tree is in bloom. Not sure if any of the Avos have pollinated, nor the mangoes. But the Asian basils and the salvias are coming back with a vengeance, and the lavenders are starting to reshoot after I hacked them apart in midwinter.

And the roses and the wildflower lawn are going off!

APRICOT

3rd October 2022:
APRICOT has espalier frame, will tie down the branches before going on holiday
RHUBARB is growing well
POTATOES are growing well (should be some good spuds in November and maybe for Christmas!)

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AVO-SHED

18th October:

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weekend gardening things

Plants seem to do heaps better with seaweed solution, chook manure, and banana peel water. Also dilute urine. Not terribly surprising, but definitely good news!

Need to make a weed tea sometime in the next few days. Now that we have the water tank connected up, there's rainwater and to spare.

I had a rhubarb that was doing okay-ish in the top of a 'strawberry pot' it was in. Pulled it out because I figured it wanted more space, put it under the apricot tree. It's going great guns! producing giant leaves with short, tangy stems. I made apple and rhubarb crumble last week and although the rhubarb stems were green, it was tasty tasty.

The strawberries with which I filled the strawberry pot are also going great guns. Possibly because I've been watering them with seaweed solution.

Asparagus is shooting okay. About a half-dozen spears a week. I have to cut them before they get too large; a bad habit of forgetting that we have them at all.

seedlings

COTTON: needs sunny with steady water options

EGGPLANT: a couple in the APPLE-CREPE bed, then some in the triangle temp bed

TOMATOES: in the Triangle Temp Bed

PUMPKIN (gramma): No idea where this one can go.

PUMPKIN (golden nugget): maybe grow it in CREPE-APRICOT, up the reo trellis and across to the crepe tree again?