2023 - permabee

WHEW.

Permabee done!

It was a long day - from 10am until about 5pm. A few people left at lunchtime or just after, but the stalwarts stayed on until sundown to finish up the projects to a point where I could manage them myself (sort of). So we didn't get everything done to completion, but we made headway, and I'll take that!

Lunch was a hit - two soups (a Spiced Carrot Soup from a recipe book and a Roasted Thai Carrot & Sweet Potato soup) plus homemade bread (dutch oven, yeast-risen), plus banana bread, and other things people brought/made.

The compost bays are done, reduced in size to be smaller and more manageable. I think the back is hardwood, so that should last a decent while.

To do on Thursday get some lids on the bays - I have some roofing metal, and some wood that can be used as framing - because we have a rainy week in the offing.

The chook tunnels are 80% done - the sides are anchored in the ground, a section of the top is done, but I need to finish off the rest, which I can do myself over the coming week.

to do Thursday: cut/trim all the top sections so they're the right fit.

The garden beds got only about 50% done. The sides are prepped and cut into lengths, I have to drill them into the stakes for the corners and set them into place (sometimes digging down to get them in and level-ish).

to do Friday: take out the old, rotting wooden pieces from the garden, get the screws out (where possible) and put them on the verge for special trash collection.

to do Saturday: set up at least one garden bed, to give an idea of what needs to be properly done, and so I can work out the fitting of the chook tractor over the garden beds.

Not done: chipping the remainder of the tree branches, spraying the trees, fixing up the chook tractor. Ah well, I hoped but didn't expect.

That said, I really need to spray the trees ASAP.

Next things to do:
Clean out the blue water barrels
finish chipping the wood
fix up the wheelbarrows

dear diary: Monday 25th July

OBSERVATIONS

Bulb section of yard is sprouting.

CHOOKS

Coldie and Shantung went to the vet. Coldie is fine, all healthy, seems okay after her surgery and implant.

Shantung...they extracted about 600mL of fluid from her abdomen. There was definitely something happening there; exactly what, the vet still isn't sure. Apparently Shan still feels a bit 'lumpy' inside and so she's going back after her course of anti-inflammatories and painkillers is done. (which I forgot to give her tonight. DAMN.)

She was slow out the gate this morning, retreated into the laying box and stood there for a while. But by late morning she was out with the others, happily pecking away at the prawn heads. And she was roosting tonight, so that's good. But I'll have to medicate her in the morning again. UGH. I hate medicating chooks.

The fluid they extracted from her!

PRUNING & PREPARING

trimming down a lot of the trees, ready for Friday afternoon and the chipper...

NOTES

I feel like I don't have enough things for the composting on Saturday. I was planning to chip all my branches, but not going to manage that before the weekend.

1 barrowload of mown grass (2 days old)
1 chookyard of half-mulched compost
3 boxes of half-decomposed chips
3 boxes of fresh-mulched chips
1 box of paper shreddings
3 tubs of chicken poop
1 garden bed of indian borage
1 bucket of wood ash
1 packet of rock dust

post-permabee thoughts

Things that weren't done:

• the chook yard roofed
• apple tree growing frame shored
• back hexagon garden cleared
• the northern wall cleared

Things to do now:

• plan the stripping of the house, asbestos removal, window replacement, insulation, wrapping, cladding
• plan the strengthening of the chicken run to something solid enough to set up sections as seating around the edges. (Future plans.)

The former bee bed needs rethinkng. The norhtern side is far too damp for the avocado, which was why it was slowly sinking. An alterantive would be to put something in there that doesn't mind exposure (west winds) and likes it warm (northern slab heating) and which also can take watering.

The area surrounding it needs thought as well: in part because the grass creeps in either way - the long runners that end up taking over the bed or sneaking in under it. When I made the compost for the bed, I didn't really dig up the grass and now I kind of regret that.

I could put in bulbs, but the grass would overrun those. Also, they make mowing the lawn edges tricky, because one doesn't wnat to whipper snip the bulbs, but one wants to get the grass. Probably the best option then, is to grow something that doesn't mind being cut down and which will bounce back.

TBH, ideally this would be comfrey edges. But I'd want them according to the layout of the Linda Woodrow chook dome (in the future, which is probably quite a way away right now).

Maybe the temp option is the bulbs and a meadow mix. Plant the bulbs now, staying back from the edging. Then plant alyssum and yarrow and other easily-mown plants along the edge, pulling back the grass wherever possible. Do marigolds repel grass, by any chance? Oh, there's the thick 'looks like violet' stuff that was growing thickly around the black sapote. That looks like it might do a decent job once transplanted: dig out a big chunk and lay it down?

Need to take a photo of that and ask people what they think it is.

Right, first half of this week is planting time for the bulbs. Also need to contact Steve-the-neighbour and ask if he's willing to help chop out chunks of the frangipani. May need to get the termite guy to look at this, too.

gardening for a friend's 50th

A friend, L, is turning 50, and she's always admired my garden - she got really excited when Costa did a livestream of my garden a couple of years back, and she watches 'better homes and gardens' with her teenaged son (who's always seemed like a sweetheart).

A mutual friend from church suggested that as L's 50th Birthday Present, we could do some work in her garden: clear some of the viney tangled spaces, trim down some of the hedges. etc. The kind of thing that you need multiple people to work on so it doesn't seem endless and impossible. I volunteered to do some reconnaisance and work out what could (and should) be done (as well as what probably should not).

I did the recon with the assistance of her son, talking about the garden and what their family did so far as maintenance (mowed the lawn, really, that was it). I put together some notes and a plan, we arranged for the first weekend in July to do the majority of the work, while they're away, and to finish up in the second weekend in July. Unfortunately, we got a bucketload of rain this weekend. So that turned out to be a no-go. But we did have a group of us turn up so they could walk around, look at things, and get an idea of the plans for what could happen.

Nobody except me really gardens. They just maintain their suburban spaces as most people do. Lawns, hedging, some shrubs, etc. So we turn up and I'm talking about a patch that has a raspberry bush in it and how we have to weed the grass but leave the raspberry canes. And then we had the problem of them not recognising raspberry canes. I told them to let me trim the raspberry canes down and then anyone can pull up the grass/weeds. Sometimes, after decades of reading, observing, learning, it's hard to remember that most people don't have the body of knowledge that I do. (And some people learn it, but don't manage to keep the knowledge.)

So, there we all were in rain gear, while I explained what probably needed doing. In the end, we agreed that we'd get rid of the viney things, leave the shrubby/tree things, and probably bring along our own green waste bins to fill, because theirs is going to end up filled in a matter of hours. I mean, if I had everyone there at the same time in the same place, then I could have marshalled people to do things - but that unfortunately wasn't an option due to the rain. So people are going to come by and do what they can during the week, with a more concerted effort next weekend.

Except next weekend I have my own minibee happening at my place. ARGH.

We do think we discovered a tree - possibly the lemon tree that L's son vaguely recalls from childhood, although he thought it was more in the middle of the garden. There is no tree in the middle of the garden and there never has been...

I also have ideas about shrubbery along a southern fence - salvias, thai basil, mexican marigolds, maybe some lemongrass - but it will take a couple of seasons to actually grow everything into place (at least 2 years, probably - as long as it took my picket fence garden to really take off). Still, it'll look pretty, attract bees, etc.

(Speaking of bees: varroa mite is in the country. This is DIRE and terrible for our crops and for pollination of our crops. I had a native beehive the summer before last, but it died and the friend who split her bees for me initially had a partner who was in the last stages of cancer for the last 18 months and so she's been in no state to deal with the beehive and to check out if it was something like hive beetle, or what. I haven't dared to open it up myself. Maybe I should ask someone else with native bees about it? IDK. At this point, I imagine getting hold of native bees is going to be like winning the lottery; everyone with native bees will be holding tight to them.)

Anyway, I'll have to go around early this week to trim down the things that need trimming which my non-gardening friends are unlikely to recognise.

Also: do some reading up about whether the canes need to be cut back or just trimmed to a reasonable length to fruit. I don't know what kind of raspberry it is (I need to work out with my own raspberries what kinds they are as it is, and I already trimmed them yesterday - oops), but the raspberry will need a trimming if only so we can get down to the ground and pull the weeds.

EOFY + Minibee

Raspberries are fruiting - think it's an autumn one:

Sprayed front stone fruit with Lime Sulfate (last time was done was on the 2nd, also Lime Sulfate), budswell is about to happen. I'll try to spray with Copper Spray after 9th June which is when I've rescheduled the minibee, but will likely lose a few of the early flowers.

MINIBEE PLANS

• trim rosebush down to 50cm
• trim frangipani down
• trim bee bushes down to 50cm (salvias, thai basil, mexican marigold)
• trim fruit trees down to 2m
• dig out kumquat
• dig out lychee
• dig out acerola cherry
• dig out citrus
• move chip mulch to back paths

Dear Diary - 3rd June

WEATHER

FRICKING FREEZING MR BIGGLESWORTH (5C-8C)

CHOOKS

Noticed some reluctance to roost: have Alphamite watered last night

In triangle orchard, have done a decent job of scratching things up, particularly on south side

No laying

Scraped off some of the chook poop to the floor, need to scrape the floor off and bin/box for fertilising

PRUNING & PREPARING

Cream-coloured potatoes to be planted in triangle bed with mustards/radish/turnips as green mulch - a la Limestone Pumpkins-to-Potatoes

Limestone Pumpkins-to-Potatoes
1. pull up pumpkin vines and leaves, put down over beds - chop and drop (early june)
2. cover vines with decomposed chook manures and leafmulch (early june)
3. seed potatoes laid in two rows, one either side of mound, on top of manure and leafmulch, then covered by hay mulch (early june)
4. loose hay mulch applied as cover (early june)
5. compost strips applied along centre of mound at depth of mulch, planted out with cover crops and green maure (early june)
6. Once cover crops/green manure mature, pull-and-drop while still young (late august?)
7. Mulch around young potato plants (late august), laying potato plants in towards middle (where pull-and-drop happened), can also scavenger.
8 Prepare for pumpkins/squash - fill dug out 'pods' with compost for seedlings (early sept)
9. Plant out pumpkin seedings in pods. (sept)
10. Pumpkins will start taking over (~Oct)

Video link here.

PLANTING

Those damn brassicas!

RIPENING

A handful of kumquats, a handful of oranges

HARVEST

Oranges, maybe?

NOTES

Permabee next weekend (11th June) will involve:
- trimming down fruit trees (dual stone, peach-neko, plum, donut peach)
- digging up some badly-placed trees (lemon, lychee, kumquat - multi-citrus? kaffir lime?) and putting into pots
- trimming down and pulling out perennial shrubs (salvias, thai basil, mexican tarragon, lavender) and putting into pots
- digging out compost bays and sieving the contents for use
- digging up and dividing rhizomes (arrowroot)
- chipping the trimmings and building into a compost pile.

permabee: chook enclosure

Had a permabee on the weekend to enclose the 2nd chook yard, partly to give some protection against bush turkeys and swooping birds.

Not only got the enclosure (roof) completed, but also trimmed the overhanging branches, shredded the branches, raked up the leaves, dug out the mugwort tree, dragged over the fig tree for replanting, sieved the existing compost, and made a new compost!

I love permabees; opportunity to meet, chat, get to know people, work in concert with others, learn, and get shit done!

Now need to find some other members who'd like to get shit done at their place...

Permabee: what happened next

It was a much smaller permabee than the one in December – only 7 people including me. Thankfully, Margaret of Moss House brought her partner Kris along to help and he provided plenty of muscle and practicality.

We moved the water tank, remade the compost bioreactor (chopping up the smaller pieces in the process), and planted out the front treefence.

I dithered a lot. Particularly in the planting of the treefence, but it’s done now. From the north, going south:

• seed avocado (already planted)
• kaffir lime
• elder tree
• macadamia
• lemon tree

Having discussed the removal of the jacaranda with my sister, we discovered that Margaret’s husband loves both climbing (with ropes and harnesses) and tree lopping. He’s willing to do it ‘just for fun’. That’s $1K saved! Now just have to deal with the council on the issue of the jacaranda.

I’m thinking we might do the food forest around the Flame Tree. The chiefest problem is that all the trees that we have left are evergreens: black sapote (chocolate pudding), kumquat, mango, lychee, etc. And they’ll block out the light under the tree in the middle of summer which is not the best outcome.

Perhaps the kumquat could go at the lounge corner of the house, while the lychee is at the lounge-porch corner, add the acerola cherry in as a low hedge/bush to shade the brick wall… That leaves the mango, banana circle, paw paws, pineapples, 1x avocado, and chocolate pudding tree for where the jacaranda presently is, once it’s been cut down. That should get sun all year around. Water may be a problem but isn’t it always? I can probably run a bucket greywater line out that way eventually.

The mulberry and 1x avocado at the gate corner would also work nicely: they won’t be blocking anything but each other, and the mulberry should provide the avo with some shade/protection, so long as I keep it trimmed down. Maybe?

Temporary plantings along front bed (one season)

• sunflowers
• marigolds
• poppies/poppy mixes (rake away mulch, bare a line of soil, moisten soil, sow seeds, moisten with soil)
• eggplant
• tomatoes
• broccoli

Plant (perennials, longer term)

• comfrey & borage
• lawn thyme (dig out around the water tap and plant the thyme)
• oregano
• rosemary bush
• lavendar
• parsley
• allium flower bulbs (not sure if annual or perennial)
• lemongrass
• rhubarb crowns (need to acquire first)
• vietnamese mint

Good planting days for August are listed here and I still have to think about what to companion plant with the apricot. I have asparagus which aren’t performing fantastically where they are – decent, but not amazing – but sometimes I feel like that’s the story of my garden…

Permabee plans (iteration 1)

Move water tank
a. prereq: chop down bush
b. prereq: set down frame to hold gravel (sleepers)
c. prereq: gravel into frame
d. buy: short metal stakes for framework, ~1m cube gravel

undo biocompost & remake
a. empty biocompost
b. reset frame
c. chip the chips to make them smaller
d. remake biocompost
e. get: coffee grounds, horse manures, grass clippings from neighbours, café wastes; mix it all in. (ask for: comfrey and other micronutrient plants)

plan(t) out front food forest/fence
a. macadamias and acerola cherry
b. elder | loquat | mulberry | black sapote | avocado
c. citruses (? bad time in winter – leave until Oct-Nov and plant down at the edges of flame tree once jacaranda is gone?)
d. underplanting with borage, vietnamese basil, comfrey, sprinkle with floral seeds in between

plan(t) out banana circle
a. not actually a circle, but certainly a grouping:
b. bananas, mango, pawpaw, black sapote, lychee, avocade
c. ginger, galangal, turmeric,

the permabee post

So Sunday came and was crazy hot - 35C with strong winds in the afternoon.

But we got SO MUCH done!

1. Permanent chook run

Ironically, while this was something I particularly wanted completed, it didn't get finished. It didn't even get started, due to the one thing which I'd casually earmarked as 'necessary but not an actual task' turning out to be seriously labour and time-intensive!

I'll talk about this at the end of the list.

2. connect up rainwater tanks

This was beautifully done! Two linked 60L barrels set on a platform with a tap installed so the water can be bucketed elsewhere, or channelled down a hose to the orchard!

3. make composting bioreactor

At first the bioreactor was difficult because nobody had seen it done before. However, after I got my laptop out and showed the taskgroup the video of the Johnson-Su bioreactor, they got the gist of it, and things proceeded pretty well.

A compost bioreactor is essentially a 'set and forget' compost that's supposed to be very rich in fungal nutrients because it doesn't get turned to aerate, thereby requiring the biota to readjust when everything is turned over. Instead of turning, six 'air columns' run through the middle of the pile, allowing the bacterial to breathe and do their thing. It takes a while to break down (some 5-6 months was the estimate) but the results are excellent, and not having to turn it means you can create several of these around the yard and deplete one while others do their thing.

Bare space where the bioreactor is going:

They put down a wooden pallet on bricks (to keep it from rotting) and then positioned the bioreactor on top.

Completed but lidless bioreactor on the day:

The bioreactor contents were basically two garbage bags of horsemanure, two containers of guineapig litter, one container of chook litter, and a helluvalot of chip mulch.

A day later, with the pipes pulled out to leave the airholes, and a 'lid' on top to keep the moisture in.

Two days later, with a water barrel that gets filled with the 'waste shower water' that fills up a bucket while showering, and which seeps into the compost to keep it moist:

This one, more than the other projects, will probably have pictures in future, so others can see what it looks like as it breaks down over time.

4. (move lattice and) set up composting bays

The front and back yards of the house were previously defined by the position of a lattice that ran in line with parts of the house. It left a gap behind the shed of about 1.2m, enough for a composting space, but not a very easy place to work. I wanted the lattice moved forward to run in line with another corner of the house, and a couple of compost bays set up behind the shed.

Late on Sunday afternoon:

This afternoon (Wednesday):

The idea of the composting bays is to have something that regularly gets added to. Paper wastes, vegetable wastes unsuitable for the worms or chooks, possibly chook manures. It will require turning after a while, but right now, it's just settling with the compost that was made on Sunday (left-hand bay) and the pine-and-banksia woodchip mulch that I've been filling the right-hand bay with for the last couple of days. We'll see about the results - ideally, there should be more 'green'/nitrogenous wastes to make a hot compost, but the chips are only about 4 days old and might still have some decomposing to do. Either way, neither of these composts is likely to be much use for a few months at least.

5. empty, move, and refill vegepod

This took somewhat longer than I expected; I was just expecting a move-to-a-new-location, but the wonderful women working on this task went about not only repositioning my vegepod and making sure it was flat and supported and positioned to my satisfaction, but also turned it into a wicking bed. Which I kind of wanted, but didn't figure I had the time/materials to do.

Well, they found the time and scrounged the materials, and although this meant that the task took longer than expected, it's a wonderful surprise and will be extremely useful!

Next week, I'll plant out the melons, cucumbers, tomatoes, eggplants, and mild/sweet peppers that I've been growing for the last month, and set up some wires to run up to the roofline. The goal is to get the vines growing up those wires to give a little shade to the house in the coming months of hot northerly sun...

6. set up bathtub gardens

We moved the bathtubs, and that was about it. I needed to seal up the holes in the tubs, and I haven't. But they're in the location I've envisioned, now I just have to get them sealed and re-positioned, and then we can add what goes in them. One water garden, one above-ground garden - possibly a wicking bed.

Unexpected

Team Chook Pen had the task of not only creating a run for the chooks, but moving two lattices (one of them blocking the area for the compost bay) and combining them into a single fence.

I put this down as a throwaway line - in brackets - a task that needed to be done in order to get around to the chook pen.

It took ALL DAY.

Out of all the tasks, this was the most time-intensive one! Taking the lattices apart, digging out the fenceposts, digging the new post holes, putting it all back together... A team of five or six started when the bee began, around 10am, and it was pretty much the very last thing to be completed around 4:30pm.

WOW!

But the result is also WOW!

Overall, that is easily several months (if not several years) worth of work done in a single day by dedicated teams of people who love gardening. The old adage "many hands make light work" precisely sums it up!

The non-existent chook pen is a bit of a pain, but I have a reasonable idea of how to go about it now, I just have to kick myself into actual gear in the next couple of weeks...

I'm thinking about applying for a permabee next year, too - this one to simply plant out a food forest along the picket fence line...

Permabee

Got a permabee happening at my place on sunday - a Permaculture working bee - with my local permies group, and while I'm looking forward to it, I'm also a little worried that I won't have enough to keep everyone occupied for the entire day.

1. Permanent chook run
- using metal fencing in picture
- this is somewhere for the chooks to go that isn't the backyard while I'm growing things out the back in the middle of summer. I can move the chooks around the backyard in winter, but I want the space for growing things in summer
- need to work out the plan of which piece is going where and how to make it all fit together (or I could ask people to do it?)

2. connect up rainwater tanks - the main 4000L rainwater tank hasn't arrived, but we have a couple of 60L barrels that could be set up next to the carport and connected up to the downpipe there.

3. make composting bioreactor
- full resource guide
- this is an experiment in seeing if this kind of composting system could work: just set and forget until it's needed six months later (and I always need soil in my garden)
- this will be the most labour intensive one to do

4. (move lattice and) set up composting bays
- one video here
- another one here
- still another one here

5. empty, move, and refill vegepod
- can do this myself but will be easier with multiple people

6. set up bathtub gardens
- can do this myself also

On re-reading this post, I suspect I've underestimated just how long it's going to take to do some of these things. We'll be lucky to get the chook pen, the bioreactor, and the compost bays done in a day, I think!