Permaculture Design Course: Weekend 1

Permaculture Design Statement (draft)

Our garden is productive and abundant, a neighbourhood icon and influence, abundant and intriguing. It's a space I take pride in and enjoyment in working in. I enjoy the bounty grown in it, the animals that live there, and consider it somewhere I want to be in to read or pray or reflect. My garden is a green paradise in the midst of a straitlaced suburbia. Retrosuburbia in action. The house is comfortable in all rooms and all seasons, with sufficient space for entertaining, enterprise, and storage, as well as living areas, and a preparation area for food coming in from the garden.

Maybe needs more feeling words?

What do I want to feel in my garden? Pride and satisfaction. I want a change from my house spaces and the structures there. I'd like to have somewhere to relax a little, but mostly to produce food in-season and store it out of season, and for other people to take an example from. I want people to be able to say "maybe I can't do all of that, but I can do this one little bit". Or for neighbourhood people to be able to contribute to it or work out how to do their own.

I definitely want a smoother transition from the garden to the house - preparation spaces and storage spaces.

ETA:

Final:

Our garden is productive and abundant, a neighbourhood icon and influence, abundant to the knowing eye and intriguing to those who haven't been taught to see. It's a space I take pride in and which I enjoy working in. It provides my household bounty in a steady supply of eggs, and year-round vegies, and provides for the animals that live there. I consider it somewhere I want to be in to read or pray or reflect.

My garden is a green paradise in the midst of a straitlaced suburbia, a hub of connection in a disconnected city: retrosuburbia in action. Our house is comfortable in all seasons, using minimal energy, with sufficient space for entertaining, enterprise, and storage, as well as for resting and relaxing in the slower spaces of life and living.

HAVE
land - one sixth acre
3 br house (1960s fibro cement over wooden frame, wooden floors)
chickens
fruit trees (15)
vegetable beds (10)
compost bays (2)
contemplation chair
3500L water tank
lawn space
solar panels

NEED
solar battery
annual beds in front yard
verge garden
more water management
solid chookhouse
cold cupboard
electric bicycle
renovation and retrofit for energy management
replace gas with induction
greywater processing

WANT
front yard mandala
humanure
permie neighbours (other permies in street)
reconfiguration of driveway and garden orientations

I may have to rejig what are needs and wants

B1: wants a house that comfortable in all rooms in all seasons, with good energy management, and space

the rain steady drumming on the roof above my head...

With all the floods up and down the east coast of Australia, I'm fine, my family's fine, all the friends I know in the hardest hit areas are alive and well and their houses have been spared.

I give grateful thanks for that providence.

Doesn't change that a lot of other people are now stuck without homes, many of them without hope, and they're not getting much encouragement or hope or leadership from the parties in power who believe in hauling oneself up by one's own bootstraps, never mind if you're barefoot.

Mostly, at my place, it's rain. Endless rain - and it may be May, or even later, before we see a significant break in the weather. But all I need is a few days between downpours and I think I can manage this.

Right now, the watertank is 95-100% full and keeps getting filled.

In between storms I'm pumping the excess into this bin.

And in the bottom of the bin is a pump that's pumping the water up to the 'triangle orchard/garden':

It's complicated and not a great way to do it, but the bin is there anyway to deal with the runoff from the eaves (the gutter above it has something in it that blocks the rain; this has been a problem for two years. And the water goes into the garden and the soil absorbs it. I'll take it.

Dear Diary (with pics!): 3rd-4th March

CHOOKS

Chooks are SUUUUUUPER sodden thx to the rain, but they should be somewhat less-eaten by mites, thx to me entirely removing the 'base' of the roosting zone:

It's a bit chillier for their underskirts, maybe, but their feathers are made to keep them pretty well through very cold climates, so long as they're not sodden. And the space is still security-enclosed against foxes and other predators, which is the main protective thing.

But I did also get Coopex, which is permethrin, which is not ideal but somewhat necessary. A couple of the chooks are really reluctant to go into the coop at night, most likely on account of the mites, and it's going to need some long-term management.

I need to decide whether to spray it down with water, let it dry, then spray it down with coopex. I've dusted the inside with diatomaceous earth, and I'm wondering if the coopex will work through the DE.

PRUNING & PREPARING

Everything needs pruning. Especially the comfrey and the fruit trees:

*sigh* But everything's utterly sodden right now.

HARVEST

Last of the apples gone:

And the parentals have a bucketload of bunya pine cones:

I'm still trying to get rid of the bunya nuts; got a lot of interest, but nobody wants to come out while it's raining.

NOTES

We've had a couple of weeks of on-and-off rain, and then the last four days it's been steady and significant. Flooding all up and down the east coast, from Sydney up to the Sunshine Coast. There's flooding in low-lying areas of Sydney, particularly the Hawkesbury-Nepean floodplain (now full of houses) Even friends whose water-management systems are considerably better than mine are reporting runoff from their properties.

One of the plans for this year is to put a water management system in place: greywater management, at the very least. If I'd arranged to run the rainwater tank to the toilet, then at least we'd be using the collected water in the tank. It's presently ridiculously high, and gets topped up with every slighty-greater-than-a-sprinkle-of-rain. It's a bit stressful.

The entire property is sodden at this point: the water's seeped into the soil and everything squishes under your feet. It's going to need a few days of no rain to solidify things up - but that's not predicted for another two weeks. Actually, the low pressure system has been forecast for 'two weeks ahead' for the last week. It never seems to end, it's always predicted to run for another two weeks.

Let's hope not...

dear diary, 24th February

CHOOKS

Dusted the coop again. Won't have a chance to properly wash-and-dry it again for at least another week. Need to dust the girls before this weekend.

PREPARING

Dug out the first northern lawn edge up against the triangle garden, dug out comfrey and planted.

HARVEST

2 Braeburn apples, 4 golden delicious (still green). Tomatoes still not ripening.

NOTES

Grain mites transferred inside the house. Most likely off a bugspray can - at least, that's what I'm hoping. Doesn't seem to have hit any grain yet, but the other problem is that the place is a dust-trap. God only knows what bits and pieces of food, crumbs, scraps, whatever, have gathered in, under, over, around the dining table where I discovered the mites on a bottle of tequila and margarita mix. Wiped down what I could up the end, but we're probably going to bomb the kitchen-dining-lounge-hall tonight.

dear diary: 21st Feb

CHOOKS

Cleaned out the coop. Mites, some of them blood-fed. Didn't manage to scrub it down (rain was pending), but rinsed it down and out with water, then changed the floor from the wooden slab to a wire grille. Bedding was transferred (messily) to the small all-green bin where it will stay until at least September. But doubtless plenty of the mites and their eggs ended up on the ground and will make their way back to the chooks. Luckily I bought 9kg of diatomaceous earth for sprinkling, but I have the awful feeling it may need a chemical bomb, as un-permaculture as it is. Although I wonder if sticky bands might work around the legs after a good rinse-off?

Someone once said, perhaps a little cheekily, that mites were part of keeping chickens. I'm not particularly happy with that conclusion, but certainly the situation I have them in at present (wooden coop, plenty of places for them to hide and breed) is not helping.

PLANNING

Cement floor for coop, raised-and-bolted wooden frame so coop can be sprayed down and water can drain out the bottom. Metal walls, metal roof, metal grating for roosts. Maybe an insulated roof to reduce the heat during the summer overhead sun.

NOTES

Will have to do another coop-clean in a fortnight's time once the weather dries out. It's going to be showers for the next 10 days, easing back off around the 6th March (we hope). But overall, the wet and the warm this summer hasn't helped the bug situation.

dear diary: 20th Feb

A small change in programming. I'm going to be posting to this with a lot of 'diary entries': things that are going on in the garden. i'm a lot faster typing than I am writing, so hopefully will get more down. The main problem is that text is very rigid and I don't have a lot of space for scribbling 'notes in margins'.

May have to use the comments for that.

CHOOKS

Tractor moved onto PLUMSTONE bed on Thursday, leafy greens stripped within two days.

Goongbao is broody again. She's in the cage of shame.

Automatic door is playing up again.

Shantung is laying but not every day, 2 out of 3.

PRUNING & PREPARING

CHERRY TREE: hard prune. I feel like I should prune it way down to stumps so that new growth sprouts up.

DUAL PLUM, 4APPLE: still needs to be done.

4 STONE, DONUT PEACH, DUAL PEACH: will need another hard prune come midwinter.

APRICOTAVO bed: planted out Clucker Tucker in eastern half (western half still has beans) for when chook tractor goes on

GARLIC: 3 cloves in seaweed solution to get roots (plant out somewhere accessible for green shootage - BACK WICKING perhaps?)

ELDERBERRY: dug it up from front picket bed. Decide what goes there - APPLE or BLACK SAPOTE?

Sieved some compost: about 6 forkfuls before exhausting

PLANTING

STRAWBERRY: runners in water waiting to be planted out into their own pots

SHALLOTS: planted roots into BABYPOD1, hoping for green shootage.

RIPENING & POLLINATING

TOMATOES: large cherry, and large lobed-types, orange ovals in LOWER BED

PUMPKINS: chook corner pumpkin is producing itty bitty fruit but they're not pollinating

PUMPKINS: Sugar baby under apples is producing a couple of fruit, pollinating okay.

HARVEST

POTATOES: plant has died off in washing line planter - dig out potatoes (if any)

BASIL: a couple of plants still going

APPLES: golden delicious not going golden just yet, Gala all picked

NOTES

Missing: 20 ANEMONE Mistral ( bordeaux, magenta, rosso sfumato, tigre) - [Tesselaar]

Also missing: 25 RANUNCULUS mixed [Tesselaar]

SWEET POTATO: peg down (Katerina's advice) particularly where roots

winter plans for winter plants

Did I say I wouldn't bother with BRASSICAS again?

Okay I lied.

Mind you, I do have all these seeds that need planting out, and since I've got them, I might as well, and it's not like I have a shortage of netting (although I fear the netting has a surplus of grain mites in it), so...

I planted out my brassica seeds in January, most of them have reached the typical "small seedling" stage at which point they get stuck until such a time as I find somewhere to plant them out.

There is not much bedspace in which to plant them out.

There's FRONT WICKING but I suspect there's a leak, VEGEPOD (did that last season, got aphids), TRIANGLE RAISED (still has eggplant and watermelon), TRIANGLE GROUND (has tomatoes, eggplants, and sweet potatoes growing all over it and is difficult to net besides...).

I could maybe use one of the smaller vegepods (VEG1 and VEG2) but they have a habit of drying out and letting aphids in besides. Oh, and at least one of them has grown leeks+black aphids, which I keep forgetting to soap-spray. Hm. I might need really fine netting for the small VEGEPODS. Must ask Margaret where she gets her netting from.

Otherwise, I have to find somewhere to do ONIONS (don't want to use the FRONT WICKING again because I used it last winter). Technically BATHTUB didn't grow any of the onions but plenty of the carrots. But it won't be very sunny... *grimace* Again, TRIANGLE RAISED and TRIANGLE GROUND are both still full of plants...