Author Archives: Cheryl
3 month growth
April 5, 2010
More Snakes
February 6, 2010
We have caught 2 more snakes and lost 1 duck and several chickens.
We keep catching the snakes and taking them for a long drive, but there are just too many of them. I think next time we wont get chickens in the summer when they are so active. I like them in the roof keeping the rodents away but that is about it.
New Growth
January 31, 2010
Over the last 2 weeks we have not had a drop of rain but Marty continued with planting trees. The average temp was 35 Celsius which required us to water the new trees every day. Finally we are back to our usual daily rain showers which takes care of our newly planted trees for us.
Coffee Tree
Left is a coffee plant which was really important to get in first so we can keep up our energy with a good ‘ol home brew asap! This was planted on top of a Swale because it doesn’t like wet feet. Most of the land we are planting into is clay.
Clay
You can see what we are up against in the photo of the clay. Using Mother Nature in the right way we will be able to over come these obstacles. When we plant anything we mix into the soil a handful of worm castings mixed with manure, then place another handful of the mixture on the top to keep the plant feed for a while. Then cover it all in Lucien.
Yummy Bananas
Marty has also planted a banana circle or 2.
With all the rain you can now see evidence of the system starting to w
ork. We have swales collecting water, trees and plants thriving and sprouts from all the seeds we sowed coming to life in as little time as a month. We did however, have a hand from Marty’s sisters that decided they wanted a holiday with us but little did they know they were then put to use everyday slaving away with Marty and me planting sweet potato, lemon grass, various seeds were sown and Lucien spread everywhere. I think they had to go home to have a real holiday.
We have action on the swales
Swales being useful
Just a last sad note, we had another chicken taken from us last night by another python that consequentially has taken a trip to Cunungra for a long vacation. RIP little chicky.
View a list of Plants
January 28, 2010
You can now click the link on the left of this page under bookmarks to view all the plants we have purposefully introduced to our farm.
All of their planned purposes are described when you click in the details of each plant.
I am currently working on My Garden Pal to be able to search for plants by the permaculture uses but it’s a few months away as yet.
The Greening of the desert II
December 11, 2009
The foundations and workings of the permaculture way that we are going to implement on our property can be visualised in this video “Greening of the Desert II“. This video is about half and hour long and shows the process of permaculture on a desert property in Jordan. The property was first developed with permaculture 10 years ago and was viewed world wide in “The Greening of the Desert”. Now this video gives a recap on the initial design and then revisits the property in October ’09 and catches up with what has happened 6 years later.
A must see video for anyone that cares about the future of our world.
Permaculture
December 10, 2009
We have contracted the Permaculture Research Institute of Australia to draw up our entire property in a sustainable way.
So the veggie garden that we thought we would build is now so much more. We are implementing swales, dams, and of course flora and fauna.
In the next week we’ll post the plan that they have come up with.
In the mean time we are continuing with the re-building of the soil on the arena by covering the sand with cardboard (sourced from our local fruitier and our garbage) then layered with organic matter (leaves, Lucen) and worm castings. Finally a layer of newspaper and then wood chips, to help preven weed seeds imbeding into the soil. See the following no dig garden sheet for more details on this process.
The Land and the Plan
October 1, 2009
These are the photos of the horse arena that we are going to start the veggie patch on.
Veggie Patch to be here
There is irrigation up to one end of the arena that comes from a spring fed creek.
We are going to start off with a small patch about 10 meters x 10 meters and see how we go.
Since this land is on a firm rock base with sand we need to build it up over the next few months with organic matter before we can plant.
At first we thought we would have to buy in some organic soil by the truck load and spread it over the site. But after some chats to various organic experts, namely Daniel Sheridan from On Foot Foods (expert in permaculture), also Greg Pevey from Wormtec, (check out his amazing work here www.wormtec.com.au), we have decided to try a couple of their suggestions.
First we are going to invest in a worm farm. The ones Wormtec recommend are the hanging sling type. This costs about $180 AUD. We will need more of these later but we are going to start with just one. The worm castings taken from the bottom on the sling will provide natural bacteria to break down the Lucen and together this mixture should provide enough natural material to support a veggie patch. Have a read of Wormtecs’ site as there is so much supporting material there to provide information about how this will feed our veggies and keep away pests naturally. Click here to see how easy it is to keep a worm farm.
Then we are going to drive about 5 minuets up the road and collect free used horse hay from a polo club. We will then spread this over the sand at about 20 centermeters thick.
Once we have some worm castings this will go over the hay and sit for about 12 weeks before we can plant.
Well lets get going!
The Organic Project
August 12, 2009
Our family is going to try and grow our own organic vegetables. We have the space to do this and are slowly gathering knowledge from books and friends. We realise this is going to be a huge task with a lot of upfront costs.
We hope to use this blog as a way for others to let us in on their secrets to success and also learn from our successes and mistakes and see the actual cost over a year to grow your own organics.
Shortly we will post photos of our area raw so you can watch the transformation process.
My husband (Marty) and I will be editors on this blog and our helpers will be our four children (hopefully).
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