The Greening of Gavin

One Bed At A Time

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I have been a very busy lad in the garden today. 

The first thing I did was pop next door to have a look at Danni and Dale’s veggie patch to see how it was progressing.  I gave Dale some sweetcorn seed that I saved from last years crop, and he planted it during the week.  So far they have parsley, loose leaf lettuce, tomatoes, corn and butternut pumpkins growing quite well.  Danni was a bit unsure as to whether the tomatoes were growing, so she marked the stakes with a permanent marker last week to check if there was a difference in height.  Well all tomatoes have grown about 5cm with on of them growing about 10cm in a week.  Then they popped over to our place to have a look how we constructed the chicken coop.  I discussed the design and how I built it in elaborate detail with Dale, and offered to help him with some of the construction.  They have an old dog house next door that, with a bit of modification, we could convert into a chook house.  The run would be quite easy, with 4 posts, a basic frame and wire.  Should be easy enough, and I might even ask Adam to help out as well.  We agreed to catch up next Sunday and make a start.  Well done so far neighbours, your veggie patch is going well. 

Now if we can just start to convince a few more of our neighbours to join us, we will have the beginning of a small community who could swap produce and help each other out with knowledge sharing.  It would be fantastic to get this type of thing up and running, because in hard times (and in good), it is nice to know that there is team of households that will have no problems with what ever we face in the future.  A little bit like a mini Transition Town, but more like a hamlet I suppose.  Daharja over at Cluttercut has just written a great post about the Transition Town she is helping to set up in Dunedin, New Zealand.  I think if we can get enough neighbours involved just in our little area, then a Transition town in Melton West would be the next logical step.  We will see what happens over the next few months.

So after the neighbours departed, I got stuck into a new veggie patch in the front yard.  Here is what it looked like before I got stuck into it.  Click to enlarge any of the photos.

I took all of the bark mulch off and distributed it into the other beds, then I removed all of the plants that were still alive.  The two Nandina were placed in pots, the two Liriopes replaced a dead one in the deck area, and the flax and Cordilyne were transplanted into another bed in the front yard. The dead weeping cherry tree is now a feature in the chook house.  Hopefully they will use it as a day perch.  Here is a photo of some of the successful transplants.

 

After all the plants were replanted, I got stuck into making the new bed fit for vegetables.  I sprinkled generious handfulls of Dynamic Lifter all over.  Then a few handfuls of dolomite lime to lower the acidity in the soil due to the bark mulch.  Then I dug it all over with the pitch fork.  About 6 cm down I struck solid clay, so it took me about an hour to complete this task.  I took it very slow, and took regular breaks so that I didn’t damage my back or flare it up.  I managed to get a fair bit of clay mixed in with the garden bed soil that we imported in.  This was mainly to improve the water retention properties of the bed.  After all of the turning, I watered the bed once and found that the soil just repelled the water, and it just sat in pools on the surface.  I had to repeat the dig then water process three more times before the water began to soak in.  Thank goodness for the clay, because it helped soak in the moisture.  Here is the bed after a good rake to level it out.

I watered it one more time with a watering can with some Seasol solution to help improve the soil.  Tomorrow night after work, I will put down a layer of mulch, and then plant some cucumber and melon seedlings that I have managed to stop the earwigs from devouring over the last two weeks.  They will have plenty of room to sprawl all over the place.

You may remember the first bed I planted out in the front yard.  It is doing very well now and the sweet corn and a few self seeded tomatoes are about 30 cm high and very healthy.  There are 32 corn plants, and 4 tomatoes growing in this bed.

 

Hopefully, as others see our efforts in the front yard, they too will want to start a veggie patch.  Always happy to help out.

As for the rest of the patch in the back of the yard, here are a few progress shots I took this afternoon.  Here are the chooks fertilising the plum tree for me.

Here is a shot of some Kent pumpkin seedlings that were growing in the worm farm.  I planted out 4 of these today.  They are yellow because they haven’t had any sunlight.  Even the worms have become gardeners at my place!

A few days ago, I transplanted some of them into the pumpkin patch.  This is what happens to the yellow seedlings in about 3 days.

Nice and healthy with strong first true leaves forming well.

My tomatoes are doing well.  I rescued all of these self seeded plants from under two of the citrus trees.  The seedlings were growing from tomatoes that had fallen into the pots last summer.  What a bonus.  So far, I think we have a mix of Purple Russian and Tigerella, with a few Tommy Toes for good measure.

 

4 out of the 7 plants already have fruit on them, with one nearly ripe Purple Russian tomato ready to be picked in the next week.  I expect a bumper crop from this lot.

The onions that I planted in Easter this year are coming along well.  They do take a long time to grow, but are well worth the wait.  If they are going to be anything like last year, they will be the best tasting onions I will eat this year.  The tops are starting to die off and the bulbs are growing fat.  In about 2-3 weeks they should be ready for harvest.  I can’t wait to make some more pickled onions.  I only have one jar left from last years crop and they are oh so nice to crunch on.

 

Here is an few shots of the seedlings I am still growing for the second wave.  I have about 4 capsicum and 20 more tomato seedlings doing well in small pots.  The is a mix of tomatoes, from Tigerella, Mortgage Lifter, Elfie, Yellow Currant, Purple Russian, and a mix of types.  Once the onions are pulled, I will plant most of them out in that bed, and the rest over in the chook house bed where the peas were.

Here are the cucumbers (spacemaster) for the front bed that I prepared today.

And some Horned African Melons for the front bed as well.

Here is some more rainbow chard for us and the chooks.

All the seedlings were planted from seed.  This is about the third batch of seedlings I have tried to grow.  Many did not germinate in the first round, even in the greenhouse.  I tried way too early in September, and it was just too cold.  The second lot got eaten by earwigs, so at least now that I have them under control, I can get some late crops in.

The citrus is going great this year.  I gave each tree a handful of Dynamic Lifter in their pots today, and watered it in well.  As every plant has fruit, it is a good time to apply because I have found that they are very heavy feeders as the fruit develops with the leaves turning yellow when they lack nutrients.  I will have to feed them again in about 6 weeks time.  I apologise for the blurry photos but you get the general idea.  These are Lemonade.

And these are Mandarins

 

I didn’t include the pictures of the Lemon and Tahitian Lime, because they were just too blurry.  The camera I used does not like close-up shots.  Sorry about that.

Never a dull moment at TGOG’s house, well, not in the garden anyway!

I will leave you with this little quote that I think rings true.  I am not a Buddhist, but this wisdom is undisputable.

Live your life in happiness, even though those around you lead lives which are unhealthy, and wish to spread their illness to you. Be Happiness itself. – Buddha

The Humble Earthworm

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The Earthworm is a wonderful creature. I have a few thousand of them in my worm farm, and it never ceases to amaze me of the types of food these, the most under-appreciated species I know, will devour. I can feed them just about anything organic except onion, citrus and meat. Other than that, if it can rot, they will eat it eventually. They especially like avocado flesh.

Worms will not eat fresh food, and wait until it is well rotted before eating the vegetable matter. I have found that the best way to feed them so they process quicker, is to blend the kitchen scraps, because the smaller food particles then rot down faster due to the increased surface area and broken up fibrous structures. However, I have had to stop blending because our food processor is on its last legs and Kim thinks I had something to do with it! Here is a quick video of my worm farm and some of my slimy friends.

One thing that particularly has interested me is the way they reproduce. You see, they are hermaphrodites, so they have both male and female organs and produce both sperm and eggs. Many times I have caught them at it, entwined in a passionate affair, lining up their sexual organs and attempting to produce their cocoons that contain the embryonic worms. The baby worms are born without sexual structures, which take about 60 to 90 days to develop. They reach full maturity at about one year. To better understand the mating process of the earthworm, have a look at the video below. It is one of a series about insect mating habits, made by Isabella Rossellini. You can find the rest of the series called Green Porn, on Youtube if you search for “Isabella Rossellini Green”


The best thing I appreciate about the earthworm is that they make fertiliser for me in the form of worm wee and castings. Wikipedia states that;

“fresh earthworm casts are 5 times richer in available nitrogen, 7 times richer in available phosphates and 11 times richer in available potash than the surrounding upper 6 inches (150 mm) of soil. In conditions where there is plenty of available humus, the weight of casts produced may be greater than 4.5 kg (10 lb) per worm per year, in itself an indicator of why it pays the gardener or farmer to keep worm populations high.”

Other than in my worm farm, which is populated by compost worms, I have noticed a considerable increase in the normal earthworm population around my garden since I began organic gardening techniques. I have found them virtually anywhere where there are thick layers of mulch and rotted material, and where the soil is constantly moist. They even turn up in the older type compost bins in small numbers because these bins don’t heat up. Even though we have a very compact clay based soil where we live, there are worms present everywhere. They are increasing in large number around the hen house, mainly because of the extra nutrients around this area and partly because I sheet mulched with cardboard before I put the house in position. When I find a big fat worm on the surface, I throw it into the chicken run and laugh at the antics. The chooks all go crazy over these tasty morsels!

In conclusion, worms are an integral part of any home waste management system and organic garden. Between the worms, the chickens, the dog, and the bacteria in the compost bins, all of my organic waste is processed here on-site at TGOG’s home farm. Now if I can just get rid of plastic packaging, we would have no non-recyclable waste at all….

“The plow is one of the most ancient and most valuable of man’s inventions; but long before he existed the land was in fact regularly plowed, and still continues to be thus plowed by earthworms. It may be doubted whether there are many other animals which have played so important a part in the history of the world, as have these lowly organized creatures.”

Charles Darwin (1809 – 1882)

Fixing the Greenhouse Day

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Today was fix the greenhouse day. Here is the background. Last year I suggested to Kim that other green bloggers and many books I read mentioned that it was much cheaper to grow your own seedlings from seed than to buy the seedlings for $5 at the nursery for 6 plants. So, she went about having a look and buying a great present for her hubby from eBay, for which I thank her dearly.

I ended up with a pretty cool plastic covered greenhouse that stands about 1.8 metres and is about 70 cm square. I used it last year in August with a fair bit of sucess, however because it was out of site, it was basically out of mind, and I kept forgetting to check if the seedlings needed watering, or re-potting or even checking if it was too hot. To add to my problems, somehow the snails found their way in and ate just about any seedling that managed to break through each night. I never did get to plant any rockmelons last year like I had hoped. They were just to irresistable for the snails!

Just before May this year, we moved the greenhut to the main vegetable patch, however, because we did not secure it to anything, it blew over about 5 times due to heavy winds (you think I would have figured it out after the first time), and about the 6th time it blew over, something ripped a huge hole in the top of the plastic cover and being PVC, it became brittle. Now being the keen gardener I am, I didn’t want to throw away the greenhut because of a simple tear, so Kim decided to repair it for me today. I found her some waterproof gaffa tape, and she broke out her massive roll of bubble wrap, and low and behold, she had constructed a new roof where the tear was, and had tied it to the railing that surrounds our deck quite securely. That way, we see the hut every single day, as it is in clear view. I even had a spare thermometer that was given to me at the Sustainable Living Festival in February, and tied it to the inside of the hut with string. It was 13 degrees outside, but a nice warm 20 degrees celcius inside the plastic hut! Just the right temperature for tomatoes, chilies and capsicums to germinate before spring starts, so that I get a good head start.

It would be about now that I would insert some pictures for everyone to see, which I did take this afternoon. Unfortunately, someone who shall remain nameless deleted the pictures to take some videos of Ben running around in my Captain Planet cape and cuffs! Not to worry, because not only will we have photos of Kim’s repair work tomorrow, we will also have photos of the six tomato seedlings that are about 20 cm tall that I re-potted today from around the Mandarin tree that we have growing in a very large pot. The tomatoes self seeded, and we are pretty sure that they are of the Tommy Toe variety, because that was the only variety that wrapped itself around the tree early this year. Some of the fruit must have fallen into the mulch under the tree and germinated. The same thing has happened under the thornless Lemon tree which is the next row over (which has thorns, ouch), but we thinK that they are either the green zebra or tigerella variety because they were the closest variety to that tree’s pot.

I took it very slowly so as not to flare my back up again, and managed to extract half a 10 litre bucket of home made compost and the other half filled with my newly aquired organic coconut planting medium and mixed the two together. What a fantastic potting mix it made, with lots of nutrients and water absorbing properties! I then kneeled at the manderin tree like I was praying in church, and carefully transplanted each of the six tomato seedlings into old plastic pots that I had saved from last year. After watering them in with a weak solution of seasol and water, I placed them in the newly repaired greenhut, and then hung up the thermometer and took the photos. Like I said, you will get a treat tomorrow, and get a look at Kim’s great handy work. It even withstood the hail and thunderstorm that we received at about 4 pm this afternoon, so it must be ready for the growing season! I think we received about 2mm of rain in about 30 minutes, which was welcome by all of my plants.

We have also figured out, as hinted at previously, that we can take about 6 minutes of good quality video with our digital SLR camera. We really hadn’t tried it out before, but had some promising screeners of Ben running around this afternoon. Ben is writing a script about saving the planet (pretty good for an 8 yr old), as he is currently reading the book “True Green – For Kids”, which is written for kids in a language they can relate to. For example, you should have seen him a couple of days ago when he found out that we can feed dog pooh to compost worms. He wanted to make a new worm farm there and then. I promised that we would give it a go this weekend, as I have two plastic boxes that I found about three months ago on one of my wombling trips. As I have more than enough compost worms, we can make some bedding with the organic coconut mix and then add the worms and slowly add Butch’s daily doings. As Butch is now mainly being fed vegetables with a little bit of cooked chicken each day (he is getting old and needs the fibre), I don’t think the worms will have too much trouble with the faeces. It is better than bagging it in compostable cornstarch plastic bags and sending it to landfill. Those bags cost a fortune let alone adding them to landfill!

Anyway, we are hoping to put together a little “Save the Planet, by saving energy” video in the next few days, starring Ben of course, and the older girls if they let me. Stay tuned, because my video editing skills are a bit rusty, but it should work out fine, and as I said earlier in the post, photos tomorrow, I promise!