WWOOF blog

Harvesting Sunshine

blogadmin — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 06:21:10 +0000

My hosts here have recently installed two systems to harvest the huge amounts of sunshine that we all get here in Australia. First they installed a solar hot water system on their roof. Then just recently they installed 12 photovoltaic panels. So as well as getting their hot water heated for free by the sun, they are now generating a major portion of their electricity, in fact more electricity than they use on many days.

The hot water system uses evacuated tubes. This area is frost prone, and as well as being a very efficient system for heating hot water, the tubes are unaffected by frost. (As a bit of cross promotion you can get one of these systems at a discount through BREAZE if you live in the Ballarat region. See here: http://breaze.org.au/projects/shw/134-solar-hot-water)

One thing also to bear in mind apparently is that you should use insulation that is appropriate for solar hot water systems. Below is a picture of what they are using (with some crab apple blossoms!).

They have been able to switch off the boosting to their hot water service now Winter has ended, so now it is costing them nothing to heat their water. I know people in Ballarat with older systems who are still able to heat their water solely with the sun for most of the year.

The photovoltaic system here is very impressive! As they have the space, they have been able to install 12 panels onto a frame, which has space for more panels to be added on later. It makes so much sense to have solar panels here.

I think this is great. They are really making an effort to drastically reduce, if not eliminate, their electricity consumption from the grid. This is especially important here in Victoria, where most of our electricity is still generated from brown coal – one of the worst methods for producing green house gases. So it’s really heartening to see people being proactive and doing all they can to make a difference.

Even if you aren’t able to install these systems there is still a lot you can do to reduce your greenhouse gas emissions. There’s heaps of resources out there, for example if you are renting this booklet is great: “The Victorian Green Renters’ Guide: Sustainable Living Tips for Renters”. I found this link on the BREAZE weblinks page, here: http://breaze.org.au/resources/links

And another great way to instantly reduce your carbon emissions is to buy Accredited Green Power from your retailer. Here’s a site which gives independent advice on accredited green electricity retailers, with ratings based on which make the most difference to your emissions: http://www.greenelectricitywatch.org.au/

Veggie Patch with a View

blogadmin — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 09:14:22 +0000

The house I am currently staying at is near Bright, in NE Victoria. It is on the end of a ridge jutting out into the Ovens Valley. One side of the house looks up the valley to Mt Feathertop, the other side looks down the valley to Mt Buffalo. The veggie patch has the view down the valley. It’s the most scenic veggie patch I’ve ever visited!

As they are on the top of a hill the soil is thin and rocky, as over the years top soil erodes down into the more fertile valleys. Some top soil initially was brought up from further down the hill for the veggie plots. The two main sources of nutrients for the veggie plots here now are a worm farm, and cow manure from cattle agisted on the property. Compost and mulch from garden prunings are also used.

The worm farm was built after seeing Josh Byrne on Gardening Australia talk about a worm farm built from an old fridge. They found an old freezer at an op shop that was going free to a good home. Then they used Josh’s instructions to build the farm.

They’ve taken the shelves out. They then drilled a hole in either end and joined sections of old pipe into the drainage holes, so the water doesn’t seep into the insulation and also to block the worm castings from filling the holes. As it’s an old freezer it is insulated, keeping the worms from overheating on hot days.

Josh’s description of the worm farm are in the transcript here: http://www.abc.net.au/gardening/stories/s2058164.htm

The worm farm is very successful. They put all their chopped up kitchen scraps in the farm, the worms are very prolific and eat it all up. It produces large quantities of worm juice, which can be diluted and put on the veggies, as well as worm castings.

The cow pats also make a great source of nutrients for building up the soil. I collected some from the paddock the cows had just been moved out of, so the grass was lower making it easier to scoop them up, and they had a chance to dry a bit. All you do is shovel them up. There are numerous ways of using it – one is to make a compost tea. Jerry Coleby-Williams descibes a method here: http://www.abc.net.au/gardening/stories/s2002063.htm

The difference extra nutrients makes to the growth and yield of veggies is dramatic. It took me a while to realise that soil is not just to hold plants up, the plants take up nutrients from the soil to grow. And in turn we get the benefit of them when we eat them. This is one of the reasons for choosing organic food over non-organic. Crops grown in non-organic monocultures receive minimum fertility from NPK fertilisers. Whereas there are a much wider range of minerals and nutrients in compost and organic inputs used to grow organic food.

<1039 veggie patch>

The house I am currently staying at is near Bright, in NW Victoria. It is on in the end of a ridge jutting out into the Ovens Valley. One side of the house looks up the valley to Mt Feathertop, the other side looks down the valley to Mt Buffalo. The veggie patch has the view down the valley. It’s the most scenic veggie patch I’ve ever visited!

<984 drive>

As they are on the top of a hill the soil is thin and rocky, as over the years top soil erodes down into the more fertile valleys. Some top soil initially was brought up from further down the hill for the veggie plots. The two main sources of nutrients for the veggie plots here now are a worm farm, and cow manure from cattle agisted on the property. Compost and mulch from garden prunings are also used.

<1033 cattle>

The worm farm was built after seeing Josh Byrne’s on Gardening Australia talk about a worm farm built from an old fridge. They found an old freezer at an op shop that was going free to a good home. Then they used Josh’s instructions to build the farm.

<942 worm farm>

They’ve taken the shelves out. They then drilled a hole in either end and joined sections of old pipe into the drainage holes, so the water doesn’t seep into the insulation and also to block the worm castings from filling the holes. As it’s an old freezer it is insulated, keeping the worms from overheating on hot days.

<905 pipe>

Josh’s description of the worm farm are in the transcript here: http://www.abc.net.au/gardening/stories/s2058164.htm

<914 worms>

The worm farm is very successful. They put all their chopped up kitchen scraps in the farm, the worms are very prolific and eat it all up. It produces large quantities of worm juice, which can be diluted and put on the veggies, as well as worm castings.

<927 worm castings>

The cow pats also make a great source of nutrients for building up the soil. I collected some from the paddock the cows had just been moved out of, so the grass was lower making it easier to scoop them up, and they had a chance to dry a bit. All you do is shovel them up. There are numerous ways of using it – one is to make a compost tea. Jerry Coleby-Williams descibes a method in the episode transcript here: http://www.abc.net.au/gardening/stories/s1805268.htm

<1023 cow pats>

The difference extra nutrients makes to the growth and yield of veggies is dramatic. It took me a while to realise that soil is not just to hold plants up, the plants take up nutrients from the soil to grow. And in turn we get the benefit of them when we eat them. This is one of the reasons for choosing organic food over non-organic. Crops grown in non-organic monocultures receive minimum fertility from NPK fertilisers. Whereas there are a much wider range of minerals and nutrients in compost and organic inputs used to grow organic food.

<1021 buckets>

Perth Community Gardens

blogadmin — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 13:26:08 +0000

On my journey back from Geraldton I stayed in Perth for a few days, before my return journey on the Indian Pacific train across the Nullarbor.

I visited three community gardens – Perth City Farm just outside the central business district, Earthwise Community Garden in Subiaco and the Lockridge Community Garden. There are numerous gardens in Perth, a project has been running here in WA to support existing gardens and help new ones to establish. All these gardens rely on volunteers. Grants for infrastructure are available, but money is rarely given to hire people to do the work. So gardens rely on volunteers and what they can fundraise.

I have a soft spot for Community Gardens – it was at the Ballarat East Community Garden a couple of years ago that I learnt how to grow (and harvest and cook) my own veggies – watching and talking to the old hands there.

City Farm has been established the longest in Perth, about 15 years. They run an organic Farmer’s Market here every Saturday, as well as Festivals a couple of times a year to raise money. Some art work has even been incorporated into the site amongst the plants.

They have an impressive composting system, providing nutrients and material for the garden beds. What they need is more people to volunteer in the gardens – weeding, planting etc – to get full productivity from the space.

The Earthwise Community Garden in Subiaco surrounds a Church building. They have done a lot of work on the site to establish garden beds and plant them out with fruit trees, berries and perennial plants such as herbs. They also appreciate volunteers, there is a group who meet once each week to work on the gardens.

One interesting thing they are doing, among many, is using worm castings. There is a great business in Perth which collects green waste from office buildings, and uses this for food for worm farms. They supply the worm castings that are produced to community gardens such as this one. This is great I reckon, we need to be mindful of the waste we produce in all areas of our life, and the workplace is one of them. So to be using a resource, that would otherwise be treated as rubbish, to produce wonderful soil is a great idea.

The Lockridge Community Garden is relatively new, having been started about 3 years ago. It was started by a group of people who live in the area, and are committed to encouraging people in the community to grow their own veggies.

They have a day a week where volunteers come to maintain the garden and plant and harvest veggies. They also have a number of fruit trees. They have built a pizza oven, which they use on weekends when they run workshops for instance.

They are hoping to encourage people to grow their own veggies, and swap them amongst themselves. Another project they would like to run is to start up a community shop or co-op, where people can buy healthy organic food in bulk. There are no shops in the area. An ideal for them would be to have a farm linked to the community in Lockridge which could supply fresh organic produce, much like the Catholic Worker model in the USA.

Dryland Veggie Gardening

blogadmin — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 05:00:06 +0000

How do you grow veggies in Drylands? Drylands are areas where the evaporation rate is higher than the rainfall rate. As well as having a dryland climate, Geraldton has soils of white aluminium sand.

In the early days a lot of effort went into building up the soil. The area which is now the veggie/seed garden was covered in a layer of straw, chicken manure and loam, to about 1 or 2 feet deep I believe. They also planted a windbreak of tagasaste trees, which have been replaced in succession by acacias. As well as this, a shadecloth fence was built around the garden.

They grow annual veggies in Winter. At the end of the season the chickens are allowed in to clear up the remains of the crop, and the area is then left over Summer. They don’t grow a cover crop as the rodents would eat it apparently, as there is nothing green around at all. In Winter they cover their corn seedlings with wire cages from craypots to protect them from being eaten by rats, until the seedlings grow large enough.

When I was there the plants were growing at a massive rate, there was rain and the temperatures were in the high teens to low twenties. As soon as the warm weather arrived the plants doubled in size in the space of about a week and a half. The plants take every opportunity with the water and warmth.

The veggie gardens are very compact, the paths are small and the veggies are grown close together, it’s a tricky garden to work in, you need to be light on your feet and have a good sense of balance. It also means it’s more efficient to irrigate the veggies as there is less area to water, and also less chance of evaporation.

The perennial gardens are irrigated in Summer. Perennial veggies suited to the climate are grown here, such as seven year beans, perpetual spinach and warragul greens.

While I was there we replaced the old shadecloth fence with a new one. This involved dismantling much of the fence, except for the poles. We then strung up medium tensile wire, and used a tool called a jambro to staple the chicken wire to the fencing wire. We then threaded wire through shadecloth, and stapled that up as well. Finally we wired bamboo batons to the fence to take the tension in the wind.

A lot of work has been done to build up the soil. Each year compost was made and added to the garden beds. Recently they have eased off on the compost, as the nitrogen levels were sufficient, it is now lack of some trace elements that needs to be addressed. Foliar sprays such as seasol are applied to the leaves of the plants, as an immediate remedy, until the soil can be improved.

They are starting to experiment with compost teas, using the methods taught by Elaine Ingham. This adds beneficial microorganisms to the soil, which unlock the elements needed by plants.

Poultry Management

blogadmin — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 13:45:09 +0000

One of my jobs here has been to let the ducks into their sleeping quarters in the evenings, where they are safe from foxes. They wait in the same spot (most afternoons!) waiting to go in. They just need to be encouraged a bit, as they know where to go.

There are a few different types of poultry here – ducks, chickens, geese and emus. The emus are very friendly and hassle you for pats, however they are also useful for eating some of the weeds common around here. The chickens free range in the orchard and also everywhere outside the fences, they are excluded from the seedling nursery, the area around the house and the seed veggie garden in Winter.

A couple of retired people live here in a very comfortable caravan, where they spend time painting and doing art. They also help out around the property doing numerous jobs suuch as watering, weeding, looking after the poultry and collecting the eggs each day.

The eggs are wonderful – the most yellow yolks I’ve ever seen. Over a dozen a day are being collected at the moment, so we’ve been eating a lot of omelettes, quiche, homemade pasta, mayonnaise – yum!

To collect the eggs you have to do a lot of searching, and really just get to know the spots they lay. Apparently they will change spots all the time, and won’t lay again in one for a while if they think you are onto them.

One trick to outwit chickens is to leave one egg in the ‘nest’. A bad egg can be used for this, marked with a pen and left in the nest. (To test if any eggs are bad, you immerse them in water, eggs which are good stay on the bottom and don’t float.)

The conditions here are so harsh in Summer that they grow their veggies only in Winter. Once the veggies and veggie seeds have been harvested, the chickens are run in the gardens to eat any remaining greens, forage for and eat weed seeds and grubs, and fertilise the ground with their manure.

They are thinking of using ducks in the veggie garden at the end of the season rather then chickens. Chickens scratch up the ground and mix the mulch in with the soil. Whereas ducks dibble in under the surface for slaters and don’t scratch up the soil.

Geese are useful as watch animals, they sound the alarm when anyone walks past. Whenever you walk past them they honk loudly, they’re a dead giveaway. These particluar geese are pretty mean at the moment, as it’s mating season. I’m glad I wear boots as I’ve needed them to protect myself from attacking geese once or twice. Here’s a picture of them I’ve bravely taken from the other side of a fence!