Our first out of class "Permablitz"

After our Permaculture Design Certificate course finished in late August we promised that we would continue to work as a group to do "permaculture" things.   So today we completed our first out of class permablitz ... and we had lots of fun... our goal was to create the base for a new Zone 1 kitchen garden using sheet mulching.

Here is what we achieved.....

We started by laying wet newspaper over a sprinkling of well aged sheep manure....

Wetting all the newspaper to be laid - a job the kids loved....

Nearly a complete covering of newspaper...

Now for the lucerne mulch layer......

All mulched now......  I think we used 20 bails of lucerne!!!

Some paths went in then some young seedlings were planted into some additional compost within the mulch.

A new Zone 1 kitchen garden laid out.....

The next task will be to fill it with a mix of perennial and annual food plants.....

It is amazing how many hands make light work... this was all achieved in just over 3 hours...

Next permablitz is at our house in a month.... I have on the list of things to do - a dry creek bed, a sheet mulched area under some newly planted fruit trees and the planting of shrubs and ground cover in our fruit tree orchard as well as more shrubs, sedges and shade loving natives in our native plant conservation zone.... should be fun.... can't wait ....

Who says young kids don't listen

For the Sustainable Living Expo last weekend we made up some small sample packs of local wattle and kurrajong seed to be propagated at home by anyone who wanted to try.  The kids helped put on some labels saying what species we had in the sample pack and how to propagate them.

Being seeds with a hard seed coat the instructions said that the seed had to be put in hot water before it was planted out into tubes.  Our littlest must have been listening to the boys and myself talking about this process and the other night came out with some seeds reading for planting!!!

She had filled the seed packet with hot water from bathroom tap... and wanted to plant the seeds - packet and all.

After a positive word about her attempts to propagate the seeds we went about learning how to do it correctly together.  So I got her to put the seeds into a coffee cup and we poured hot water from the kettle over them, waited for the water to cool and then we planted them.... now we just have to wait until they grow....

I am always amazed at how much little kids take in from the conversations that occur around them....

Sustainable Living Week in Orange

It was Sustainable House Day on Sunday 12th September.. in Orange the week following was Sustainable Living Week and we participated in a few activities.  In my role as the local Landcare coordinator and as a teacher at our local TAFE I helped out on a infomration table at the Sustainable Living Expo last Saturday and then we spent most of Sunday looking through some local sustainable homes... and here are some photos I'd like to share.

We started at this house... a house feature in Sanctuary Magaziine

Water features are always a hit with the kids..... we plan to get some water features into our garden...

We loved all the north facing windows we got to see... and are so jealous that we have a 1980's house with very little northern aspect..

More north facing windows..

A small urban permaculture garden......

A 1980's house that was designed with good northern aspect...

A deciduous vine on the western wall..

I would have liked to see more houses that have been retrofitted to improve efficiencies that were not designed for in the first place but we did get to see some good ideas in action.

A suprise in the glasshouse

With our recent spring weather I ventured out to the glasshouse and found these...

.. they are Blunt Greenhoods. I have bought them inside and they are now sitting on my window sill above the kitchen sink.  Mum gave me a pot of them to look after a couple of years ago.. and these are the few flowers that the slugs and snails did not get. 

I also have some sun-orchids about to open ... they will come inside on the kitchen window sill when they are flowering.

Plastic bags...

I finished my bag I was weaving from plastic bags.... Rough I know but it was my first attempt at weaving..

it now hangs in the bathroom collecting toilet rolls for reuse as vegie seedling pots...

At least these plastic bags are not going to be picked up and carried by the wind and water to pollute our great oceans....

Below I have put a great "Mockumentary" on plastic bags.  It is from a campaign to get support for bill AB 1998 and getting California to kick its 19 billion bag per year habit.  For more information on the campaign visit the Heal The Bay website.  Unfortunately their bill to ban the use of single use plastic bags in California failed to pass the senate last week.




What do you do to limit your use and disposal of single use plastic bags?

A very wet month....

I just looked up our rainfall statistics for August - I was curious to see just how wet we have been this year compared to the norm.

We got rain on half the days in August this year... with a total of about 240mm for the month (nearly the highest on record which is 270mm) - the long term average is just 94mm.  The local water supply has reached full capacity - the first time in about 5 years - our heavy water restrictions have been dropped back to a token Level 2... and everything is very wet.  A great way to go into spring and summer and in contrast to an earlier entry I made about our dry weather.

It has however been a difficult month or so to get any washing dried... and with three kids that like playing in the water and mud it has been an uphill battle to get clothes dried.

Our solution - like many households - has been to live with clotheshorses in our main living areas - a wash house....

Having said that, I have not had to resort to using the clothes dryer that we strategically left in the shed when we moved to Orange a few years ago - it's a great incentive not to switch it on!

Plastic weaving workshop

Last night we went to a plastic weaving workshop...  

I wanted to start learning some weaving techniques so that I can not only make us of some of the plastic that goes into our recycle bin but also I would like some practice before I move on trying some weaving with local native fibre plants such as matrushes and flax lilies (Lomandra and Dianella species).

Here is what we started with.... a pile of plastic bags......

We slowly started to weave it all together.. row by row.. here is the first row... 

We were starting to make a bag... so here is the base taking shape..

And then... we started turning up to the make the sides...

But that is as far as I got on the evening... so my homework is to keep going until I get a bag to ensure I don't forget the weaving technique... lucky it's a TV free and computer free night tonight!

The kids had fun and tried their hand at weaving old yoghurt containers with strips of breadbags...

What's in your recycle bin?

Over the past year we have been trying to reduce the packaging and rubbish that comes into the house but we still manage to fill our recycle bin most fortnights for collection!!

To try to work out were we can cut our packaging or find new ways to reuse the things we are putting in the recycle bin we tipped a fortnights recycling on the floor in the kitchen and we sorted it (well the kids did - thanks kids).

Nearly sorted now.... milk cartons, tins, glass, plastics, paper and cardboard...

Now for the tough work.... what can we do to reduce the amount of these entering the bin in the first place - or if we can't reduce it how can we reuse it!

The glass jars we already keep for jams and chutneys etc... the best way to reduce the number of jars we are getting we will try to preserve more things next year.  I would like to try some tomato paste this summer and maybe some curry pastes.

The tins we put into the recycle bin... the kids suggested plant pots...  but I think the best way to reduce these is to bottle our own tomatoes this summer - as the majority of cans we generate are from canned tomatoes.  This is a little scary though - if we had 1 bottle of tomatoes a week that's 52 bottles of tomatoes for the year.  I might have to hit the op shops and clearing sales for more preserving jars.

Last summer we bottled cherries, peaches, nectarines, plums and pears - as a result we have not bought (much) tinned fruit this year.

We have recently changed to milk cartons - what can we do with all these.  We use some for growing plants - but I am not sure what to do with the rest - maybe some tree guards or even use them as "bricks" to build a cubby house for the kids on the back deck.

And well, plastics - we have been trying to reduce the amount of plastic that enters the house but it's hard.  We have reused some of the plastic bottles as little "mini-glasshouses"  to protect seedlings in the garden. More recently I have been saving bread bags and other clean plastic bags and are going to a plastic weaving evening next week - that should be great.  I love the idea of making stuff out of rubbish.

What's in your recycle bin?  Can you reduce it? Can you reuse it?

Remembering that the three R's are REDUCE REUSE and then RECYCLE.

All those saved toilet rolls..

Recently I have been watching as some of you from warmer climates have started planting out seeds for your summer gardens.. I have been patiently waiting.  We have been saving toilet rolls over the winter  (part of our waste reuse activities)...

On the weekend I had the kids cutting the bases and folding them under to make little pots (see here and here - who supplied the idea in the first place)

Then we filled them with a mix of river sand and compost.... 

Now we have started some of our seeds in mini hothouses on heat beds... we planted tomoatoes, pumpkins and cucumbers....  and nearly used all those toilet rolls we saved over the winter months.

Once the seedlings are large enough I will move them out to the shadehouse before planting them out in the garden after our last frosts - in Orange that is around the Melbourne Cup (first week in November).