Welcome to my backyard

Some pics for a change.

First up, my mostly-recycled chook pen... with a little addition on the near side which I'll get back to in a minute. The far end is the existing fence. Rear-left is a piece of lattice which some previous owner left lying around this place. Rear-right and the lower half of the front and front-left are rigid mesh fence pieces Mr S had in surplus. The gateway on the right used to be parts of Mr S's neighbour's verandah, while the gate frame itself is cut down from a wardrobe door which I hated. Underneath most of it are old hardwood sleepers which were somebody else's idea of garden borders. The only significant new material was the chicken wire to fill in the gaps above the fence panels and in the gate section.

The hutch doesn't look like much in this pic but by damn it was the hardest part of the job, and is also made from recycled materials. I'll post on it another day.



Right down there in front of the home for chooks is the home for my Jericho beans. Six little sprouts now have a chook-proof, well-nourished, sunny spot with lots of opportunity to climb. You can see in the previous pic the passionfruit vine which has its roots in the neighbour's yard. I'm enjoying that for now but will probably cut it back later on to make a bit more room for the beans. More recycled fence panel, a bit of the wood panel from that hated wardrobe door and even some old White Pages went into the construction of this bit. I confess to buying the compost from the hardware megastore today, but at least it's organic.







And finally, some proof that my back yard is actually capable of supporting some kind of useful plant life: our herb garden. Featured are basil, parsley, chives, chillis, rosemary, sage, marjoram, chickory, spring onions and - if you zoom in and look really carefully - a solitary coriander leaf. Yeah, the garden hasn't yet proved it can support coriander. We have some oregano on stand-by to take its place.

Gardening update

It's about a year now since I first decided to try and grow some food in the backyard. Last autumn I was posting about the my first attempt, the tomatoes in a pot. Time for a review and a look at what's ahead.

So what have I got to show for my past year's efforts? Dead tomatoes. Dead capsicums. Dead cucumbers. Dead strawberries. Dead carrots. We did get to eat a few handfuls of tiny cherry tomatoes, several strawberries and a couple of capsicums, but on the whole... I'm really glad the shops still have plenty of food in them.

There is good news with the bad though, because I've learned things through these failures. Most of what we planted was grown in pots with soil from the garden bed I excavated to make way for one of the tanks. My conclusion is that that soil sucks. It really didn't hold water well and appeared to be lacking a great deal in nutrients.

The plants which grew the best were the capsicums, and they were transferred into the ground as seedlings with a layer of home-made compost and mulch on the top. They grew vigourously and fruited like mad - only to have the fruit flies destroy almost every last one. That garden bed is now seemingly lifeless, with the nutrients depleted, the sun keeping it hot and dry and the mulch (woodchips, really) still keeping even the weed seeds at bay. I have an experiment forming in the back of my mind to do a soil improvement project over winter using comfrey or something and then have another go at the capsicums since they seemed to like that spot.

Taking heart from the way the capsicums responded to the compost and mulch treatment, over the past few months we've converted a weedy, wet corner of the yard (just in between the fence and the patio) into a herb garden. It was full of clover and some other leafy weeds and a bit clay-bound so I took a garden fork to it and churned it up. Not much "soil structure" there to be destroying, don't worry. I then mixed in a generous amount of well-aged compost, and promptly ignored it for weeks. The weeds grew back with renewed vigour of course. And then we got serious.

Lots of weeds got ripped out and fed into the new compost bin. A thick layer of newspaper covered the ground with holes left where the chives, sage and marjoram (gifts from a friend) were planted. On top of that went a layer of recycled pine bark mulch that a neighbour was throwing away. Since then we've expanded the crop with basil, parsley, rosemary, challots and a little chilli bush. And they're thriving!

The chillis quickly became infested with what I think are aphids... complete with the "farmer" ants tending them. The plant is still flowering, fruiting and looking generally healthy but I'm sure it would be better off without them, so this arvo I took action. I found a recipe on the net for "white oil" - a mixture of vegetable oil (I used olive), water and dishwashing detergent. This has been sprayed liberally on the plant and as far as I can see the aphids are in fact now dead. Fingers crossed that the plant will survive.

My other proud success is the quality of the compost that I've made. OK, it's not that hard, but it's still deeply encouraging to see the cycle of life playing itself out with such calm assurance, relentlessly renewing. It makes me realise that my main responsibility is to learn how life works and just facilitate it. The new bin accelerates the process and takes some of the manual effort out of it. And in the spirit of facilitating, earlier I scooped out a few handfuls from the bottom (mostly material which I had transferred from my previous heap to get this bin started) and introduced some of my worms.

Yes - my worm farm is still alive! They don't eat anywhere near as much as I'd hoped but they're still going. Maybe the compost bin will be a more appetising home for these worms and certainly they can't do anything but contribute to the process... even if it's just by becoming raw material.

The compost that I removed, I sieved to get rid of the woody bits and then took a close look. It's dark brown, but distinctly not black. It's light, spongy, and if you squish it it retains its shape. But it's also "crumbly", in that you can break it apart into light, spongy pieces again by rolling it between your fingers. And it has almost no odour at all. From the descriptions I've read... this is exactly as it ought to be.

I'm going to grow food in my backyard. It's just a matter of time.

Starting again, though not from scratch

It was about a year ago that I first became seriously concerned about the environment and the sustainability of human civilisation. For about six months my energy and activity built up, then they plateaued and eventually waned over summer. Now here we are approaching the March equinox and I think things are on the up again. I'm totally out of phase. Maybe I should live in the northern hemisphere.

In the latter part of last year I came into a bit of extra money. It was enough to offer lots of interesting possibilities, but not so much that I didn't have to think carefully about what I'd do with it. I kept a chunk of it in reserve in case the appalling mosquito plague of the previous summer repeated itself, in which case I'd have invested in a gizmo to help make going outdoors a less hazardous proposition. But thankfully summer was mild and the mozzies were less than awful and so the funds stayed in my bank account.

Over the same period though, my gardening and composting efforts pretty much stopped. I got the overflow from the south tank connected up to the street, and I ripped up four old sleepers and a previous owner's intricate irrigation system in preparation for a backyard renovation... but that was about it. The compost pile has had no turning or tending. And yesterday I found that my mulch heap has become home for cane toads and termites! That's going to be a challenge to sort out. But anyway...

Pragmatically speaking, living in a city and having a sporadically time-demanding job as I do, I can't guarantee regular time to devote to gardening during the week. So I need to be smart about the way I set things up and to make use of systems and solutions which don't require a lot of maintenance.

Realising this, I've finally given in and used my stash of cash to purchase a fancy compost bin to take over duty from the simple open-bottomed thin-walled mouse-eaten black plastic box I've been using up until now. I put it on a base of four large pavers sited nearer the back door so hopefully it'll be less inviting and accessible to the furry little bastards, and adding things to it in the evenings should be less of an, um, "adventure".

I have to say, though, that as I set about giving my new bin a good feed of starting materials I was rather impressed with the quality of the compost in the bottom of the old black bin. It was made from a huge pile of woody weeds, a large dose of hedge trimmings and half a dozen or so 4-litre buckets of already-putrefying kitchen scraps irregularly thrown in on top. After removing some of the sticks and stalks and chunks of onion, what I was left with pretty much fit the descriptions of good compost that you read in books: dark brown, spongy, slightly moist, little odour. About ten centimetres of that has gone in to the bottom of the new bin to hopefully give the thing a good kick-start.

And along with that I'm hoping to restart my gardening efforts. In the past year or so I've failed to grow heaps of things, but I've learned a fair bit along the way and am ready to have another go. In truth it's a little out of character for me to show that kind of long-term persistence. Sadly, though, the signs are increasingly suggesting that a backyard garden is going to be an invaluable asset in years to come.

Returning to our irregularly scheduled program

It must be almost a month since my last post. I'm not dead, and I haven't just abandoned this. Hopefully that doesn't disappoint any of you. It's just that my professional life has been highly demanding in recent weeks leaving not a lot of time for things that actually matter.

Unfortunately that's not likely to change for the next month or more so I have to squeeze things in when I can. That means a quick update now.

1. Seven or so weeks after getting my first tank sited on its base, this morning I finally got the second one into its own spot. The quality of the groundwork is not as good as the first one but I'm hoping it's good enough for the task. Now the next phase begins: drainage, pipes and plumbing.

2. I'm so impressed with the new solar water heater. There's no discernible difference between the new hot water and the old hot water out of the taps, but emotionally it feels great to have yesterday's sunshine warming my back in the shower. It's also wonderful to see the electricity meter sitting unmoved week after week.

3. The worms have me a bit concerned. They don't seem much inclined to eat any of the kitchen scraps, which kind of defeats the purpose of having them. There are also increasing numbers of non-worm inhabitants in the farm including some really tiny white ant-like creatures and some actual ants which are slightly less tiny and rather more black.

4. Of the dozen capsicum plants we transferred from the pot to the garden bed, one has died, two are looking less than fantastic and the rest appear to be thriving. There are flower buds forming around the tops of most of them even though they're only 30-40cm tall. The compost/mulch combination appears to have worked a treat for nourishing the capsicums while suppressing the weeds - so far I've only had to pull out a smattering of nut grass.

5. The tomato plants have just about run their course. They've produced a fair amount of fruit but it's all been very small - the largest about the size of small marbles but many nearly as small as peas. I'm planning to have another go in that pot but with better soil, a larger variety of tomato, just one plant instead of several, and pruning to try and focus the plant's energy on fruit production rather than straggly stalks.

6. Our carrots are also seeming to find their pot-bound existence a bit less than ideal. They're too crowded and the combination of water restrictions plus too-good drainage leaves them looking withered most afternoons. We'll see what we can do to make them fatter and sweeter but I'm not confident that this crop is going to end up being very edible.

7. The compost has been totally neglected for weeks. It's almost certainly full of mice, judging by its popularity with the neighbourhood cats. May have to start over again with that one.

8. A combination of bindies, weeds and flies is making outdoor time less pleasant. At least we don't have a plague of mosquitos - yet - like we did last summer.

Giving up the pot

While we're on the subject of addictions...

Just kidding. I'm tired and it seemed funny at the time. This is about plant pots, more particularly their absence.

Some of those little capsicum plants which we grew from fresh seed as a random experiment have really flourished in the recent wet and warming weather. Many of the others were starting to show signs of stress, presumably from overcrowding. Today I decided it was time to try our first bit of in-ground planting.

There's an existing garden bed very near to where the capsicum seedlings have been growing. The previous owner of this house put some effort into improving the soil but over the past two years that bed has been totally taken over by something that might be aloe vera. This afternoon I removed a pile of them and cleared about two square meters of the bed.

On top of that I put a layer of compost - my first significant use of the stuff which I've been brewing up in the back of the yard. Michelle and I transplanted about six really strong-looking seedlings and four more which were the best of the rest from the pot into the compost. Then all around them went a layer of the mulch which I made two weekends ago.

It's pretty simple stuff, really, but apart from some really naive poking about when I was a kid this is the first time I've done anything like this: growing seedlings in a pot, making compost, making mulch, planting out a garden bed. To be honest I'm half expecting the plants to die but that's all fine in the spirit of an experiment.

Thankfully our lives don't (yet?) depend on a good capsicum harvest in the back garden. But with a bit of luck we'll have some of our favourite salad fruits from our own crop on the table and the BBQ this summer.

Mulch ado about nothing

If you've read a few of my previous posts you'd hopefully know that I'm strongly in favour of reducing the amount of manufactured goods we purchase, selecting locally-made quality items when it's necessary to buy something and using my own muscles in preference to power tools. But sometimes the practicality of the situation is that you really don't have much choice.

This weekend I bought a mulcher. It was made in China, which is generally considered to have some of the worst industrial practices in the world in terms of environmental impact and social justice. It came in a box with styrofoam, plastic bags and bubble-wrap. Large portions of the product itself are made of plastic which is probably not recyclable. Oh, and it can use as much electricity in about two and half hours as the rest of the house does in a whole day (not counting hot water).

So what was I thinking?

Well there's a lot growing in our back yard including a couple of monster palm trees which drop enormous fronds on a regular basis. We have hibiscus bushes and on three sides a border of sheena's gold, all of which need to be trimmed frequently or they get out of hand. In order to make room for tank #1 I had to remove (by hand) one small tree and while I was at it I removed another (by hand) which had established itself in what is ostensibly the vege garden. Both of the trees, a half dozen fronds and a heap of prunings all piled together were starting to look like a fabulous snake refuge for the coming summer.

In rural areas and in times past, people would simply burn much of this material either as fuel or simply to get rid of it. That's not permitted in cities like Brisbane (for good reason). Here, this material is considered "waste" and so it is subjected to the same general rule which applies for other waste - it gets transported to a central waste transfer station and "processed". If I don't want my garden trimmings rotting in landfill I have to put them in a trailer and drive more than 15 minutes each way to drop them off myself - or pay somebody else to make the trip for me.

But I don't see this material as waste. It's a resource which I want to use here as compost or mulch. I tried for a while stripping the green leaves from the hibiscus prunings by hand so as to make a suitable material for compost, but in the end it just wasn't working. And how am I supposed to manually make mulch from those huge palm fronds?

In a bygone era there might have been mulching machines which could be powered by hand (or foot, or horse... or children). I very much doubt I could track one of those down these days. In the end there wasn't much choice. I had to go with what's available.

One aspect of the decision was easy: I wanted an electric one rather than something with a petrol engine, because I know I can buy 100% of my electricity from renewable, non-polluting sources. Beyond that it was just a question of choosing something that would get the job done. And I have to say... well actually no, I won't "say" anything. I'll just let the results speak for themselves.

The cat's away...

... and the mice are playing in the compost again.

The compost bin comeback

Found another surprise in the compost bin today... a pleasant one this time.

As happy as I am about my first thousand worms, they aren't eating a lot of kitchen scraps yet. I'm guessing that's partly because they're so (relatively) few in number and partly because they still have lots of other food to consume in their initial bedding material. Most of what I provided for them on Saturday is still there and our little bucket in the kitchen was full. Well the scraps had to go somewhere and it sure wasn't going to be landfill, so out to the compost bin I went.

Sometime in the past couple of weeks I had decided the compost pile was too dry. I started experimenting with a new formula: one bucket of kitchen scraps spread out, a layer of dried grass clippings and finally one kitchen bucket's worth of water on top. After making this contribution again this afternoon it seemed like I should aerate the pile a bit and make sure it's not going nasty in the middle.

Well! Far from being nasty, what I found in the middle of the pile looked suspiciously like the stuff I'd seen on the glossy front cover photograph of my neighbour's composting book. It was dark, moist, spongy, inhabited by tiny bugs and earthworms, and it gave off a noticeable amount of heat. No visible rodents, either.

Perhaps I should have left it alone, but I used my garden fork to try and mix things up. There's plenty of material still to be decomposed and I'm hoping that introducing some air and those additional nutrients into the core will help it rather than hinder. This coming weekend I'll turn the whole pile again and see what I find.

If that kind of result is repeatable, and the mice stay away, I may keep the bin going in addition to the worm farm.