Our garden is based on Linda Woodrows "The Permaculture Home Garden". We had a lawn area that measured 22mx13.5m (or so) and needed to move our 6mx13m garden to make way for work trailers/trucks etc... The most obvious place to move it to was the lawn seeing as the kids had all grown up and left home they didnt need it anymore. However the thought of scraping the turf off and hand digging this whole area had us beat before we started. I happened to mention our problem to my brother when we were up in Auckland for a visit and he pulled out a his copy of Linda's book and gave it to me. My dad and hubby built our chook dome at 3m rather than Lindas 4m and we have 6 hens in this. This is almost our second year using this system. For the most part we consider it to have been a raving success and alot of fun in a frustrating sort of way. Our aim for the first year was to get used to using this system and 1. produce all our own eggs, most of our own vegetables, herbs and some of our own fruit and spices and herbal teas. 2.(me) to use all those lovely lawn clippings I get from the handful of lawns I do each fortnight rather than have to take these to the dump. 3.Not to have to dig the garden Those aims have been pretty well met and we have new aims for this new growing season. 1.To get our seedlings grown to the reccommended 6 inches high before they get planted out . 2.To get the seedlings ready in time to plant out each new bed as soon as the chooks have been moved off of it. 3.To get a better balance of vegetable types growing. 4.To get the greenhouse built so we can get things up and running faster and have a place to store tender plants and shrubs over winter....Tamarillos for one.(tree tomato) 5.To find the 'right' tomato for our garden I have found I have an addiction to trialling different plants to see which does better. So this year there are 6 tomato and eggplant types including some home grown seed and 4 Okra, just for an example, call me greedy but its fun. 6. To get the garden beds edged so hubby and visitors stop walking all over his food. 7.To finalise the layout of the garden and make it permanent. 8. To get each bed planted out in sequence without missing any due to no plants to plant out. 9. To learn how to do this gardening by the moon/constellations. I think I have a better understanding on this now but as the first book I read on this is from the Northern Hemisphere I still get alittle confused and need alittle more research to fully understand what exzactly it is we are supposed to be doing. We have already discovered that we prefer Butternut Squash to the round sort of pumpkins because they are faster growing, taste just as good( alittle different to round pumpkins I think), store really well and better still, even now, the skin is easy to cut thru with a big knife in comparison to the round ones which go really hard. The idea is to grow as much of what we eat as we can and to find out what can be grown here. I would like to have some nut trees. We spent ages measuring everything out again and marking out with pegs where the beds will go taking into account the width of the permanent edging to the beds,I'm leaning towards Winter savory for this and the dwarf munstead lavendar and until we can get seedlings grown of these we have opted for a type of parsley that grows only 1' each way. These are alittle late being started so the edges have pegs around them so we dont lose track of just where the edges are. Next was drawing up another to scale map of the garden and the exisiting trees, buildings etc.. We put the greenhouse on even though its not built yet because we Are going to build it this year and that Is the best spot for it. This makes the first mandala not a circle which at first was disappointing but now we realise that its going to work really well. We are translating a design worked out for a sub tropic site into a cool/mountain(I thought temperate but apparently not) site, so by having the central bed being used for the chooks and the greenhouse effectively taking up the space of an 'outer bed'.....what that means is that we can if we need to skip over between 1 and 4 beds in winter and use these beds for the winter plants. That puts them as close to the house as you can get and they get the reflected light off the tool shed all day. There was room to 'replace' this bed by moving to the other side of the bed next to the greenhouse. This makes this mandala sort of like 2 sets of triangles with a central bed between them, (more on this irrelevent added significance later). By moving that dratted Orange tree to the central bed of the second mandala, this means we have a proper circular flow going around the mandala leaving good space to get between all beds and all fruit trees and the fence. We or rather I decided that the beds and the mandals needed names. I get tired of saying first bed, second mandala, soooo. I was once again gazing at our drawing trying to get some inspiration and thought well as we are going to start getting serious about gardening by constellations etc,... then maybe we can use this subject for the names. I thought that with the Orange tree being in the centre of the second mandala, that everything flowed around it while it stayed still and that reminded me of the sun. So the second mandala became the sun mandala, which meant of course that the first mandala had to be the moon set. I looked at what the constellation were that I thought related to the sun and have named the 1st, 3rd and 5th beds after Leo,Aries and Sagitarius while the 2nd,4th and 6th became the Gemini,Aquarius and Libra beds. With the Moon mandala it wasnt quite so obvious as they are not circular like the Sun mandala. I finally decided that we had 2 sets of sort of triangles adn that the 'tighter' triangle had to be the earth signs so going along from the greenhouse we get the virgo, capricorn and above those at the apex is the Taurus bed. Earth being a tighter, firmer sort of thing compared to water which is looser. (Told you it was irrelevent added significance) So on the other side of the path from the greenhouse you get the Scorpio, cancer the crab and Pisces beds. I am going to have to find an alternative to cancer or crab bed they just dont do it for me and conjur up most unwanted imappropriate pictures. I did think of putting signs up with the symbols of each constellation and realised that this bed would wind up being called the 69'er,(with crabs... thats just not nice).
Hi 9andalf and PP, Funny you should mention aerial views.... I was sitting on the bench seat that we moved further along the hedge. Its under the evergreen tree and I had this idea that once all the beds have their parsley edges and are planted out, that I could use the long work ladder and climb the tree, trim off afew branches and take some photos from up there. There are alot of branches to stand on its just that they are so high up and I should be able to get a really good shot of both sides. Hopefully the greenhouse will be there by then too.
I cannot think of anything better than just sitting in the garden "like a potato" just watching the different things happening and day dreaming about plans of greenhouses and beds and planting.I usually will have a little smoke of dope so I can really immerse and daydream for a good period of time.It is as calming as a Sutra of full awareness breathing.I was dreaming your garden for a second to Mischef good luck with it mine is a sacred place now,I hope yours will be too! Best Wishes Fernando
Thank you. Will we be seeing a thread here on your garden? I'm really hoping others will tell us about their systems, I think it would be a great way to learn from each other.
8)I think Fernando would need a resilient garden to cope with his frequent absences/jail times. I will be having a beer in it one day I reckon.:hi:
PP thats not nice and anyway how do You know that. Were you in there with him? The garden calendar says that today we should sow and plant roots crops so thats what I did. There is a section infront of the Feijoa trees that we have just moved the horse manure off and restacked it alittle more tidily. Decided that this area would be for the potatoes. I'm hoping that they will mature in time before the chooks have to go back on but if they are ready then we'll have to skip over this area instead. Eventually we'll get the timing right on everything. Had a bit of a tidy up cos things were starting to look alittle like a dogs breakfast. The hedge trimmings/branches that hadnt broken down were put in an empty bay of the compost bin and trod on to fit more newbies in, the 'almost dirt 'sort that was underneath them has gone onto the compost bin along with the resident worms and slaters. After raking the ground reasonably level we worked outthat we could have 5 short rows and have them alittle wider apart than the normal 2' cos I want to try intercropping with nasturtiums and beans. These are supposed to be good companions for potatoes. Could try them with the melons as well, just have to see how they go. This area is where the Orange tree used to be. I used to 'hide' the compost behind it, so the soil is a lovely black colour with twiggy bits still in it. Yes we still have convovulus in this part of the garden as well but have found with the mulching, that it is for the most part, quite close to the surface and easily pulls out. At this point I would like to 'fess that when I first moved back home a few years ago that I did try to get rid of this horrible weed with an unmentionable liquid. It didnt work.It did knock it back abit but when its all over the railway tracks and thru the hedge it was a waste of time. My mother hates this stuff and has spent many enjoyable hours hand pulling it. Mulching definitely made a difference as did pulling off all flowers on sight and all leaves. So our game plan with this is to keep mulching and then removing anything that dares to show itself. When we finished leveling, sorting the rows we used the spade to loosen the soil on both sides of the potatoes and then hoed some over to cover them. We have to keep them covered until the end of october because there have been late frosts here inthe past. I dont think we should have too much trouble with them though because it is a quite sheltered spot. Its raining again now and I FOR ONE AM REALLY REALLY READY FOR SUMMER. The parsley seedlings are sprouting. So far we have around 80 to pot up (during the leafy plant time of course). I chose parsley for the edges because it is biennial, doesnt bolt to seed and should give me time to get the winter savory sown/planted and ready in a year. I find myself gazing love-ing-ly at our floor plan of our garden, it does look awsome. I just want it to look like that in the physical world right now and am having differculty with having to wait for the actuality to catch up with the dream. The Kiwifruit and boysenberries have started to sprout, the boysenberry cutting we took look green but havent actually sprouted yet but I hope they come away. Still need to run the wires along the trellis. I t does have railings and I am wondering perhaps we should take them off and just have the wires. Hubby thinks that its a girl fence(i built it) and would be wise that we leave it as is just incase it falls downs which I thought was not nice. Okay the posts maybe alittle futher apart than maybe they should have been but its been afew years now and it is still standing so I think it will be fine. I had a wind chime hanging in the porch window. It wasnt really doing much there and nevermade a sound so I decided to hang it in the branches of the tree over the bench seat. Its a butterfly and now tinkles quietly even when the winds are quite strong. Forgot to say that hubby loves where the old laundry tub is and cant wait to run a proper line out to it so I have water. Might have something to do with tripping over the hose everytime I forget to put it away, but it does seem to be the right spot for it. Occassionally we have culture clashes. Being from the States, he seems to have this idea that things should be Nice, bright and shiny new penny rather than recycled old and worn looking. I hate new. I deliberately bought an old house cos it Was old. I love recycling, not just because it saves me money but because its a challenge. For example, the old steps up to the lawn was a set of old pallets cut to size. It took me ages to find just the right size and they Had to be treated which is really hard to find. They lasted 10 years and only cost me the countless hours of fun I had looking for them.
Hi mischief. Is this forum Adam's place. Where is Adam? I am going to keep going on my thread over at the other forum but i can come in and go out of here too. Is this link updatedin the what's new thing. That's where i go daily to see what is going on. It saves time. I have noticed that not all the forums are listed in that part. I can't imagine why. Can i tempt you to put piccies up on photoblog too? Or somewhere and provide a link. I've been using that place for a while now for other things and its quite easy to use. Though not as pretty as a usual blog. I think i will still have extra things to write in here that i won't write on that cause i wanted that primiarly to be a picture record. Its just that i can't help myself writing a lot of stuff as well. You've written a very long blog above. I imagine it would be hard for anyone to start reading from scratch with mine as well. I really do have a short attention span these days. But I will gradually catch up with yours. or at least I will try. What sort of floor plan have you chosen for your garden? Is it your own design? Have you pegged it out yet? I am just about to do that to mine. Or are you talking about the floor plan of a whole big place, while i am only talking about my vegie patch.
I'm still here, just haven't been posting much recently. Also it's not my place, it's everyone's. I would love for more people to use this part of the forum! Kudos to you for posting your thread up here, by the way, mischief. Your garden sounds really fantastic but I am dying for some pictures! Will you be sharing any with us?
Adam!! Of course its Adams' place, you thought of it and its a great idea and I would love more people to use it too. I think it gives you a better idea of whats happening when you get a running commentary and I have found it useful to go back over myself to see what happened to such and such a plant., etc... Much easier than trawling my diary. I need to do something with our pictures, I think we've used up all our allocation based on the fact that I couldnt post all of them. They might be too big, maybe I should learn to use my phone to take them or wait for my son to visit so he can put some kind of editing thingy on our computer. The next lot I try to post will be when the beds are planted out and is full swing in summer, that way you get to see what they look like bare as I posted in Micshief at large and in full bloom here. One thing I'm still confused on is the gardening by the moon/constellations. I've been using the 'Garden Diary' but today when I read a mag(Australian womans weekly I think) it was different to my diary. Would this be because even though we're neighbours, we are far enough apart for there to be differences? They also state which sign the moon is in and whether its a fertile or barren sign whereas mine just tells you its a good time to do what ever. I dont suppose we have our very own astrologer on board do we, wouldnt that be good. Hi Sunburn, Yep this is Adams' place but I think he's feeling alittle shy about me calling it that. I can take pics but Im not that great on putting them on the computer, hubby had to do that. Maybe I should check out your link, it might be easier to do that. I decided to start a new blog for the start of the new growing season. This is the start of our second year using this system.
I got the bio dynamics book out again so I could re read the parts on the constellations. I think my main problem with this is that I dont know when the moon or sun or what ever is in a fertile or barren sign. When you stop and think about how much energy earlier civilizations put into astrology it makes you wonder if they were of the opinion that this sort of thing made a difference. That so many different civilizations went into astrology in a big way made me decide to try to use this in this new growing season. The other problem I have is sometimes this book talks about the moon being in such and such a constellation and then its going on about the sun being somewhere which leaves me beffuddled. So I am rereading whilst sticking to what my gardener magazine says to do. Today for example, after I finished work, I moved the chooks over to the next station. Because the girls dont leave the ground nice and level, I give it a brief hoeing to make it sort of the same height. I found that if I do this straight away then I dont killl so many worms, they obviously dont move in straight away. According to my diary, today is the start of when is best to plant everything that produces above ground(in New Zealand). So All the brassicas that I sown and have been sitting for ages went in. Way more than we will probably eat but I figured I could give the ones that we dont eat away or sell them. I did have the seedlings labelled but ordinary pen on bits of seed packets arent working, I cant read any of the labels. I think a permanent marker and some cut up milk bottles might be a better idea. That way I should be able to reuse the labels each year too. Planted were, red and green cabbage;violet, green and white cauli,chinese cabbage,mizuna,9 sweet corn,red loose leaf lettuce, 3 calendula(I normally get these to grow really well but in the last two years they havent done so well),afew mexican marigold mint. I had three beds that needed to be planted out, the one that the chooks just moved off, the previous on that I only got to plant the beetroot into (and had to wait for a more auspious time fot the rest) and the bed that had the huge compost pile brewing away for the last 6 months. This bed isnt a circle, abit like the potato bed really, the chooks havent been on it cos it had this huge mound of stuff. I had to use the garden fork to pull it apart as the grape vine cuttings didnt break down like I thought they would. These were taken out and put in a neat pile while I work out what exactly to do with them. At the end of last summer this compost pile was around 3m in diametre and a metre high. When I pulled it apart it was maybe a foot high. I raked it into a blunt pie sort of shape and at the back planted the sweet corn. On one side I planted the pine cuttings I took (13 for kindling maybe?, pine needles?coppiced?),in the middle I planted alot of brassicas- no idea which is which except for the chinese ones. Around the edges I put the loose leaf lettuce and the mizuna (I love this in my noodles, in stir fries, in salad, on cheese sandwiches....). In the bed that the chooks just left so far I have sown a couple of Italian zucchinni and Cannelinno beans. I know I went overboard on the beans,but I think I've got them figured out. I sowed them along the path at afew inches apart. This year I will mound them up with mulch so they dont fall over everything else. These beans are for growing to dry so I will be keeping an eye on how they go about filling their pods and will be picking them when they are fat but not quite mature(thats the idea anyway) This year one of my personal goals is to grow enough drying beans for the year. I also sowed some Painted Lady runner beans at each end of the Arch leading into the garden. These we will use as both green beans and drying. I thought originally they were just green beans til I opened the packet and saw how big the seed was. I spend alot of time gazing at our poor orange tree sending it lots of love.( yes I just reread the Celestine prophecy too). A friend who visited the other day said she thought it looked alittle yellow and probably needed abit of epsom salts. I told her what had happened to it and she just sort of stared at me and shook her head. I'm starting to get alittle nervous about the seed sowing thing again. Its time to put my money where my mouth is. There is so much I want to get done this year and it all boils down to timing. The thing that annoys me the most about this time of year is that the weeds grow so fast but my vegetable seeds take so long it just doesnt seem right or fair. I visited a friend on the way home today too and may have scored a source of stinging nettles. I found fat hen at the nursery I worked over winter and now this. We are going to get together again and have a sort out of who has what and what does each other want from the other. A glass of wine was mentioned and good food which sounds just what the doctor ordered.
Mischief, I've taken to cutting wedges out of old computer DVDs and CDs for my name tags and writing on them with permanent marker.
Encouragement............. I can't think of anything else to say. I like weeds. I like pulling them out. Grass I don't like and hte speed at which it grows and can take over scares me but then there's always the mower. On harvesting your beans, I just checked cause i wasn't sure but Penny Woodwards says to pull up the whole plant and store somewhere airy and cool for a couple of weeks before taking the beans out of the pods. That sounds like an easier way of getting them out than cutting the pods off the bush. I do like cannelini beans though.
Hi Graham, I dont have that many dvd or cd's but I have a stack of milk bottles I havent taken to the recycler yet. The few cd's I have I want to use to make copper foil/leadlight type things with when I get around to getting back into my artwork again. The permanent marker is definitely on my shopping list tho. Hi sunburn, Last year I did the let em grow and pull up whole to dry and was disappointed as alot of the beans were starting to sprout in their pods. They got wet in the rain and started to grow again, so this year I'm going to try to harvest them as they become mature while still letting the plants keep on doing their thing. I'm trying to look at weeds as a resource, either for the compost bin or as chook food. In this biodynamics book I got out of the library, it says to pull up runner type weeds and rather than putting them into the compost, put them into a bucket of water and decompose them that way then use the liquid as a liquid tea on the garden. Already I have a full bucket and need to clean out another one of gib stopping compound so I can fit the water in before I can decompose anything!
I managed to skip between the rain drops this week and got abit done. I had to weed to roadside garden before I could plant anything. We've put 2 staggered rows of giant sunflowers in here so far. They were actually six inches high.Yipee, finally got something planted out at a decent size- course they would do seeing as they're sunflowers. I am hoping for seeds for the chooks, compost for the garden and the stalks- kindling for the fire. Our Parsley seeds are still doing well and we've so far transplanted into 4 trays.These have 24 litle pots all joined togther. I chose these because the little pots are small enough that I dont think I will be using too much compost, but big enough to grow decent root systems in. I have found that the seedlings all have really well developed roots even with only the first leaves that open so I have been transplanting them into their pots then rather than waiting til they get their first real pair of leaves. I'm starting to think I could get away with sowing the seed into these pots and getting less stressed seedlings in the process. I'm using compost again this year and it seems to be going okay, last year the seed sowing mix caked and I had to crack open the tops so the seeds could grow thru. I found the fastest way to use these trays is to grab a handful of compost and pile it ontop then sort of push down slightly as I run my hand over the tops of the pots and keep doing this til they are all filled up. So far with the seedlings we've planted out they 'soil' is holding together rather than falling apart and I think hurting the roots. I did alittle experiment. I keep hearing that capsicums and eggplants have the same requirements as tomatoes which annoys me cos I havent seen that. So I alitle of all three at the same time. The tomatoes came up first-Amish Paste was the winner there,the capsicums are just starting to show thru now and I cant see any eggplants yet. I also did some okra just to see and one came up but sunccumbed -definitely needs to wait afew months yet for them. I've sprinkled some corn poppies under the orange tree to add a splash of colour there. The seed sowing started off quite well with a few more different things beings sown but with all this rain I feel bluesy and dont want to go outside. Perhaps if I complain loudly enough we might be able to move building the greenhouse forward abit. Ah, no cant cos its my job to move abit more soil underneath it so its level and I dont want to til the soil is not saturated. I 'found' another smaller piece of white perspex Im going to liberate to the garden. The seeds I've put under this seem to come up better than without. I dont have sheets of glass-we did have an old window but that had an accident when it wasnt sitting properly over the trays and the cat decided to sit on it.So no more glass in the garden. Im reading abit of my biodynamic book again and one that goes over what Alan Chadwick did with this and french intensive planting methods called biointensive. All my reading at the moment is to find out what people do in what climates and the reasoning behind it so I can see which bits will fit in here. If I cant get into the garden at least I can dream about it and read about possibilites. The guild plants as suggested by Linda dont always work here due to our difference in climate. There are some months when it doesnt matter how hard you wish the seeds either dont sprout or the seedlings grow so high and then stop for a couple of months. Still, it will be interesting to see what we can get whne we have the greenhouse up and running. I also want to grow afew 'gluts' so we have shitloads of beans and tomatoes for purees and sauces. Personally I dont see a problem with growing alot of the same thing together, so long as they have some companion plants in with them and are not planted in the same bed two years in a row. I havent used the weemanure on the garden yet, I figured that it would get washed away with all this rain. Did you know that urine was used in Scotland to bleach their woven woolen clothe?(It was aged first).
Where is waikato? What latitude? Is it coastal or inland? Elevated? I'm curious about your climate? Okra is strange. The packet say it should grow up here all year round. The seeds always germinate easily but after that nada. I am trying again now that it's warmer. Two days ago i was up the hill at Kuranda and a friend had a okra growing. I didn't ask her when she planted it though. Its cooler up there.
