This Sustainable House

Welcome to the ‘new’ This Sustainable House website. The aim of the new site is to provide an ongoing commentary of the happenings at TSH, and provide linkages to it’s new sister site Green Phoenix Permaculture (greenphoenix.asia).

This new ‘dual’ site layout will see most of the fact sheet type content being stored at Green Phoenix and general information about the TSH project here.

Please let me know what you think of the new layout by filling out the survey below.

Cheers
Shane

As you may remember from the pond video, I planted some comfrey root cuttings in the pond filter though I wasn’t sure how they’d go. Well today I assessed the cuttings and they weren’t, on the whole, doing well.

It would seem that although comfrey can be quite happy in boggy situations it isn’t all that happy with it’s roots continually submerged in water. This was evident from the colouration of the leaves, indicating some nutrient deficiencies, and very poor growth.

All three cuttings have now been removed to a soil-based garden and I’d be very surprised not to see a marked improvement in their growth. I will need to find another candidate for the filter but will begin with true bog plants to see if a solution can be found.

One of the things I really love about gardening is the way it constantly surprises me. For example, on Friday I set-up the indoor gardening trial using hydroponics to grow salad vegetables inside (see the post here). As noted in that post, I also planted some seeds in growool cubes to ‘flesh’ out the bed… and WOW!! Talk about growth…

Here we are, only 72hrs from planting, and already we have seedlings presenting their heads. Admittadley, they are slightly spindly as their current location is a little devoid of light but that can easily be fixed. Check it out…

Well it has been less than 24hrs and the first ‘issue’ has arisen. Location! To explain…

The best location for these gardens is on the second floor of the house as this location has the most available light resources, affords excellent opportunities for maintainence/supervision, and is naturally the warmest part of the home. However, the second floor is also the master bedroom and our flood & drain table gurgles as it drains. Dag Nammit!

At this stage it’s not too problematic, there are only 2 cycles throughout the night and the gurgling only lasts a minute or so. However should the trial prove a success then an insulated base would assist with muffling the propgation of the sound. If worst comes to worst, the master bedroom can always be moved.

Winter is starting to close in at TSH and in this climate that has implications for what can be grown. Specifically we have very harsh winters at Mulloon with very heavy frosts. This makes growing the kitchen garden somewhat challenging.

In order to alleviate the ‘issue’ of fresh greens over winter I am trying a new gardening technique… indoor hydroponic gardens. The system I am trialling initially is a flood and drain table placed alongside a north facing window. It is hoped that the window will provide enough light without artificially introducing additional light.

Of course there are other benefits to indoor gardens not least of which is humidification of the air inside the house. This is a fine line between adding a little moisture and creating a mould farm so a hygrometer has been installed to keep an eye on the ‘issue’.

The way that a flood and drain system works is that there is an electric pump in the resevior which turns on for 15mins per hour during daylight hours, with an additional 2 x 15min intervals during the evening. In this case we are running the pump for a total of 3.5 hours per day (in total). The pump floods the table to a predetermined depth during each flood cycle, and the nutrient enriched water then drains in-between.

The plants are growing in an inert media, in this case expanded clay, and are fed purely from the nutrient rich water which floods the table.

At this stage the garden has been planted with seedlings purchased from a nursery (kale, parsley, coriander & rocket) however over the weekend seeds will be planted in rockwool cubes to further populate the garden. Planning on planting silverbeet, basil, beetroot, chives & warragul greens. The garden isn’t very large so it’ll only be one or two of the above… but it’s a GREAT opportunity to test the new system.

Check out the photos below. I’ll keep you updated on it’s progress.

Creating a place of contemplation is really quite an easy task. You want

• somewhere quiet, undisturbed from the sounds of the industrial age;
• somewhere comfortable to sit or lie down;
• some greenery surrounding you; and,
• perhaps the sound of trickling water.

Well those are the things that I need!

The first three elements on the list were easy, and already available at TSH, but the final option wasn’t yet available. So it was time to build a pond. The place chosen for the pond is a location at the ‘back’ of the house which is nicely separated from the outdoor living areas. It has two windows over looking that area, one from the downstairs bathroom and the other from the guest bedroom. Of course this means that one can enjoy the sounds of the water from the bath…

There is also a window on the second storey that faces this location and allows the sound to travel into the master bedroom on a sultry summers eve.

The pond was constructed using a pond liner, and was then planted with a water lily, milfoil and water parsley. It is filtered via a custom built filter which uses expanded clay and living plants, namely water parsley, water chestnuts and comfrey. The pond is populated with approx 25 goldfish, of varying sizes, which provide algae/mosquito control and visual interest.

The video below show’s what has been done so far, and what still remains to be completed…