This Sustainable House

Posts Tagged ‘garden’

This weekend we were blessed with the most incredible weather and it seemed a shame to waste it. It’ll be very cold all too soon!

So this weekend was spent pottering, doing a few homey things such as planting seeds, chopping wood and building strawberry towers. In fact, the strawberry towers are what this post is all about…

So what is a strawberry tower? Well in this case it is a length of PVC drain pipe (100mm diameter x 1400mn length) with a series of small holes drilled in the side (24 in all). The bottom of the tower is capped, the cap having drain holes drilled in it, and the top is hung by chain from the verandah fascia.

The strawberry crowns are planted in the holes, into enriched potting mix, and are watered by a central ‘weep’ line down the centre. The top section, where the chain joins the pipe, is then filled with clean straw to minimise evaporative losses.

The concept is that the strawberries grow against the clean PVC outer, allowing one to just pick and eat. They are also at an easy height for picking without bending, are kept free of the ground and therefore snails and slugs, and take up very little floor space (the strawberries are growing in the vertical space like a vine). In fact there is still room beneath for a pot of herbs, say mint, which cab collect the drainage water from the tower.

This concept of ‘stacking’ is very important in all permaculture designs as it allows us to significantly increase the yield from all available space. For example, if I planted the strawberries in the garden (using the same area of about 30cm diameter) then I’d have room for 5 plants yielding about 1.75Kg of strawberries (~7 punnets). However by planting the strawberries in the vertical plane I have managed to squeeze in 24 plants which should yield about 8.4kg of strawberries (~33 punnets) AND a herb crop such as mint from the pot underneath. All up this is an increase of yield of over 400% which is just phenomenal.

A fact sheet detailing the design/construction of these pots will be available on the Green Phoenix Permaculture website in the next few weeks, so if you are interested in creating some strawberry towers then head over to there.

UPDATE

Today I noticed a ‘fault’ with the irrigation system. Essentially the piece of ‘weep hose’ which watered the towers has failed leaving the plants dry, and some dying. Unfortunately I think I’ll lose about 6 crowns due to the failure, but they can be replaced.

I had honestly thought that this might be a problem, the chance of the tubing clogging with small particles was always pretty high. As a result the ‘back up plan’ was to place a dripper in the top of the tower, and let gravity do the work. So that’s exactly what I have done… I’ll let you know how it gets on.

Food. There’s plenty of it around, and we all love to eat it. So why should anyone need to defend it?

Because most of what we’re consuming today is not food, and how we’re consuming it — in the car, in front of the TV, and increasingly alone — is not really eating. Instead of food, we’re consuming “edible foodlike substances” — no longer the products of nature but of food science. Many of them come packaged with health claims that should be our first clue they are anything but healthy. In the so-called Western diet, food has been replaced by nutrients, and common sense by confusion. The result is what Michael Pollan calls the American paradox: The more we worry about nutrition, the less healthy we seem to become.

But if real food — the sort of food our great grandmothers would recognize as food — stands in need of defense, from whom does it need defending? From the food industry on one side and nutritional science on the other. Both stand to gain much from widespread confusion about what to eat, a question that for most of human history people have been able to answer without expert help. Yet the professionalization of eating has failed to make Americans healthier. Thirty years of official nutritional advice has only made us sicker and fatter while ruining countless numbers of meals.

Read the rest of this entry »

One of the major differences between standard gardening and permaculture is that the latter put’s great emphasis on design and planning. It can seem that ‘permies’ only ever talk about design however it is often easier to correct a deficiency in garden design prior to it’s implementation. This is especially true if you site something in the wrong location… in that case moving it is a drag!

The video below outlines the new Mandala Gardens being set-up at TSH, and the reason they are laid out the way they are. The system being adopted was originally designed by Linda Woodrow (The Permaculture Home Garden) so credit where credit is due.

The reality for a lot of people living in cities is that they don’t have the space, or time, to grow their own food. Of course there are a number of initiatives that help to address this, such as the allotment movement. But how do you grow your own food at home, or how do you make the most of allotment resources if you are frail, infirm or have other ‘issues’. The solution is easy… Sprouted Seeds

The Benefits of Sprouting

Sprouting seed is one of the easiest, and most productive form of gardening available. It is something that anyone can do and, in fact, it is a wonderful activity for children.

Sprouts are an alkalizing, living food which continue to grow until such time as they are eaten. They contain a greater concentration of vitamins, minerals, proteins and enzymes than almost any other food, and have been used for centuries to invigorate the body’s immune system, work against toxins and even counter cell mutation. Think of them as a super food you can grow right on your bench top and you wouldn’t go far wrong… Read the rest of this entry »

One of this weekends task’s was to begin setting up the greenhouse. One of the first things I needed to do was to setup a couple of propagation tables with irrigation system. The irrigation system is attached to a automatic timer ensuring that the system turns on, and off, regularly throughout the day without supervision.

The video below details the system…

So far so good…

It has now been about a week since the trial was started and already the plants a visibly growing. Wonderful!

The issue to do with gurgling was addressed by reducing to flood cycle to one cycle per night. This means that though it still gurgles it’s not causing too many problems with my sleep patterns. The more long-term solution is the insulated base but that will have to wait till the ‘alpha’ is completed.

However a new issue has arisen, something that is more of an aesthetic problem than anything else… The direction of light.

As was originally hoped, it seems that the light entering through the window is more than adequate for sustaining the plant growth so far. The plants are growing well with no signs of spindliness (is that a word?). However the plants are ‘leaning’ into the light which kind of makes sense when one considers that the light is only coming from one direction. As noted, this gives the plants a slightly odd look in the garden but doesn’t seem to be affecting their growth.

A potential solution is to place a reflective source, at least 30cm tall and the width of the bed, on the southern side. This should bounce back the light that pushes through and provide some stimulation to the cells on the southern side of the plant.

To test this concept I have attached a piece of corflute, a type of rigid plastic with a reflective side, to the side of the bed. At the moment, as can be seen below, this is only temporarily in place but should the trial proceed into ‘production’ then a more robust frame will be built.

Perhaps making the ‘mirror’ movable, ie up and down as well as angled, would add value?

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…