TTKD June 2013 meeting: Bryan Hacker "Towards a Natural Envinroment"

Thursday June 20

7.15pm for a 7.30pm start

Kenmore Library Meeting Room

TTKD Growing Food & Landshare Initiative

Growing Food and Landshare Initiative:
Interested in growing food?

Your local Transition Town: Kenmore District group is continuing the process of self-empowerment.

We are launching the Growing Food & Landshare Initiative.

Please share the following information with your email lists, neighbours, friend and family in the area.

Here in the Pullenvale Ward (from Kenmore/Chapel Hill through to Moggill) we are very fortunate to have a mixture of medium density housing through to peri-urban acreages. This diversity creates an opportunity for those without land, or land unsuitable for growing to match with landholders who do not have the time or resources to utilise their land. This synergy can result in a very productive and stronger community.

This idea of matching people keen to grow food to people with available land came to fruition in the U.K . Landshare was launched by KEO films in the UK in 2009 through the River Cottage TV program. The concept is simple: to connect people who wish to grow food with landowners willing to donate spare land for cultivation. Since then it has flourished into a national movement of more than 50,000 people, sharing more than 3,000 acres of land, with matches in every region of the UK.

TransitionTown: Kenmore District (which covers the Pullenvale Ward) would like to engage with people interested in exploring the possibilities of:

1.Landshare and setting up an online Landshare register

2. Co-ordinating people who are already growing food and have a surplus, no matter how big or small.

3.Co-operatively selling food through the local Moggill Markets in the first instance then onto a wider local food supply network.

______________________________________________________________________________________
Who should register interest?

Anyone interested in growing food.
Anyone with land they are happy for others to use with a written agreement as to the terms of that use.
Gardening Mentors: people in the area who have experience in growing food and are willing to share that knowledge.

Register your interest by sending us an email: transitionkenmore"at"gmail.com

"From little things, big things grow" - Lets start growing!

Want your garden permablitzed? Here's your chance

We have decided to attempt a more ordered approach to picking properties to blitz, using the ancient art of a roster.

So, if you want your backyard turned into a sustainable fruit and vege garden, send us an email at transitionkenmore'at'gmail.com. Just change the 'at' for an @ first.

Please let us know if you have attended any blitzes we have held to date as we will be giving preference to those that have, but even if you havn't, put your name down and soon enthusiastic gardeners will be heading your way.

Building a chicken tractor - In pictures

At our World Environment Day 2010 permablitz, folks from Transition Kenmore built a chicken tractor.
Chicken tractors come in various shapes, sizes and designs but the essential point is that they are a "movable chicken coop without a floor". This allows the chickens to live outdoors but with some protection from predators. It also allows then to peck, scratch, eat and fertilize the area. Once they are done you can move the tractor to a new area and plant in the newly fertilized space they leave behind.

Here's a few pictures of the chicken tractor we built, based on the book: "The Permaculture Home Garden" by Linda Woodrow. There are of course lots of other possible designs (just do a google search for chicken tractors)

Setting up the frame

Covering the frame with a wire mesh

Ready for their new home. A roost has been added, which is hidden by the covering.

Ploughing starts immediately

Permablitzing Anstead - Pics from our World Environment Day blitz

A couple of weekends ago Transition Kenmore carried out its June Permablitz on a sunny but temperate Sunday morning.

Holes were dug

Coffee trees were planted

The soon to be Chia patch

Shoveling soil and compost

Ready for planting

On goes the Chia

Relaxing afterwards. Thanks to everyone who came.

Permablitzing Chapel Hill - Pictures from the March Permablitz

On Saturday the 13th of March Transition Kenmore carried out its second Permablitz in Chapel Hill.

One of the first jobs was clearing away weeds from around the section

Garden boxes, ready for mulch and new plantings. Plus a very large pile of mushroom compost.

Planting in the newly cleared side of section

Planting strawberries

A much smaller pile of compost than when we started

The very professional looking chook-house

Planting done, growing begins......

Permablitz time! - Come along and help out at our next garden blitz on the 13th of March

Transition Kenmore is performing our next permablitz on Saturday March 13th in Chapel Hill.
Start time 7:30am.

Helping out at one of our permablitzes is open to all, not just our regular members. As in Melbourne, we are using the system that once you have attended 3 blitzes you can add your own place to the list of upcoming blitzes.
For a background on permablitzes and the results of our first blitz last year see here and here. If you want to come along email us at transitionkenmore 'at' gmail.com so we can let you know the address and get an idea of numbers for morning tea.

Blitz details

We will be chopping down some shrubbery, creating 4 garden beds, composting,mulching and planting and also finishing a chook house!

Needed on the day: wheelbarrows, cardboard, pruners, shovels, trowels. For those helping with the chook house, drill, screwdriver.

AND .....Plants. Any seedlings you might have popping up in your garden and would like to share would be welcome or any other vegie or herb seedlings or plants you might like to contribute.

Don't forget: hat, sunscreen,water bottle and gloves.

If you don't want to miss out on the fun let us know you are coming at transitionkenmore 'at' gmail.com just so we have some idea of the number of bodies for morning tea!

Come for a little or a longer time, we'd love to have you along.


Ps: Louise (whose yard was the subject of our first blitz last year) has been happily eating from her garden all summer and sharing with her neighbours. Its a great way to spread the word!

How to build a garden box part 2 (plus a part 1 progress report)

Back in December 09 I posted about one DIY method to make a garden box to keep opossums and brush turkeys out of your vege garden.

Despite being a little cluttered due to our enthusiasm to plant as much as possible in the space available, we now have spinach, chillies, broccoli and zucchini growing quite happily where 6 weeks ago there was bare dirt (check out the photos from the original post)




The chilli plants seem to have enjoyed the recent rain and are flowering and sprouting a lot of little chillies.






Making the wooden framed box with a lid in part one took a bit of work. Since it seems that the local brush turkeys aren't so interested in more mature plants we are also using more simplified protection for other plants.

For our sunflowers, we simply bent some chicken wire into a upside down "half-pipe".



Keeping it as free of other bought or non-degradable items as possible, we used some bits of bamboo bark that was lying around to wedge the chicken wire open
















and then some large seed pods to hold it all down.








When the sunflowers grew taller, we simply cut holes for them to grow through. Easy.

Mangoes, mangoes and more mangoes!

When we moved to our couple of acres last September, we were delighted to have 3 mature mango trees. We spent some time trying to work out how we would get nets over the tops to protect the fruit from the bats and birds when they began to ripen. 

Well, I have to say, we have been most happy to share our harvest with the bats and birds as you may have heard this has been a year for a bumper mango crop!

It has been quite a delight to be sitting on the deck having breakfast and watching the chickens eying off the cockatoos ( they are a big bird!) eating and wondering just how judicious it was to move closer? They obviously had  second thoughts and returned somewhat later! So there were the chickens ( lovely yellow yolks), the cockies, the rosellas, the king parrots and a couple of different  honey eaters all very well fed, as well as the bats at night.

In spite of that, we had mangoes, mangoes and more mangoes! Some were shared with friends and then I got busy. Firstly, Doone and I spent an afternoon bottling using the old Fowlers bottling kit and preserved over a dozen jars of luscious tasting mangoes. We had intended to build a solar drier to dry excess fruit but somehow time slipped by and we resorted to an air dehydrator which worked very well and it is not exorbitant in energy usage. We worked out it cost less than 60 cents for each drying load of 5 trays. Dried mango, yum! I had some young visitors who pronounced it 'delicious'.

Not being chutney or jam eaters, I looked for another avenue and found a recipe for Mango, Lemongrass and Ginger cordial, all of which I had growing. 

For those of you wanting to try it out, here is the recipe:

 

Mango, Lemongrass and Ginger Cordial

Ingredients

550gm  (about 3)  chopped very ripe mango

375gm                     sugar 

2 stalks lemon grass, bruised

5cm piece of ginger

1 vanilla bean, seeds scraped ( I used liquid vanilla essence)

60ml lime juice to taste ( or lemon)

Method

1. Combine all ingredients except lime juice in a large saucepan. Sir over medium heat until sugar dissolved. bring to boil and simmer until mango is pulpy. Strain through a fine sieve or muslin cloth. Discard solids. Add lime juice and bottle in a sterile bottle

The recipe says to store in fridge but I have made several batches and keeping them in a dark cupboard so will let you know how they store. 

Enjoy with mineral water or filtered water to taste.

As for the rest, well, our freezer is filling up with lots of frozen pulp which is just fabulous as a smoothie with chia added to keep our energy up through this hot weather!

Hope that helps you with some ideas for your surplus mangoes.

Permablitzing Kenmore - Part 3

Wow, what a boon this rain has been for the permablitz garden :) I'll let the pictures speak for themselves - note that the herbs are already being well harvested! The madagascan bean is thriving, as is the cassava. I've had a bit of trouble with my resident possum, she seems to REALLY like corn. I've planted another lot since the permablitz, but virtually as soon as it comes up she eats it. And she quite likes young tomato plants, although I've noticed that once they start to grow she leaves them alone. Obviously has a sweet tooth and likes the young pick. Bit of creative protection is needed I think....

Anyway, hopefully soon I'll have some pumpkins, melons or sweet potatoes to bring along and share. Feel free to drop by and have a look for yourselves if you're in the area :)

To see the progression from bare earth to productive garden, check out parts 1 and 2 of our series on Permablitzing Kenmore.

How to build a garden box

If you find, like we did, that your attempts to grow a garden are being sabotaged by marauding raiders in the form of hungry scrub turkeys (or opossums) then you might want to fortify your position to protect your innocent vegetables. Thankfully, stone battlements and boiling pitch are unnecessary to ward of these raiders and a garden box can be made in a few hours with a some pieces of wood, nails and chicken wire.
Our method was not necessary the best, but it does show anyone can do it.

Here's what we did.


Measure out a likely spot, be a little less optimistic than we were about how close to the brick path is reasonable.


Construct the lid, a lid may not be 100% necessary but does provide excellent protection. Crossbeams provided the flimsy wood with some strength.



Add the chickenwire netting. This can be attached with staple type nails, single strips of wire and by winding the chicken wire around the wood and back onto itself.



Attach chicken wire to your corner stakes for your sides. Leave plenty of stake to dig into ground. We only attached two (opposite) corner stakes initially and added others once the size and fit of the edge was confirmed.



Once sides are done, start planting. We added some stones that were dug out of the garden area round the sides to discourage tunneling.



Attach the lid and there you have it. If you wanted to be fancy you could add a wooden top to the side pieces and then attached some hinges between this and the top for easy opening, but a few bits of wire or string work as well.

Permablitzing Kenmore Part2

Well what a resounding success the first permablitz was! Fourteen enthusiastic and willing helpers turned out to transform a sad, weedy garden into a fantastic edible landscape. It was a very warm morning, even by 7 am, however the old saying 'many hands make light work' couldn't be more true - in just over two hours we had composted, mulched, planted and watered the whole site - and even had time to make a temporary compost heap out of the removed weeds. Not to mention the split logs generously provided by a couple of TT folk to make paths so that all plants are within easy reach - very helpful for watering already.

The mushroom compost I had delivered was great value - rich and fertile. Both the compost and sugarcane bales were delivered by Sapar Landscape Supplies at Mt Crosby (3281 7888). At about $48 m2, the compost was very reasonable - the delivery price to Kenmore is not cheap ($66 for 2m2) but on balance it was certainly a good trade off for me - I didn't have to worry about trailer hire, driving over to Mt Crosby, unloading the compost etc - so worth considering if you are time and equipment poor like me.

The amount of plants donated was incredible - seedlings, cuttings, seeds - of all different types. Rockmelons, watermelons, pumpkins, sweet potatoes, tomatoes and corn went into the steep 'garage garden' (as I can't help but think of it). The narrow garden leading to the front door is now a fabulous herb garden with parsley, thyme, basil, oregano and lemon grass. In the front yard is some beautiful cassava, lettuce and galanga, not to mention one very special peanut tree. A young helper even pointed out a native tree species, a tuckaroo, already growing in the garden, which I would never have recognised and probably pulled out as a weed. Now I know better! There were even a couple of Madagascan bean seeds which I have potted out until they are ready for planting.

Best of all, the home-made lemonade, peach and iced tea ice-blocks to finish it all off were a very welcome treat. Let's definitely make that a feature of all our permablitz efforts!

Thank you so much Transition Town folk - what an amazing effort by all :) Just being able to enjoy a few moments each morning watering and wandering around the garden is truly lovely, and I can't wait to share the harvest. Next post - exploring water efficiency options. Any ideas?

Action at Anstead

Well, we are definitely settling into our new patch here at Anstead. On the 4th Nov when the temp reached 36 degrees we had the insulation installed, thankfully early in the morning. The guys installing jumped into the pool to recover !

On Nov 5th we had the new 1.44KW (expandable to 2.5KW) PV system installed -temp 32 degrees. Our average output per day so far has been 6.68 kWh with consumption 9.5 kWh per day ( that swimming pool pump!) so by the time we add another 1KW to the system we should be self-sufficient. Doone only has one more panel to buy on ebay.

Fortunately the 2 rains we have had have nicely topped up the water tanks.

We have added a grape vine, 2 xfig trees, black zapote, guava,olive, lem

onade, pomelo, 4 passionfruits, 3x pawpaw, cassava, native frangipani, herbs, rocket, a few vegies, ferns, palms and bromeliads to our growing garden. The 3 mango trees are laden so we might have to have a mango drying workshop!

The aquaponics unit moved well. We didn't lose a fish and they are certainly having a growth spurt in this warmer

weather. We need more grow beds as there is too much nutrient for the amount of plants we have resulting in too rapid growth.

AND, the point-of -lay chooks have started laying AND they put themselves to bed on only the second night of residence. I wish I had trained my children that well when they were young!

We would love to hear what's happening at your place!

Carol & Doone

Permablitzing Kenmore

You can see why I was more than happy to be the guinea pig permablitz garden! This garden is an exercise in the importance of planning, planning, planning. Check out the interesting ‘garage garden’. Apparently the driveway was too steep to use, so the then owners decided to turn it into a garden – rendering the double garage unusable without extensive renovation and waterproofing (the amount of water that raced through there back in the May floods had to be seen to be believed). The garden was planted out - with declared weeds. These then had to be removed, leaving unsightly stumps and not much else. An efficient drip and spray watering system was installed to water those weeds – unfortunately, because of current water restrictions this is not allowed to be used either (okay, that one was hard to foresee, but for anyone thinking of using one, well worth considering now!).

With all the benefit of these prior learnings, I thought the best thing I could do was to call in an expert to help me plan what to plant and where. Scarlett Patrick from Brisbane Local Food was fantastic with the help and advice she gave - even taking time out from her own house-painting to come out to my place to have a look. She has some awesome gardening tips on her own blog too - check out her no-dig gardening powerpoint, and the photos of her regular garden harvest - you can find it on her profile page at http://brisbanelocalfood.ning.com/.

I think she was a bit daunted when she first laid eyes on the site, but quickly advised composting, mulching and came up with some ideas for edible plants that are relatively easy to grow and will hopefully thrive. So a big thank you to Scarlett for her generous time and advice.

Next thing, I co-opted my eldest son and we got stuck in and started weeding – a very hot experience last weekend I must say. I concentrated on the herbaceous weeds whilst he applied muscle and machinery to the woody weeds that were sprouting up everywhere. The most common one appears to be chinese elm which seems to be rampant around this area. I think the cobblers peg has been unchecked for a long time and it has taken months of continuous removing and binning to even make a dent in it. I’ll keep you all posted as to how successful we are at keeping this down. We made great headway and finished the day off with a thoroughly enjoyable water fight (buckets only of course!). Next post, I'll upload the photos of the prepared areas and the types of plants that Scarlett recommended.

350 Practical Actions

It is heartening to see a surge in climate change activism at the moment with 350.org doing a great job in raising popular awareness. I find the message sometimes, (well maybe often,) overwhelming as well. Being out in my garden, just noticing what's going on, calms the mind. I have observed this effect on myself for many years - a swim in the ocean, a country weekend, alfresco dinning! Of course there is now a name and academic analysis of it - ecopsychology , a relatively new branch of psychotherapy.These moments are refreshing because they reconnect us with our true nature, too much of our contemporary lives have become an abstraction. Ecopsychologists argue that the ecological mess we find ourselves in, is directly the result of our efforts to ignore and repress all that is natural (and uncertain, mysterious,uncontrollable and real).

So to the garden -

Even the most neglected garden can be therapeutic. This week I looked beyond the weeds and dead dry lawn and saw that my paw paw had ripened and a respectable amount of cherry tomatoes were ready. The rocket went to seed over the holidays. I managed to save them (the seeds) using new skills gained from the OOOBY workshop. Not a bad effort I thought to myself, considering this time last year I was, (a complete novice), just starting my horticulture cert at Northy Street. If I applied myself to 350 such practical actions, (1 per day and 14 days reserved for inaction or impractical actions,)why that would be a year of good mental health plus as much paw paw and tomato as anyone could eat!

JULY in AUGUST

The year is racing away from me - it is August already but I am just finishing up stuff from July.
I have harvested my lemons and made little cakes with them. The photo is not particularly kind, they are delicious. I am also getting good rocket from the garden at the moment, almost

 everything else has been taken by the possums.

Speaking of really unkind photo's - we had our first birthday at Transition Town Kenmore District in July.  We actually did have fun.  I have enjoyed getting to know my neighbours this past 12 months. I've also learned a lot about gardening and am starting to re learn how to make things rather than buying everything from China. As a group, our main achievement perhaps has been to connect with other transition groups both in Brisbane and beyond. Going forward, we are close to starting the action part of our local community garden in Kenmore.