Limiting Your Water Usage (Quick Project)

Here I have an old tip which we have been doing for many years ever since I was a child, well, my Mom told me about it and I asked if we have done it in our home, when she said no, I was immediately outside scratching around for the required materials.

It’s simple, and think of it as How Much water will you save over a year, 5 years or your lifetime if you implement this Now?

Toilet & Brick Water Saving Technique

• All you do is grab a few different sized bricks, and perhaps a couple of shopping plastic bags. open the cistern of your toilet/s and try figure out which brick will consume a lot of the space but not disrupt the mechanics of the flushing device.

Balcony Gardening, multiple possibilities

People often say: ” well I don’t have a garden so I can’t grow my own vegetables or fruits”, now imagine if this short video interrupted the nightly news and everybody nationwide saw it, what would they say then??

Create a Real personal space, a little utopia for you and your family / friends, a getaway from being boxed in the building, here a lady from New Zealand shows just how much she got into her 4m x 2m space, and just a small spoiler, there are not only plants there!

enjoy and most Importantly, Be Inspired !

Permaculture Allotment Tour with Mike Feingold ( Bristol UK )

”Far more valuable than growing vegetables, … is my sanity, I can be here, and I have no awareness that I’m in the middle of inner city East Bristol, I’m on planet Zog here … and that’s incredibly valuable”
– Mike Feingold, UK Permaculturalist and Allotment Manager

For our overseas friends, Allotments are small areas of land which each council sets aside for interested members of the public who would like to grow their own vegetables, for rent. History of UK Allotment culture can be found by Clicking HERE.

Certain senior allotment holders can become committee members and there will always be at least one Allotment Manager. from the limited video’s or info I have seen about Mike and this allotment site, it seems to be that the whole site is set in a very close knit community / permaculture setting.

Things discussed are: Bed profiles, fruit trees, leguminous deep rooting plants, water retaining plants (Good for wildlife), early flowering plants (good for the pollinators), Winter crops, uses of cardboard etc.

enjoy:

Permaculture System Tour – Johannesburg South Africa

This is the second in this ‘series’ of posts, whereby I will post a good video (Preferred) or a photo log / page tour of an individual’s Permaculture System in their City / Country.

Today’s Tour is in the Suburbs of Johannesburg, South Africa, Next I plan on posting a very interesting video from Bristol UK with Mike Feingold who has been on the Permaculture path (Now an instructor / lecturer) for many years and runs an Allotment site in his local Council area.

In the following video, you will see the owner’s greywater filtration and re-using system, discussing their plans to convert to Solar Energy, nitrogen fixing plants and on site composting in order to remove All need for imported compost or soils which includes connections with the local restaurants and coffee shops who supply some essentials such as used coffee grounds, egg shells and vegetable scraps

Anti Fracking … Damn RIGHT we are !!

I will be throwing in a little politically related material from time to time, especially bombshells like this one!

Corrupt House Of Lords Fracking Report

Quick Garden Tips (Fern Tree Winter Care)

Fern Trees (Dicksonia Antartica) are not only highly expensive in countries where they are not naturally occurring, but especially in regions where they will not normally survive in all the seasons, there are ways to prevent losing them to frosts etc.

Beautiful Tree Ferns ( Dicksonia Antartica )

These tropical plants are now becoming well sought after in Europe, but even though you spent a lot of money obtaining one or a few, the place you bought the plant/s from most likely did not explain winter care to you and perhaps, your gardener may not even know this!

simply either get a bag, and:

1. go around your neighbourhood and cut a few fern leaves from any fern variety and bring them home, or just cut one or two from your fern tree (per tree).
2. make a rough ball and place it in the crown of the tree where the top branches emerge from the trunk, it should be about 5 – 10 cm thick (2 – 5”) …thick enough to work as thick insulation against frosts and snow
3. That’s it !!
4. Eventually all the other leaves will turn brown then black, these can be cut off to make way for next year’s growth, you could also add some of these to the plant crown

Top View of Crown with Winter Insulation

Side View of Applied Winter Insulation

Leaf Mulching The Quick Way

Thick fresh Leaf Mulch on a bed

Hi Folks, this will be a quick one on how to apply leaf mulch but most importantly, how to step up or speed up the procedure to obtain the mulch quicker…

Step 1: Obtain a Lawnmower or Strimmer if you do not have one,
Step 2: Rake up all of your leaves into a pile and mow over a few times, if you feel like it, you may empty the bag straight back onto the lawn and go over it again once more

Broad Bean multiple uses (Fava Beans)

Whilst all beans will have the useful trait of being Biological Nitrogen Fixers (Leguminous) for our soils (Bringing Nitrogen back into the soil naturally) which may have leached out trough heavy rainfall, for example.

The Broad Bean (Fava Bean) is particularly useful to anyone who prefers to ”model nature” (John Kohler’s words) and not rely on chemical non-natural based off the shelf products which, in the end, bring a negative balance to local ecosystems.

Broad Bean Plants

Positive Traits that make them so useful:

• Tolerant of heavy soils (Clay),
• Cold Hardy (not specifically needing be grown in a greenhouse or poly tunnel during winter),
• Nitrogen Fixing,
• Green Manure (Chop and Drop before going to seed / flower),
• Some varieties are used as animal feed and forage,
• Extremely easy to save seeds,
• Vigorous growth and,
• Fast germination too

Basics in building a Herb Spiral bed

A Herb Spiral is simply a type of raised bed design whereby you mimic a sea shell on its side (birds eye view) by using rocks, bricks or any other strong material good enough to support the weight of the soils / composts and plants.

Herb Spiral Design / Cross Section

Why a herb spiral? Well, herbs do prefer drier conditions so, being raised and supported by stone / bricks etc. ensures good drainage in wet conditions, for those in drier areas, applying mulching techniques will prevent over drying!
A spiral configuration ensures the water runs down from the top plant all the way through to the bottom so water conservation is another point of this design.

Just before planting

Above you can get an idea how simple this design is, I really do not need to supply step by step instructions as this can just be observed in the above and upcoming pictures, there are also step by step instructions online or on youtube videos:

Permaculture System Tour (Australia) with Geoff Lawton

Hi everyone! I have decided to track down a good permaculture tour video for every country (if possible) and collate them here on this blog for everyone to access in one place, so for post #1 with this theme: We are sharing a video from Australia.
The system designed around this typical middle class home is absolutely stunning! The use of space, the systems implemented here are great! It really looks like a wonderful place to spend your weekends in (or all week if you are lucky enough to have quit the rat race already!) … Definitely a must see for anyone in an urban environment and access to a garden. Geoff Lawton was a lucky man to be able to visit and take a walk around this garden ….

enjoy!