Suburban Micro Food Forest's Blog (215)

I locked the girls out of the

Instead of a pond, a veg terrace to collect runoff from the driveway. Also gets morning sun.

Have cut this one above the pond with a felled cabbage tree acting as a retainer. Bed is North sloping, runs E-W and collects water flowing off the driveway. A good spot for more berries.…

Instead of a pond at the end of the driveway Ive created a small terrace for more veg crops as it gets plenty of water and morning…

Have now put this into a scale drawing showing overflow pathway and seepage areas. Will think about how to get some soothing water sound generated in the process.

Im agonising over where to locate a second pond. The top of the section would be most useful as the roof runoff comes in there and the water could then flow down to water plants, but it would mean relocating the chook house. Another option is the end of the driveway which would be fed from the concrete runoff, but I would have to relocate some citrus and the herbs. This spot would be visible from the verandah. Theres also a low patch in the middle where a previous soak hole has subsided.…

Seeds have germinated everywhere from the recent rain and will keep the chooks fed as long as we get enough showers to keep them growing till they get decent root systems established. The first few weeks are critical as we saw this summer when most of them died.

Crickets have been keeping us awake so I was pleased to see a chook pounce on one and devour it. Hens were out in the forest for 10 hours yesterday.

Chooks evolved from forest dwellers so mine have spent most of the day hiding from the sun under the passionfruit vine. If you want to free range your chooks make sure theyve got shade. This may explain why the commercial 'free range' egg producers birds kept going inside when all they had was an open grass…

http://www.geofflawton.com/fe/33812-urban-permaculture-the-micro-space

Given that red wine appears to reduce the risk of heart disease (vis the French paradox), its interesting that its not only double taxed, but triple taxed, as GST is charged on the retail price, which has already had duty added. Ive made a contact at a local vinyard who will supply me with cuttings from winter prunings and from which I plan to produce my own wine.

Geoff Lawton explaining a Queensland development he evolved

http://www.geofflawton.com/fe/46743-5-acre-abundance-on-a-budget

Have been letting the chooks out for prison exercise. They seem to prefer the neighbours lawns to my food forest and ended up sunbathing in one guys veg patch. Hopefully more weeds will germinate with the rain.…

It rained. Yabberdabberdoo!

Liberated some discarded fencing from a construction site and used it to put a better retaining wall around half the veg bed. The other half is steeper so I built retaining earth mounds from clay excavated from tree planting holes. Pics to follow when the sun returns.

Im testing various foliage on the girls in my quest for closed loop eggs. They eat taro, yacon, dandelion and nightshade (without the berries). Giving them access to the compost gets it well mixed and manured. Im also grinding the shells to powder and putting it on the veg beds for calcium.

I was about to remove the last courgette, which has finished flowering, when I noticed it had 50 ladybirds on its fungus infected leaves. I wonder if, like some ants, they eat fungus? By tidying up we may be depriving our ecosystems of useful stages of habitat. Old habits die hard.

45 self sown pumpkins in total. Have now taken the vines out and composted them.

Stupidly got stung by my own nettles. I tried cellotape to pull the stings out, vinegar, baking soda, soap, anti-histamine cream, pee pee and calamine lotion - none of which really worked. Need to let some docks grow and plant some Aloe.

Our neighbours agreed to tend the chooks in exchange for the eggs for two weeks while we were in Japan. Strangely three sparrows drowned in the chooks water bucket during this time.