Chook Dome Maintenance

After its five years of service, it was time to have a really good look at the chook dome. The UV-stabilised plastic twine I had used for bracing (following the original instructions in Linda Woodrow's book) had not worked well, as the chooks often tripped on it, and now it was starting to shred. When I untied it, I found that a couple of the joints had lost their wiring, so that was my first job. An intact joint is shown below.


The cross-bracing didn't seem to me to be necessary with my small-diameter dome, so I decided to just strengthen the upper joints with the good sections of twine.


I couldn't cover the lower joints without removing the netting, which seemed a bit much, as I wanted to move the girls in to their dome the same day.

What was the rush? I'd seen Annie sitting on wet ground. They only do this when they are afflicted with mites, to cool down their itchy undersides. While the girls had been mite-free for months, I think the butcher-bird I saw stealing their scraps a fortnight ago might have left them a return gift. After I had caught each girl and subjected her to the indignity of the spray-on parasite treatment, she was popped into the restored dome and set to work in my garden.


For more information on the structure and purpose of my chook dome, see this earlier post.

However, I am not the only creator of structures in the back yard. I suspect this is an artillery bunker, but the information is Classified.

Cool!

The Geek pointed out this Ars Technica article. I must admit I had never thought about the hideous power demands of data centres, and it's great to see such intelligent responses to the problem, using passive methods. The permies strike again!

Permaculture Basics: Guild Planting

Well, finally, I think I've figured out the whole photo-to-blog bit, so here's part of my vegie patch:
Is it chaotic? Yes. Deliberately so. This is guild planting. Guild planting, like all gardening, is a way of recreating nature -- but in order to take advantage of some of its processes.
Most ecosystems are mixtures of plants and animals, rather than vast monocultures. Why?

• each species uses slightly different resources (the 'ecological niche')
• each species has slightly different outputs, which are used by other elements in the system
• taller plants shelter tender young plants from extremes of weather
• not all species are susceptible to the same pests and diseases
• some species shelter pest predators
• potential exists for symbiotic relationships
  

A guild is a mixture of species organised to provide similar benefits, including benefits to the human designer. In a typical vegetable patch, plants are lined up in rows by cultivar. Snails call this a supermarket, I suspect. In a mixed planting, it's harder for pests to see or smell the plants they prefer, so there should be less pest damage. I haven't entirely managed to avoid rows here. That's because of the broad beans -- they are so tall that they need to be grown together so they can be tied up to prevent wind and rain damage. Behind them, however, is a random planting of Florence fennel, broccoli, Tuscan kale and volunteer parsnips.

Another idea of guild planting is to keep the ground covered by plantings all the time so as to minimise space for weeds to colonise, so that when one crop is pulled out, it should be replaced by another -- either by a new plant, or by a neighbouring plant growing bigger. In the picture above, you might be able to see radishes growing between the two rows of broad beans. They are a very fast-growing crop and I expect to pick them this week. The broad beans are now big enough to cope with root competition from weeds. The bok choy and the lettuces will also be eaten before the beans need the extra space.

And by the time the beans are out, it will be time for spring planting, which seems very far away!

Book Review: Smart Permaculture Design

Jenny Allen's book is a beguiling exploration of permaculture for the novice. Filled with fascinating ideas, it emphasises the creative side of permaculture while still explaining the basic concepts that define it.

The photographs are beautiful and I enjoyed the quotations that wander through the pages, as well as the sly humour that peeps out from time to time. It is endearing to find a gardener who admits her mistakes. Her bush food garden, she points out, is very hardy, yet she has it in Zone 1 (ie, adjoining the house). Plants that really do require care are thus further away, meaning that they are less under her eye and require a little more effort to look after. She has a comfrey saga as well...

The Aspirational Trees impressed me; I hadn't seen them before. These are a more focussed alternative to brainstorming. You start with a bubble. Inside it, write something that is important to you, such as "fresh food". Draw lines out from the bubble (branches) and write what you might do in the garden to achieve it: "herbs" or "vegie patch" or "strawberries", for example.

The list of possible garden features provides intriguing options. I've never considered an aphrodisiac garden, though no doubt The Geek would be impressed. More amusing was the zoo garden, planted with such animals as tiger lilies, dragon fruit and snake beans!

There is a comprehensive list of categories of beneficial insects and how to attract them. Regular gardening books spend almost no time on this. As permaculturists might point out, a predatory wasp is very successful at removing caterpillars, requires no work of the gardener, kills no beneficial insects by mistake, and is fascinating to watch. Perhaps as the Western world becomes a bit more Green, we might see the regular gardening books change their emphases.

Now for the quibbles. The book opens with a poetic description of life in permie paradise, as do most permie books. I know why they all do it but gosh, it gets annoying after a while, particularly at a time when I am finding organic methods of kikuyu control to be pretty useless. But perhaps this battle is telling on my temper.

The main strength and weakness of the book, in my view, is due to the writer's location. Maleny, in Queensland, is a hub of permaculture, having some of the most fertile soil in Australia and a tropical climate. The list of unusual edible plants for the tropics is fascinating -- but only useful if one is in the tropics, on acreage. Suburban permaculture in the temperate zone is, I can't help thinking, a touch more difficult. Gardeners in the tropics and subtropics will gain most from the practical chapters, but the creative ideas are adaptable to any climate.

I would class this in the 'nice ideas' category rather than in 'essential reference', even for tropical gardeners. Borrow a copy through your local library before purchase.

Allen, Jenny
Smart Permaculture Design
Frenchs Forest : New Holland, c. 2002
ISBN: 187706917-5

Mid-February Vegie Guilds

Today I moved the chooks back into their dome on the vegie patch. They will be in the one place for a couple of weeks, eating insects and plants, scratching up weeds, and manuring and turning over the soil. This is permaculture in action: with minimal use of (my) energy, but good use of a biological resource, the various natural behaviours of the chooks lead to improvement in my vegie patch.

I'll use glyphosate on any remaining grass after that, before I plant. I have tried to plant straight after moving the dome, but the result wasn't good!

In my Guild 1 spot, of the seeds I sowed a fortnight ago I can now see:

• a few French beans
• purple carrots
• dill
• Florence fennel
• 5 plants dwarf snow peas
• a row of radish "French Breakfast"

The Welsh onions and silverbeet have not come up. They might be slow germinators, but I think I will put them in punnets in future. I suspect the other peas and beans have probably rotted; we've had 170mm since I planted those seeds! I will plant some more in the gaps tomorrow.

My punnets have done quite well. The only seedlings not up are the lettuces -- and I was trying to use up old seed.

Starting Afresh with Vegie Guilds

Off and on, I keep trying to plant vegetables in guilds as recommended in Linda Woodrow's The Permaculture Home Garden. At some point, I'll review this book: it is actually practicable for urban permies in the temperate zone. Just to explain briefly: a guild is a planned mixture of plants in a single garden bed, organised so that harvest occurs within three months. The advantages include lower losses from pests and diseases, and continuous harvest of a variety of vegetables. Woodrow's system forms six guilds into a sophisticated "mandala", including use of a chook dome to lower pest numbers and fertilise, weed and till the soil.

Because I'm a SHE, my guild system usually amounts to trying to avoid planting the same kinds of vegies right next to each other (apart from sweet corn, which needs to be planted in groups for pollination, and which I underplant with cucumbers). It works reasonably well, except that I sometimes find that it's time for the chook dome to go on an area before the later crops have finished. Also, I'm not too good at having something ready to fill in spaces as they arise, and that means weeds elbow their way in until the chooks get them.

Time to give it another go. With this blog providing some structure, perhaps I'll be able to manage a bit better. So here is my planting list for the first fortnight in February:

Direct (done last Saturday):
10 French beans
1m row purple carrots
1m row Florence fennel
Parsnips (not by me; I just wait to see where they come up!)
1m row dwarf snow peas (I think it's too early, really, but have given it a go)
Radishes "French Breakfast"
3 silver beet "Five Colours"
1m row Welsh onions

In punnets, for later guilds (seeds planted yesterday):
5 beetroot (mixed heirlooms)
3 broccoli "Romanesco" (which, admittedly, I've never had any luck with)
3 cabbage "Mini"
3 kale "Tuscan Black"
1m row leeks "Jaune de Poitou" (these are whopper leeks that need ages to grow)
10 lettuce, plain Cos and "Rouge d'Hiver"
10 pak choy

Oops. I should also have had a few seedlings ready to go in with the seeds, but I hadn't many -- a punnet of leeks, and some crook tomatoes -- but I popped them in too.

Later in the evening, the rain started again. It has rained all day today and everything is drenched, to the point that I now worry my freshly-planted seeds might fall prey to damping-off disease!