Autumn garden to-do list - Sunday update

Today was a very productive day with us all out in the garden!

~ Weed a couple of garden beds (ones which will be slighted shaded over the depths of winter), lightly turning the top layer of soil (don't want to do too much so I don't damage the structure of the soil at this time of year) and sprinkle on handfuls of Blue Lupin seeds so I can grow a winter cover crop, and then rake the soil over. This will be the first year I have done this, but have been meaning to since I learned about them when I did my Organic Hort Course 3-4yrs ago. - check. We ended up with 3 beds of blue lupin, and the remaining 3 are relegated for winter plantings.
~ Add compost to the beds. - check (we got a trailer-load and liberally dumped it on and turned it in. We haven't bought a trailer load for the lower gardens before, so they were due for a big boost. Usually I just add it from a bag or from our compost bins).
~ Put up some seed trays (or buy the seedlings): lettuce, spring onions, peas, carrots, spinach, silverbeet. Onion seedlings are already in. - tomorrow's job
~ Bulbs and sweet pea seeds need to go in. - check
~ Clean out the chicken coop and sprinkle all the poo on the garden bed I've set aside for my garlic - check
(these beds will also get a good dose of fish meal, woodfire ash and compost). check
~ Replant calendula and borage seedlings that self-sowed (and put extras on freecycle for others to come and take away). - check
~ Add carbon back to the soil - dig in carbon by-products such as corn stalks, brocollis, peas and beans. Also mulch with straw (great if it comes out of the chicken coop with food scraps and chicken poo mixed in) and dry material from around our property. - check.
~ Replant the strawberries and any new runners into well composted beds. - check

The upper kitchen/herb garden still has an abundance of silverbeet growing for our use (I notice that the chickens are self-feeding off the plants down here). The tomato plants and courgettes were finally pulled out. And the last of the beans were harvested before being pulled up.


Before (with 2 cleared beds from during the week)

 



A fresh start.

We harvested some pears, apples and rhubarb to make a yummy fruit crumble for dessert!

Autumn garden to-do list

I've finally made it out into the garden! There are still quite a few chores that need doing though, but I've made a little start. With a bit of help from my Organic Garden Calendar by Kath Irvine, and a few other books I have on hand I've put the list together.

~ Weed a couple of garden beds (ones which will be slighted shaded over the depths of winter), lightly turning the top layer of soil (don't want to do too much so I don't damage the structure of the soil at this time of year) and sprinkle on handfuls of Blue Lupin seeds so I can grow a winter cover crop, and then rake the soil over. This will be the first year I have done this, but have been meaning to since I learned about them when I did my Organic Hort Course 3-4yrs ago. - check

~ Add compost to the beds.

~ Put up some seed trays (or buy the seedlings): lettuce, spring onions, peas, carrots, spinach, silverbeet. Onion seedlings are already in.

~ Bulbs and sweet pea seeds need to go in.

~ Clean out the chicken coop and sprinkle all the poo on the garden bed I've set aside for my garlic - check
(these beds will also get a good dose of fish meal, woodfire ash and compost).

~ Replant calendula and borage seedlings that self-sowed (and put extras on freecycle for others to come and take away). - check

~ Add carbon back to the soil - dig in carbon by-products such as corn stalks, brocollis, peas and beans. Also mulch with straw (great if it comes out of the chicken coop with food scraps and chicken poo mixed in) and dry material from around our property.

~ Replant the strawberries and any new runners into well composted beds.

The Garden

This morning we went down and did our grocery shopping. Before heading into the supermarket we went next door to the organic shop where I wanted to purchase a local planting caldendar that has been recently released. I thought it was a small price to pay for specific ideas on what to do when in our area of the country - it was packed with plenty of other organic advice too which was nice to read in an easy to read relaxed kind of way.

With all the rain we've been having lately, whenever the sun comes out we're down into the garden just to hang out when we can. The veges that are down there are booming at the moment, so it's lovely to wander around the garden while the chickens are out for a scratch around.


Today I decided to turn some of the compost I'd randomly thrown together when I pulled out the end of summer plants. I pulled off the top layer and underneath it exposed a pretty good compost pile. The chickens are onto it now - whenever they see a garden fork, they're in there and scratching around.

I returned a few hours later to put them back inside and they were still at it.

A HUGE heap!

Today I spent the morning out on a fieldtrip for my Organic Horticulture course. We had to prepare a large layered compost pile using a wide variety of materials. The end result was a pile about 1.5m x 1.5m and 1.5m high. It was an interesting process, and I have taken away a few things that I wasn't aware of before.

Did you know the optimum ratio for carbon:nitrogen materials is 25:1?

Most people add too much nitrogen material - I know I do anyway.

Nitrogen materials (green) include: green garden waste, weeds, kitchen vege and fruit scraps, grass clippings etc. These provide protein for the microbes.

Carbon materials (brown) include: straw, hay, sawdust, woodchips, dried leaves, twigs, shredded newspaper etc. These provide energy for the microbes.

So although the ratio is 25:1, that doesn't actually mean for example 25 centimetres to 1 centimetre, but it is important to add reasonably equally weighted layers of each as you build your compost pile. As the decomposition process occurs it will reduce to 10:1.

Most compost piles will reduce and do it's thing regardless of how you do it - but if you have a pile too high in carbon, it won't be decompose very quickly as the micro-organisms require adequate nitrogen for the process to work efficiently. If the pile is too high in nitrogen, it will work well, but there is a wastage of nitrogen that is released (as ammonia) into the air and waterways producing pollution.

When you have a higher ratio of carbon (as recommended) you will likely need to start adding water to the heap - I've never really needed to add water because my nitrogen materials have had plenty of moisture in them, however, by adding more brown waste (carbon) I will certainly need to begin to do this. (Unfortunately, today when the water was being added via a large hose from the bore someone turned the tap on too much (when they were trying to turn it off) and it leapt out of the person who was holding it's hands and dowsed three of us head to toe! Luckily I had a spare top in the car and just had to put up with clammy jeans for the next 1.5hrs and yucky hair that went frizzy as it dried!).

For this aerobic system to work efficiently, it also requires air pockets to break the materials down. This can be achieved by creating a layer at the bottom from small branches (about the width of your little finger), as well as ensuring only thin alternatining layers are added ie a large amount of grass clippings will compress and start to decompose anaerobically.

Other useful additives and activators include: blood and bone meal, seaweed, small amounts of wood ash, rock dust and animal (but not pet) manure.

Happy composting!

A dilemma

Feeding the dog
Feeding the chickens
Feeding the compost

That is the dilemma.

It's finding the balance between $$ spent, return to the garden and feeding the animals.

Prior to the chickens moving in we were feeding the dog all the household food leftovers from the day - a lot! He was actually getting too much and put on weight.

Prior to the chickens moving in the compost was a lovely, nutrient rich growing heap of organic matter.

Now...

The chickens now get a good portion of the left over scraps, all the vegetable scraps (except citrus and onions since they don't seem to care for them) and the odd topping up of pellets when there doesn't seem to be much "cereal" based scraps (as in the kids rice porride, Simon's left over weetbix crumbs from the end of the box or bread crusts).

The dog has lost weight and we are once against supplementing his diet with dog food.

The compost only receives pumpkin skin, onion skin, citrus skin and grass clippings/vacuum cleaner dust.

The only thing really benefiting are the chickens (and the dog's health). However, I suspect they could be laying more eggs than they are (only 1 or (very occasionally!) 2 eggs in 2 days from three chickens).

So! (Gee, what a long winded lot of waffle this is...)

I will give the chickens a full diet of laying pellets/wheat, they free range most days and get fresh grass under their tractor once a week - so a nice rounded diet I think. We hopefully will see an increase in egg production. The extra $$ spent on buying in what they need will hopefully pay off in a few ways and actually lasts quite a while - being bantams, they require less calories than full size chickens).

The dog will go back to getting the majority of the cooked food scraps, but only as much as he needs and the surplus goes to the chickens. Saving on $$ here again.

The compost receives all vege scraps from the kitchen again. Savings on $$ so I don't have to buy any in and the benefit of it being organic.

A fairly ho-hum day...

Simon went off today with a friend to go and collect some free-for-the-taking firewood from a forest of trees that need clearing to make way for native trees on a friends orchard - so he was gone for the day.

Myself and the kids had a pretty low-key day starting off making our way down to feed the chickens over the frost covered ground, then spent some time raking up leaves and twigs into mulch piles.

While Danielle napped, Nathan and I cleaned the outside windows (after the disaster from a few weeks back when the windows got completely mud splattered) - yes I've just sat here for 2wks peering out windows without seeing much! Nathan cleaned his playhouse...I think.

Then we moved on to clearing and digging up a garden which runs along the front of our house. It just had boring ground cover plants in it and I plan on putting our tomatoes and sunflowers in there in a few months, so wanted to get it all prepped. Next mission is to add a heap of compost and manure since it's basically all sand. Last years tomatoes that I put in there just didn't get the nutrients they needed compared to the ones in the square foot garden and it's special mix.

Tomorrow's list of outdoor chores is pretty long. I suggested to Simon that he might need to take a few leave days from work sometime soon and have a few long weekends to try and knock off some of the list. Guess he needs a windsurfing day soon!

Reducing our household waste...

I'm going to do some posts on environmental issues that we've been looking out in our house.

Reducing our household waste further is something I have been focusing on for the past 6mths. I always thought we did pretty good, but in reality, we were shocking! OK, so possibly not as bad as it can get, but I was pretty unaware when I now consider what I know and do!

As more and more discussions appear on The Nappy Network, TV programmes are produced such as Wa$ted, from reading books and internet browsing, each make me think, reassess and implement another little change. Some of them I've just been plain lazy about and others just totally ignorant. This seems strange to me - I am a thinker, I am a woman of action - why have I had my head in the sand for so long??

So, I've taken action over the last 6mths and these are the changes I've made which have been a long time coming.

* All wet waste is now distributed between - The Dog gets all surplus food scraps and leftovers that have been lying around (we generally eat left overs for lunch the next day that haven't been served up) - said dog has actually put on unnecesary weight and therefore will be sharing his scraps with the chooks when we get around to getting them (we no longer need to buy the dog any food aside from dog biscuits that he gets for breakfast); vegetable/fruit scraps/teabags/vacuum cleaner dust gets popped into the compost bin (I tried a worm bin, but it didn't work too efficiently for us, so I have reverted to the compost bin which we relocated so it was easy access, close to a water source and "brown" material). We compost 1-2 x 2 litre ice cream containers of scraps a day!

* All paper is now recycled. This is the most embarassing one for me. I can not believe I wasn't using the kerbside recycling which is provided (we don't get kerbside recycling offered for plastics/glass etc yet ALWAYS take it to the recylcing station every few months - this is why I felt we were doing pretty good). However, we were tossing the 3 weekly local rags in the bin, all junk mail, boxes from cereal packets etc and other random paper. We had already put a No Junk Mail sign up about the middle of last year and that in itself made a huge difference (I never join mailing lists to receive newsletters). Now I put out one large grocery shopping bag of paper per week. (When I refer to "grocery bags", well they're not really because I don't receive any, but it's how I think of "size").

These were the two major changes I made to our rubbish. I am amazed to say that we have now reduced our weekly rubbish from a small wheelie bin (about 4 grocery bags) down to ONE grocery bag (in fact I no longer need to use a bag as a liner in the bin because it just doesn't get yucky from wet goopy things anymore). It is full of plastic wrapper type stuff only. It occasionally has meat bones. We have always been great at not buying goods that use excessive wrappers or little boxes or whatever else - so really our problem was paper and wet waste. A few days ago I cancelled our wheelie bin which we have been forking out $$ for!