Water Retention Strategies

This is the beginning of the research for water retention.

Rain Garden - A rain garden is a planted depression that allows rainwater runoff from impervious urban areas like roofs, driveways, walkways, parking lots, and compacted lawn areas the opportunity to be absorbed

Ozy Wastewater system - interesting how they actually use the waste water to flush.  Also interesting to see how much more water the shower and bath use than anything else.  Making use of an outside bath / shower as i've been wanting to do for while and then re-using that water could be a good idea.

Reduce your lawn - Turfgrass is one of the most water and labor-intensive types of "gardens" you can have. Consider planting groundcovers or low-maintenance perennials instead.

Graywater - a comprehensive resource about greywater planning.  It seems very modern but in the end is selling a drip tube system.  But lots of good info.

Create an Oasis with Greywater - by art ludwig.  He's supopsed to be one of the authorities on this stuff

Rainwater harvesting for drylands (vol 1) (vol 2) - by brad lancaster - again he's supposed to be an authority on this stuff.

http://www.harvestingrainwater.com/ - Brad Lancasters site

http://oasisdesign.net/ - art ludwigs site

2 months without water.

After a couple of months away from the garden and a couple of devastating heat waves the hole garden has gone to shit.  The soil has died and all the fruit trees have gone as has the lawn - not much of a surprise there.   It took 2 years to get the garden to where it was so it's a bit disappointing to take such a large leap backwards.

However, what this does prove is that whatever we were doing was not sustainable.  No matter what work we did, what we planted none of it was sustainable without a more integrated and sustainable water retention strategy.  Using our grey water was good and was showing results, but the solution needs to be deeper than that and take in to consideration a natural sustainable water retention strategy.

We've got some ideas such as the water sink that we tested with the grey water, and of course water capture from the roof.  But we need to do a little more research in to other methods of water natural and sustainable water storage.

So, I guess we're starting from scratch but this time with the aim of designing a solution that essentially survives without human input.

 The soil is totally dead

 The hugelkulture is the only place that has any signs of life

 The tomato plants here are still alive and there are even some tomatoes left.

The other potager is totally dead.  The soil looks pretty terrible too.

Hugely culture coming along

The hugel culture send to be working. Everything us now growing better.

Harvesting a Bowl of Comfort

growing Camomille in the garden. got to do this one day

 

 

Sent to you by axavier via Google Reader:

 

 

Harvesting a Bowl of Comfort

via Chiot's Run by Susy on 5/31/12

Every year I add a few more herbs to the gardens of Chiot's Run and learn how to use them. A few years ago, chamomile was added and my gardens will never be without it again. Even if I didn't harvest it for calming teas, I would grow it because it's a beautifully graceful plant.

My chamomile plants are about 18-24 inches tall and blooming profusely with hundreds of tiny white daisy like flowers. These plants grow right by my driveway. They were only supposed to be 8-10 inches tall and I was planning on them spilling over the rock wall. Not the case, they grow upright and are a bit leggy. In the future I'll grow in among other plants to help cover up it's skinny legs.

Mixed in the with the chamomile the 'Lady' lavender is blooming as well, together they make a wonderful night time tea that's delicious, comforting and certain to help lull you to sleep. Hopefully in a few weeks I'll have a quart of dried chamomile for the pantry this winter.

What's your favorite kind of herbal tea?

Looking for some great books about growing/using herbs & spices, here are a few of my favorites:

A great source for herb plants of all shapes, colors, flavors and sizes is Richter's Herbs. Most of the herbs in my garden have come from them.

Related posts:

1. Harvesting Herbs for Tea This week I've been out harvesting a lot of my...
2. Growing Herbs for Soothing Teas I'm a big fan of hot beverages, even in the...
3. Harvesting My First Asparagus I harvested my first asparagus last week. I have a...

 

 

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Maximising boysenberry yield

This looks like a good idea. He gets 1/2 a bucket a day from this!!! worth considering somewhere. I like that it's functional and takes little space

 

 

Sent to you by axavier via Google Reader:

 

 

Maximising boysenberry yield

via Abdallah House - Redesigning a Home by noreply@blogger.com (permie) on 3/17/12

Principle 3: Obtain a yield

Boysenberries can be a great producer, or a big problem, it all depends on management. My gardening mentor Brian has been advising me on how to make the most of these prolific plants, and suggested growing them on mesh, which doubles as a fenceline whilst supporting the downpipe to rainwater tank. The mesh supports a sultana grape vine, male and female kiwi fruit vines along with about 7 metres (2.4m high) of boysenberries. The trench on the laneway side of the mesh has small check dams within it to hold water so that the water can seep into the ground rather than run off which reduces the need to irrigate them so often.
Boysenberries require frequent maintenance, but not much of it. This is best done using leather gloves, as the tiny prickles can be quite painful if they break off in your skin. The main task is to feed new growth through the mesh, and remove excess leaders before they get out of control. The images below show the growth and management over the past 18 months. My management style is evolving as I go.

Boysenberries planted end of Spring and fertilsed with horse manure. Native grasses planted on laneway side, providing mulch, habitat and buffer (from traffic, herbicide runoff and invasive grasses.

Canes are threaded through mesh in an ad-hoc fashion as they grow through summer.

Most of the leaves drop off during winter, the rest are removed by hand to reduce habitat for berry eating insects

During Spring growth resumes and the growth on the canes were prunned to 300mm above ground level to reduce habitat for insects / mould. The native grass was cut back to provide mulch and better access for prunning canes.

Thick new growth consumes the mesh and flowers mid Spring. New canes begin to grow from base and are left to grow at ground level.

Heavy cropping from late Spring till early summer. Averaging half a bucket a day for many weeks during peak.

Having such huge yields over a short period meant that we had to find creative uses for the fruit.

• We ate what we could straight from the canes
• We made berry smoothies
• Preserved about 20 large jars of them in water
• Made about 20 jars of jam of various sizes, some given away at Christmas
• Froze some in containers - best to use the containers that they were picked into as they don't transfer well. Very nice with cream or ice cream.
• Made about 15 stubbies (375ml) of berry / plum purée mix as the wild plums were coming on at the same time
• Made about 15 stubbies of berry / plum cordial
• Gave away some fresh berries to our neighbours and friends

Preserved berries stored in cellar.

Old growth pulled from mesh when finished fruiting (early summer) and cut for mulch, took a couple of hours. New cane growth led up mesh, one per vertical - not ad-hoc as per last season.

Early Autumn - When canes reach the top they are tipped out and horizontal growth led through mesh to fill in gaps.

www.permacultureprinciples.com

Olive pruning

Reminder to self:

anton, you are trying to prune these trees right down to half their size. But you didn't want to do it all at once and kill them.  Prune hard again next season.

Soon to be,wind damaged

This spot wasn't great. The wind just hammered the spoilt plants. This was probably the single worse influencing factor.