Category Archives: permaculture

May 02

Wee on a Tree

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One of the great engineering acheivements of the 19th century was construction of the underground sewerage systems in heavily populated cities in Europe and the “New World”. At the time they were severely polluted and disease was rife.

The construction of the sewers provided immediate and substantial health benefits to the people in the those cities. They were one of the main factors that wiped out serious water borne diseases that often reached plague status. Over time these systems were rolled out into smaller towns and villages and regulations were enhanced and enforced until they almost had a life of their own.

We now live in cities and rural communities where these rules and regulations are becoming counterproductive and are actually preventing us from implementing new techniques and practices that have positive environmental benefits without endangering our health. From composting toilets to proposals for turning human manure into renewable energy, these ideas are met with stiff resistance and sometimes angry responses from authorities around the world. To be fair, local authorities are very risk averse with good reason as they are the one’s who wear the pain if things go wrong but there needs to be a way to move forward. We don’t want to be the six gorillas. Well, I found a way to do my bit, as it were.


Wee on a Tree!

I remember as a kid growing up on farms siding up to the nearest tree or bush in the paddock to answer nature’s call. I also remember getting into loads of trouble when we moved the suburbs when I was five, for doing just that in the front yard.

Boy, was I confused!

 

Approximate Nutrient Content of Urine

 

Now, as it happens the majority of the nutrients are in the urine and it can be considered liquid fertiliser. So wee, as it were, is the thing for the garden rather then the… ahem… rest of the business. The table shows shows the nutrient content of urine.

That’s a lot of NPK+ fertiliser going to waste, Literally!

 

 

People in many parts of the world store and use this wonderful plant food to great effect. I’m not prepared to go quite that far (yet) but I’m more than happy to wander out in the evening and pick a different tree and not just the proverbial lemon. It’s important to vary the location because, even though it is a relatively dilute fertiliser it can build up if applied continually to the same spot. You should also hold off, so to speak, if you are sick as some pathogens can be present even though usually it is pathogen free.

Another benefit is the water saving as each time you fertilise a tree you save between 6 and 12 litres of water depending on the toilet and choice of flush. Win-Win!

There are loads of links on the web about this and related topics, but one I found quite informative is

https://www.uni-hohenheim.de/respta/poster/urine_fert.pdf

So go on, do your bit and  Wee on a Tree!

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Apr 28

Turning Apples into Pumpkins

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“Magic?”, you might ask. Not quite.

As the weather slows down and the summer garden gives way to the winter crops, we slowly go around and collect the last of the summer fruit and veg. We still have apples on the granny smith tree and a few struggling tomatoes and cucumbers but we are picking the last of these.

 

 

The cucumbers in particular ended up being a pretty good crop considering I planted the last lot quite late and we’ve had a glut over the last few weeks.

One of things we didn’t get was pumpkins. The few that I planted were ripped up by the birds when they were seedlings.

However, last week my mum rang up and said she had been given a couple of pumpkins from the guy across the road and asked if I wanted one. “You beauty”, I said, “how about I swap you a couple of cucumbers, some apples and a jar of freshly made quince and apple sauce for the pumpkin?” “What time can you get here?”, she replied (She loves quince and apple).

A quick trip (and an extended 3 hour chat over coffee) later and I was the proud owner of a delicious big pumpkin and Mum was going, “ooh”, and ,”aah”, over her jar of quince and apple. Sharing is such a wonderful thing!

We’ve already had two meals from the pumpkin and, on the weekend, it’s pumpkin soup time! YUM!

I think I might try saving the seeds as well.

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Apr 25

The Aromatic Bulb of Happiness

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You know how I told you I loved ginger? Well, I really love garlic! The pungent little member of the onion family takes centre stage in much of our cooking. But it wasn’t always so.

I remember growing up, like most of the “Aussies” around us, with no idea about garlic or many of the other wonderful spices and herbs common in other cultures. The only foriegn food you were likely to experience was at the local Chinese take-away restuarant and most of our home meals were the old “Meat and Three Veg” with the odd roast on special occassions. Fortunately, when I was still quite young we moved into some very multicultural areas and my culinary experience exploded!

We made friends whose families came from Italy and Greece, and then others from all over Europe and the Mediteranian. Later there were others from Asia, India, South America, Africa and just about everwhere else you can think of. So you can imagine the explosion of tastes and smells that we were introduced to. It’s hard to imagine a world without this cultural and culinary diversity and richness now, and we are all the better because of it.

It’s also hard to imagine a world without garlic as it plays such a significant role in so many cultures’ cuisines and folklore. Garlic has a rich history and is reputed to reduce blood pressure, control blood sugar, fight off viral infection, improve your immune system, make you more virile, ward off evil spirits and even deter mosquitos! There’s even a garlic phobia – Alliumphobia is the term for the fear of garlic. The list goes on and on, but I just love the taste :-).

For some reason, until relatively recently, I didn’t grow much garlic. But last season I bought a few bulbs from Ceres Community Environment Park in Brunswick and set aside two small beds dedicated to this most wonderful of herbs. A few weeks ago I realised that the tops had died down a bit too much and they were well overdue to be harvested. Anyway, I got a good crop and we’re going to have really nice garlic for a while now. The cloves are a bit small but they have an intense flavour.

I noticed the other day that I must have missed a few or dropped some bulbs because I have several clusters of new season plants popping up in the old beds. I’ll leave some where they are and translplant the rest over the week and get set for another awesome crop next year.

    

So what prompted this little reminisce? Well, I cooked a bolognaise style pasta dish tonight and guess what one of the key ingredients was? Yep! The Aromatic Bulb of Happiness! 🙂

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Apr 22

A Peck of Pomegranates

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Pomegranates are a wonderful and unusual fruit. The yellow/red thick skinned fruit contains hundreds of sweet but tart, bright red anils which surround the seeds. Originally fro the Persian region, they are grown around the world, but you don’t see very many in suburban gardens. We have one growing in the orchard/chook run and it produces reasonable quality fruit. The only trouble is, the chooks love them as well. You can see them here jumping to get at the seeds

I also have a number of seedlings planted from the seeds I collected from a tree near our house. You can see them on the left in this picture and I am looking forward to growing a number of these to see whether any of them produce similar quality fruit.

I “rescued” the remaining fruit from the tree. The seeds look fantastic with a rich red lustre and are reported to have a number of health benefits and anti-oxidant properties.

I am going to juice them and make some genuine Grenadine. I might even have a go at some alcoholic and non-alcoholic cocktails such the original versions of “Roy Rogers”, Sea Breeze” and “Shirley Temple”.

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Apr 20

Peel me a Grape

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There is nothing quite like eating fresh grapes straight off the vine. I have a few grape vines scattered around the garden including a few on the varandah outside the kithchen that have produced a some really nice fruit, but they are all one variety.

A few months ago I wipped up a wire trellis along the fence near the water tank and planted two new vines with some dark table grapes. There is a Ribier that is a mid season grape and an Autumn Black that is a late grape. Hopefully, this will give me wider variety grapes over a wider timeframe.

You can see the Autumn Black on the left and the Ribier on the right. In the middle is a transplanted pepino which is doing very well in it’s new home. The pepino has large egg shaped fruit with a yellow skin with purple streaks. the orange flesh is a bit like a rock melon.

When I lightly pruned the grapes last month to train them on the wire I took the opportunity to take some cuttings and as you see in the centre of the photo, they have struck nicely. I will plant these out into the garden in early spring a little further along the trellis to make sure we have plenty of mouth watering grapes next summer.

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