Delicious pot of compost

Lex brought over this huge pot of compost so I can plant my seedlings out into the big wild world of the jungle garden. I'm sure they are looking forward to getting their roots into this!

Very significant moment

Today I visited my Grandad and he gave me my very own 'Chayya' plant, it is a rhododendron that he crossed and named after me 20 odd years ago. It's super exciting and amazing to have one. I'm so blessed and high pop toppy into it, it will be my garden wizard, overseeing and inspiring all the vegetables to grow grow grow!

Hi Chay-Ya,

Straw is what is left from a plant after the seed has been removed. Hay, on
the other hand, is cut and dried at an earlier stage (when seed is at milky
stage rather than fully mature).

To make hay, you cut it and let it dry in the sun for several days to reduce
the moisture content so it can be stored without decomposing/rotting. This
you can store in dry conditions for several years.

Hope that helps,

James

Complete urban farmer #4 COMPOST

Things I learnt today
* there are four main ingredients needed to make compost - Carbon, Nitrogen, Moisture & Oxygen
* the difference between hay and straw -
Hay is when the whole plant is harvested and cured, such as lucerne, this means the nitrogen is retained
Straw is the fibrous part of a plant that is left after the peas/beans have been harvested, such as pea straw, which means it is mostly carbon
* humus is the stable end product after the decomposition process, ie what compost becomes when is cooked and ready
* Nitrogen - greens, grass clippings, food waste, manure
* Carbon - straw, cardboard, wood chips, leaves
* if anaerobic (if not enough oxygen is present), it is not compost, as the beneficial fungi and bacteria are asleep or dead and some other crazy creatures have taken over
* Fungi store carbon in the soil
* fungi can send out toxins and enzymes across distances to break down leaves and organic wastes so the conditions are favourable for when they arrive there later

I found mâché seeds!

When we picked up the straw today I noticed the store had a stand of imported Italian seeds, I had a quick peek and there they were! Mâché feldsalat, valeriana, lambs lettuce, corn salad (all same thing different languages)! Harray finally! And only $2.30! And just down the road!

Straw barrow mission

My new housemate Joel pumped up the flat tyre on the wheelbarrow and then we walked down to the neighbouring suburb and bought some straw. It was a five kilometre round trip and we saw a few friends along the way. It was a nice way to engage with the area and really see the houses we walked past, especially as carrying a load encourages a slower pace. It was super great to finally get some straw for the chickens and mulching around some of the garden.

Community Farmers Markets

FARMERS' MARKETS

Veg Out, St Kilda
1st Saturday of every month

Collingwood Children's Farm
2nd Saturday of every month

Gasworks, Albert Park
3rd Saturday of every month

Slow Food Melbourne, Abbotsford Convent
4th Saturday of every month

Raw permaculture

Bi-Lingual Spanish-English
Permaculture Design Course

December 6 – 19, 2010
at Buena Fortuna Botanical Gardens, La Ribera, Baja Sur, Mexico

All-Star Instructors:
Penny Livingston-Stark, Andrew Jones, Daniel Jaramillio, Bruce Horowitz, Seeds of Change Co-Founder Gabriel Howearth and guest instructors.
Hosted at Buena Fortuna Gardens, a dry tropical plant paradise with over 3000 species!

Course Syllabus:
 > Ecological Design < > Bio-Remediation < > Organic Gardening < > Natural Building < > Appropriate Technology < > Sustainable Community < > Water Conservation < > Renewable Energy < > Seed Saving < > Food Preservation < > Resource Efficiency < > Local Economics < > Disaster Preparedness < > and Much More! < At the end of the class, students engage in a group design project. Link to RawPermaculture

Orchid nectar

I've been quite excited the last few days because one of my orchids is
flowering for the first time in the three
years we've lived together. With all today's high spring lovin' I just found a bee almost inside the orchid drinking out all the sweet nectar, on my kitchen windowsill. Bees are so cool.

Heirloom seeds

Jankala Organic Seed Organic and heirloom seed varieties, and DOT Pots which are made from natural wood fibres and peat moss and are designed to plant straight into the earth without disturbing the roots.
It is a small company with a lot of integrity and their selection of seeds is humble but there are some great varieties and very reasonably priced.

The Italian Gardener Specialising in Italian heirloom vegetables, all of these seeds come direct from Italy, there is a good selection of organic/ biologici and they sell Yellow watermelon! Delicious! And! Mache / Lambs Lettuce! My favorite! This is the only place thus far I have been able to track down this seed in Australia (I fell in love with mâché in France). One day when I'm rich I will definately buy some, maybe someone wants to go halves in a packet?

Eden Seeds, our classic heirloom seed friends.
OUR AIM is to distribute old traditional open pollinated varieties of vegetable seed, preferably old Australian varieties and organically or bio-dynamically grown where possible.

Select Organic is Eden's Certified organic label with colour pictures on the packets. The only thing with buying seeds online is the rather large postage fee, so I guess it's wise to buy seeds together with a few people?

Or you can SAVE seeds and SWAP them!

Seed Savers Network is quite amazing and brilliant.
Seed Savers Network | Preserving the genetic basis of tomorrow's food
Promoting and organising the preservation, free distribution and exchange of open-pollinated seeds.

Anyway lots to read and research and be apart of, the Seed Savers Handbook is meant to be an awesome resource and there are local groups all over the place that you can join. I reccomend checking it out and becoming apart of this global movement to create a wonder filled deliciously diverse edible jungle!

Upcoming Very Edible Gardens workshops

Poultry Systems Establishment within Permaculture Paradise
Come along to a stunning property in Heathmont - one we designed over three years ago - to learn how to set yourself up for chickens and ducks in your backyard.  We'll look at and thoroughly explain an integrated chook house-greenhouse-strawyard-run-garden-orchard system.  We'll also build a duck pond that uses slope to direct nutrient-rich water to fruit trees, look at sensible duck housing solutions, and generally go through all things duck (note - we think ducks are under-rated in the suburbs!).  As part of the day we'll also have a tour of Kim's permaculture system which is like flipping through any permaculture book on suburban possibilities.
Sat, Oct 9th, @9:30am - 01:30PM

Edible Weeds Walk
Many if not most common urban weed species of Melbourne are edible and can provide valuable and nutritious fresh food. Learn to enjoy dandelion, sow thistle, mallow, amaranth, wild onions, wild celery, stinging nettle and many more (with seasonal variation). Many weeds are used by health practitioners for their curative properties. Learn too about some of the ecological uses of weeds as soil improvers, soil indicators and compost additives.
Sat, Oct 30th, @11:00am - 01:00PM

An Introduction to Urban Permaculture
Permaculture is a broad design system for building sustainable human habitats, drawing inspiration from patterns in natural systems.
Sat, Nov 13th and Sat, Nov 20th @9:00am - 04:00PM

Have a look at the VEG website to read more about their workshops and come along, I went to their Fermentation workshop a few weeks ago, it was super great, everything about these guys come highly reccomended.

After yesterdays inspiration I decided to gutter integrate my learning by embracing the half a million or seed trays left at my house by a previous housemate and do some progating! It was really fun and a lot of things I learnt yesterday made more sense as the newness of information settled. I'm growing red pak choy, black zucchinis, tatsoi and crystal salad cucumbers amongst other things.

Victory gardens 2007+

In 1943, 20 million gardens were producing 8 million tons of food.
Victory Gardens, also called "war gardens" or "food gardens for defense", were gardens planted both at private residences and on public land during World War I and World War II to reduce the pressure on the public food supply brought on by the war effort. In addition to indirectly aiding the war effort these gardens were also considered a civil "morale booster" — in that gardeners could feel empowered by their contribution of labor and rewarded by the produce grown. These gardens produced up to 41 percent of all the vegetable produce that was consumed in the nation.
-City Bountiful: A Century of Community Gardening in America, Laura Lawson

Drawing from the rich history of World War II Victory Gardens, Victory Gardens 2007+ puts a new spin on the meaning of “victory”. In this program, “victory” is:
- independence from corporate food systems
- community involvement
- getting people closer to the natural environment.

read more about Victory Gardens project in San Fransisco

I photographed these images from the Victory Gardens 2007+ book when i
was at MCA last week. This began the re-ignition of the food cart dream

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants

"We’re not eating food anymore. We’re Orthorexics, people with an unhealthy obsession with healthy eating. And now that the ideology of “Nutritionism” has its cold, clammy hands firmly throttling our very throats and controlling what we mindlessly shovel into our mouths, food has been distilled into a convoluted linguistic labyrinth of nutrients, macro-nutrients, micro-nutrients, vitamins, minerals, protein, fat, carbohydrates, saturated fat, antioxidants, polyunsaturated fat, cholesterol, fiber, amino acids, etc, etc, et al. Good Grief!"
-- From review for Michael Pollens book In Defense of Food, An eaters Manifesto by James from San Fransisco
--
Michael Pollen has written lots of books on food politics, I haven't read any, just some reviews and discussions on the web, the solution he offers to the nutritional crisis is: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants” which seems sensible. I would add - enjoy with it wonder, chew slowly, taste, smell and touch your food, spend time gardening and wild foraging, playing in kitchens, and sharing with love.