Permaculture Living

For an alternative to traditional charity giving, check out Kiva, where you can help entrepreneurs around the world grow their businesses and help lift themselves out of poverty.

I loaned $25 to a rice-seller in Tajikistan to help her buy a larger amount of stock, but there are farmers in Uganda, spare parts sellers in Peru, and shoe sellers in Kyrgyzstan. Some are riskier than others and some have better business skills, but it’s up to you who receives your loan.

Permaculture has finally made it to television, on Costa’s Garden Odyssey (Thursday, 8pm, SBS). Last week they showed volunteers a Permablitz on a backyard in Melbourne, and things you need to know for installing a water tank.

Episodes are online on the SBS website if you miss them on TV too.

It’s the depths of winter in Brisbane, getting as low as 5 degrees at night. Yet the pumpkin vine I planted last November is still alive and has only now decided to start producing female flowers and fruit, after nothing but leaves all summer. Has anyone else in Brisbane had pumpkins behaving strangely this year?

Over the Easter weekend I’ve renewed my no-dig garden. I pulled out the old and not very productive rockmelon and watermelon vines and snake beans, re-did the fence so it sags less (and is less easily climbed by marauding possums), and added more lucerne and more sugar can mulch.

All the rain has made it a perfect time to plant for winter. I’ve just put in some cauliflower and Grosse Lisse tomato seedlings, and a few unusual salad greens that I learned about at a tropical vegies workshop a few weeks ago: mitsuba, Brazilian spinach, and mustard greens. The capsicums and basil are left over from summer and are stilll producing now.

If you don’t have the outdoor space for a compost bin or Can-O-Worms, then perhaps this rather unique worm composting bag is worth a look.

I’ve been growing snake beans over the summer this year. Brisbane is sub-tropical and has hot and sticky summers, so I’ve been trying out some more tropical vegies that won’t wilt at the first touch of Queensland summer sun.

The snake beans are pretty prolific, and live up to their name - I harvested one that was nearly 30cm in length. They seem to survive dry hot weather, but don’t bear much unless they get a decent soak. The beans themselves are a little paler than standard green beans, but taste similar.

After a few weeks of hot dry weather, the last week has been a little kinder to the garden and it’s had a good soaking again.

I’ve been harvesting handfuls of basil and the odd tomato, capsicum, and snake bean but mostly I’m waiting for the rockmelons to ripen. There are at least five in there, ranging from tennis ball size on upwards. This is my first time growing them and they are surprisingly easy and tolerant of variable condition compared to finicky plants like tomatoes.

I appear to have won the ongoing battle with the possums. The answer, which was kindly provided in the comments earlier in January, is mosquito netting.

Enclosing the whole garden in a double-bed size net has kept the possums from climbing the fence and from eating any of the vines that are growing along it. It also filters the hot Queensland summer sun a little.

The one caveat to covering your garden in netting - remember to open it up during the day, otherwise the pollinators aren’t able to get in and the harvest may suffer.

I just love how fruits and curcurbits look when really young.

If it looks like Permaculture Living has gone back in time, that’s because the server the site lives on died a couple of days ago.

Most things were able to be recovered, but I lost a week’s worth of posts and comments. I’ll try to restore them soon.