Permaculture Living

The first female flower (and fruit) on the watermelon vine.

I’ve just signed up with Foodconnect, a co-op that sells organic produce sourced with five hours of Brisbane. It’s pretty new to me and I wasn’t sure what or how much produce to expect in my weekly box; certainly not as much as I received!

My order was a single vegetable box (the smallest available), and it contained:

1 corn cob
2 small cucumbers
5 medium tomatoes
200g cherry tomatoes
200g mixed salad greens
1 beetroot (with leaves)?
2 bunches of spinach
2 knobs of ginger
3 spring onions
2 heads of broccoli
3 potatoes
2 sweet potatoes
3 onions
2 large carrots
1/2 a large cabbage
Bag of mushrooms
Large bunch parsley

Now.. what shall I turn all this bounty into…?

The very cool Permaculture Principles website has produced a Permaculture Calendar for 2009 and a spiral-bound diary for 2009. I know what my nearest and dearest will be receiving for Midsummer and Christmas.

The worm farm has been operational for a couple of months, and the worms are busily breeding - and eating more and more - inside. I’ve found that they prefer softer food scraps like tomatoes or strawberries, and large scraps like potato peelings take a long time to be eaten (and the skin is still left at the end).

Smaller is also better. Blending all the different food scraps into a vegetable smoothie works well, but makes quite a wet mix. The best worm food so far is fruit and vegetable pulp from a juicer; it’s in tiny pieces and not as wet as the blended scraps.

The pulp from the tamarind pods is used for a sour flavour in Asian food. It’s also a sweet snack in Thailand - just watch out for the hard black seeds.

It’s broccoli and cauliflower harvesting time in Brisbane. Normally there is just one head of broccoli per plant…

Unless it’s this strange branching specimen which is at least a year old, and survived a hot summer to produce again this winter.

And again, and again.

I’ve just set up a worm farm to produce castings and liquid fertiliser to feed my container plants.

Regular composting has worked pretty well for me but requires a lawn to provide the carbon elements; the worm farm produces pure liquid and solid fertiliser, and can used in much more limited space.

I bought the Can-O-Worms direct from the nursery at Northey Street City Farm for $80, and ordered the worms from Kookaburra Farms. The worms turned up in a box in the post, not seeming to mind being shipped around halfway around Queensland.

Below is the Can-O-Worms in its packaging. It comes with three worm layers, a base to hold the liquid fertiliser, a lid, a tap and nut, five legs for the base, a manual, and compressed package of coir fibre.

And the cotton bag full of worms.

Inside, a mix of compost and 1000 compost worms.

Step one of the process was to put the brick of coir fibre (complete with paper packaging) into a bucket of water and let it soak while putting together the rest of the farm.

Step two was to add the attachments to the bottom layer of the farm: screwing the tap to the hole and fastening it with the nut provided, and sliding in the five plastic legs. The bottom layer isn’t for worms, but is where the liquid fertiliser collects (hence the tap).

Step three was to add the first of the worm trays to the base - and to wait for the coir fibre to soak up the water. When the coir was broken up and fully soaked, it looked like this:

Next the coir was spread over the first worm tray.

Then the worms and their compost were added on top of the coir fibre.

Together the coir and worms reached the top of the ribs on the inside of the tray, which meant I could go right ahead and add the second worm tray (the worms like to feed from the top, so will move on up into the next tray when the lower one is full).

I sprinkled a small handful of food scraps on the bottom of the second tray and covered it all with the cotton bag (wet) the worms came in, to keep them in the damp and dark as they like it.

I put the lid on, and (later) moved the farm out of the sun into a shadier part of the balcony. I stashed the third worm housing layer to be used as the farm fills up further.

Two days later, the worms have been busy turning the food scraps into worm castings.