Category Archives: garden

compost, Eco Thrifty Life, garden, growing food, no-dig gardens, tomatoes

Prepping for Tomatoes Before Christmas

September 23, 2014 Estwing 1 Comment

I have had great success pushing the season outdoors by planting tomatoes on the vernal equinox and reaping ripe fruit before Christmas Day. This year is no different although it has been a struggle to do so.

This is what we started with: a sodden, compacted, clay lawn with poor drainage around the house foundation.

I started by preparing to improved the drainage while also building more garden beds.

This process took a while as there was lots of soil to move. Simultaneously I was making a cubic metre of compost where one of the garden beds would go.

The hot compost we make takes about 30 days to mature.

I had a helper for part of the job.

Finally ready by September 21st, the vernal equinox, to put in the tomatoes.

I had some plastic sheets that our new ceiling insulation came wrapped in. I used it to suppress some of the grass before cutting it to an X and then skimming the turf.

As the soil was severely compacted, I forked it to help with aeration. These will be no dig garden beds once established.

I always plant my seedlings with a litre or more of compost.

Fold back the plastic…

…and cover with mulch. Mind you, the plastic will only be in place for this one growing season. After the sod is killed and the tomatoes have done their dash, I will remove the plastic, fork the bed again, add compost, and then just treat it as a no dig garden bed.

These first six plants are Early Girl. They will bear ripe fruit around the 10th – 15th of December.

The next six plants are Money Maker. I have good luck with them as a consistent, heavy cropper and relatively good a resisting plant diseases.

Peace, Estwing

Eco Thrifty Life, food forest, garden, no-dig gardens, permaculture, wanganui

Permaculture: Turning Liabilities into Assets

September 5, 2014 Estwing 1 Comment

With an abundance of bad design around the world and across New Zealand, the opportunities for good design and re-design are almost endless. Simply addressing the built environment would provide thousands of jobs over many decades, to say nothing of the “natural environment.”

But this week’s column will, however, address the natural environment, which is, across most of this country, far from natural. In many cases non-native animals graze non-native plants on steep slopes that results in increased river levels and erosion during heavy rains and decreased river levels during drought. Put simply, poor design and out-dated land management techniques contribute to both flooding and drought: a lose-lose situation.

Good eco-design and contemporary land management can hold water on the land during heavy rains and provide water to plants and rivers during extended periods without rain: a win-win situation. This is called eco-design because in many cases it is the way “nature” manages water movement across the land with trees and wetlands.

This new orchard will be designed to use excess water off the roof as needed.

Redesigning marginalized landscapes for water storage is at the heart of permaculture – an Australian eco-design philosophy first developed in the 1970s. Permaculture is now practiced by tens of thousands of eco-designers in probably every nation on Earth. In arid places such as Jordan or Arizona, deserts have been re-vegetated using permaculture design.

In New Zealand, permaculture design has been used to restore the health of degraded land and to increase its productivity. A large part of this design philosophy is turning a liability into an asset. (Sadly, this is exactly opposite to what appears to be the management philosophy of Whanganui’s wastewater treatment plant.) For example, water poses a threat to a house made from timber, but is required for a vege garden to thrive.

This area is being transformed into a vege garden alongside water management improvements.

Good eco-design would transfer water from where it is not wanted to where it is, but without the need for costly drains or pumping. With regards to water management, good eco-design uses gravity to move it for free.

Another example of turning a liability into an asset is composting. Whether it is unwanted food scraps or an excess of manure or yard waste, composting the material and returning it to the land saves it from going to landfill where it converts into methane gas, or from running off and polluting streams and rivers. Win-Win.

Before.

After.

If you have a small section or a large section or a lifestyle block, you may be interested in learning how permaculture design is used to manage water and soil fertility. On Sunday the 7^th of September I will offer a sampler of what good permaculture design would look like on both small and larger properties (see sidebar). These events kick off Adult Eco-Literacy Week (7^th-14^th) and the Whanganui Permaculture Weekend (13^th-14^th).

Aside from being the gold standard in eco-design, permaculture is also unique in that it is an ethically-guided belief system. Central to permaculture are three ethics: Care for people; Care for the Earth; Share surplus resources.

Whanganui is unique in New Zealand in that we have a small but dedicated core of permaculturists who hold tightly to these ethics. For the second year in a row we are offering a weekend of outstanding events hosted by a range of experts in their respective fields. In other places across NZ and around the world you could expect to pay hundreds of dollars to register for such a series of events, but we are offering it to our community absolutely free.

It would be difficult to describe how unique this is, and it is one of the things I cherish about living here. Thanks to this handful of people who care deeply about our community and truly practice what they preach. And a huge thanks to Rachel Rose for helping organize the weekend.

Peace, Estwing

Sidebar:

Adult Eco-Literacy Week 2014, 7^th – 14^th September

7^th September, 1-2 PM Eco-Design for large properties. 223 No. 2 Line

7^th September, 2-3 PM Eco-Design for small properties. 223 No. 2 Line

9^th September, 6:00-7:00 PM. Solar Energy. Josephite Retreat Centre, Hillside Terrrace.

10^th September, 5-6 PM. Growing vege on sandy soils, Castlecliff

11^th September, 12-1:15 PM. Raw Milk and Yoghurt Making, Women’s Network, 75 St. Hill St.

12^th September, 5:30-6:30 PM. Best ways to use your heat pump, Josephite Retreat Centre, Hillside

14^th September, 4-5 PM. Tomatoes Before Christmas, Wanganui Garden Centre. Gonville Ave.

Whanganui Permaculture Weekend, 13^th – 14^th September

List of events can be found here: http://whanganuipermaculture.org/

Eco Thrifty Life, garden, growing food, tomatoes

Seven Months of Fresh Tomatoes: Mid-WInter Update

July 13, 2014 Estwing 4 Comments

At first I was pleased with five months of garden-ripened tomatoes… and then I was thrilled with six months of garden-fresh tomatoes. But as of today, we actually have seven months of ripe home-grown tomatoes without a glass house. I’m speachless.

It may not look like much, but they are still producing… and they still taste good.

And the plants are still flowering.

Apart from that, we have the usual winter veges growing.

Especially lots of broccoli.

Additionally, the rhubarb seems to be pumping.

And we are getting our first real orange crop.

Many of our native trees are putting on new growth.

And others are flowering.

I really love these purple hebes.

Peace, Estwing

compost, Eco Thrifty Life, garlic, growing food, no-dig gardens, organic, raised bed gardens

Planting Garlic Between a House and Farm Place

July 1, 2014 Estwing 2 Comments

Due to changes in our work lives and a desire to steward a larger piece of land, we will be shifting at the end of this month. However, garlic is meant to be planted around the end of last month. What to do?

Garlic is the only crop that we sell regularly, and when you grow the World’s Best Garlic, it is worth the time and effort. Over the weekend we hurriedly got somewhere over 400 garlic in the ground at the new property. This is how we did it.

We had to transport some of our 3 cubic metres of compost

We selected a bit of flat land for our market garden.

We did not have time to convert the paddock into a garden, so we brought in cardboard to kill the grass and topsoil to quickly build a raised bed.

We have had great success growing garlic on top of sand by using 80 mm of topsoil.

One key to growing great garlic is to use plenty of great compost. I pull a deep furrow with a hoe and then fill it with compost.

Meanwhile…

Nek minit.

We plant the garlic at 100 mm centres.

Everyone gets involved.

After two afternoons of work.

Peace, Estwing

Eco Thrifty Life, garden, garlic, growing food, no-dig gardens, organic

Growing Great Garlic: A Matter of Design

June 13, 2014 Estwing 1 Comment

Eco Design is a large and growing field. Facing a future of rising energy prices and increasingly volatile weather patterns, it is the inevitable future of design thinking as well as the future of business modeling, education, and governance. Those individuals and organizations that embrace eco design as early adopters will be at an advantage and those that put it off will have squandered time and money unnecessarily.

In my experience, eco-design thinking is applied in two distinct ways. The first and most intuitive way involves biological systems. In other words, using lessons learned from observing natural ecosystems to design and build managed ecosystems that serve human needs. The most obvious example of this is an organic garden.

The other way eco-design is used is in non-biological systems, which can include buildings, vehicles, energy production, industrial processes, management, and even governance. Our renovation is a perfect example of eco-design thinking applied to a draughty old New Zealand villa. This column and Project HEAT (Home Energy Awareness Training) are attempts to promote eco-design thinking throughout our city.

Today I’ll stick to biological systems with a focus of food production.

Organic agriculture goes all the way back to the dawn of agriculture because there were no synthetic fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides and fungicides back then. Imagine a time before Monsanto!

Organic growers use eco-design thinking to produce as much food as possible while working with nature, not against it. Their ‘toolbox’ consists of a range of techniques, equipment, compost and on occasion naturally-derived pesticides. The vege plots at our home and the organic techniques we use were recently featured in a film profiling super abundant home gardens throughout New Zealand.

Eco design thinking along with a decade and a half of experience have allowed me to produce abundant healthy kai for our family at very little expense of time, effort and money. This is the type of win-win-win outcome that is almost always provided by eco-design.

Although there is no substitute for experience, one good way to leap frog your own experience is by engaging in well planned experiential learning. While I was developing my organic growing skills I took advantage of local farm tours, I enrolled in workshops, and I practiced…a lot – sometimes 14 hours a day while I was market gardening.

Those days are behind me, but I draw on that experience to manage our low-input/high-productivity gardens, or what I also sometimes call “Lazy gardening.” From my experience, one of the best crops for lazy gardening is garlic. Over the years I have grown and sold many thousands of beautiful and delicious garlic. Growing great garlic is all about working smarter instead of working harder. (See sidebar to learn more.)

Another example of low-input/high productivity food production on our property is the way we grow tomatoes: lots and lots of tomatoes. This year we have enjoyed five months of continuous garden ripened tomatoes from the middle of December through the end of May without a glass house. This abundance was made possible by designing for sun, concentrating fertility, and successive planting. But we’re still three months away from putting tomatoes in the ground so we’ll save that story for another day.

Sidebar:

Growing Great Garlic Workshops

Learn how to grow the best garlic in the world. Workshops include the world’s best organic seed garlic for you to take home and two litres top quality organic compost. $15.

21^st June, 9–10 am

22^nd June, 9–10 am

22^nd June, 3-4 pm

Registration and deposit essential. theecoschool@gmail.com, 022 635 0868, 344 5013

Eco Thrifty Life, garden, growing food, organic, tomatoes

5 Months of Home-Grown Tomatoes

May 13, 2014 Estwing Leave a comment

We have just reached a milestone of five continuous months of fresh, organic, home-grown tomatoes without a glasshouse. Our first ripe tomato appeared on 13th December.

As of now, we have a small bowl of tomatoes on our counter and a few more outside on some very tired looking but still living plants.

We use a combination of sun traps, timing, compost, mulching and successive planting to maximize our production while minimizing inputs. I’ll include more details in another post.

Eco Thrifty Life, garden, no-dig gardens, organic, permaculture, raised bed gardens, scything, tomatoes, Uncategorized

Successive Planting: Summer/Autumn Transition

April 7, 2014 Estwing Leave a comment

One way we are able to produce large amounts of healthy food on a small amount of land is our approach to bio-intensive annual gardening. A combination of 80 mm (2.5 inches) of topsoil and copious amounts of high quality compost have allowed us to grow large, healthy and abundant vegetables.

Another way that we achieve high yields is by successive planting. In other words, as soon as one crop comes out another goes in. For example, after harvesting broad beans last spring I immediately planted pumpkins in mounds of compost.

Both of these strategies rely on abundant, high quality compost in order to replenish soil fertility to make up for the food removed. We use a hot composting system called the Berkeley Method that ‘disappears’ meat and roadkill in a matter of weeks.

Sometimes we use our lawn clippings in our compost, and sometimes we use them for mulch.

This week I have taken out some tomato plants that were in the ground since the 21st of September – 6 and 1/2 months – and replaced them with broccoli.

You will notice there are still some capsicum (bell peppers) in the ground, and I even left two of the eight tomato plants rooted as they were still producing. I simply laid them on the ground on top of dried grass mulch.

Each broccoli seedling is planted with a large dollop of compost.

The tomato ties – old bed sheets torn into strips – are collected and stored for next year.

And my helper and I carry on with the next chore.

Peace, Estwing

Eco Thrifty Life, food forest, garden, growing food, organic

Harvest Season Permaculture Update

February 25, 2014 Estwing Leave a comment

We have been blessed with a week of light winds and pure sunshine that has topped off our blackboy peaches, put our tomatoes into overdrive, and all of the other good things of early autumn.

We are actively saving the stones to plant more of these amazing peaches.

Hard to keep up with the tomatoes at this point, and giving away the excess.

But eagerly awaiting our first capsicum.

The tamarillos got pounded by wind three weeks ago, but are recovering now.

These autumn raspberries are fabulous.

While strawberries still going after 3+ months.

First rock melon on the way.

Pumpkins curing before storage.

Monty’s Surprise apples will be ready in another month.

Big, beautiful broccoli flourishing despite white butterflies.

Even a rare chance to harvest seaweed on our coast. It usually does not wash up here.

We were invited to have dinner with an interesting European couple who spend six months each year on their farm nearby. They gave us these gorgeous pears.

And our dear friend Murray brought us these early Tropicana apples for us to enjoy.

Peace, Estwing

food forest, garden, growing food, wind breaks

Eco-Thrifty Landscaping: Integrating edible annuals and perennials, natives and ornamentals

January 29, 2014 Estwing Leave a comment

Our friend Monica from Canada is writing a book on eco-design/build. She has asked me for some landscaping photos for her to include. These are some shots of our property this summer.

I’m still trying to figure out this new blog format, so this looks like it’ll be only pictures today. – Estwing

Eco Thrifty Life, food forest, garden, growing food, organic, permaculture, tomatoes

Mid-Summer Permaculture Update

January 13, 2014 Estwing Leave a comment

Here are some images of our productive permaculture property during the first and second weeks of January. Highlights include our first apricots, first olives, and first kumara plants.