New Gardens

So while away I decided to pursue a few new things this year - add some fruit trees to the side of the house, and get a garden bed down, down the side of the house!

I got about 12 m2 of garden bed bricked off, and I think it will be enough for now. After we rent out the house I'll just throw some mock oranges on it or something, but in the meantime, it'll be good practice.

UPDATE
The extended garden bed has been abandoned.... just gonna plant on the existing one for a bit.

Beees!

With all the plants flowering around the place, I'm happy to welcome a new addition to the place - BEES!

Just dont tell Sara.

AquaPonics Fish Tanks

So I dragged FatLoserBoy all over Ipswich today, on the quest to find some suitable containers for holding fish. We looked hi and low, and on the way attempted to find a recycled house stuff warehouse (theyve ALL shut down apparently!).

A few quick stops were made at Bremer Tafe, for FLB to enrol in an Arts Diploma, and ""Town and Country" where the attendant proceeded to tell me how little research I'd actually done.  Get stuffed, attendant.

After an extensive search, including much discussion on making them, looking at raw materials for it even, we ended up at Bunnings (again) and saw they had a 500L tank there for $79. To my mind, starting out on the whole enterprise, it would be the way to go - as opposed to making our own out of wood, cement or metal.The other thing I've *just* found out about is "IBCs", you can 1000L tanks for $100 from eBay.  The only other thing I saw was a Raised Garden Bed made from corrgated iron, but this would set you back close to $300, but looks pretty good.

Chickens and Soap

Im keen on getting some chooks. Having only a small yard and limited cash to spend, I might start with a simple A-Frame chicken coop and go from there, down the track. Will probably start with just the two and see how that goes!

There is some great information on doing it at the Down To Earth Blog. She also writes on a whole host of items, baking bread, making soap, all that stuff that I want to get into.

So ideally we would have a few egg-laying hens, and a few for growing and eating, but to start with we'll just get a few for eggs, and go from there.

Guard Your Mango Trees

Who doesn't like (free) mangoes? In my wanderings around Annerley, I have over time, noted that there are many mnay mango trees in vacant lots, on council property, all just sitting there with tons of unused, juicy, delicious mangoes hanging off them, being ignored by the local population.

So, to that end, and in the spirit of dumpster diving (I've only done it ONCE) (but I thought it was pretty cool), Ive been going on some late night raids around Annerley. If you see a suspicious individual wearing black, with a headlamp on his head, and carrying a massive rake, just casually walking around the streets of Annerley, minding his own business ladeedada, give me a wave!

My friend doesnt seem to think that people should need to "guard their mango trees". I have noted that he has since started actually picking his off his tree though, maybe because he knows that I know where he lives :)

Its also given me an insight into what its like to sneak around suburbs late at night. Its pretty cool/creepy. No-one really notices you, most people are inside watching telly, only the odd house will have people hanging outside at night, everyone else is watching telly or on the computer. Yes I have been watching *you* mwahhahhaaaaaaa.

I, paradoxically, call it the "Caveman mentality" -  we all like to get inside at night where its safe and warm, and free from harm from maruding invaders or wild animals. I even have friends who won't venture onto the streets at night in the suburbs, for fear of something bad happening to them. But we'll happily to into the valley, where something bad *might* actually happen to you.

Lessons learned about germination

At the tail end of the germination process. leave the seedlings in there for an extra week or 3, so that they are *physically* big enough to survive in the pots or the  garden beds. I transplanted a bit early and the rain physically smashed them into smithereens.... *sigh*

Its a pain, but you have to really look after them after the transplant process for a few weeks making sure that they are fully protected from the elements for a while until they are big enough to go into the outside world on their own, go to school, get a job and start a family... bless their little cotton socks ... ;)

Fruits of our labours

A few months after beginning from scratch (the very beginning), the original crop of tomato plants have begun to bear fruit, after flowering for a while.

Even the smaller plants have started to flower as well and are beginning to show the same desire to grow fruit.

There is still a lot to learn about how each plant grows and what they do after they reach maturity, but its a good feeling to see some success and results happening at this early stage!

The general process is that after germination, they start to mature, then they will flower. Depending on the plant, they may need another plant to pollinate them, or they may be able to self-pollinate.

Given the close proximity of so many tomato plants, these have been able to have sex with each other in some sort of tomato-based plan orgy.

Of course, no doubt everything will produce at once, and we'll go from no tomatoes to a thousand in the space of a week.

Um, tomatoes anyone?

Food Introduction

Part of the challenge of Project Caveman is to start growing my own food, using seeds sourced from shops, bought food from the Markets, and seed saved from the garden, with an eventual reliance on saved seed over time. I'd like to get to about 50% of food production from home.We started with some herbs in July, and they actually didnt die, thanks to Sara's presence. During Surgery rotation, about October, after getting back from Texas (Australia) I started getting the gear needed to do it, and its actually been really cheap to get it all set up.

• Worm Farm: $100
• 2000 worms: $100
• 150 pots (ugly but cheap): $15
• Random other pots (nice ones): $100
• 40 bags of potting mix, $3 a bag: $120
• 10 blocks of Peat: $30
• 8 Germination trays, $8 each: $64
• Seeds from Eden Seeds: $70
• Miracle-Gro x 2: $30

And that's it for a complete (initial) set up, to allow a whole heap of veges to be grown at home, for kitchen scraps to be recycled and used as fertiliser and establish a germination system that can be close-looped after a certain amount of time.  If I was going to do it even cheaper, I'd get rid of the nice pots, maybe blow off the worm farm, and it would be possible to be up and running for less than $300.

Eventually I'll get all nice pots and put in a raised garden bed or three, and spend some more money on it, but this is a decent start, and Ive got a coomplete closed-loop system up and running in only 2-3 months.

From the second last photo, you can see the latest crop that's in the process of being transitioned from the germination trays to pots. Its the bit that take the longest actually, but mainly coz Im filling the posts with mix for the first time each time they get transferred.

At the moment there are about 70 plants in pots, and another 50 waiting to be transferred across from the germination trays in a few weeks time, once they get a bit bigger. At the moment, we've got carrots, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, beans, watermelon, onions, beetroot, corn, lettuce, herbs in, with some more to come!

Im trying to avoid things like hydroponics, aquaponics at this stage, just trying to make the growing as primitive as I can, within the constraints of living in the city and needing to move house in a few months. Ideally I'd have a few acres and go nuts with raised garden beds and flat ones, but with only 300 square meters to play with, I cant do what I'd ultimately like to do, but that gives me a chance to show whats possible in the city (not that I know what that is).