Rain gardens and bio filters

Rain gardens, bio filters and figs. My spy at the festival of plumbing in Victoria recently sent me lots of goodies. It's all about stopping precious rainwater going straight into stormwater and people, councils and companies are innovating in backyards and in urban catchments.

First of all building a rain garden is something we can all do to stop rainwater flowing directly into the stormwater if you don't have a tank. We need to slow the water down before it hits our stormwater systems. A big slug of water hits the natural waterways with high speed which is damaging. Slowing the water down reduces the damage to the natural water ways. Here is a link to how to build a rain garden. It's easy. Native plants are best and a gravel mulch works well.

Water garden at the Australian National Gallery

In Melbourne councils are trialling bio filters to reduce stormwater impact. An intelligent network of rain gardens to mitigate stormwater flowing into marine systems. The units are modular and use plants to clean the water and slow the flow. Biofilta is the name of the company which builds next generation bioretention systems. Their vision is cities which can adapt to climate change through an intelligent network of these plant-based systems which treat and cleanse the stormwater for re-use in urban areas.

Now for the figs. I love fig trees. Have you heard of the term 'capfrication'? NSW Agriculture does terrific fact sheets where you can find out lots of technical horticultural stuff like methods for pollinating figs. I was planning to plant some along our back fence. Until. Jody Rigby told the festival of plumbing that a fig tree will search over 20 metres looking for water. Wow! I don't want one of those babies searching for my stormwater pipes. So, I will admire fig trees in other people's backyards for the moment.

Chickens are really smart

I looked at the PETA website the other day and in a bid to persuade me to go vego they mentioned how chickens are smarter than cats or dogs in some respects. I was dubious. Until this evening. Every night we have been chasing our chickens to put them to bed. There is always one nicknamed 'speedy' who refuses to be caught and I have been habitually late after spending half an hour or so trying to herd and outsmart this one chicken. We were about to put up fencing wire so we can herd them up into their house.

My husband went outside to put the chickens in their coop this evening but couldn't see them anywhere. To his surprise they had walked up their little ladder and put themselves to bed!!!!! That's smart.

Peter Cundall...sigh!!!

Everyone goes gooey over Peter Cundall don't they? One of our great Australians and he was a migrant of course with a fascinating life story which includes running from the Nazis in World War II on some mountain in Austria. I've posted previously that I have harlequin bugs in the garden. They are nesting in the compost heap. I also have leaf sucking insects that attract the ants. I wasn't quite sure what to do and I have sprayed with a soap spray available from Yates. I'm hoping the chickens might eat the harlequin bugs. I dusted off Peter Cundall's the Practical Australian Gardener and sighed with delight. I don't need the internet! It's a seasonal version with a weekly list of tasks and covers absolutely everything I need to know even though it's about 10 years old. Peter hates the harlequin bugs and says it's imperative to destroy their nests with Clensall or winter oil. White oil will also help with the sap sucking bugs. The harlequin bugs are nesting in my wooden upraised vegetable gardens.  Phase One of our ornamental vegetable garden is complete and I note from reading Peter Cundall that most vegetables need lime in the soil. I'm not going to plant too much straight away as many crops really need establishing in Spring.

I was impressed by the simplicity of Peter's potato garden - find an area you want to rehabilitate and throw good seed potatoes over it then cover with a few nutrients and lots of straw. Just keep piling up the straw and the potatoes and earth worms will transform your soil and you will have a good crop by autumn. Lift up the layers of straw and your crop will reveal itself underneath in abundance.

I'm going to photograph the Chinese garden around the corner and also Anne and Kim's new garden at Dickson which is a showcase for the front yard vegie garden. By the way someone or something has completely stripped my Asian salad green seedlings. They are nought but little stubs. Who or what is it?
I know it's not a possum. It's thrown me the gauntlet  - I wanted that mizuna.