One magic square

Last leaves of Autumn in Canberra

 Lots of inspiration this week but not much time for pursuing my dreams in the garden or even reading about them. One Magic Square is a beautiful book by Lolo Houbein that I have flicked through and feel I need desperately to buy. Now I understand why Sheryl, who loaned me the book, was so enthusiastic. It really is brilliant. It has a series of food plot designs and wonderful narrative from author Lolo Houbein who experienced severe food shortages as a child in war-time Holland. The book begins:

To start growing your own food without delay, put down this book, go out in the garden and select a spot in the sun. Dig over one square metre with a garden fork and remove all weeds by hand. Pasta/pizza plots, salad plots, bean plots, winter vegetable plots - the list of combinations and her beautiful designs is comprehensive. She describes how to take your produce from garden to table with practical suggestions for cooking great wholesome food. It's not a book - it's a manual for self-sufficiency and has a magical feel to its pages. She has thought of everything and trawls history, culture and travel to bring in useful vignettes such as the Greek horta - a description of how Greek women would go into the mountains and gather wild greens for their cooking pots.

There is no free lunch. There is no cheap food. The cheapest and best food is the food you grow yourself - food that does not accumulate added costs for transport from other states or continents, needs no refrigeration because you pick it minutes before preparing, does not add to pollution because it only travels from garden to backdoor, is free of costly chemicals and needs no packaging. Consider the real cost of a cucumber in a plastic jacket, grown in a temperature-controlled poly tunnel, refrigerated, put in the jacket, transported a great distance and displayed in an air-conditioned supermarket under burning lights. The cucumber you grow yourself just has to be fresher, tastier and healthier than that, doesn't it.

Lolo warns about peak oil and future fruit and vegetable shortages that may occur. Lolo says food gardening is the most intelligent adult endeavour on earth and her techniques allow people like me to start small, gain confidence and enjoy moving towards greater self-sufficiency.

My living table decoration of alfalfa

Now - don't shoot me but I have a balanced mildly economic rationalist view - I agree we should all be growing our own food and that food shortages and price hikes are real threats.  I also think it's great that we have a horticultural industry and that you can buy tasteless rock-hard tomatoes bred for transport in truck if you want to. I agree the hidden costs are high but our population deserves access to cheap, healthy food - how the real cost of that food is made transparent is another matter.

Conversely, any endeavour in the home or community garden that is real, practical and achievable is what I support.

Dickson Wetland community planting day


This event sounds great. A community planting day at Dickson Wetland, Hawdon St, Dickson.


Saturday 4 June 2011
11am-3pm


Carrotmob at Ainslie IGA 11 June

I've never heard of Carrotmob until this week but this new type of consumer activism is working towards our 40% greenhouse gas reduction target. Here's some of the blurb from their website.

To contribute to and highlight the ACT's newly adopted 40% greenhouse gas reduction target, Canberra Loves 40% and partners present 'Carrotmob'. 

Carrotmobs are a fantastic way for business and the community to work together for sustainability. 

Carrotmobs are a global movement of community organisers who use consumer activism as a way to help change businesses in their communities. In a Carrotmob campaign, businesses compete at how socially responsible they can be, and then a network of consumers spends money to support the winner.

Ainslie IGA has won Canberra's first ever Carrotmob by committing to put 100% of the money spent by the ‘mob’ on Saturday June 11 into reducing their greenhouse gas emissions. The SustainAbility Advice Team has donated an energy audit to help Ainslie decide how to get maximum emissions reductions with the mobs money.

The more of us and the more we spend the more they can do! Join the mob that's creating a more sustainable Canberra by registering on our website www.carrotmob.love40percent.org

The Land newspaper

I've discovered The Land newspaper thanks to the gentleman farmer of Crookwell. I so don't enjoy mainstream media (yawn!) but was riveted by stories on how to crack a stock whip and what qualities to look for in a plucky sheep dog. The issue I read had a lift-out on sustainable farming including the lovely free-range pig farmers of Temora who sell at Epic markets and the success of Milkwood Permaculture (see my blog links).

The Land sells out quickly I'm told. This latest issue has a special on eggs in its 'Farming small areas' lift-out. Quail eggs are becoming very popular. There is a feature on Majestic Mushrooms at Murrumbateman, farming in suburbia, alpacas and chainsaw safety - love it. Even the ads are interesting with solar-operated gates and interesting sheds. I note Joel Salatin is back in Australia again - on 2 August he'll lecture at Jamberoo on how to create a profitable, diverse 'beyond organic' farming enterprise.  It's a one-day workshop on the techniques from Poly-Face Farms. If The Land is anything to go by it sounds like farming practices are evolving and regenerating and things are moving in a different direction.

Acoustic soup 

I keep missing Acoustic Soup nights at the ANU due to a clash with children's activities. They are organised by Real Food Canberra for uni students but everyone is welcome. Last Wednesday's theme was Mexican May. This was the delicious-sounding menu:

• Sopa de Zanahorias
• Sweet potato and Bean Chile
•  Mexican Rice
•  Cornbread
• White-bean and silverbeet dip

Art in the garden

As any genuine Canberra local under the age of nine will tell you, some of the best spots at the Australian National Gallery are on the outside, not the inside. I discovered recently that the Eucalypts in that place of beauty and sculpture are intentionally planted to cast shadows on the walls of the gallery. Fern Garden by Fiona Hall is a piece of landscape architecture that I always make a point of experiencing when I visit the gallery with children in tow. Hidden away behind a curlicued gate, it transports us into a secret little world that is both contemporary and layered in history with its references to Islamic courtyards and other traditional influences. I particularly love the swirling pebble paving which are placed to remind us of the flow of the regional watercourses from which they were sourced. The Dicksonia are ancient remnants which remind me of Where the wild things are and create a stark contrast between the contemporary and the primeval. The water fountains in summer are a cool retreat. Someone remarked to me that it doesn't quite hit the mark with what it is trying to achieve but I still believe it creates contemplation and reflection hidden away from the bustle of the gallery main and fulfils its functions as a piece of landscape art.

I have noticed an increasing trend for sculptors to collaborate with garden designers and include their installations either permanently or temporarily. Artists help us interpret, understand and protect our natural world with their interpretations of beauty and the past and present. Since I was able to take time out of the corporate world while my children were younger I have been struck by the impact of artists on my psyche and sense making. From my friend Judy reinterpreting the sacred lotus through screen print to a woman inspired by the Bayeux tapestry to create a 3-D history of Canberra tree plantings in paper mache, artists stop us momentarily and make us think, feel and experience something beyond our mundane and soulless corporate and consumerist culture.

I particularly love the work of the sculptor who makes giant pears out of horse shoes, Victoriana pineapple plants and creations from barbed wire.

Strelitzia

I've learned a lot from Holly Kerr Forsyth about the genesis of many of our introduced plants in Australia and why we have so many species from South Africa as the ships of the early settlers sailed around the Cape of Good Hope. Another eminent garden historian Richard Aitkin also explains a similar Brazilian connection and I'm looking forward to reading his book Botanical riches.

It all makes me feel logical about my fusion garden of Banksia roses, camellias from China and tough plants from South Africa especially when I realised that gardeners have mixed and matched plant species sourced from all over the world since they first arrived as non-indigenous occupiers of this land. I have strelitzia reginae about to bloom with 'birds of paradise' in my courtyard nestled under the eaves. They are really tough and love close plantings in the pot so I have also squeezed in some geraniums which cascade over the side. I realise that it probably would have been collected on the way here along with agapanthus and all sorts of other South African 'goodies' although strelitzia were introduced in 1733 to Kew Gardens in England. What I think is quite hilarious is that my strelitzia plants were purchased from Aldi after I spotted them in the catalogue a few years ago - never saw them  advertised again. You can get all sorts of odd things from Aldi - even strelitzia reginae.

City farming, SEE-Change and other innovations

I've been thinking about innovation in the way we grow produce and wondering what's happening around the world particularly in less developed countries. I am partly inspired, I guess, by Terence Conran's book A Chef's Garden - fresh produce from small spaces which is 11 years' old but started a trend and shows gardens growing masses of produce in small spaces using beautiful design techniques. Conran designed a chef's rooftop garden for the 1999 Chelsea Flower Show.


I've already copied his ideas with my new living table decoration of alfalfa sprouts in a blue glass urn. As an aside our first lot of alfalfa sprouts I blogged a couple of months ago were eventually a failure using the jam jar and muslin. They definitely need a soil medium to grow. I have also purchased a sprout kit which is a mini-innovation - the sprouts grow in a stack of four cylinders using a clever drainage system. In three days we had crunchy sprouts to snack on. The Dr Fothergill sprout kits are in all the hardware stores which are stocking an increasing array of herb and vegie starter kits for kids and grown-up gardeners alike.


Two great innovations are transforming people's lives in two completely different parts of the world. In India a new green revolution is taking place but instead of synthetic fertilisers boosting growth, the methods of Dr R T Doshi are using biomass such as sugarcane waste and household organic waste to grow gardens in the city. The methods are fascinating and use a method combining growth and composting waste in the bottom of specially adapted drums and bags with extensive tips on companion planting and general guidance for healthy organic fruit and vegetables in an urban space.


City farming workshops are currently being conducted in Australia and a workshop will be held in Canberra under the auspices of Real Food Canberra. The City Farming website is great and I recommend the video to see what people are growing and how quickly their crops get to harvest stage. The city farming system has been commended by the United Nations Development Fund.


Meanwhile in the United States another innovator has developed a 'freeware' approach to water wise fruit and vegetable containers called Earthtainers. I read the article in slate.com and the person who developed these amazing containers, Ray Newstead, regularly travels overseas leaving his bumper crops unattended with complete confidence due to the wicking properties of the containers he designed. I don't think I could build one but he claims anyone can use his plans and get the gear from the hardware store.

Newstead says on his website:

The EarthTainer is not a "Product" - - there are none for sale, thus it doesn't compete with Commercially available self-watering container products.  Rather, it is a "design concept" that is made available as "Freeware" for your private use and enjoyment.  Just remember to please make a donation to the Feeding America Organization if this design does bring you happiness.

This kind of innovation is probably featured in a film the Canberra organisation Real Food screened recently. I wasn't able to attend (it was tonight) but it sounds great. The movie Fresh by Anna Sofia Jones is billed as a new way of thinking about what we're eating. The Real Food organisation promotes real food that is sustainable and ethical for people and animals. I took my children to a photo shoot and soup meet for their children's sustainable cookbook currently in development.


We took one of our pumpkins and a few morsels of spinach and herbs. The girls were proud, nevertheless, that they could take their own homegrown vegies and donned aprons and wielded wooden spoons to help some of the Real Food people cook up a big pot of delicious soup. It was a great afternoon and the big people showed the littlies how to shell peas and chop onions wearing swimming goggles.

Look what I grew in our pumpkin patch!

The Crookwell connection


Our pumpkins seeded a bit too late and with the likely advent of tomorrow's first frost they might not be quite ripe when the vine withers. Peter and Dell Bungay dropped in for a lovely visit not long after I purchased some of their succulents from Wagga (see my earlier posts). Turns out Dell's family come from Crookwell and in fact are a well-known family of brick makers and bricklayers who literally laid the foundations for many of our beautiful heritage buildings including in the Southern Highlands (the exotic mushroom farm is in a brick tunnel built by one of Dell's forebears).


Dell told me Crookwell is so cold that any diseases or pests that would strike potatoes are unlikely to survive in that pure air. She sent me some beautiful photos of the early potato farming in the 1800s. Her husband Peter gave me some great gardening tips including the importance of removing lateral shoots from tomato and pumpkin vines to boost production. My big pumpkin patch, although impressive, is a Japanese pumpkin which is too thin-skinned to store over winter and needs to be harvested straight away. They should have ripened earlier but have just scraped in. Dell was interested in the location of the gentleman farmer of Crookwell in case she knows the area from childhood. The caption on one of the postcards reads 'Potatoes grown by Mr Vidler Crookwell – weight from 2.5lb to 3.5lb each'.

Crookwell potato seed stock in the late 1800s or early 1900s

Potato farming at Crookwell late 1800s or early 1900s

Dave the horticultural demon inspected my ornamental vegetable garden this evening and said the use of black weed mat on the rises will help protect the seedlings from frost and cold. His tip is that with the water table high at the moment, the risk of frost burn is greater for young seedlings. The ornamental kale I've planted is completely edible but I'll stick with the cabbages and leeks for the moment.

Ornamental kale looking 'showy'

Our new vegie patch in the front yard

Autumn joy


I took great joy in restoring my garden somewhat over Easter with lots of pruning, clearing and planting. I discovered the joy of dividing. My sedum 'Autumn Joy' had flattened out which is a sure sign they need division. I've done some mass planting of this drought-tolerant beauty and hope the crowns survive my novice attempts. I also pulled up about six gladioli bulbs for re-planting in July. Gladioli are a symbol of love at first sight. According to Dell, Crookwell was once the site of a giant gladioli farm to supply floristry for weddings. I also divided my agapanthus and gratefully received a huge box of 'aggies' and irises from my good friend and superb gardener Libby. With the price of plants I'm very keen to re-use what I've got and the 'aggies' have created a beautiful sweeping border in a couch-infested hot spot.


SEE-change


I'm really interested in this organisation as part of my growing awareness of why we all need to make a difference and take small steps towards big change particularly with what we teach our children. I read in my local newspaper about a program called SEE- Change which aims to encourage Canberrans to think positively about the future and act to reduce the territory's ecological footprint. A festival of young ideas will showcase the best innovative ideas the students develop at the end of 2011. I have blogged previously about the work of academic and geographer Paul Tranter and the importance of encouraging our children to embrace science, technology and innovation to solve the environmental problems of the future.


Naomi Wynd is the executive officer of SEE-Change and in The Chronicle on 19 April she said the organisation's role was educating teachers in the subject area and developing tailored curriculum for use in the classroom. She said teachers could then implement the ideas as they wished. Subject areas will include improving the sustainability of transport and how food choices can affect the ecological footprint. Our great lifestyle has a big environmental cost here in Canberra.


SEE-Change was trialled at Lake Ginninderra  Secondary College with Year 12 environmental biology students as part of the curriculum. Students at the college have made solar-powered ovens, have a native plant garden they plan to share with other schools and are experimenting to find the most effective blades to use in wind turbines. Apparently the program will run in all schools next year.


I don't to be a pessimist as SEE-Change wants to promote positivity but did you know wind turbines use so much concrete as base that it potentially outweighs the carbon reduction impacts? They need to run for a long time before all those tonnes of concrete are mitigated by the renewable energy benefits. Cement for concrete is one of our most carbon intensive products due to the pure water and massive energy requirements. There are always costs and benefits and lots to think about.