The value of a zone 1 kitchen garden or the benefit of “gardening from the back door out”

I am housesitting a house. The house is nice with lots of gardens, chooks, fruit trees and a large garden. There are lush herbs and greens growing in said garden. However, the garden is not right outside the door, its a tiny walk to the other end of the house, up a path and through a gate. Maybe 30-40m from the back door; tops. Not far right?

But what if you’ve just scrambled some eggs and need some herbage to sprinkle on top? Extra snappy mind, you don’t what cold eggs and toast! In my case, I don’t really want to go on a miniature mission to get some herbs, I’ll just go without, after all its only one meal. But, this happens all the time. I make some food inside, and then I’m thinking “fresh greens! Its not a meal without some”. Then I start skipping the fresh greens unless I have the forethought to harvest a days worth in the morning. And I can’t stand refrigerated greens that you buy and leave lying around for days. In my opinion greens need to be fresh otherwise they’re shit. Tasteless, limp and sad.

So I have come to realise the importance of my zone 1 kitchen garden. Zone 1 referring to the area on my property that is visited the most. This area is essentially right outside the door. When I make food at my house, I just whip out the door a few steps grab a load of leaves: chives, parsley, sow thistle, dandelion, purslane, brahmi, lettuce, sorrel etc. give ‘em a rinse and munch ‘em down with lunch. This practice ensures that I get all the goodness fresh leaves offer and most of my daily vitamin and mineral requirements in a form that is most easily available to my body. Fuck vitamin tablets, that’s what plants are for.

Now if my zone 1 kitchen garden were at the back of my yard and through a gate I would probably be inclined to do this less. And I think most people (not health die hards!) would act similarly. A small kitchen garden, even if it is just some easy herbs and greens right outside your door, allows us to pick nutrient dense food to fortify every meal. A garden right outside your door massively increases the likelihood of you obtaining the extra little bits of nutrition that are so important with every meal. Parsley and dandelion are two of the most nutrient dense herbs on the planet, chives are also one of the best for bioavailability of nutrients to people. So grab some pots or some seeds or whatever and plant food right next to your door!

Smiley face bean!

I grew this little guy last summer. 

"I just bean having a good time, you know"

Sustainable toothbrush alternative- Licorice Root

"Its soo simple.." (Owen Wilson as Hansel from Zoolander): when stick becomes toothstick

Did you ever wonder what people did to clean their teeth before the invention of toothbrushes and toothpaste? I used to for a long time. I just idly wondered what people did to clean their teeth. Then, sometime later, I happened to read a caption on a photo in an anthropology book about how healthy the pictured stone-age tribespeople were. I think they were Africans. The caption remarked upon the fact that the people in the tribe had very good teeth and that tooth decay was very rare amongst them. It also mentioned how the people were able to meet the needs of each other so well (indicating a healthy young toddler in the picture and an elderly man), in a desert environment ‘civilised’ man would call positively hostile. I then read about the use of tooth sticks in “Making it” by old Erik Knutzen and Kelly Coyne. I then saw a Youtube video of a guy brushing his teeth with a licorice root (Glycyrrhiza glabra) and hearing his anecdotal claims of it helping to heal a cavity in his teeth!

 

From that point on I decided I would be crazy to buy another plastic toothbrush, what with these awesome alternatives available.

 I believe toothpaste and plastic toothbrushes are made for profit not for dental hygiene. Well, maybe that’s not the whole truth. Though it is probably the guiding principle with regard to toothbrush existence.

 

So what to do? I have been trialling the use of licorice root as a tooth brush for the last two and a half years. I don’t think I will ever buy a plastic toothbrush again. Even my dentist was impressed at how effective my humble root was. However, it was difficult to get her to admit this; entertainingly so.

Here is a short list of the pros and cons I have found with using a licorice root

Pros-

·         Cheap, can be free if grown, can be organic (very much desired)

·         tasty

·         gain all the herbal benefits of licorice (improved digestion, calming, better sleep, ween from sugar etc)

·          returns to soil

·         gentle on gums

·         allows for thorough cleaning of each tooth

·          interesting conversation starter prop (simply brush your teeth in class, after smoko or lunch or on the bus to or from work/school)

·          disconnects your dental hygiene from the globalised capitalist matrix of terribleness; every little disconnect counts!

Cons-

·         Slower than conventional toothbrush.

·          Can be expensive to get in Bunbury and regional places, in East coast and Europe/America is cheap.

·         You may look like a drooly doofus if you forgot to brush your teeth the night before and end up brushing your teeth at work/school/on the train etc.

Of course there are other ways to brush your teeth too. 

A small sampling of plants that provide toothsticks include:

·         Oak trees (Quercus spp.)

·         Liquidambar styraciflua

·         Some Birch varieties, esp. Black, cherry and sweet.

·         Possibly some Melaleuca varieties

 

Traditional cultures around the planet have always used toothsticks so it should not be a problem to find some in your local area, barring that, you can grow your own and order from your local health food shop until your plants are big enough.

You can also make your own toothpaste with simple cheap ingredients. My housemate uses one involving clay powder. I am happy with my licorice root so I haven’t explored much other teeth cleaning techniques. At the very least I think everyone will benefit to a transition to compostable toothbrushes which are now widely available.

 

The mycelium is running!

These are some of the fungus's that are fruiting in the three month old sheet mulch I have laid over my front lawn. I was terribly excited to see mushrooms in the garden because 

1) Reading Mycelium running by Paul Stamets will turn you into a full blown fungus fan and

2) Fungi are the 'teeth of the soil'. Their presence in the garden means that humus is being created and that their is life in the soil. The fungi are the decomposers of ecosystems and they are important in turning death into new life. Fuck yeah

So far I have only seen these two types of fungus, but I cannot wait to see what else will pop up over time in my very first ever forest garden...

The sprouts all around are from a broadcast of seed to build the soil, shade the soil and give me something to eat; obtain a yeild! I have sown: Alfalfa (nitrogen-fixing, edible), Mustard (edible, build soil with root mass), Dandelion (healthiest vegetable ever tested by US Dept. Food and agriculture, nutrient accumulator, remedies soil compaction) and Garlic (just for kicks) among others.

I had never seen this peculiar fungus but was so stoked to see it I jumped right ouf the car all excited. I probably have seen it before I was a fungus fan actually, but just never acknowledged it.

Wicking Bed/Self-watering container

 Here is an easy garden project that once set up doesn’t need much maintenance. We were inspired to do this after seeing the lettuces my sister was growing and were lamenting the fact that we didn’t have any fresh salad greens growing. So using some scavenged materials we put together a wicking bed, a salad garden that waters itself.

Plants do really well in these because of the constant access to moisture they enjoy. This means plants never suffer water stress making their growth vigorous and more pest/disease resistant. Leafy greens do really well and plants that need extra attention are not a problem when grown in wicking beds. As with any plants in containers though, nutrients need to be added over time. To address this problem I thought I would put some “worm towers” (mini worm farms) in the corners and see what happens. I just put a handful of worms from my worm bin in with some scraps and shredded newspaper. I could go on forever about the benefits of wicking beds but let’s just get stuck into it, shall we?

To make one of these you need:

Some kind of container, imagine a plant pot but without the drainage holes- the bigger the better

A drill or other holemaking thing

Some soil

Some seeds or plants

A length of PVC pipe (optional)

A fat length of PVC pipe for worm towers (optional) with 2 lids for the pipes

Some gravel or rocks

Fill your container to about half with the rocks or gravel.

The PVC pipe may be inserted here to use a refill tube. Watering in this fashion may prevent some degree of nutrient leaching from soil.  

Then lay down some sort of permeable barrier, we used old hessian from my pallet garden but I have heard that shade cloth or a thin layer sand works.

This permeable layer allows water to leach into the soil and plant roots and prevents the soil from washing into the rocks.

 Drill a hole in the side of your container for an overflow. This hole will mark the high water level, it needs to be level with the rocks.

Now put soil in and plant.



Drainage holes in wormtowers for worms and their poos and wees to move into the soil.

Mulched and planted with brahmi, chives and seeded with salad greens

Sadly our container buckled and began to sag on the sides because it was old and weak in places. The buckling hasn’t affected the bed much; it just looks ugly. Watering is done very occasionally, using a dipstick in the refill tube can be useful.

Happy Gardening!



What I am reading...

A DIY mentality and a small concern about the future of civilisation have led me to research all kinds of things. After a while the impression is gotten that I absolutely need to know how to do everything! Well Jackie French does and she is the bomb! Robert Heinlein said something once about specialisation being for insects. A man needs to know a great many things. However, how does one remember everything that one has read? How does make the most out of reading? And how does one manage to study for a degree without disturbingly unbalanced levels of stress?

The answer: Tony Buzan.

What a flippin’ revelation! Buzan comes through early in his book ‘Use Your Head’ with some big calls. He says things like he’s gonna show you how to unleash your mind, give you a ‘Swiss army knife for your brain’, show you the way to greater memory and make studying any subject a breeze. Sounds pretty good, but, come on…

However, after reading the book I am sold on all he has to say. He is a legend. He is the guy who created MindMaps, a concept most people are familiar with. Like Mollison and Holmgren (co-creators of Permaculture [capital P?]) were doing around the same time, Buzan drew inspiration from patterns found in nature to come up with solutions to human problems. Buzan had trouble studying and began to enquire about how to use his brain better. He found that unlike our preferred method of transmitting information linearly with books and words, our brains do not operate that way. Our brains are more complex, non-linear, integrative and associative things. So Tony created Mind Maps to match studying to the way our brains work. A Mind Maps inherent characteristic is a complex branching pattern that efficiently and effectively links, orders and presents information for the purpose of remembering; the brain cells in our brains, the mycelia of fungi and the internet (most likely the entire universe as well) house and access vast amounts of information in similar ways.

Visual representation of systems sharing nature of the internet

Dark matter (majority of universe is made up of this apparently) on the left and myclelia of mushrooms on the right

After some minor experimentation with mind mapping for some exams I found it to be very helpful. It is especially relevant to studying systems and permaculture type stuff because of its integrative and visual aspects. Complex ideas and theories can be simplified and presented in a way that is pleasing to the eye. Also, studying is actually fun with mind maps, with all the drawing and the colour and you get to kind of create your own mini work of art; and each one is different. I reckon everyone with a brain should know about Tony Buzan and his Mind Maps and study techniques, get on to it and spread the word!

Here are a few of the first Mind Maps I have done

Humanure part 2

Some of my favourite things about Humanure composting are:

·         The pile never needs to be turned!- The use of straw traps pockets of air which aids aerobic digestion of the pile, plus turning the pile would destroy the helpful bacteria

·         The collection of urine means the pile is not in danger of drying out. A waterwise compost pile is an asset to gardeners in dry climates like mine

·         The compost pile is not fussy and will digest everything from the kitchen and nothing needs to be done to the scraps, just chuck em on and cover ‘em up

·         Its low cost to start and maintain

·         It is resource recovery as opposed to the current thinking of poos as waste that needs disposal

·         It’s off grid living baby!

·         I can’t think of anymore just now

From a permacultural or systems perspective this system closes an otherwise very open-ended nutrient cycle. Energy comes onto the site via food, exits through you, is captured by the compost and returned to the soil where more food is created. This ‘closed’ cycle is sustainable and resilient as it consumes less energy and resources than an ‘open’ cycle by keeping energy and resources cycling through the system and by making use of renewable resources like trees and straw. An ‘open’ system in comparison relies on constant, expensive, unsustainable inputs (fossil fuels for sewage treatment and water purifying, off-site food, infrastructure and water to carry poos and wees from site, etc…) to construct maintain it.

Bearing all these benefits in mind it is still important to remember that ecological solutions and designs need to be aware of context. For example, adoption of this method would not be appropriate for people living on flood plains because the risk of raw faecal matter coming into contact with freshwater would be very high- the solution does not fit the context.

The need for composting humanure could be eliminated entirely if a new house is being built. Homeowners could design systems that take all the manual labour and work out of dealing with the poo’s a la Earthship style septics and treatment cells. Composting humanure works for me as I am a renter with a long term lease in a suburban area who thinks and cares about the effect my life has on old mate Mother Earth. I seek to adopt sustainable living strategies that are low-cost, effective, efficient and also high yielding so this method works for me. The small amount of infrastructure I have put in is easy to remove. The downside is that I if we decide to leave we need a year to let the compost decompose to make moving easier. Ways to transport partially composted fecal matter could be conceived but my guess is it would expensive, risky and unpleasant.

The chooks were let out under careful observation to investigate the pile, it was found that they CANNOT be trusted!

Another pallet makes a chook proof door



A star picket rammed into the ground on one end creates a hinge