Millions of people all over the world have started growing
food for the first time, which has even caused a shortage of seeds. People are
cooking a lot more than ever before too. Families are sitting together for
meals. School at home is including measuring ingredients, following recipes,
planning menus, using up what is in the fridge in creative ways, as well as
preparing garden beds, harvesting fruit and saving seeds. Isn’t this how life
is meant to be? After all, food production, preparation and eating encompasses
every school subject you can think of!
Making the most of chook yard design
Being at home, it is a good time to look at your garden and
explore ways to make it more user friendly. This is where permaculture design
can help and is worth researching.
You can harvest many products and gain many services from a
well thought out chook yard, besides the obvious eggs. My chooks range under
half a dozen fruit trees. Their kind services here include constant vigilance for
coddlin moth and other pests that overwinter at the base of trees, everyday
manuring, turning of the mulch and eradicating weeds and grasses that
germinates there as well as cleaning up some (but not all) fallen fruit.
The product I appreciate most is their production of the
most beautiful leaf soil from the fallen leaves of two large oak trees that
overhang the chook yard. Thousands of oak leaves fall from now into winter and
form a very thick layer of gorgeous dry leaves which is the playground for the
chooks all winter. They constantly turn it, manure it and crush it, while the
rain dampens it, resulting in a very fine, deliciously soft, quite acidic, leaf
mold or leaf soil by mid spring. I rake it up and spread it around liberally
wherever acid loving plants grow (such as blueberries and strawberries) and
where I am going to plant acid loving plants such as tomatoes. Left for another
year it can be used with worm castings and something light, like perlite, as a
seed raising mix or added to potting mix.
(Last year I gathered lots and lots of the fallen oak leaves
from one of the trees and put them into 3 large sacks. The resulting compost or
leaf mold is now good enough to eat on your muesli, as Peter Cundall would say.
I look forward to making good use of it.)
If you don’t have such a luxury, just cover the chook yard
in any old hay, raked up autumn leaves, finished tomato plants etc. Peter
Cundall recommends you throw around some lime under the hay. If you use
dolomite, you will be adding magnesium and it is gentler on chook feet than
other lime too, as they scratch about all winter. I use woodash.
In order to have a constant supply of greenery for chooks,
it is a great idea to surround the perimeter of their yard, outside the fence,
with things they like to eat. Plantings right up against the fence will poke
leaves through or even over into the chook yard and allow the chooks a constant
supply of your favourite vegetables without you having to do anything! Leaving
some things to go to seed and fall into the chook yard will give them a good
addition to their seed intake.
Useful leaf plants for this include chards, comfrey,
parsley, nasturtiums etc. Useful seed plants include amaranth, small sunflower
seeds, millet, wheat etc. Useful fruits
include strawberries and any soft fruit. For more info check online.
Cuttings
May is the perfect time for taking cuttings of deciduous
plants like grape vines, glory vines and black and red currants as well as for
rosemary, Chilean guavas and other evergreen edibles. Cut lengths of new grape
vine growth to include 4 buds. Put into a damp, light, potting mix deep enough
for 2 buds to go below the soil and two above. A cheap potting mix with no
added nutrients is best. With rosemary and other evergreens, strip the leaves off
the bottom 2/3 of a cutting and place into damp potting mix. You can put
several in a pot. Cover with a plastic bag secure with a rubber band. Leave in
a sheltered place and keep just damp, not wet, until spring. Check for root
growth then and pot up to grow on further or leave longer. Some will take much
longer than others, so be patient!
If this all sounds like too much hard work, grab yourself a
bottle of linseed oil, mix it half with turps, sit in the sunshine and rub an
oiled cloth over the handles of all your garden tools. Listen to the birds,
breathe our clean air and be grateful for the safe place we find ourselves in.
Books, websites, courses and facebook pages
Books:
Paradise and Plenty by Mary Keen…. The inside
workings of the legendary, productive garden at Lord Rothschild's private
house, Eythrope in Buckinghamshire, England
Dark Emu by Bruce Pascoe…. How first Australians
farmed and managed the land as recorded by all the explorers of the day.
Around the World in 80 plants by Stephen Barstow…. A
compendium of 80 perennial, edible plants from around the world, with stories
and recipes. Amazing!
Online:
For Tasmanian relevant, food gardening articles, videos,
courses and more check out the “Milkwood” website.
Join a local facebook page such as Food Gardeners Tasmania,
Tasmanian Fungi, Preserving Folk, Cygnet Seed Library, Tasmanian Bushtucker,
Crop Swap and others from further afield such as Wild food and Hedgewitchery,
Earth Homes, Huws Nursery, Garden Art, Junk and Antiques and so many more!
|
Sow in the garden now |
Plant in the garden now |
|
Broad
beans Bok
Choy Mustard
greens esp. frilly Miners’
lettuce Corn
salad (mache) Shungiku
(edible, Japanese Chrysanthemum) Radishes Salad
and spring onions Coriander Chervil Stinging
nettles (for teas and pestos all winter) |
Perennial
Leek bulbils including elephant garlic Garlic
cloves Seedlings
of Asian veg. Flower
bulbs Sow in the
hothouse to plant out: Lettuces Kales Broccoli
raab Red
onions Sow to stay in
the hothouse or outside in frost-free areas: Sugar
snap peas, podding peas |
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