It might not look like much, but this drum, bit of pipe and reclaimed hose can save us heaps. It’s simply a way to catch the washing machine water, let it settle, then send it to the garden. We don’t use hot water in our machine which has a 4.5 star water rating and uses…
Category: water
water
Vlog 3: Surviving the heat
It’s the last Vlog of the year and it’s a hot one. This time, I cover the ways we keep the garden and critters watered and cool. At this stage of the game, we don’t need to artificially shade any of the plants. The garden was designed so that after two or three years, the…
Where’s the ‘How to’s’?
I’ve been spending a lot of the hot weather redoing some of the blog – new theme, upgraded plan, all that good stuff. While I’ve been at it, I’ve been checking out lots and lots of other people’s blogs. I’ve noticed that there are soooo many ‘How to…’ posts and videos out there. When I…
Bare Earth… No way!
I’ve been sharing this pic around because it’s an unusual event in the garden. When we bought the block, the first thing we did was cover the whole front yard with layers of newspaper and about 10cm (that’s 4″ in the old measurement) of compost and mulch. After a frustrating wait of a few days,…
Winter aquaponics update
A quick Winter update on the aquaponics system. It’s hanging in there over the cold weather with only natural daylight and no covering. The Winter has been pretty mild so far and only the Kangkong is suffering, but it’s doing better thsn expected when you consider it’s a tropical kind of plant. The basic…
Phil’s sand mini-wicking beds
I was visiting our friend Phil last weekend at his home. While I was there, he showed me an interesting take on the wicking bed idea. Phil’s idea is to use shallow trays of sand to raise seeds and seedlings using the basic design of wicking beds. You can see the concept in action in…
Joe’s Connected Gardens Open Garden.
Every year, as part of Open Gardens SA here in sunny South Australia, Joe and neighbours open up their connected gardens to the public for two days of exploration. The gardens are in Elizabeth South and are one of the best examples of people sharing space and ideas that you’ll see in suburbia. At last count, 5 properties…
How we save nearly 2000 litres of water a year
It’s this simple! We all know that water is a valuable resource and one that shouldn’t be thrown away lightly. Some of us are still in mains water, so here’s a way to save quite a bit of that precious and increasingly expensive resource. The idea works for those on tank and bore water too….
A jar of Comfrey tea
A little while ago, I posted a Low Technology DIY showing how to make a Comfrey Compost Tea Maker. This black, odourless liquid is the result of a week of that gadget working. It’s not a lot, but is highly concentrated goodness. I even tasted it and it has, what they call in herbalsim,…
Gary’s got a new home!
A couple of days ago we took out the backyard pond. It took lots of space and wasn’t very productive, so that space could be used for other things. While we were doing this, we needed to find a new home for the goldfish. That was easy, they went into the aquaponics (after a…
