Permaculture Out West

Archive for November, 2009

Memorybyrnong Wave Your Flag Braybrook Big Backyard Celebration

As part of the Braybrook Big Backyard, Memorybyrnong Wave Your Flag event is on between 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM
Wave your Flag is a celebration to come together, share, learn and be inspired. Join us!
LOCATION: Community Garden, Braybrook Community Centre, 107-139 Churchill Av, Braybrook (main stage area)

Braybrook’s Big Backyard
Braybrook will once again be the apple of the community’s eye on Sunday 29 November when Maribyrnong City Council and other local Braybrook services present Braybrook’s Big Backyard, a FREE ‘Come and Try’ Activity Day. Come along and join in the fun from midday til 4pm.

LOCATION: Braybrook Community Centre, 107-139 Churchill Avenue, Braybrook. Click here for map.

For POW members and followers comment:

What are people’s opinion of having a POW slogan, and that the slogan is ”emPOWering community”?

The monthly POW meeting is tomorrow, Wednesday 25th November 2009.

Location is 9 Exhibition Street West Footscray. Click here for a map

Starts at 6pm and finishes at 8pm.

Another question asked by people is what are natural methods of controlling earwigs

Earwigs eat anything that’s organic – that means any dead or decaying tissue is fair game to them. Generally in the garden, they’re not much of a problem, but when they get to plague proportions, you can do something about it.

Another method is to take a old magarine plastic container, place slits on the sides of the container just above where the sides of the container become the base. Then place a small amount of oil in the bottom of the container, put in your garden near the plants. Place a brick or something heavy on top of the container so that it doesn’t get blown away in the wind. The earwigs are attracted to the oil, enter through the slits on the side of the container, and then can’t get out of the oil. Empty regularly.

Earwigs will feed at night and hide in the trap in the daytime. Hiding spots are the go, so rolled-up hessian, newspaper or (my favourite) corrugated cardboard, with some wheatmeal in the middle as a lure, in amongst your vegies. Tin cans with rolled up/scrunched up paper inside and the lure at the bottom. Check your traps regularly and dispose of the earwigs, then reset your traps on a daily basis.

Best control or disposal is via the chooks. If you feed the chooks lots of greens first, so they’ll crave protein and be ready to clean up the ‘wigs, either directly in the garden, or the finds of your traps. Try grooved decking boards on the ground, grooved side down, then you can turn them over when the chooks are out.

Earwigs give off an aggregation pheromone (‘smell’), which continues to attract other ‘wigs back to the same spot, so use this to your advantage by reusing traps to continue attracting and trapping them, and changing stakes,tree guards etc. from areas of past high infestation.

Stop earwigs climbing up fruit trees and stakes, or into pots, with a barrier – something greasy or sticky but not sweet. Recommended substances are hand soap rubbed on, liquid hand soap, vaseline, oil, hair gel, paraffin.

POW had a stall at the Hobson Bay Eco-Expo on Saturday. A number of people asked the question “How can I control Harlequin or Stink bugs?”.  The Harlequin bug is a garden pest that attacks a wide range of crop and ornamental plants, such as cotton, pome fruits, stone fruits, fig, grape, kurrajong, strawberry, vegetables, wisteria, dahlia and violet. When they are present in large numbers their feeding makes growing tips wilt or spoils fruit. Sometimes the bugs swarm on tree stumps and fences, and they may come into sheds and houses in large numbers. They are sometimes referred to as ‘Stink Beetles’ due to the odour they give of when disturbed.

Suggested natural solutions are:

From Gardening Australia: mix of water with a few drops of dish liquid & either garlic oil or minced garlic. Shake really well & spray them till saturated & they will drop off plants fences etc.

Ensure that you do not have areas of overgrown weeds or really long grass as this is where they love to inhabit. They don’t like regularly turned soil areas.

Food Among The Ruins by Mark Dowie
(selected excerpts below)

Right now, Detroit is as close as any city in America to becoming a
food desert, not just another metropolis like Chicago, Philadelphia,
or Cleveland with a bunch of small- and medium-sized food deserts
scattered about, but nearly a full-scale, citywide food desert. A food
desert is defined by those who study them as a locality from which
healthy food is more than twice as far away as unhealthy food, or
where the distance to a bag of potato chips is half the distance to a
head of lettuce. About 80 percent of the residents of Detroit buy
their food at the one thousand convenience stores, party stores,
liquor stores, and gas stations in the city. There is such a dire
shortage of protein in the city that Glemie Dean Beasley, a
seventy-year-old retired truck driver, is able to augment his Social
Security by selling raccoon carcasses (twelve dollars a piece, serves
a family of four) from animals he has treed and shot at undisclosed
hunting grounds around the city. Pelts are ten dollars each. Pheasants
are also abundant in the city and are occasionally harvested for
dinner.

…
There are a few cities in the world that grow and provide about half
their total food supply within their urban and peri-urban regions—Dar
es Salaam, Tanzania; Havana, Cuba; Hanoi, Vietnam; Dakar, Senegal;
Rosario, Argentina; Cagayan de Oro in the Philippines; and, my
personal favorite, Cuenca, Equador—all of which have much longer
growing seasons than Detroit. However, those cities evolved that way,
almost unintentionally. They are, in fact, about where Detroit was
agriculturally around one hundred and fifty years ago. Half of them
will almost surely drop under 50 percent sufficiency within the next
two decades as industry subsumes cultivated land to build factories (à
la China). Because of its unique situation, Detroit could come close
to being 100 percent self-sufficient.

…
Leading the way in Detroit’s soil remediation is Malik Yakini, owner
of the Black Star Community Book Store and founder of the Detroit
Black Community Food Security Network. Yakini and his colleagues begin
the remediation process by removing abandoned house foundations and
toxic debris from vacated industrial sites. Often that is all that
need be done to begin farming. Throw a little compost on the ground,
turn it in, sow some seeds, and water it. Water in Detroit is
remarkably clean and plentiful.

Although Detroiters have been growing produce in the city since its
days as an eighteenth-century French trading outpost, urban farming
was given a major boost in the nineteen eighties by a network of
African-American elders calling themselves the “Gardening Angels.” As
migrants from the rural South, where many had worked as small farmers
and field hands, they brought agrarian skills to vacant lots and
abandoned industrial sites of the city, and set out to reconnect their
descendants, children of asphalt, to the Earth, and teach them that
useful work doesn’t necessarily mean getting a job in a factory.

…
About five hundred small plots have been created by an international
organization called Urban Farming, founded by acclaimed songwriter
Taja Sevelle. Realizing that Detroit was the most agriculturally
promising of the fourteen cities in five countries where Urban Farming
now exists, Sevelle moved herself and her organization’s headquarters
there last year. Her goal is to triple the amount of land under
cultivation in Detroit every year. All food grown by Urban Farming is
given free to the poor. According to Urban Farming’s Detroit manager,
Michael Travis, that won’t change.

…
Any agro-economist will tell you that urban farming creates jobs. Even
without local production, the food industry creates three dollars of
job growth for every dollar spent on food—a larger multiplier effect
than almost any other product or industry. Farm a city, and that
figure jumps over five dollars. To a community with persistent
two-digit unemployment, that number is manna. But that’s only one
economic advantage of farming a city.

…
I tried to imagine what this weedy, decrepit, trash-ridden urban dead
zone would look like under cultivation. First, I removed the overhead
utilities and opened the sky a little. Then I tore up the useless grid
of potholed streets and sidewalks and replaced them with a long
winding road that would take vegetables to market and bring
parishioners to church. I wrecked and removed most of the houses I
saw, leaving a few that somehow held some charm and utility. Of
course, I left the churches standing, as I did a solid red brick
school, boarded up a decade ago when the student body dropped to a
dozen or so bored and unstimulated deadbeats. It could be reopened as
an urban ag-school, or SHAR’s residents could live there. I plowed and
planted rows of every imaginable vegetable, created orchards and
raised beds, set up beehives and built chicken coops, rabbit warrens,
barns, and corrals for sheep, goats, and horses. And of course, I
built sturdy hoop houses, rows of them, heated by burning methane from
composting manure and ag-waste to keep frost from winter crops. The
harvest was tended by former drug addicts who like so many before them
found salvation in growing things that keep their brethren alive.

…
That afternoon I visited Grace Lee Boggs, a ninety-three-year-old
Chinese-American widow who has been envisioning farms in Detroit for
decades. [...] I asked her whether the city government would support
large-scale urban agriculture. “City government is irrelevant,” she
answered. “Positive change, leaps forward in the evolution of
humankind do not start with governments. They start right here in our
living rooms and kitchens. We are the leaders we are looking for.”

…
Detroit now offers America a perfect place to redefine urban
economics, moving away from the totally paved, heavy-industrial
factory-town model to a resilient, holistic, economically diverse,
self-sufficient, intensely green, rural/urban community—and in doing
so become the first modern American city where agriculture, while
perhaps not the largest, is the most vital industry.

–
“Don’t waste time protesting; it changes nothing—that is why it is
legal” (Keith Farnish)

My household GHG emissions including car travel ~9kg CO2e/day
Household daily use of Water 180L, Electricity 5.2kWh, Petrol 1.4L, Gas 0MJ

Homegrown – The Art of Gardening Sustainably

We will once again be holding an exhibition to spread the word about sustainable gardening in the community and raise funds for SGA. The exhibition will run from the 5th February to 14th of March, 2010 at the Bolin Bolin Gallery at Bulleen Art & Garden. www.baag.com.au

We are asking artists to exhibit works in any medium which respond to the idea of gardening sustainably, with particular emphasis on growing our own food.

If you are interested in taking part, go to http://www.gallery.baag.com.au or contact meredith@baag.com.au. Expressions of interest due by 10 December.

Meredith Plain
Bulleen Art & Garden
meredith@baag.com.au

NSW introduces generous payment for solar homes
Walk Against Warming – 12th December 2009
Could you live in 36 square metres?
Housholds with a diverse water supply key to our water future
Images of the Future: ATA’s sustainable living photo gallery
Pre-xmas price crash – Power-Mate Lite for less than $100
NSW introduces generous payment for solar homes
The Alternative Technology Association (ATA) applauds the NSW government for introducing one of Australia’s most progressive payments for household solar power.
The NSW government’s shift away from previous plans for a net feed-in tariff, in line with other states, is a clear signal the Rees government is committed to building a green collar workforce in NSW, says Damien Moyse, ATA’s Energy Policy Manager.

Click here for more info.

Walk Against Warming – 12th December 2009
Walk Against Warming is Australia’s biggest day of community action on climate change and is an event that involves individuals, families, community groups and people of all ages.

The focus of this year’s walk is to send a message to the world leaders, gathered in Copenhagen for the Climate Talks, that we all want a safe climate and want them to take urgent action to reduce the world’s greenhouse emissions.

Go to www.waw.com.au to find out how you can participate in your state.

Could you live in 36 square metres?
Micro houses, eco rebates and enviro prefabs.

Sanctuary magazine issue 9, now in newsagents, features a Size Matters theme with 40 pages of inspiring smaller homes; a look at the latest in sustainable prefab designs; and everything you ever wanted to know about sustainability rebates.

Preview the issue on the Sanctuary website www.sanctuarymagazine.com.au

Housholds with a diverse water supply key to our water future
Householders with a variety of water supply sources are less vulnerable to the extremes of drought or flood than those who rely solely on the mains water network, says Anjali Brown, ATA Water Policy Manager.

ATA research shows that householders who have installed water saving technologies such as greywater have a greater understanding of and control over their water supply.

Click here for more info.

Images of the Future: ATA’s sustainable living photo gallery
On 24 Ocotober 2009, the ATA lunched the Real People Living Sustainable Lives photo gallery as part of the International Day of Climate Action.

Hundreds of ATA’s members, across Australia and New Zealand, contibuted photos to the gallery, joining the call for the world’s political leaders to create an equitable global climate treaty at the United Nations Climate Change meeting in Copenhagen this December.

Click here to view the gallery.

Pre-xmas price crash – Power-Mate Lite for less than $100
As a special once-off for the month of November, you can buy the popular Power-Mate Lite power meter for less than $100 (plus shipping).

The Power-Mate Lite is easy to use and can display energy used and the cost per hour, quarter and year, greenhouse gas production and more technical figures such as power-factor, frequency and volt-amperes.

To purchase go to the ATA wesite at shop.ata.org.au or call the ATA on ph.(03) 9639 1500, Monday – Friday, 10am-4pm.

You have received this email because you are an ATA member or subscriber to ReNew or Sanctuary magazine.
The Alternative Technology Association (ATA) is a not for profit association that promotes sustainable living and what we can do in our own homes. We rely on the financial support of our members to carry out our work. If you would like to become a member of the ATA please click here.

If you don’t want to receive bulletins like this from time to time, please let us know. Ph (03) 9639 1500 or email maddie@ata.org.au

ATA – Alternative Technology Association
A not-for-profit organisation promoting renewable energy, sustainable building and water conservation since 1980.
ABN: 57 533 056 318

Level 1, 39 Little Collins St, Melbourne VIC 3000
Reception: (03) 9639 1500
Fax: (03) 9639 5814
ata@ata.org.au
www.ata.org.au

Fortnightly update. November 2009 #1

Have your say as to what goes on the label …

On the back of the proposed amendment to the Food Standards Code (Truth in Labelling Laws, Senate Bill 2009), the Food Labelling Review Panel is asking for submissions.

Lots of things you could mention. Here’s a few:
the word “Australian” only apply in relation to food that is 100% produced in Australia from Australian products. (in above bill)
label all Genetically Modified foods – currently oils, sugars and starches from GM crops; products from animals fed GM food; GM additives, processing aids and flavourings; and food from street vendors, takeaways and restaurants do not need to be labelled. (more at Madge)
mandatory labeling of palm oil in the ingredients list of all packaged foods which contain any quantity of palm oil or palm oil derivatives. Palm oil is found in 1 in 10 supermarket products and linked to orangutan habitat loss. (more at POAG)
label the method of production of meat, eggs and dairy products, and define and regulate terms such as caged / battery eggs; barn laid eggs; free-range, open-range or range eggs; grain fed; bred free-range; organic and biodynamic.
label nano-ingredients in foods (more at Foe)
See the things that major groups such as Choice, Humane Society International, Ausbuy, Zoos Victoria, and WWF-Australia, and many others including industry groups, have said in their submissions here.

Act now. Send a short email to FoodLabellingReview@health.gov.au – You’ve only got till the 20th November.————————————-

Buy Nothing Day – the global holiday from Consumerism – is upon us again …

On November 28 – Saturday week – you can be one of the tens of millions of people around the world to bring the capitalist consumption machine to a grinding – if only momentary – halt.
Don’t just stop buying for 24 hours, but to shut off your lights, televisions and other nonessential appliances. Park your car, turn off your phones and log off of your computer for the day. Call it a Ramadan-like fast. From sunrise to sunset abstain en masse, not only from holiday shopping, but from all the temptations of our five-planet lifestyles.
More at www.adbusters.org/campaigns/bnd

And more … so you want to really take on the challenge? .. Buy Nothing Christmas
This Christmas we’ll be swamped with offers, ads and invitations to buy more stuff. But now there’s a way to say enough and join a movement dedicated to reviving the original meaning of Christmas giving. Check out the information kit and celebrate the real way … if you dare?
More at www.buynothingchristmas.org/
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Jive Talk …

Sun 22 Nov, 2pm
No bookings required, Free event

At The Dancing Dog Cafe
The Dog Theatre
42a Albert St Footscray
Melway ref: 42 C5

More

Nick will be talking at Jive Talk during the Big West Festival. Come along and join in the fun.
Jive Talk is a space for people to meet, listen, engage and dream about a better world through social conversation. To hope for our future and expect that when people get their hands dirty and learn the heartbeat of the world that something amazing can happen. ——————

Coming up…

“Shopping with a Conscience” Supermarket Tour
Our next public workshop will be held in February 2010. 6pm – 8.30pm. Cost $25. Light supper provided. Meet at Footscray
Baptist church, 60 Paisley Street, Footscray. Find out more at http://www.ethical.org.au/swac

Ethical Consumer Group ‘meet & movie’ nights
Also resuming next year… stay tuned! Find out more at http://www.ethical.org.au/ecgmovie
(ps. We’ve received some funding to start up an audiovisual library so soon you’ll be able to hire movies to stimulate discussion
amongst your own groups).

Sustainable Living Festival 2010
New 2 week program, 6-21 Februrary 2010, and the main event 19-21 February at Melbourne’s Federation Square.
Now is the time to submit your ideas, exhibits and events. Or join the festival volunteer team – enquiries at info@slf.org.au
Find out more http://festival.slf.org.au
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Get a Guide for your stocking!

They’re going cheap on mass. Contact Pradeepa to find out the bulk deal for our ‘Guide to Ethical Supermarket Shopping’ pocket book. Great for Christmas presents, end of year office gifts, or raising funds for your church, workplace or community group. Find out more by sending a email to orders@ethical.org.au

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See news updates at http://www.ethical.org.au/news