Permaculture Out West

Archive for April, 2010

We’ve finally got ourselves organised and POW is running the Seed saving workshop on 16th May.

POW is running a seed saving workshop. Seed saving is about preserving the genetic diversity that evolved over millions of years. Genetic diversity is slowly being lost, due to genetically modified forms of plants and hybridisation. We’re becoming more reliant on multinational companies like Monsanto as the seeds from hybrid or genetically modified plants are sterile or not true to type; this means gardeners and farmers become locked into buying seed each year.

Topics covered: when the seed can be harvested, how to harvest the seed and store it, how long it can be stored.

On the day, you’ll be able to join a new seed savers network for the western suburbs.

Location: Braybrook Community Garden, Skinner Reserve 107-139 Churchill Ave Braybrook.

The following fruits and vegetables are at their best and cheapest this month.

Fruits: Apples, Banana, Grapefruit, Grapes, Kiwifruit, Watermelon, Figs, Lemons, Persimmons

Vegetables: Beanshoots, Broccoli, Carrots, Cauliflower, Mushrooms, Potatoes, Pumpkins, Spring onions, Turnips

Council has allocated funds within the 2010 and 2011 capital budgets to upgrade Charles Street between Victoria and Gamon Streets, Seddon. This work continues Council’s committment to the implementation of the Seddon Urban Design Framework.

Your Say

Council consulted with the local community, Seddon traders, public transport organisations and service authorities through first quarter of 2010. The feedback from the community consultations has been incorporated into the design development of the two preferred design options (attached below) for the upgrade of Charles Street.

Council is now seeking feedback from all residents and traders within the Seddon community on both design options. Feedback forms are available here.Community feedback closes on Friday 7 May 2010.

Charles Street Option 1

Charles Street Option 2

Feedback form

Artichoke globe, baby beets, beetroot, broad beans, broccoli, leeks, lettuce, onions, spring onions, climbing & dwarf peas, radish, shallots, spinach, strawberry runners.

Herbs: chives

We would like to hear from community members if our priorities are on track, and if there is anything else we should be focusing on.

Please take 15 minutes to complete on-line Community Survey. The closing date for surveys is Wednesday 28 April 2010.

The results from the survey will help us finalise the Annual Action Plan for 2010-11. The Plan will be presented to Council for endorsement in late June 2010.

If you prefer to fill in a hard copy survey form, please contact Mary Ciliak at Council on 96880413 and a copy will be sent to you (with a replied paid envelope).

For more information contact:

Corporate Planning & Performance Co-ordinator

9688 0413

email@maribyrnong.vic.gov.au

Dear Permablitz Out West, I live in Westmeadows not far from the airport and was hoping to host a blitz on June 5th. I have attended four blitzes since last year including the West Footscray fiesta blitz. I am in contact with Adam at Permablitz but we seem to be having trouble pinning down PDC’s and getting a design complete. I was wondering if there was anyone in your network who could assist? I am feeling a little nervous as the day is approaching and I am intending to combine it with my 40th birthday and want to send out invites, but at this stage I can’t guarantee what is happening.

Please send an email if you can help out to permablitz@pow.org.au

One of the inspirational things I discovered during my PDC course were food forests. Around the world, humans have been molding their environment, sometimes destructively, but sometimes constructively.

Here are 2 youtube videos that may interest you. One is about a 300 year old food forest in Vietnam, and the other, a 2000 year old food forest in Morocco.

300 year old food forest in Vietnam

2000 year old food forest in Morocco

For those people who live in surburbia, a trip to the Botanical gardens, or a walk along a river bank lined with trees are the closest some of us come to a natural forest system. I’ve often thought that it would be great to live (I live in Seddon), and walk out of the backyard into a forest. Until I did my PDC course with Bill Mollison and Geoff Lawton, I thought that it wasn’t possible. But in that course, I was introduced to the work of Robert Hart. Robert Hart was (he died back in 2000) a famous practitioner of forest gardens. He had a 500m2 property in England. He noticed that trying to maintain a vegie patch, an orchard and livestock is a lot of effort. One day he saw that a small bed of perennial vegetables and herbs where thriving, with little intervention. From these observations he developed, over a 30 year period, a forest garden. He observed forests and saw there were 7 natural layers in a forest.

The 7 layers are:

• Canopy – large fruit or nut trees
• Low tree – dwarf fruit trees
• Shrubs – currants, berries
• Rhizosphere – root vegetables
• Soil surface – ground covers like strawberry
• Vertical – climbers, vines

There are a number of benefits to such a system.  By incorporating all or most of these layers, you are creating a micro ecosystem that becomes self sustaining with little effort. The canopy layer and the low tree layer provide shade to the other layers, and help to reduce evaporation. There is a lot of natural leaf litter, which gets incorporated back into the earth by the various bugs and worms. It provides food.  It changes your backyard into a sanctuary, and provides privacy from the neighbours (something I’m in need of in my little workers cottage).

Looking to nature, you see that it has solved a lot of space problems, and it’s just a matter of looking and observing and learning how nature does it.

Watch Costa’s Garden Odyssey on SBS 1 at 7.30pm 22nd April.

Costa explores Melbourne’s Kevin Heinze Garden Centre where people with disabilities get their hands in the dirt, do something physical and experience the sensory delights of the space.   It’s a space where people can see, hear, touch, smell and taste a variety of plants and flowers.  The Maidstone Community Centre also wishes to create this type of garden for their members and Costa, with the help of POW, transforms their overgrown backyard into a sensory haven where people can interact and connect with nature.  It’s a philosophy that the Abbott of the Quang Mihn Buddhist Temple endorses – we need to create harmony and balance between the environment and our use of it which is why the Temple has installed a commercial worm farm to recycle the Temple’s waste.

Costa’s garden odyssey

Due to a mixup with dates, venue and availability, POW won’t be running a seed saving workshop this weekend. We’ll be contacting people who registered for the course with the new date early next week. Of course, we’ll be posting the date here on this website, so you still have the opportunity to enrol.

Apologies for the deferral and any inconvenience it may have caused.