Permaculture Out West

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Seddon Festival in the Park – Sat. 5th March Harris Reserve, cnr Gamon & Thomson Sts Seddon

Thanks to cool initiatives by our friends at City West Water, we need 4 to 8 volunteers for ‘Wash Against Waste’, 2 to 4 Bike Valets on rotation as well as a some ‘waste educators’.

More info or offers, email Susan Lengyel at susan.lengyel@gmail.com

ANTIQUE APPLE TASTING FESTIVAL – IT’S ON AGAIN!

Heritage Apple Orchard tours, antique apple tastings, market stalls, entertainment, fruit tree displays and advice, music, storyteller, speakers, Freddy the Snake Man, Costa from ‘Costa’s Garden Odyssey, Dan and Adam from VEG, creators of Permablitz, Alana Moore, bestselling author of ‘Keeping Chooks Naturally’ and ‘Sensitive Permaculture’, Pete the Permie on Urban Fruit Trees and espaliers for home gardens, community stalls and myvore.

http://www.heritagefruitssociety.org.au/festivals.html

27TH March 2011 10am – 4pm
Petty’s Orchard, Homestead Rd, Templestowe, 3106 Victoria, Australia. Melway 22 A11

The Seddon Community Group Inc. has been hosting festivals annually since 1998 in Melbourne’s “Inner West”.

2011 SedFest is on

Saturday 5th. March 12.30 to 7pm

This year’s line-up & times…..

12.30 -             Hyde St. Youth Band

1pm                  Official Opening

1.05 -               La La Ville Choir

1.45 -              The Hackkets

2.30 -               Soteria Bell

3.15 -                Lily & King

4pm -                Kim Beales

4.45 -                The Legless Lizards

5.30 -                Zeptepi

6.15 -                Rebecca Barnard

6.55 -                Livingstone Clark (premier Melbourne performance!)

Apples

Johnny Apple-Seed had the right idea.  He was a missionary for the Swedenborgian Church and nurseryman who sold seedling apple trees in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois.  He had religious objections to grafting and preferred wild apples to all named varieties.  Apple seeds do not grow true to type and each apple seed will produce a unique variety of apples.  The fruit from Johnny’s trees mostly became alcoholic cider as only some trees would have produced sweet fruit. 

 You can plant apple seeds.  Some people recommend stratification of the seeds in the fridge before planting, but this probably isn’t required if your apple has been cold stored before you ate it and planted the seeds in Spring or Summer.  There is an article in the link below which gives a very detailed method of growing apples from seed but I felt that some of the joy is lost.  http://www.articlesbase.com/gardening-articles/how-to-grow-apple-trees-from-seed-473689.html

 A Life of Apples blog by an apple picker has great information about apples, written in a wonderful style.  He has also written about apple genetics, http://appleharvester.blogspot.com/2010/03/apple-genetics.html and has a great photo of some old standard (full size) apple trees here: http://appleharvester.blogspot.com/2010/03/trees-of-yore.html

Golden delicious was a product of nature, a chance seedling.  Here is the story of the “discovery” of the Golden Delicious variety from the above blog: “Now one day, when I was about 15 years old, that would have been about 1891, dad sent me out with a big old mowin’ scythe to mow the pasture field.  I was swingin’ away with the scythe when I came across a little apple tree that had grown about 20 inches tall. It was just a new little apple tree that had volunteered there. There wasn’t another apple tree right close by anywhere. “I thought to myself, ‘Now young feller, I’ll just leave you there,’ and that’s what I did. I mowed around it and on other occasions I mowed around it again and again, and it grew into a nice lookin’ little apple tree and eventually it was a big tree and bore apples.”

The original Red Delicious tree was a seedling that was cut to a stump for several years before it was tasted.  The Red Delicious variety often produces single branch mutations or “sports” and 40 varieties have been patented.

The first ‘Bramley’s Seedling’ tree grew from pips planted by Mary Ann Brailsford when she was a young girl in her garden in Southwell, Nottinghamshire, UK in 1809.  In 1900 the original tree was knocked over during violent storms; it survived, however, and is still bearing fruit two centuries after it was planted. It is now the most important cooking apple in England and Wales.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bramley_%28apple%29

The Aussie Granny Smith seedling grew in NSW from the remains of some Tasmanian French crab apples which were dumped by the creek:  http://www.ryde.nsw.gov.au/ryde/msherwood.htm

Highly recommended is this series of chapters on Yoko Ono’s Imagine Peace website.  It is the story of a Japanese farmer who is trying to grow apples naturally.  They publish a new chapter every week.  http://imaginepeace.com/miracleapples/?page_id=8

I have seen many varieties of apple seedlings and grafted apple trees growing in this region naturally with no help from humans.

by Philip Hitchcock, Friends of Stony Creek

Have a look at our local groups at http://www.maribyrnong.vic.gov.au/Page/Page.asp?Page_id=5967&h=-1&newsletter=true&ID=60&UID=1072

I was listening this morning to a Late Night live podcast
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/latenightlive/stories/2010/2952641.htm of an
interview with Frederick Kaufman who has written an article for Harpers
subtitled called The food Bubble: How Wall Street starved millions and got
away with it”.
Another interview here:

http://www.archive.org/details/TheFoodBubble-FrederickKaufman-2010

He warns in the interview that nothing has changed to stop these masters of
the universe creating another food bubble (which appears to be happening
now), nor to stop another GFC. So while

2008 saw food riots, these people were paid, and so it continues, huge fees
and bonuses for being so clever.

Regards,

Pat

Early Spring starts with the first warm spell after the cold of mid-winter, in late July or early August.
This provides the signal to start thinking about those summer crops that need a head start in warm
soil under cover of some sort. Cold tolerant winter vegies can continue to be sown in the open
ground, but they’ll be slow to germinate and get established while the temperature is low. It’s still too
early to sow summer crops in the open ground.
If you’ve sown any green manure crops these can be dug in as soon as they commence flowering.
AUGUST IN THE VEGIE PATCH
Sow Beetroot (Early Wonder), Broccoli, Cabbage, Coriander, Kohl Rabi, Lettuce (Cos), Mizuna,
Mustards, Parsnip, Green Snow & Snap Peas, Radish, Rocket, Shallots (Bunching Onions), Spinach,
Swedes, Tatsoi, Turnip, Calendula.
Sow under glass or in a hot-house. Capsicum, Chillies, Eggplant, Tomatoes. These common
vegetables are of tropical origin and need warm soil to germinate.
Plant Tubers and bulbs of Oca, True Shallots, Sunchokes, Potatoes, Yacon. Crowns of Asparagus.
Subdivide and replant Chives, Garlic Chives, Bunching Onions, Globe Artichokes, Rhubarb.
SEPTEMBER IN THE VEGIE PATCH
Sow As for August, including Beetroot (Cylindrica and Detroit). Lettuce, You may want to start some
of the cucurbits (melons, cucumbers, pumkins, zucchini, etc) under glass or in the hothouse also, so
they’re ready to plant out in the open garden late October – early November. These are best sown
singly in small pots or Hyco tubes, so that can they can be planted out with minimum root
disturbance. It’s also time to start sowing Asparagus, Bol Choy, Chinese Cabbage, Carrots (All
Seasons, Topweight), Celeriac, Celery, Chicory, Endive, Lettuce, Parsley, Silver Beet/Chard.
Plant Potatoes, shallots. Any tomatoes, capsicums, etc, that are big enough to transplant after
germination under cover can go into pots to be grown on for a few weeks, ready for transplanting into
the open garden in Late Spring.
As we approach the Spring Equinox increasing day-length will trigger the bolting of many biennial
vegies. Root crops (beetroot, carrots, parsnip) will need to be used up before this happens, unless
some of the best plants are being left for seed collection. Shoots of leaf crops (leaf beets, parsley)
can continue to be used before they flower and go stringy.
EARLY SPRING IN THE ORCHARD
Pruning of deciduous fruit trees should be completed during August before the sap starts to rise and
blossoming starts. Wood ashes spread around fruit trees and berries at this time of year will provide
some potash to enhance fruit set and flavour. Some rotted manure or compost, covered over with
mulch, will stimulate some strong early growth of new wood, particularly with young trees that are not
yet well established.
If you have curly leaf in your peaches and nectarines a copper-based spray applied just as the
flowerbuds begin to swell and turn pink will help to control the fungal spores hanging around on the
bark waiting for a chance to invade the soft tissues of the blossoming trees.

Learn the tricks of grafting your own fruit trees for your backyard orchard in a friendly atmosphere with plenty of opportuniuty for asking questions and learning with people witrh similar interests to yourself.

Held at:

Maidstone Community Centre
21 Yardley street Maidstone (enter Via Gibb Street gate)
Sunday, August 15,
10:00 AM until 1:00 PM
Tea & Coffee provided

Cost: Only $15:00 per person. -PLUS you get a newly-grafted fruit tree to take home!

Numbers strictly limited
Book via the POW website: email workshops@pow.org.au

Brought to you by Permaculture Out West
&
Werribee Park Heritage Orchard.

The Age 11 June
http://www.theage.com.au/national/melbourne-life/green-thumbs-and-highrise-ambitions-20100610-y0hx.html

STROLL along North Wharf in Docklands, among the towering apartment blocks, and at the end of the wharf you’ll come across the precinct’s best kept secret. In the midst of the concrete surrounds, near the far end of the wharf, an oasis of greenery has been created, an open garden with a profusion of ready-to-pick herbs, vegetables, and flowers. It is a community garden, the first to be introduced to Docklands….. The community garden was established as a trial after Monash University student Emily Ballantyne-Brodie approached Docklands’ developers Vic Urban and Lend Lease with a proposal. They gave the space, while the Environment Protection Agency funded the plants and garden supplies.

”Our ecological footprint per person in Australia is 50 per cent based around food, the water used in production and the travel involved in getting it to the city,” Ballantyne-Brodie says. Her concept is for the creation of a community hub, eventually on a permanent site, that will combine sustainability ventures. It already includes an eco-shop selling garden supplies in nearby Merchant Street, where classes are run on establishing balcony and rooftop gardens,  harvesting grey water and rainwater, organic gardening and permaculture design, and sustainable cooking.

Ballantyne-Brodie, 26, is studying for a master’s degree in environment and sustainability. She spent two years researching the idea of urban agriculture and community design at Italy’s Politecnico Di Milano.

Her passion for the project derives from her experience growing up at Upper Beaconsfield ”with a vegie patch and chickens”. The community garden has proved an enormous success with residents of Docklands, she says. She has been helped by a team of volunteers, including landscapers.

Ethical investment isn’t just a feel-good exercise. It makes good business sense. The companies who do well environmentally and socially are also those who will increasingly do well financially. Come along to our discussion evening to find out more.
Ethical investment – how your savings and super can work toward a better future Responsible companies – who are the companies leading the way Sustainable returns – how doing good can do better

The Climate Advocacy Fund ~ engaging for change

The Climate Advocacy Fund is a ground-breaking way to influence corporate behaviour in Australia. The fund will pursue improved climate change performance from Australia’s largest companies principally through resolutions at annual general meetings.
Melbourne – 27 July 2010 – Novotel St Kilda
16 The Esplanade, St Kilda – 6.30pm to 7.30pm

Melbourne – 28 July 2010 – Metropole Hotel & Conference Centre
44 Brunswick St, Fitzroy – 6.30pm to 7.30pm

Geelong – 29 July 2010 – Geelong Conference Centre
Adams Court, Eastern Park, East Geelong – 6.30pm to 7.30pm

The speaker will be James Thier, one of the founding directors of Australian Ethical. James is also a Churchill Fellow, having travelled to the US and Europe to study shareholder advocacy.
The seminar is free to attend and light supper will be provided. Please bring along family and friends who would also like to learn more about ethical investment and corporate engagement.
RSVP to Sally Rowland by email to srowland@australianethical.com.au or by phoning 02 6201 1902.