Sunday 3 June 2007

MORE ON PERMACULTURE



Paul and I had our mulching day last week. We probably learned more from the group that attended than they did. It’s amazing what individuals know about gardening! We would like to thank everyone that turned up for the enjoyable day.

One method of gardening we covered was Permaculture. I remember I picked up a book by Bill Mollison, (the Australian who came up with the idea in 1978) a few years ago. Permaculture is a system where people and the land live in harmony together. This can include energy efficient housing, composting toilets, wind power etc. Permaculture uses a no dig policy on the land and no pesticides are used. This idea in gardening isn’t new though I have a book on my shelves called Gardening Without Digging written by A.. Guest which was published in 1947 which covers the same basic ideas (It’s still in print but costs £5 instead of 2 shillings!). I’ve no doubt these ideas go back thousands of years, as most of them are common sense. Anyway, as this is Paul’s last week with us I’ll pass you over to him to explain about the practicalities of permaculture.

Paul’s parting ponderings
How does permaculture work in practice? We have been doing some work on the site at Clonbeg to prepare for next years vegetable plot and incorporating some of the ideas. After all if you like the look of something the next thing to do is try it out for real. The outcomes are not entirely predictable, it’s bit experimental and I think any venture that incorporates the ideas of the perma-culture advocates will always be, as artists say, “a work in progress”. Instant success is good and a spur to further exploration but lessons learnt when the unexpected happens are also very useful and serve to increase our understanding.

First of all we looked at the area to be worked .It is an informal vegetable plot covering about 100 m2 that has become overgrown with couch grass, docks and nettles. The drainage is quite poor but it’s encouraging to see how many worms wriggle for cover when a spadeful of soil is turned. The lushness of the unwanted plant growth shows that the site has obvious potential, being extremely fertile.and sheltered from the prevailing weather. There are no obvious pests and the surrounding area supports a healthy population of small birds. There are frogs living in the near by wet areas.

We decided that the best way to achieve the highest yield for the least effort on the site is to build raised beds. These allow easy access for cultivation, don’t waterlog and enable a “no dig approach to be taken. .We used scrap planks to build three of them rescued from a landfill; a fourth was an old bed frame. The beds were lined with cardboard, newspapers and woolen carpet underlay We filled them with a mixture of yukky stuff that included spent mushroom compost, seaweed, horse manure, leaves, hair, uncomposted kitchen waste, old paperbacked books and some very ancient and tatty but muched loved jeans after all some sacrifices have to be made. We topped them off with the contents of old hanging baskets and mulched them.

To study which mulches would be most successful we tried three different types. One bed is covered with eight inches of oat straw, one is covered in black plastic recovered from old potting compost bags, one is covered with old carpet underlay and one has been planted with winter field beans as a green manure. The beans will fix nitrogen and take up nutrients that would otherwise be washed out of the soil by winter rains. In the spring they will be chopped down and used as a mulch or composted. Decisions will then have to be made about how all the beds will be worked with, and what vegetables will be the most productive.

In an attempt to keep the invasive perennial weeds at bay (if that’s possible!) we have surrounded the beds with old carpets retrieved from landfill, a strip of kitchen floor covering and a mulch of deep straw from some spoiled bails. These serve as paths and when the nettles, docks and couch grasses drive through, they will be covered with more straw or have their heads chopped off and composted. ( That will teach them!) To increase the space we have for growing and use height as well as width we have built a hazel arch between two beds for climbing plants to scramble over. We used thinnings from a coppicing job for this.

Phew! All this has been a great deal of hard work and has taken hundreds of cups of tea to accomplish. Tea bags have played an important role in filling the raised beds. The plot has been transformed and we have managed to put all the hard ware in place using materials that someone else has thought of as rubbish. (One of the interesting books I found in the Buncrana library ecology box calls rubbish “secondary resources”, I like to think of it as anything we have not found a use for …yet!) With luck and a bit of help from the weather next year our planning should pay off and in the autumn we should be able to look back on a bumper harvest grown with the minimum of effort. It is said that the best gardener is the one who is happiest with his or her garden and enjoys it the most. If some of this works we will be very happy and whatever happens we have enjoyed ourselves.

It is also important to encourage helpful wildlife to live around the site so we have fastened an old tin teapot in a tree hoping a robin will build a nest in it in spring. We intend to put up enclosed nesting boxes for blue tits. From hatching to flying a brood of young blue tits scoffs its way through twenty thousand caterpillars (I don’t know who counted) saving the need to use sprays on early plants. They are also very keen on varying their diet with a few greenfly. It would be good if a hedghog decided to join the team. He would hoover up the slugs, which could be a problem in a garden that relies so much on deep organic mulches, protecting and feeding the soil to help the plants grow successfully.

If we have managed to whet your appetite and you want to know any more about what we are working towards Ian is always happy to talk about his project. You also might have lots of advice for him, as there is always something new to learn in gardening. I’m off back to Nottingham on Monday and will be working on a community orchard scheme for a few weeks.




Horticultural.


TOP TIPS




LOST
If you loose something small like jewellery or earrings on the floor don’t panic. Put an old pair of tights over the end of the vacuum cleaner nozzle. Gently go over the area with the nozzle and when you find the item it will not get sucked up into the machine but will be the on the tights for you to pick off.

NICE RICE
Save energy when you are cooking rice. Put a cupful into a flask and very carefully fill with boiling water Leave this for an hour and when you take the top off the rice will be perfectly cooked. The rice might have formed a bit of a blockage at the top. In which case you could tap the flask gently to remove the blockage. If this fails a teaspoon will do the trick.






Update: A reader tried this and had a real job getting the rice out of the flask. We advise that if you do try it, to use a flask with a wide neck and don't leave it in too long!






Household.



NATURAL FLAVOUR


Dear Ian

I read the article about adverts being misleading to the public (Sept 28th edition). Sometimes adverts can be amusing and on the whole generally harmless as long as the public keep a bit of common sense and can see the advert for what it is, - a means of getting you to buy something that you do not necessarily need, or really want for that matter.

There are instances where omissions of the truth and withheld information can be very damaging, especially in my case of being a vegetarian. I constantly have to watch my food intake because of added animal products in so called vegetarian food.

A BEEF ABOUT THE CHIPS
Most multi national burger bars are switching to all-vegetable oil to cook their fries. The reason was to reduce the saturated fat content of their food, which is bad for the heart. Previously some fries were cooked with beef tallow. Tallow is appetisingly referred to in the dictionary as, "Hard fat obtained from parts of the bodies of cattle, sheep or horses, and used in foodstuffs or to make candles, leather dressing, soap and lubricants." Yum.



The problem for one of the companies was that the veggie-oil cooked fries didn't taste like their popular tallow-cooked fries, which they solved by including a beef flavouring at the time of preprocessing for distribution (not while being cooked in the restaurant). Under the US government's food guidelines, they were allowed to label this beef flavouring as "natural flavour," which it is of course but out of animal’s internal organs. But because of the hype over the switch to vegetable oil for frying, vegetarians assumed—and this one particular company did not try to dissuade--that the fries were now vegetarian. The conclusion of a recent court case against the burger giant gave vegetarian and religious groups a ten million dollar windfall and left a lot of people with a nasty taste in their mouths. Just as a matter of interest the company still cooks with the beef flavouring in their fries.




Yours G Hallowell Derry




Environmental.


SHINY FRUIT


Even on the supermarket shelves we vegetarians have to watch out. The first of these products are the obvious staple ingredients of day-to-day meal planning for vegetarians - fruits and vegetables. Take some apples for example. Some fruits are coated with a waxy substance that protects them from damage and gives them that lovely, glossy sheen. There are many types of protective coatings, among them is shellac. Devastatingly for vegetarian and vegans, this is a resin derived from the secretions of the lac beetle, found in many parts of Asia. The Guelph Food Technology Centre calls this refined insect secretion one of the most common confectionary glazes for hard sweets and chocolates as well. This may not bother meat eaters much beyond finding it unappetising. But vegetarians might see this as a reason to look for fresher, untouched produce. All organic produce is usually free from waxy additives so I go for those. In an ideal situation though I would favour home grown

Environmental.

BEETLES IN YOUR SWEETIES

There is a food colouring called carmine, also known as carminic acid or cochineal. It's a red dye derived from the bodies of dried and crushed female cochineal beetles. According to PETA, North America's largest animal rights advocacy group, it takes 160,000 of these insects to produce one kilogram of colouring. The dye, often referred to as Red #4, can be found in cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, dairy products, baked goods, confections, yogurt, beverages, ice cream and fruit fillings. Because of the dye's rather unpleasant source, companies are secretive about using it. Most companies just call it ‘colour’ in their list of ingredients. Then of course there is gelatin. You will find this lining of a cow’s stomach in everything from chewy sweets to jelly. To conclude then it is sometimes what is not said that is important to look out for in advertising. Be aware!



Yours G Hallowell Derry

LOST STITCHES


We here at Clean and Green are always pointing out the importance of re-using and using natural products as much as possible. At one time when wool was scarce and a jumper became threadbare, instead of it being thrown away it would be unpicked and a new garment would be created in it’s place. This is rarely done anymore, same as you never see anyone darning socks. The art of knitting is still with us though and a lot of people still sit in the evenings and click away with their needles. A hand–knit item is special as it has that extra ingredient of love! Anyway the reason that I have mentioned this is that a neighbour of ours has just shown us a poem he did at school. We thought we would share it with you.






MY LOST STICHES

I got some knitting needles and a yellow ball of wool
My granny gave them to me and I took them into school.

Mrs McCay told us she would teach us how to knit,
So off I went on Friday with a new knitting kit.

I cast on 20 stitches and was feeling very proud.
I knitted each one carefully and counted them out loud.

I thought I had the hang of it, I was getting very keen.
But suddenly it stopped…. I had only 17!

I was so disappointed. Where did they go?
I asked Steven Nelson, but he didn’t know.

Well, I’ve lost 3 of my stitches, I don’t know where they’ve gone.
And there’s a hole in my knitting, where did it come from?

So if you find 3 yellow stitches, you will keep them safe for me.
And I’ll try my best to put them, back where they should be.

By Sean O, Doherty
3rd class
Scoil Iosagain




WOOL CARE




The three enemies of wool are heat, rubbing and wet. Careful washing is actually better for woollen clothes than dry cleaning, and better for the planet too. For good results dissolve pure soap in hot water and add enough cold to get the temperature down to below body temperature. Soak the pullover for about ten minutes and then press it to the bottom of the basin until it is clean. Putting a teaspoon full of natural glycerine in the final rinse will leave the wool feeling soft and fluffy. It is important to get the water out of the wool as soon as possible. The wool spin on the washer should sort that out. When it is as dry as possible the jumper can be hung outside on the line to dry. One method of hanging the garment is to pass a pair of tights through the sleeves and secure them to the line. The other method is to put a shirt inside the jumper as if you were wearing it and fasten the sleeves to the line. It’s important to dry the jumper without it resting on any sharp edges or being supported by pegs as this can put the garment out of shape.

When it comes to ironing a wool jumper, the less it is pressed the better. If you do have to do this, put a cloth between the jumper and the iron, this will reduce the risk of damage. Keep the iron on a low temperature as well.

Household.


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