Style = Substance

I came across a great little article yesterday. There are so many stories on the women who didn't fit into the same old depressive stereotypes of minorities in the US, but we always hear about their hardships and the pain, never their ability to just be normal women. Here is a short article celebrating just those women, defying the time and age while looking real slick (poofy hair and everything).

Excerpt:

Here’s what I wish I knew back when I was in high school and so proud of myself for being the exceptionally compassionate, caring person I believed myself to be: focusing only on the pain and degradation of any oppressed group of people does another kind of damage to those individuals. It turns them into stereotypes of pain and damage and ignores everything else about them, including whether they’re funny, or stupid, or weird, or brilliant, or irreverent, or stylish, or creative, or boring, or selfish, or anything else that people are capable of being. It takes away their complexity and vastness and reduces people to one-dimensional figures. So yes, this is a post about style, but more than that, it’s a post about not denying these girls the dignity of their multitudes.

Never underestimate the power of small acts. Even something as trivial as hairspray can be a radical act.

Thoughts on organizing a permablitz

My housemates and I spent all last weekend buying materials and sorting out the plan for the permablitz next week. Organizing can be hard work, especially with many different tasks! But at last, the mushroom compost and mulch is ordered, the wood sourced, the tools accounted for, seeds and seedlings bought, the call for volunteers made. We'll be expecting around 20-25 people on Saturday to come help us finish up the chicken coop and the run, dig the pond, build the composting toilet, and put in the vegetable patch.

The process of organizing such an event is in itself a really good learning experience. Here are some thoughts on how to avoid great frustration and stress:

1. It can be difficult working on your own for this, so it's important to have good team work and to make sure that everyone is on the same page.
   
2. Everyone working with you should be familiar with the permaculture design principles as well as the ethos of a permablitz (creating edible ecosystem gardens, building community networks, skill sharing). It's not just about getting the garden the way you want it, it's also about teaching other people how they can do something similar in their neighborhood and creating a knowledge network.
   
3. Task delegation is very important!
   
4. Good communication between hosts, facilitators, and designers is key so no one is left out of the loop.
   
5. Don't try to bite off more than you can chew. As tempting as it can be to put in every single great idea (fruit trees, climbing pumpkins, oh my!), you have to be realistic about your budget and your time. Are you really going to spend 30+min in the garden every day to tend to everything you put in? If not, then you might want to scale back.
   
6. For plants that take a long time to bear fruit (ie trees), you can put them into portable pots for greater mobility and flexibility.
   
7. There is free material everywhere if you're willing to spend time looking for it. We got a good amount of free wood from Gumtree (Australian's version of Craig's List) and free cardboard from off the street.
   
8. Do your research! Whether it's buying materials, looking at companion planting, or designing the garden, going in with some prior knowledge will be essential.
   
9. Empowering people by letting them have ownership of the project is very important.

Some great resources for hosts, facilitators, and designers are available here on the Melbourne Permablitz website for those looking to organize a permablitz of their own. Definitely read through them!

So what's our garden going to look like anyway?

Backyard design plan
We'll have the center vegetable patch (bike wheel style) where we'll rotate different veggies in depending on the season. It's in what's known as the zone 1 area, really close to the house and easily accessible.

To the left of the patch is our chicken run, where Henrietta Lacks and sister chicken will live. Some chicken-friendly plants, like fat hen, dock, comfrey, wormwood, and dandelion will be planted along the fence for the chickens to eat. The idea of having the chicken run next to the veggie patch is so that we can do our rounds in the veggie patch and swing by the chicken coop to check for eggs every day. Easy!

Above the vegetable patch is the herbs area, for herbs like basil and rosemary. We'll have some beneficial insect plants as well, basically anything that will attract pollinators or shelter predators of pests. These include cosmos, queen anne's lace, borage, and chamomile.

Up by the bike shed, there's some frames. Later in the year, we'll try growing vertically up them with pumpkins or peas or zucchini. If the area is warm enough, we might try for passionfruit as well!

Behind the shed is an evergreen area. We'll plant some evergreen natives, bamboo, and maybe some honeysuckle to attract birds and increase the biodiversity of the garden. It'll make a good reflecting spot if we have a nice little path leading to the back.

Across from there is the wet area where the pond is going. If we're really ambitious, we may add in a bench and turn it into a really nice area for relaxing and reflecting. Mint, peppermint, raspberries, coriander, and later lemongrass and ginger will be grown there.

Next to that area is the composting toilet shed. Yes, you read that right, the composting toilet. More details on how that's gonna turn out later! Hopefully we'll angle the venting pipe so that it doesn't go straight into the faces of people in the entertainment area.

Next to the house will be our propagation area. It'll be a really simple "table" made of wood or slabs on top of our rainwater tanks. We can check on it every day when heading out and make sure it's covered via a shade cloth. By putting it next to the house, the seedlings can be protected undercover.

So that's the plan! We'll see how it turns out.

Planning for Permablitz

My housemates and I are finally going to permablitz our garden in April! This is my first time designing a garden and seeing the design through. I first heard about permaculture through Wellesley's Edible Forest Garden Project in 2010, where I got to help design a fruit tree 'guild' including supporting plants for the fruit tree. But I graduated before the actual planting got started. So I'm really excited to see our design made real this time!

The first step in doing a permaculture design is to incorporate the permaculture principles. The basic premise is to model natural ecological systems in the backyard/garden so that the humans can sustainably use the space for growing edibles or enjoyment. Deep Green Permaculture has a good description of the design principles and there are many books on permaculture, notably by Bill Mollison, Dave Jacke, and David Holmgren. Here's a short summary of the principles:

Design Principles

1. Relative Location – every element is placed in relationship to another so that they assist each other
   
2. Each element performs many functions
   
3. Each important function is supported by many elements
   
4. Efficient energy planning – for house and settlement (zones and sectors)
   -Zone Planning
   -Sector Planning
   -Slope
   
5. Using Biological Resources – Emphasis on the use of biological resources over fossil fuel resources
   
6. Energy Cycling – energy recycling on site (both fuel and human energy)
   
7. Small Scale Intensive Systems
   -Plant Stacking
   -Time Stacking
   
8. Accelerating Succession and Evolution – Using and accelerating natural plant succession to establish favourable sites and soils
   
9. Diversity – Polyculture and diversity of beneficial species for a productive, interactive system
   -Guilds
   
10. Edge Effect – Use of edge and natural patterns for best effect
    
11. Attitudinal Principles
    -Everything works both ways
    -Permaculture is information and imagination intensive

(source: "Introduction To Permaculture" – Bill Mollison & Reny Mia Slay)

Our garden design incorporates most of these principles. If we had oodles and oodles of time (and money), we'd do everything here and use all the space in the backyard and front yard. Imagine passionfruit growing up the fences, herbs by the kitchen window, grape vines out front! But baby steps first, especially since this is our first year living at this house and we haven't gone through all the seasons yet. It's important to get a feel for how the sun/shade hits the space and where the different microclimates are (like how the corner by the rainwater tanks might be warmer because the sun hits the tanks and bounces off).


Our backyard dimensions
Our plan for this upcoming permablitz is to build or put in the following:

1. a chicken coop. Chickens, as I've written about before, are really great for the garden for fertilizer and pest management.
   
2. a propagation table/shed. The propagation shed is a handy protected space for growing seedlings. You can use a table or even just a tray that's undercover. We might be opting for the table rather than a whole shed for simplicity.
   
3. a composting toilet. Speaks for itself, why not? We only have one bathroom in the house for 5 people, so it'd be handy to have a second bathroom. Biosolids, if treated correctly, can be really great fertilizer for the garden.
   
4. a pond. This goes back to the idea of emulating natural ecosystems. With the pond, we can attract frogs, insects, and birds, all of which help with increasing the biodiversity of our garden. It's important to have support for the pollinators and pest managers that frequent the garden.
   
5. a vegetable patch. Our main purpose! We'll be doing the no-dig technique and simply laying down newspaper, cardboard, manure/mushroom compost, and mulch to suppress the weeds before planting. The veggie patch will be in a bicycle spoke design, allowing us to rotate veggies between the 'spokes' and easily access each section.

More details to come later when we do the permablitz!

Adaptation and mitigation of small island agricultural systems

Australia's Primary Industries Adaptation Research Network (PIARN) and National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility recently ran a webinar on adaptation, mitigation, and management of agricultural systems, focusing on the research work done on Tasmania. The webinar featured Professor Holger Meinke with the Tasmanian Institute of Agriculture. He spoke on improving early warning systems and risk management of the increasing flood threat, which will enable farmers to adapt cropping systems, and produce methods that will have applications throughout Australia’s flood-prone farmland.

Professor Meinke gave a very informative presentation, which is available to view below. PIARN records the presentation and also allows the public to access the presentation remotely via the internet such that they can interact with the presenter from a distance. It's a great way for the information to be accessed more widely. The presentations so far have been geared towards audiences with a basic understanding of climate change and agriculture, but are not so technical that those not in the discipline cannot understand.

Adaptation, mitigation and the responsible management of agricultural systems - a 'small island' perspective from Climate & primary industries on Vimeo.

FAO Recycling water for agriculture

This FAO animation is awesome! It explains in simple and easy to understand graphics how cities can use water in alternative ways to grow agricultural goods. Check it out!

FAO Recycling Water animation in English (Flash required)

There's also a Spanish and French version of the animation too!

More information about the FAO Water Development and Management here

Compost Death Star

A few weeks ago, my housemates and I bought a tumbling compost ball. It's pretty much the most amazing thing ever and it looks like a Death Star, which makes it even more amazing (because I am a Star Wars geek and now I have my own dark side of the garden). Most composts don't get turned over often enough or don't get enough oxygen inside, including our last compost bin at the previous house. Having a compost ball that you can roll around helps with turnover and mixing. The design even has little holes for oxygen to breathe in.

Another common problem that people have is an imbalance between the nitrogen-heavy material (your food scraps and garden greens) and the carbon-heavy stuff (dry leaves, newspapers, straw). Too much of one or the other slows down the decomposing process and makes the compost bin really smelly. So far, the compost ball seems to be working - no funky smells. We've left it in the sun to help decompose faster and have made sure to put in lots of newspaper. It'll be a couple more weeks before we get stuff to use in the garden though, so I'll post later about that.

My only problem with it is that the cover is kinda hard to open! It does come with a "key" of sorts, but it takes a certain amount of strength to pry the cover open, and if bits of food gets stuck at the top, that doesn't help.

Now for the exciting photos of the making of our compost ball!



The different "layers" of the ball



The holes for oxygen



Putting things together



How the oxygen gets in



Putting the middle parts together



Pat really likes the ball...



The completed Death Star!

Wellesley empowers women

Today, I was talking with several women in my field of research in environmental science and we spoke about how women are lacking in leadership roles within science. Apparently, they have all worked with ONLY men in their workplace. WTF, where are all the women?! They said that women in general are hesitant to speak up for bigger roles and more benefits. I ended up telling them about how Wellesley really cultivates an empowering environment for women to go after ambitious career goals and teaches us not to be afraid to be offended or to stand up to bs from our male colleagues etc etc. The others were really impressed with this and said they really wished their schools had the same kind of atmosphere. Empowering women is really honestly a hugely important part of a women's education (in my opinion)!

Also, apparently it is unheard of (or at least really gutsy) to feel comfortable just calling up alums and networking with them because they are alumnae. Wellesley's alumnae network is one of the biggest pulls for me and I'm so proud of how alums are willing to bend over backwards for other alums or students, and as a young alum, I've been able to repay the karma for several students as well. I honestly believe in the quote "There's a special hell for women who don't help out other women" - if you're breaking barriers, make sure to throw down a rope for the others behind you.

I just wanted to share that story and give a shout out to all the Wellesley alums out there who are inspiring, glass-ceiling-breaking or just otherwise kickass role models for all the rest of us. Here's to you all!