Love you, man!
Roy III

With the raised beds, you can easily construct covers for them. Some gardeners put metal pipes or short metal stakes into the soil inside the beds, and attach plastic pvc pipes/conduit to these supports and bend them into curved supports, over which they stretch greenhouse plastic or bird netting, depending on what they need the covering for.

Use only the ones I have recommended in the article – they are tried and tested, and they have been chosen by cultures worldwide because they are the best rootstock for this purpose of grafting eggplants, these work the best, and are completely safe, which is why they are used!

I love the veggie box ideas and plan to look at sizes of covering for moisture and such ideas? We get the 4 ft. concept but to extend the season up here may need to look at cover options for some of it fall.
Thanks
Gena & Todd’s

If the soil is heavy, with too much clay, doesn’t drain well and you try to grow seeds in it, then the seedlings will have too much moisture around them and they will be attacked by fungal diseases, ‘damping off’ is an attack by soil borne pathogenic fungi. If your soil is unhealthy, heavy, or of poor quality, then it is not ideal for using as a seed raising mix in pots for raising seeds in. Better to get a seed raising mix or make your own.

As a cheaper alternative to seed raising mix, I recommend buying a potting mix which is fairly fine grade, that is, with very few large coarse pieces in it, and put it through a garden sieve to take out the larger particles. Use the fine mixture that goes through the sieve to raise your seedlings in. Even cheaper yet is to use coconut coir, the stuff you buy in a compressed block that you soak in a bucket of water, which expands into a very fine dark brown crumbly medium, I’ve used it for both cuttings and seeds, and it’s way cheaper than any other propagating medium.

Regards

Just an FYI on starting seeds in plain garden soil for those out there. I tried it and maybe 1/4-1/3 survived. Its because of a thing called damping off. Basically the seed sprouts. It starts growing and then it just dies. The soil is moist enough, its getting good light and air circulation, still the seedling dies. From what I’ve found online its because there are pathogens/bacteria/mold/etc whatever it is in the soil that inhibits strong seedling growth.

Didn’t seem to make sense to me because as you say seeds have been falling to the ground and growing for millions of years in plain old soil. Don’t know how to explain it any better but all the sprouts that died looked exactly like what they call “damping off”.

Maybe the soil was too heavy, maybe I should have mixed in something finer? I am now trying a store bought seed starter mix(even though I’m strongly against the idea), we’ll see how it goes.

Thanks for the warning about Solanum mauritianum, this wouldn’t be the first choice for a grafting rootstock for the reasons you mention.

Thankfully Devil Plant (Solanum capsicoides) has no such isssues, the only thing you have to be careful of is the thorns, hence why I recommend this species, and why it’s used around the world for grafting eggplants!

Im trying to get hold of a shredder for some hedge clippings and brambles so once i have that ill get everything pilled up with some fresh grass clippings and see how it goes.

Ill report back, from the ever tropical Northern Ireland!

Regards

Is it ok to add moss/grass clippings that have been treated with ferrous sulphate? Had a guy come out to look at our lawn as it had been left to its own devices for over a year (We have just bought the place), It was strimmed back and treated with ferrous sulphate as we had more moss than grass!

2 weeks after treatment, we are still raking out the moss and old dead grass i was hoping to use this in some way rather than have to burn or dispose of it as there is quite a lot of stuff (1/2 acre of lawn). Would it be more carbon rich than nitrogen given that its mostly dead?

Would it be suitable to mix the resulting compost with some sand to make a good top dressing for the lawn?

Cheers Neil

To answer your questions:

One of the side fences is a Colorbond® steel fence, not my choice, these fences look neat and tidy but are almost impossible to attach anything to, especially plants, so a trellis has been erected in front of it, with two wires running the whole length. I’m using this for one of my most vigorous trailing berries, a silvanberry, the canes can reach 6-7 metres in length. The back fence is galvanised corrugated iron, and is covered from top to bottom in a wire mesh with a 10cm wide grid (big enough to fit hands through) attached to the timber fence posts. On this I have a passionfruit, a tayberry, a boysenberry and a loganberry, two varieties of dragonfruit and an Australian native bush food plant, and appleberry. A good permaculture designer learns to work with what they’ve got, even if conditions are less than ideal, they rarely ever are in real world design!

In regards to inputs, no, this garden thankfully did not cost many thousands! To me it is important that others can do what I have done, and cheaply at that. For this reason I emphasis soft lanscaping – designing with plants, not hard landscaping with expensive building materials! Consistent with the sites policy of sharing all relevant information, all costings have been published and disclosed back in April 2011 – you can find the link to the information on the “Articles and Discussions” page – http://deepgreenpermaculture.com/articles-and-discussions-2/ if you select the link to the article “Lessons from an Urban Back Yard Food Forest Experiment” (I wrote for the article for Permaculture Research Institute, it’s published on their site, but linked to from here). The direct link to the article is: http://permaculture.org.au/2011/04/13/lessons-from-an-urban-back-yard-food-forest-experiment/

Please keep in mind that many trees and plants can simply be propagated for free, and many materials can be acquired for little to no cost, especially if they are recycled. I designed a small food forest garden for a community garden which is thriving now (will detail in a future article), and we built it with zero budget, all donations and propagation. Where there’s a will, there’s a way. If you doubt how many plants you can produce for free, check out the links at the bottom right hand side of the page, the Merristem project is a community greenhouse project group that I worked with that propagate all manner of edible permaculture plants and trees in vast quantities to supply the local communities, it can be done, I assure you, it is being done.

Regards

Also, about the inputs, this must have cost many thousands of dollars to put in. As a demonstration of possibilities, great. But just how practical; i.e., affordable, is such a project for those who need it most to survive in urban areas — those living in the inner cities or impoverished small towns with few financial resources? Okay, the principles are the same, but a worst-case scenario might have been a better demonstration of what can be done.

…[edited for relevance]…

Thanks

Thanks