Februrary Harvest, the pressure cooker and SLF

With a family of four, it can feel like all the effort growing fruit and vegies doesn't go very far to supplement our diet, especially as we're omnivors. I realised the other day though, that we are getting a good yield at the moment. In no particular order:

• Silverbeat
• capsicum
• chives
• warrigal greens
• tomatoes(*4 varieties)
• potatoes
• basil
• apples
• nectarines
• eggs
• plums
• pepinos
• corn
• herbs(*5+)
• celery
• chillies
• zuccini
• rhubarb
• Lettuce

Sure, some are more abundant an others, but I'm pretty pleased with this list. All from 30 to 40m2 at a guess. This pic shows but a few - can you ID them all?

Here's some of this year's tomatoes. Mostly heritage varieties. The dark red ones are Black Crim. As with the yellow ones, they're very meaty compared to those commercially grown.This pumkin was a bute. I used just half to make this full pressure cooker load of pumpkin soup, plus a tray load baked in the oven. (Think I'll get sick of pumpkin in the next few weeks).
I recently found the pressure cooker discarded on the nature strip. I had been thinking of getting one, so I couldn't believe my luck. The soup took just 15 minutes cooking time, so it's a great energy saver. Here's the recipe. It does a great goulash in 45 minutes instead of four hours also.

On another topic, yes, it was a great weekend (18/2/11) at the Sustainable Living Festival. The theme that came through for me though, is how much time we've lost talking about but not dealing with Climate Chaos. Now we need to get to zero emissions in 10 years! Beyond Zero Emissions suggests how it can be done. Not sure I have much hope though. This podcast by Clive Hamilton shows how the debate is not about the science. Those on the right of politics have taken a sceptic 'position' against what they percieve as the environmental/ left wing gang.

John McKenzie at the Permaculture Melbourne stall, SLF, 19/2/11. Thanks for organising it John!

The Bok Flock: Sustainable Living Festival

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Permaculture Designs

Permaculture is a design system to live sustainably. That is, setting up your house and garden to create more energy than you use, and to live within nature's limit. I've done a handful of property designs for people since completing my Permaculture Design Course, as a hobby.

The design process starts with taking a brief from you. It needs to fit your vision, functional needs, aesthetics and budget. Next is an analysis of the property. Where are the special niches - where does the sun, shade, wind and rain coming from? How can you minimise your energy running the system. Once a plan is costed we can discuss and stage implementation.

If you'd be interested to have a chat about your place, send me a comment via this page. No cost to you except materials if you're closeby. This is my hobby and I want the experience. If you attend a couple of other Permablitzes, we can organise a working-bee to construct the design in a day.

Here's some designs I've done recently.