Veggie Patch Upcycling

This year in the patch we are trying out some new ideas in the ongoing search for ways to improve our vegetable growing on the cheap, so in this post we want to share some simple methods that you can use in your patch on a low budget. we've been up-cycling, recycling and occasionally upside down cycling with things that we have found here at home to make the garden grow even better.

In ground Worm farm composters



the finished worm composter in action

prototype 1 - DIY in ground worm composter

We are rather excited about this little experiment to try and improve our soil by placing in ground worm farms made from PVC pipe throughout our patch. we made these from some left over pipe (20cm diameter) by drilling loads of holes into lengths of about 40cm, then burying them upright in the veggie beds. Add some wet paper to the bottom, a handful of red wrigglers (compost worms) and some vegetable scraps, some more paper and last of all a lid. (just make sure it is sealed off from fruit fly). Even after a couple of weeks it is surprising how quickly the scraps are being digested.

Worms are like the intestines of the soil. Compost worms tend only to inhabit the top soil layer, breaking down leaf matter and other dead vegetation. Earthworms (the big fat guys) burrow much deeper, and help to transport the nutrient rich humus of the compost worms deeper into the soil and around the root zones of our veggies. What a great team! They are jam packed with good microorganisms that enrich the soil into a bustling micro metropolis of healthy humus... at least that's the theory behind this idea, and I am busting to see if it works as planned.

Worm farm seedling tray in one.

a great way to reuse your water

I got this idea from a permaculture farm that used old bathtubs as worm farms in their nursery. their seedling trays rested on top of their worm farms. As they watered the seedlings, the water seeped through the wormy tubs and the worm juice siphoned into a storage tank which was later filtered and pumped through their irrigation system. We have adopted the same principle on a micro scale with our own worm farm. We simply removed the lid, laid down newspaper and a folded hessian mat which the seedling trays rest on. Its working a treat.


Drip irrigation with Venturi pump

This spring was very dry, which contributed to the terrible fires that we have had up here in the mountains. To conserve our water use in the garden this year we are trialling a drip irrigation system on our main vegetable patch. Its a fairly simple setup that we connect to a small secondary water tank near the patch. We purchased some cheap black irrigation pipe and punctured it with small holes every 10cm or so,  and arranging the lines to run across our grow beds.

 We have also added a simple venturi pump system that feeds into the main irrigation line which allows us to add liquid fertilisers to the water as needed. So far we have been pumping our plants with filtered weed tea,  and worm wee and the results are starting to show already. Its important to filter liquid fertilisers to make sure the lines don't get clogged up. We are using some wool insulation in a milk carton to filter the organic fertilisers.


The venturi pump works on simple suction. As the water runs through the main line, it creates suction, which draws the liquid fertiliser from the milk container into the irrigation line. The higher the water pressure, the higher the container of fertiliser needs to be, otherwise, you will get water going in the wrong direction and back into your liquid fertiliser container. A little trial and error and you'll have it down pat in no time. The pump is very easy to install to an existing irrigation set up. all you need it a t-join, a tap, and some extra hose. you can adjust the flow of fertiliser into the irrigation line by adjusting the tap.

For the areas in our garden that don't have drip irrigation installed yet, we are making use of our old milk bottles as slow release irrigation units. We are using them on our pumpkins at the moment to give them plenty of juice. Its a simple matter of filling the milk bottle with water, adding liquid fertiliser and whacking the bottle in upside down nearby the roots of the plant. Over the course of the day, the water and nutrients is slowly released into the soil. Its great for plants like pumpkins which are heavy feeders as you can pump nutrients directly to the plants root system. It also means no need for overhead watering, which reduces the likelihood of powdery mildew and weeds. by adding a tiny pin hole on the bottom of the milk bottle, it allows air into the bottle, aiding the water flow. the larger the bole, the faster the flow of water.

beer bottles for seedling holes
Being spring time, we have been planting out our new seedlings. We have found that a great way to speed up the process is to use an up turned beer bottle to make the holes for the seedling to go in. Its a perfect fit! Its also a great excuse to crack open a beer before planting out... or maybe 3 or 4, to get the job done even faster. hmmmmm...

Water the seedlings and the planting site with some worm wee or sea-sol before planting.


Chooks and weeds get the (hessian) sack

We are lucky to have a great local coffee roaster in our community, who has loads of spare coffee bags to dispose of regularly. We have been putting them to good use in the garden as covers for some of our veggie beds. They are excellent for stopping the chooks from digging up the dirt and plants, and also help to keep the soil moist and stop the weeds. Being made of natural fibres, they break down naturally as well. If you are after some sacks, look up local coffee roasters in your area. They will have loads of sacks and may even be happy to simply give them away.

 

Hessian mats a success

 

Our new and improved DIY Black-soldier-fly Composter

You may remember that last year we experimented with growing black soldier fly (BSF) as a way of composting and generating feed for our chooks. Our first prototype was successful in so far as it attracted plenty of black soldier fly, but when it came to harvesting them, many of the grubs didn't find the pipes to crawl up. this year we improved on our BSF composter by using a plastic 10 ltr watering can. Its cheaper, easier to build, more contained and hopefully works much better. With this design the grubs crawl up the spout of the watering can (there's no where else for them to go) down some hose and into a plastic bottle. We add food scraps by unscrewing the t-bar and put them down the shoot. I used some liquid nails to fix the t-bar in place. The chooks are already very happily eating black soldier fly larvae from our new system.

 

 

bsf fly in the t-bar pipe and lay their eggs. Larvae crawl up the spout and into the plastic bottle.

 

New plants in the Patch
Last summer, we planted some tamarillo seeds from some fruit given to us by our neighbour Grant. He has an amazing fruit orchard and edible garden! Our kids loved his tamarillos, so we decided to give them a go ourselves. Not only do they taste delicious, but they grow incredibly fast. We planted this one from a seed last summer (Not even a year ago) and it's setting fruit. Tamarillo's are a short lived subtropical fruit tree, but grow well in temperate climates too.



nearly one year old

ripening tamarillo's

We have also planted two feijoa trees (pineapple Guavas) on account of how fantastically delicious they taste, and also to make feijoa wine, which I hear is very easy to swill. If you haven't tasted one of these delicious fruit, do yourself a favour. Another new addition to the garden is a tropical guava tree which has taken the place of our mandarin (God rest its roots) after it was savagely mauled by a heartless and possibly drunk mob of cockatoos. We discovered (albeit too late) that they are terrified of red underpants hung on a pole. We are not sure if this is a universal rule or if it is uniquely my underpants that did the trick. If so, and you are in need of a pair, be warned, prices will be exorbitant.

Finally our apple trees have fruited this spring, with a bounty of promising small apples hanging on their branches. If they can duck and weave the possums and cockatoo's, rosellas and bush rats, maybe we might even get to eat one in the summer.

Happy gardening gang.

Funky Bugs: composting with Black Soldier Fly

Life as a bug in our garden must be pretty good. there would be no shortage of friends and parties to attend, and no nasty chemicals to make you feel unwell. Life would be darned good, in fact, so long as you were the kind of bug that was willing to pull your weight in the garden and do your bit!

Not so, however, for the slugs and snails whom we introduce frequently to our chookens, nor the uncouth stink beetles that N and G sucked off our citrus trees with the vacuum cleaner (simply the most enjoyable way to get rid of them), nor the white cabbage moth that we use for practicing our backhand,  but there are many bugs that we do appreciate in the patch. Worms, bees and lady beetles are always welcome in our garden, doing their bit to pollinate, cultivate and eradicate pests, but we have recently become acquainted with a new creepy crawly of the good kind, known as the Black soldier fly (BSF).


black soldier fly (pleased to meet you)
Black soldierfly have a rather short and desperate adult life, with the sole purpose of finding a mate, a pile of rotting compost, and a good pick up line before dropping dead. Somehow they seem to manage. But before this fatally frantic paced lifestyle as an adult fly, they leisurely spend their childhood and teens as ravenous compost devouring larve!

BSF larvae eat just about any kitchen scraps including meat and dairy, as well as the usual fruit and vegetable leftovers, and can be cultivated in much the same way as composting worms, to break down food waste.  A BSF composting unit can be easily built from materials found at your local hardware, and once a colony has been established they can consume food waste at an incredible rate (much faster than worms), but best of all, they make a fantastic feed for chickens and even fish. BSF larvae are high in both protein and calcium, which is perfect for chooks. they are non invasive and do not enter houses or spread disease like other flies.

Once we got acquainted to this new bug on the block, we realised it was time for us to try our hand at making our very own BSF Composting unit!

Our black soldierfly composter

TA DA!!!! Our Black Soldier fly composter

Here is how it works. Food scraps go inside and the female BSF are attracted by the scraps. They fly in through the pipe at the top and down into the bin where they lay their eggs (in the hundreds). They like to lay their eggs in crevasses, so some sheets of corrugated cardboard attached to the inside make great maternity wards. the eggs hatch and the larvae fall on the food scraps, and get to work munching it up.

the larvae crawl up the pipes and into Jo's Tupperware container... thanks darling...sorry

 

 Like all good teenagers they eat just about anything until it is time to finally leave home, at which point, the larvae develop the instinct to climb to higher ground. The larvae find their way to the pipes and climb up them, then slide down into the separate storage container, where they are unwittingly trapped to be fed to the chooks.

the larvae hard at work on one of our defiant choko's and watermelon rind

But does the composter work?

In a nut shell, yes. but getting started can call for some weeks of patience. Its best to start a colony in warmer weather when the adult fly is most active. Every few days we have been checking the tub, and after many weeks, we finally discovered some young soldierfly larvae munching away under the scraps. As the weeks progressed and the temperature rose, so too has our colony and the rate at which they are breaking down our food scraps is quite impressive.

Make your own
there are a number of DIY designs on the net. we made ours using a clip lock tub, some PVC pipe parts, , some hessian and fly screen, a saw and a drill. The key is to angle the pipes at 35 degrees so that it is not too steep for them to climb.include some ventilation holes and cover with fly screen, and some drainage holes in the bottom, which you can cover with hessian.  It takes less than half a leisurely hour to put together and cost us about $40 or you could buy one of the fancy ones online for about $200.


the main benefits are:
1. a very efficient method of waste disposal
2. meat and dairy waste can be added to established colonies, unlike regular composting methods, reducing your waste output.
3. the larvae make an excellent source of food for poultry and fish, and can be frozen for later use.
4. they don't spread disease like other flies, and rarely enter the home.
5. they emit a natural repellent to other flies once the colony has been established.

Downsides:
The smell can be an issue if you add more waste than they can consume. Sawdust or coffee can help here too. This said, ours does not smell.

Initially, we had a problem with fruit fly gate crashing the party. but as the weeks have gone on, there numbers have decreased dramatically as the BSF colony has increased. AHa, dear potential BSF composters, do not be dismayed by these minor downsides. we have an organic, effective and easy solution to manage fruit flies in the patch... read on!

Bug eyes and beer goggles - a simple and effective fruit fly trap

With the onset of day light saving and the Spring evenings becoming more balmy, there’s nothing quite like kicking back on the front porch with a home brewed beer or a chilled wine and watching the sunset. But it seems that we aren’t the only one’s who love a beer to celebrate the start of spring.

We have been using some of our beer in our fruit fly traps, and we have noticed that they are more than happy to exchange their bug eyes for beer goggles, which is great, seeing as our nectarine tree is laden with new fruit to be.

got ya succers!

The trap is simple. All you need is a plastic soda bottle, some scissors, and a beer on the balcony. Simply cut the bottle cross ways about a third of the way down from the top. Turn the top upside down and insert it into the lower part of the bottle, like a funnel. Pour an inch of beer (or wine) into the bottle, and if necessary, run some tape around the edge of the rim to keep the trap together. Place the traps around your fruit trees and compost bin, or any other place that fruit flies are being a nuisance. then drink the rest of your beer.

The fruit flies fly down the funnel and get stuck. "Oh save me! Save me! I've accidentally flown into a giant pool of beer. what ever shall I do???". After an initial panic attack, they come to their senses and drink themselves to death. What a way to go. It works surprisingly well, as fruit fly are naturally attracted to anything that is fermenting. We have tried a few variations, such as sour dough starter, orange juice, and vinegar, but beer seems to win hands down.

So if you're concerned about fruit fly this spring, relax, have a shandy, and make yourself a beer trap or two.

Our New chook pen

Talking about grubs and chooks, we decided recently that it was time to make a proper enclosure for our lovely ladies. Up until recently, their pen has been a makeshift tangle of old chicken wire and odd posts. It was a shabby-chic chook pen (but with more shabby and less chic), and so it was time for an upgrade.

We decided to build their enclosure around the fruit trees, to give them shade and also to fertilise the trees. The trees have since gone mad with a flush of blossoms, which have smelled divine this spring. the combination makes a lot of sense. The trees are robust enough to handle the chooks digging around, and the poop makes a much appreciated fertilizer for the trees. Meanwhile the hens can rest in the shade and help keep pests under control, such as fruit fly.

the whole enclosure cost under $250 (about $10 per square metre) . First we dug and cemented in the posts, making sure they were level...most of the time, then connected the cross beams. the wire was fastened into place, and last of all, added the gate.

Next blog, its time to go foraging, dabble in some heirloom guerrilla gardening, as well as try our hand at some simple home made wines from our foraging finds.