Permaculture

At present I am turning a suburban garden into a permaculture lot - slowly. Some of the projects that are involved are documented here to help others who might be contemplating similar things.

DIY grey water system

In January 2009, I constructed an operational grey water system to feed the shower water out to the garden. I had searched around for a while trying to get information about how to build a system and finally settled on my own design. If you are interested go to the step by step instructions.

Fig tree up a wall!

If your garden is constrained by: (a) available space; and/or (b) available sunlight you might be interested in this. To maximise the "farm space" in my suburban garden I had to balance the need to grow a self-sufficient crop of vegetables and yet have an orchard at the same time. One of the choices I made was to use a west-facing wall of the house to experiment with growing a fig tree up the wall using a fan-type strategy. Here is the archive of the Fig Tree up a Wall! project.

First rain into our tank - August 2007

Our 10,000 litre tank is now full after torrential rain in late August 2007. Here is a video of the first rain - here!. The tank pumps into the house and also provides water for the vegetable garden and fruit trees. In 2009, we added a second tank to ensure our water supply is continuously supplied from rain water. A pumping system connects the two tanks to keep the primary tank full in times of little rain.