Permablitz #205 – Flemington
I signed up to participate in the Farnham St blitz like most blitzers, as I am committed to the ideas of permaculture and community, and because I want to learn as much as I can about permaculture through hands on experience.
Here are some things I learned:
I learned that the Farnham St Neighbourhood House is a pretty awesome place—especially its community garden which you can learn more about here.
David Holmgren says that community gardens may be a starting point for projects that could become models for a comprehensive re-ruralisation of our low-density cities. The community garden at the Farnham St Neighbourhood House is one such starting point.
Check out this beautiful forest food garden being given a little TLC by one of the Farnham St Blitz team.
The food forest surrounds the garden area we worked on. I would love to get back there one day soon to take a bit more time to really check out the food forest. There are info sheets provided on site for just this purpose – I was sorry/not sorry I was too busy barrowing dirt, taking photos and other ‘gardeny’ stuff to study them on the day!
Finding solutions to site problems and sustainability are core considerations in a permaculture design process. Chatting with Jo of The Desert Echo, the author of the design plan for the blitz, I learned that the water uptake of the magnificent eucalypt towering up the centre of the site was one of the ‘problems’ needing to be solved. Other problems were the intensity of labour required for the watering roster over the summer months that could be difficult to sustain and ease of accessibility to the beds for the diverse community using them. The answer? Raised beds and Wicking Beds — of course!
The coordinator of the neighbourhood house (NH), the lovely Pip, explained to me some of the hard ‘behind the scenes’ work that had gone into securing funding grants to purchase the materials for the raised beds being built.
the lovely Pip (right) welcoming Nikki (left) at the morning sign-in.
The raised beds—some of which will be watered by the existing drip irrigation and others by wicking—are built from a very nifty modular system called Modboxes. The raised beds around the perimeter will be watered by the existing drip irrigation (able to be set on a timer) reducing the labour required for watering and the wicking beds will also reduces labour as well as avoid the incursion of the eucalyptus on the available water for the intensive vege beds.
Here is a diagram of how the Modbox wicking bed works but you can definitely see more on their website
We didn’t manage to complete the beds on the day but Farnham St are having another Blitz very soon- get on down if you can for a great, fun, satisfying and productive day.
Here is a rundown of the day…
Before:
The team for the day, bar a few late arrivals and some shy ones. What a gorgeous bunch of dedicated people!
The early morning was spent on some site clearing and preparation..
Loads of clearing was conquered in a short time with all hands on deck.
Alda , Nikki and Amalie- more prep work…
Moving the prefab Modbox parts out of the way for site preparation.
Morning tea – so important and delicious! Cakes, slices and muffins boosted energy & morale and Rob (at the sink) kept up a supply of excellent coffee.
Apart from the site and preparation & clearing work, three main jobs were undertaken.
- Completing and filling the rear corner bed.
- Building the raised bed around the fence perimeter in the front corner.
- Building a set of five beds in an overall square design with four angled corner beds surrounding a smaller central square.
- Completing and filling the rear corner bed.
- The base of the bed was filled with about 5cm of scoria to ensure adequate drainage
- Geofabric was stapled up the side of the bed covering the scoria (a.k.a. gravel or metal) to prevent root invasion and separate the soil from the scoria.
- Food grade plastic was then stapled from the top to the inside of the bed, overlapping the geofabric to protect the timber from soil & moisture This should extend the life of the sustainably grown Cypress Pine for many years by slowing decomposition.
- The bed was filled with soil and planted with strawberries.
The before shot of the rear corner bed, Jo and Thomas checking out what needs to be done.
Some interested onlookers and Agnes and friend working on the attaching food grade plastic with a little help from Arissa and her mum, Sabrina. Loads of teamwork went into getting this bed ready for filling – some nice work by Ros, Elaine & Anthony.
Agnes, Amelie, Nikki (and others I’m sure) worked together to get the bed filled while Ros and Rob prepared strawberry babies for planting. Agnes looked so pleased with the filled bed and delighted to be able to finish the job by tucking the babies in their beds. More to be planted and irrigation to be set up, but what a perfect finish to some of the day’s efforts.
- Building the raised bed around the fence perimeter in the front corner.
- This was a big job involving initial measuring and clearing of the site which was done with hard labour and mattocks.
- Next came barrow loads of sand to aid levelling of the bed base which was tamped down with more hard labour and a useful tool consisting of a square metal plate welded to the base of a pole.
- Once the base was ready the Modbox bits were simply slotted together (ensuring the right lengths were in the right places thanks to Jo’s patient overview and instruction) for more detailed instruction you can search ‘Modbox’ online…
- After building the bed the process continued as for the rear corner bed.
Clearing, Preparing & Levelling
Arissa, Sabrina, Amelie & Joel spreading sand.
Dylan and Scott levelling the sand base out for the garden bed bases.
Building, Finishing & Filling
Jo shows us how to make sure all the right lengths are going in the right places…
The Modbox went together like a dream!
After their excellent work on completing the first bed, Agnes and friend put the finishing touches on this supersized bed using newly developed skills with a staple-gun…
Pat and Jo were so pleased to see the work coming along after months of designing and organising.
This was pretty much as far as we got with this bed. Once it’s been topped up with soil, planted out and the irrigation system set up, then we’ll see this bed fully operational.
3. Building a set of five wicking beds in an overall square design with four angled corner beds surrounding a smaller central square.
- This section of the design didn’t quite get finished but a fantastic start was made with two of the angled beds almost completed and some ground cleared for the rest of the beds.
Jo gets out her measuring gear out again!
More ground clearing courtesy of Alda, Josh and Tom
With the ground cleared and levelled, the beds were built at a cracking pace.
There were a few hitches with this one as the all-important piece of the bed (the one with the pre-drilled holes being held by Araf below) that allows the installation of the water outlet and overflow drainpipe was found after the bed was built – so a little un-building and rebuilding and the bed was back on track…
Now we’re ready for the installation of the PVC food grade liner and the plumbing!
After a little plumbing-splaining from Pip, Dylan was able to get going on installing the wicking bed outlet and overflow. Once that was done there was satisfied smiles all round as the first of the wicking bed fills with water up to the level of the gravel for a bit of a test run.
Smiles from Marcus who came late but happily took on some mattock work quickly followed by afternoon tea.
By the time this photo was taken several people had headed home but their company and hard work was appreciated by all, with a brilliant lot of work completed.
We look forward to rolling out the final phase on Jun 16!
