Adventures in Urban Sustainability

Planting community fruit tree groves

2012-05-26T10:42:07Z

Imagine pockets of fruit trees dotting public parks in the suburbs, looked after by the local community, and there for all to enjoy and harvest. Well imagine no more! Exciting news is that Wollongong City Council, supported with funding from the NSW Environmental Trust through the Illawarra Biodiversity and Local Food Strategy for Climate Change project is creating three public fruit tree groves. The goal is for these sites to demonstrate how edible plants can be integrated into public land, and bring good food into our suburbs. We’ve played a key role in designing these food gardens, and have included a range of different trees from citrus, to macadamias, longans and avocados.

On Tuesday the first fruit tree grove was planted out in the park at the back of Unanderra Community Centre, with the help of interested community members. Wollongong Councils Lord Mayor Gordon Bradbury was on hand to help with the planting, and had much enthusiasm for the project, which was wonderful to see!

Community planting days will also be held in June to help create fruit tree groves at Guest Park in Fairy Meadow, and Bulli Park in Bulli. Later there will also be workshops about establishing and maintaining free trees, which will be free for Wollongong Council residents. So if you’re a local and would like to get involved, just call Vanessa John in the Environment team at Wollongong City Council on 4227 7111.

Has anyone else heard about other public fruit tree plantings happening around Oz? We’d love to hear about them!

Finger limes – tasty bush tucker

2012-05-21T06:52:02Z

With fruits bursting with tiny pockets of limey goodness that look like caviar, finger limes are uniquely Australian and native to the coastal rainforests of south east Queensland and northern NSW.

Our four year old finger lime shrub had a bumper crop this year, and has been dripping with the small, elongated fruits.

Finger limes can be used in similar ways to other limes, and are said to be good in jams and sauces and as an accompaniment to seafood. We’re just starting to experiment with using our finger limes, and made a nice banana and lime cake with them the other day. A friend of ours enjoys eating them fresh, though they’re a bit too tart for us that way! There are some good suggestions of how to use them at:

Have you ever tried finger limes? We'd love to hear any suggestions about how to use them! If you're interested in growing finger lime, check out our finger lime profile.

Permablitz the Gong – National Permaculture Day

2012-04-28T08:08:16Z

We’ve learned so much from the ethics and principles of permaculture, and it’s really inspired the way we garden and live our lives as ‘sustainability in action.’ Next Sunday 6 May is International Permaculture Day, a day for celebrating permaculture with a blitz of permaculture activities and events! There’s a great website at http://www.permacultureday.info/ which has all the details about what’s happening across Oz.

Here in Wollongong, a group of local Permaculture enthusiasts (fondly known as ’permies’) will be using national permaculture day to launch ‘Permablitz the Gong.’ A permablitz is a sustainable garden makeover where a group of people (including at least one permaculture designer) create or add to gardens in backyards and nature strips, turning lawns into edible landscapes. If participants come to three or so permablitzes they’re then eligible for one at their own house as the permablitz network is based on reciprocal volunteer support! This first Permablitz will be in West Wollongong, and all are welcome – check out http://permablitzthegong.wordpress.com/ and http://www.facebook.com/permablitzthegong for details!

Are you doing anything to celebrate National Permaculture Day?

Tales of chicken rescue

2012-04-19T05:50:14Z

There’s a feisty new chook on the block around here – little miss Chelsea. Recently our neighbour down the street woke up to find seven chooks in her backyard! Six of them wandered back home, wherever that was, but one of them stayed, so she kindly fed her and gave her water. A month later she was still there! Worried about her not having a proper shelter and being vulnerable to foxes, our neighbour asked if we would adopt little Chelsea.

A lone chook introduced into a flock can get a hard time from the existing birds as they work out the pecking order. As our gorgeous silkies Gruma and Charma are pretty chilled gals, we thought Chelsea should be okay. Turns out it was the poor silkies we needed to worry about, as this tiny little pocket rocket chook initially lashed out, unprovoked by the silkies! That took us all by suprise! Thankful after a day she settled down. The three girls are getting along just fine and Chelsea has laid three beautiful white tiny eggs already.

On a sad note, our lovely chook Rosie, passed away a couple of weeks ago. Rosie was a sweet little chook, who rescued herself by jumping over a high fence into our yard, while the neighbours new dog tragically killed her three companions.

We happily adopted her, and she got along with our silkies like a dream right from the word go. We’re not sure why she died, whether it was old age or maybe something she picked up from the wild birds as she free ranged in the yard, but we’re glad she came and joined us here at Happy Earth.

Blissing out on homestyle dehydrated bananas

2012-04-12T05:16:27Z

With another bumper crop of over 150 homegrown bananas on our hands, it was time to experiment with our new Excalibur dehydrator!

We sliced some of the bananas about ½cm thick, as the booklet that came with the dehydrator recommended...

And 11 hours later they had been transformed into yummy super sweet treats!

We love to be able to really sink our teeth into scrumptious dried bananas, so we also cut quite a lot into quarters...

And they 24 hours later they were ready for enjoying! The only problem is they taste sooo good, it’s going to be hard to make them last more than 24 hours on the shelf!

Growing Gorgeous Borlotti Beans

2012-03-23T06:51:07Z

With gorgeous bright pink and white streaked pods, Borlotti beans look stunning growing in the garden.

This summer we planted our first crop of borlotti beans, and are already reaping the harvest. The beans can be cooked fresh when the pods are still streaked pink, or if you want to dry and store them for a while, you can let the pods fully dry out and turn brown.

The beans inside the pods are a beautiful white with maroon streaks and flecks. They do loose their markings when cooked though, which is a bit of a shame!

We found there was an average of 6 beans per pod. Thirty pods gave us about 1 cup or 150g of beans.

As well as being a yummy food, beans are great to grow in the veggie patch over summer as they put nitrogen into the soil. Have you grown any pulses in your patch? Or do you know of a yummy recipe for Borlotti beans? We have lots more on the way!

Celebrating the arrival of our little 'Happy Earthling'

2012-03-15T07:31:38Z

A month ago today, our gorgeous little girl made her appearance into the world, born in her bedroom right here at home, looking out into the garden!

She might be smaller than some of the zucchini marrows in our garden, but she is certainly keeping us on our toes!

Basil and macadamia pesto

2012-03-12T19:59:15Z

Summer is the time for basil, and a good pesto is one of summer’s true delights!

We just found a brilliant recipe for a scrumptious basil and macadamia pesto, shared by NSW macadamia farmer Martin Brook:

1/3 cup of roasted and salted macadamias (we used raw unsalted macadamias)
1 cup of loosely packed basil leaves
2 cloves of garlic crushed
1/4 cup of good parmesan
1/4 cup of macadamia oil (if you didn’t have this you could use olive oil – but the maca oil is delicious!)
1 tbs of fresh lemon juice

Simply pop all the ingredients into a food processor and blend. We also added a bit of salt and pepper at the end after tasting. It was delicious mixed through pasta and makes about 1 cup of pesto, enough for about 4 servings, depending on how much pesto you like on your pasta!

As we enjoyed this recipe so much, we went on to made a big batch! Some we stored in jars in the fridge (with a layer of olive oil on top to help prevent browning) for use over the next couple of weeks. For longer term storage we popped some into ice cube trays in the freezer.

Do you have a favourite pesto recipe, or way to enjoy basil?

Growing mushrooms

2012-03-02T07:57:34Z

Inspired by Milkwood Permaculture and GreenChange we’ve embarked on our first edible mushroom growing adventure. With all this wet weather we’ve been having, it seemed like the perfect time to get fungus flourishing! We couldn’t resist the novelty of growing King Stropharia giant mushrooms that can get up to 30cm in diameter and so we ordered a bucket of spawn from http://www.fungi.net.au. Before we knew it, we had an exciting delivery from the postie – one very big bucket filled with wood chips, giant mushroom spawn (sealed in the plastic bag) and an instruction sheet.

So we took our bucket of mushroom-making magic down to a shady, out of the way spot on the mulch path at the back of our food forest garden. We’re hoping the mushies will eventually spread all through this mulched area, and started by clearing two 25cm by 25cm patches in the path for them.

We then added half a litre of water to the mulch supplied in the bucket and mixed it around...

Placed half the moistened mulch at the bottom of the patches...

Opened the packet of spawn and spread it out...

Covered our mushroom babes over with the rest of the mulch...

Then gave them a good watering and staked them out so we remember where they are!

So hopefully in 4 to 12 months we’ll have some giant mushies popping up, and producing for several years! Have you had any experience growing mushies before?

Garden friend – Black Flower Wasps

2012-02-22T07:58:00Z

With iridescent blue wings and a black body, Black Flower wasps are native insects that are great to have about in the garden. The adults enjoy feasting on nectar and help pollinate native plants, while the larvae prey on curl grubs which live under the ground and eat the roots of plants.

You generally only spot one of these beautiful wasps at a time, as they’re solitary creatures and don’t build communal nests like paper wasps. But in the summer months a number can cluster together in an area that takes their fancy. This summer we’ve had an explosion of black flower wasps on our nature strip, which is planted with lots of native grasses and has a wood chip path. At times there has been about two dozen wasps zipping up and down the nature strip! We love watching them, but need to reassure family and friends that they’re really passive and not at all aggressive or likely to sting you! Sometimes you see the female wasps crawling into the mulch to lay their eggs.

Our native insects truly are fascinating, yet we often know so little about them. We find the CSIRO website has some interesting info about native insects, as does the website Brisbane insects which is run by a nature-loving family of insect enthusiasts!