The Tanks
There are three tanks in the back yard, two galvanised tall form 2500 litre tanks behind the garage and one 500 litre plastic tank that is connected to the shed on the north side of the house. The galvanised tanks have been in place since the garage was built about 30 years ago, one has rusted out and been replaced with an aquaplate galvanised tank about 10 years ago but the other is still going strong! The 500 litre tank is a very recent addition and has been in less than 6 months, it has not even had its first fill yet. A couple of years ago as part of a general house upgrade we replaced the 34 year old guttering and as part of that we installed a valve on the guttering that runs over the top of the garage roof. So now we can open that if we want to maximise our rain collection and water from that side of the roof will go onto the garage roof and into the two galvanised tanks instead of down the stormwater system.
The Cob Oven
Some things work well and some things don’t, this is one that don’t! Due to the peculiarities of the space the oven turned out to be more elliptical than round and that had some consequences for the airflow and meant that I had to put in the chimney to get ventilation enough to get good combustion. Another of the problems has been the lack of an insulating outer layer, I need to get hold of some more clay, mix it with perlite and make a new outer layer. The oven has been exposed to the weather for a few years and is looking a bit tired, but soon I will revamp it and give it a new lease on life. When the time is right it will be the focus of an article too.
The Aquaponics Set Up
This is still early days and has already been through a number of significant design changes, for now the most part of it is three recycled bath tubs that will be the grow beds and a 1000 litre cattle water trough that will be used as the fish tank. I have had some advice from a friendly aquaponics gentleman from Ecolicious but there is still a fair amount of work to be done in terms of electrical for the pump and plumbing. At this point the system will be a flood-and-drain type, but there is more work to be done here!
The Solar Oven
While not being stored outside the solar oven is a regular feature of the back yard because we do use it quite often to cook our bread or whatever. We keep it on a small trolley in one of the sheds so that when we want use it, it is easy to just wheel it out of the shed, turn it to face the sun and start cooking.
The Fruit Trees
We have a number of fruit trees in the back yard that have been there for some time. At the northern end of the yard we have a mandarin tree, which used to reside almost where the aquaponics set-up is now, and where the mandarin is now there used to be a peach tree. I was never wholly successful in keeping the fruit fly out of the peaches although we did get a reasonable harvest some years, but the peach tree got a borer of some description and died. The next year after it died we had very little fruit fly in the tomatoes and capsicums so maybe it was a good thing. We also used to have a “Granny Smith” apple where the potato cages are now but the heat of a western Sydney summer did not agree with it and we never did get much fruit off it and it became firewood.
Just south of the mandarin tree is a lemon tree and lemonade tree that bear reasonably well but I had fun controlling the grass growing under them so just recently I put down weed mat and a wood chip mulch to keep the grass down, tidy the place up a bit and conserve water. Towards the southern end of the yard and between the potato cages and the water tanks on the back of the garage is an orange tree. It is over this tree that we grow the chokoes and so it has become the choko tree although the granny smith apple was the original tree which aspired to that title.
The Potato Cages
There are two potato cages just west of the choko tree; they are just made out of four star posts hammered into a square about a metre on a side and chicken wire wrapped around them to make an enclosure. The western side is not connected on one side so that the chicken wire on that side opens like a gate to allow access. The idea is you plant spuds at the bottom and then throw in some organic matter every so often and then harvest mounds of spuds at the end of the growing season. They work reasonably although it is not potato season at the moment here and one of the cages is being used to make compost to grow mushrooms in, but that is another story.
The Self Watering Containers
A few years ago I made four self watering containers that sit on concrete slabs just west of the potato cages. They have turned out to be pretty successful and are still going strong. They are made out of black storage containers and the summer heat does not seem to be a problem with them, also being black they do not let the light through which extends their service life even more, the clear ones seem to get ultraviolet embrittlement of the plastic after about 12 months and break up. I use them for some of the longer growing stuff like spring onions, capsicums, turmeric, ginger and the occasional herb like sage or basil. We also have some 20 litre ones next to one of the shed for things like tomatoes and capsicums.
The Composter
Over the years we have used many composters and one of the articles on the site gives a review of what worked and what didn’t. One of the problems with composting on a suburban block is that you really don’t get enough organic material at one time to make a traditional compost pile unless you buy it in which to my mind misses the point. It is more about small regular amount of material needing to be composted. For veggie scraps etc we use the worm bath but we have a an Aerobin 400 that is insulated and a vent up the middle to keep it aerated that we use to compost the more abundant organic materials like grass clippings, wood shavings from the chick brooder and shredded trimmings from the mulberry tree. It was expensive but is the hottest compost bin I have ever worked with.
The Water Garden
You gotta love recycled bath tubs. That’s what I used to make a water garden out of to grow edible water plants, I had gotten a taste of some lotus (the plant not the car) a few years ago and wasn’t impressed, but I do like water chestnuts so I got hold of some tubers (or corms or whatever they are) planted them up and have been growing them ever since. I also got hold of some Arrow, a North American tuber similar to water chestnuts with quite attractive arrow shaped leaves; the water chestnut leaves are reed-like and not very exciting. Add some goldfish to keep the mozzies down and there you have it. The plants die down in winter and se we harvest and then replant them then for the next year.
