The garden shed

MULTI PURPOSE: My 8m by 3m shed is made from recycled materials. It faces North and is bermed into the slope with the soil 600ml up the back. 

PURPOSE 1 : The right third of the shed is a chook house. It is basically passive solar for the chooks, allowing warm winter sunshine in through the perspex (laserlite sheeting) from the North and then the cooling summer breezes from the south, which actually blow in around the hill behind it from the east. The western window is an old shower screen run horizontally, that lets a lovely late afternoon winter sun in from the north west. Shrubs planted outside the garden prevent the summer sun entering from its south west evening angle. This photo was taken in early Spring showing the 400ml wide verandah starting to provide shade on the walls.

PURPOSE 2 : The front of the shed is a great place to start off seedlings in Autumn and Winter in the old cement laundry tubs. They get the warmth of the sun, and shelter from the cold south winds, but also being up off the ground and under the small verandah, it keeps the frost off them.

New Silkie chicks arrive

Just before our Winter Solstice in June, my white Silkie bantam hen hatched 8 chicks in the old duck house. The ducks are long gone but the big old wooden potato box was her nesting spot of choice. Not wanting to disturb her, I brought the brooding box (on the left) and placed it up against the entrance of the spud box and added the small circular fence to keep them enclosed. The spud box has a corrugated iron roof and is sheltered on two sides by the garden fence and a rainwater tank on the third.

This small enclosed area is a North facing sun trap and my spot for growing citrus. It is approx 6m square and is terraced into a north facing slope. Our climate is temperate/Mediterranean  with cool wet winters and hot dry summers.

GROWING CITRUS: I was told by a 96 year old lady that citrus grow better when they can touch each other.

The small tree in the photo is a mandarin, which will one day touch the Washington navel orange and a Meyer lemon.  The chooks travel through this area from their chook house to the larger orchard. The blue tree guard serves to 1). stop the chooks scratching the citrus tree's roots which are close to the surface and 2). provides a catchment for watering during the summer as I hand water the whole garden.

Permaculture course - 2005

In 2005, I completed a Permaculture course in Adelaide and designed the small property we now live on in the Limestone Coast in South Australia. I love to learn,design,create and share what I am passionate about and what I discover.

I have been fortunate to have worked with many elderly people during my life that have shared their gardening tips and tricks with me.

My garden is an experiment as much as anything. We have 5 acres of land which was once a quarry. The site is on a slope and half of it has been scalped by machinery. It has a combination of soils and surfaces spread over it including sand, clay, limestone, bedrock and the lovely red terra rosa dirt.

My main experiment is to grow the gardens and revegetate it only on rainfall. 

We are fortunate to average 750ml a year, but that is an average since 1923. In 2006, we only had 485ml, and was the year I began planting.  I have hedged my bets and planted shrubs and trees in the well draining areas that only need 200-400ml per year, similar to Adelaide; and indigenous species and vegetable gardens and orchard where the soil is richer and deeper. 

Looking down the hill in the photo, the red terra rossa soil is now the vegetable garden. The house sits on higher ground to the left. The vegetable garden is watered from its own rainwater tank which gravity fills from the overflow of the two rainwater tanks for the house.