Hackney Permaculture


Free compost in Hackney
September 9, 2009, 7:00 pm
Filed under: Collecting | Tags: , , , , , , ,
free compost in hackney marshes

free compost in hackney marshes

Okay, East London Community Recycling Partnership are gods – officially.

A few weeks back I helped Stepping Stones Farm in Stepney pick up a few tonnes of free compost from a depot on the south edge of hackney marshes – they have wood chip too, a LOT of woodchip… and a LOT of compost… did I mention that yet? LOADS OF IT.

The picture above gives you an idea of a small part of the depot which is officially open during the day on week days… but you could easily pop in at other times as much of it is not really fenced off.

Address is Hackney Parks Depot, E5 9PF- you can see it on via the map below – it is just at the top of the car park

http://maps.google.com/maps?oe=UTF-8&q=London+E5,+United+Kingdom&ie=UTF8&hl=en&cd=4&geocode=FVDHEgMdTDH__w&split=0&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=23.875,57.630033&ll=51.552843,-0.024102&spn=0.002585,0.006968&t=h&z=18&iwloc=A

A few days after I went and picked up the compost they called me up and asked me if I could take a few tonnes more… seriously get your arse down there and get growing!

There website mentions nothing about this – go figure – http://www.elcrp-recycling.com/

If you also need leaf mould try here – http://hackneypermaculture.org.uk/2008/09/22/free-compost-from-hackney-downs-park/



selling unwanted cds using music magpie
August 30, 2009, 3:00 pm
Filed under: Doing, Recycling | Tags: ,
Selling second hand cds using music magpie

Selling second hand cds using music magpie

I curiously manage to be a hoarder who aspires to have few posessions. Every so often my ruthless streak overcomes my hoarding streak and I eBay, freecycle or put things out on the street to get rid of them.

Music magpie (http://www.musicmagpie.co.uk/) is a service for online buying of second hand cds and I have to say I am pretty impressed by their service. You type in the bar code, they make you an offer for your cds, then they send you postage stickers which you use to post them the cds using recycled jiffy bags which you have been hoarding too. Brilliant.

…and yes I did sell my Burt Bacharach cd… £36 for 27 cds was the final count – that is quite a bit of carrot cake.



Welcome the Brox
August 10, 2009, 8:29 am
Filed under: Collecting | Tags: , ,
brox recumbent quadcycle

The Brox

I am now the proud owner of this rather splendid recumbent quadcycle called a ‘Brox’ which I bought from Bikefix (http://www.bikefix.co.uk/). Unfortunately they are not in production anymore so you will have to search about if you want one. It has been absolutely amazing for transporting tools and plants around hackney.

Today I managed to attach the wheelbarrow to the back to make it a pentacycle! Happy days.

If you are interested in finding out about other workbikes have a peek at this amazing blog – http://onelessvan.blogspot.com/



plum harvesting time
Robin picking plums using telescopic fruit harvesting device

Robin picking plums using telescopic fruit harvesting device

I was never quite sure how we were going to get all of the plums harvested from the top of such a huge tree and then someone suggested I buy a special tool to do the job which I must confess hadn’t occurred to me!

A quick bit of googling and eBaying later and… ta da… one ten foot extendible fruit picking gadget. Happy days…

The one I bought was second hand on eBay but if I was going to buy new the one that caught my eye was the multi-use fruit picker made by Wolf Garden – http://www.wolf-garten.co.uk

The rest, as they say, is plum jam, plum pickle and assorted other forms of plum joy history.

The plum picking team

The picking team with over 10kg of plums... we only stopped when it got dark!



Tomato curtains!
August 5, 2009, 8:25 am
Filed under: Learning | Tags:

The tomatos in the front room have not given much fruit yet but are making rather wonderful curtains – an unexpected yield!

Perhaps I was a bit over keen putting two in each oil drum planter.

Tomato curtains in the front room

Tomato curtains in the front room

A few months back...

A few months back...



Farleigh Road Big Lunch 19th July 2009
July 23, 2009, 2:03 pm
Filed under: Doing | Tags: , , , , ,
Farleigh Road Big Lunch 1

Farleigh Road Big Lunch

Last week Farleigh Road held a street party as part of the national ‘Big Lunch’ campaign (http://www.thebiglunch.com/)

The road was shut, residents of all ages and nationalities pulled together to create a truly awesome feast and the street was transformed for a day.

I took the liberty of carrying furniture and plants from my front room into the street – happy days.

I am lucky to live on such an amazing street – full of diversity and life – a little positivity can go a long way.

Farleigh Road Big Lunch

Farleigh Road Big Lunch



Rainwater Harvesting Part 2
July 2, 2009, 2:13 pm
Filed under: Doing | Tags: , , ,
Joe plumbing in recycled food drums/barrels to increase our rain water harvesting capacity

Joe plumbing in recycled food drums/barrels to increase our rain water harvesting capacity

A little while back I set up a rainwater harvesting system which you can see here – http://hackneypermaculture.org.uk/2009/03/27/rainwater-harvesting/

I decided it needed upgrading as we kept running out of water and after some surfing I found a source of recycled plastic food drums/barrels from this gem of a place in Wales – http://www.dvfuels.co.uk/category.asp?catID=4

Delivery worked out cheapest when buying a palette of eight so I got eight and found others to buy them using the local Transition Town Hackney mailing list.

Joe and I had a fun day plumbing them into the existing water butt. Nearly got the hang of using the power drill now!

Robin trying to fix the pipe in place

Robin trying to fix the pipe in place

Piping and fixtures from local hardware shop

Piping and fixtures from local hardware shop



Front Garden from above
June 26, 2009, 8:22 am
Filed under: News
Front garden from above

Front garden from above



Pruning and training the grapevine
June 18, 2009, 8:08 am
Filed under: Doing, Learning, Planning, Thinking | Tags: , , , , ,

When we first cleared back some of the undergrowth in the back garden we discovered an old grapevine stump that looked like it was dead. To our delight it started to sprout a tonne of leaves a few months back so todays job was to start training it up a trellis into a fan.

There is some good advice here – http://www.realenglishfruit.co.uk/content/treetraining.htm

Grapevine at the start of day

Grapevine at the start of day

Grapevine after haircut - we cut it back to just two leaders

Grapevine after haircut - we cut it back to just two leaders

Grapevine with leaders tied to trellis

Grapevine with leaders tied to trellis ready to grow into a fan



Things are growing!
June 12, 2009, 8:38 pm
Filed under: Doing | Tags: , , , , ,

Okay so it is my first growing season which means just like your friends who bore you with baby photos, I have to upload photos of stuff growing.

Sure I am not going to win any awards for photo journalism but THESE THINGS ARE GROWING IN MY GARDEN!!!!

Young cauliflowers on the rear raised bed

Young cauliflowers planted amongst rocket on the rear raised bed

Potatoes growing alongside an apple tree and nasturtium

Potatoes growing alongside an apple tree and nasturtium

Yes, they were as tasty as they look!

Yes, they were as tasty as they look!



Recycling oil drums to make planters
June 12, 2009, 8:31 pm
Filed under: Doing | Tags: , , , ,

Loads of the turkish food places around me leave used oil drums out with the trash and I have taken quite the fancy to their bright colours and patterns and begun collecting them (I have seven different sorts so far!)

They make nice planters…

Tomatoes planted in recycled oil drum

Newly planted tomatoes in oil drum

So we now have quite the tomato patch in the front room…

Tomato plants in the front room

Tomatoes take over the front room!



Ladybird larvae or larva
June 12, 2009, 8:23 pm
Filed under: Collecting, Learning | Tags: , , , ,

ladybird larva larvae

Just in case you are as clueless as me – here is a picture of a ladybird larva hanging out in the sun in the back garden. They are our friends -  eating aphids and generally looking kinda badass.



Solar powered pond pump
June 12, 2009, 8:13 pm
Filed under: Doing | Tags: , , , ,

The pond has been getting a little moody so I thought I might buy it a present to cheer it up:

pump

solar

For forty pounds I got a solar powered water oxygenating pump from eBay. It seems to be a standard budget option and it is no frills, only working when the sun is beaming but with the addition of a bit more pond weed too, the pond is now starting to be a bit less grumpy. Pretty sure it was a good investment but I haven’t seen anything similar elsewhere on my wanders to compare it to…



growing communities apprenticeship

Growing Communities Apprentices 2009

I am now half way through my appenticeship working on the urban market gardens at Growing Communities – this photo was taken today after an epic harvest.

Quite how I managed to get three months into the apprenticeship without mentioning it on the blog is a mystery but I have been so busy learning the names of leafy green things that my mind has not quite been on the money in other areas :-)

The fellow front left is Ru Litherland, the head grower, and the person to whom I now owe a huge chunk of my knowledge about plants, especially salad growing and pruning fruit trees.

If you don’t know anything about Growing Communities can I recommend you have a peek around their website – http://www.growingcommunities.org/ – as part of their weekly fruit and veg box scheme they run the only pieces of organically certified land inside the M25 to produce mixed leaf salad and other bits and bobs.



back garden photo
May 24, 2009, 3:41 pm
Filed under: Thinking | Tags:

You can see the beans at the bottom left, reed bed to the right with pond above, raised bed at the back and the cold frames/compost bins being used for storage at the back left. The middle bed has an apple tree and is covered with a hessian sack mulch. I think this may be the first view of the nicely wood chipped pathway. Happy days.

DSC01100a

A quick snap of the back garden taken 24th May 2009



Midnight slug and snail raids
May 22, 2009, 3:27 pm
Filed under: Doing, Thinking | Tags: , , , , , ,

Okay so slugs and snails can be a bit of an arse. I have tried EVERYTHING. Well, not quite everything as I don’t want to poison or kill/harm the buggers in anyway. Stupid vegan hippie I hear you stay but seriously the way I am going I may be reborn as a slug and I would like a fair innings no matter what shape or size being I become.

So what to do, what to do…

Midnight slug and snail raids with a head torch and a big plastic container to store them is the answer. I have been looking for an excuse to buy a head torch for ages. Then you take them to the nearest patch of waste or common ground and let them go… You will not believe how many of them I have ‘moved’ and it can be kinda fun playing hide and seek with them in the dark… They are quick too!

Midnight slug and snail run with a headtorch

Midnight slug and snail run with a headtorch



Making reed beds for grey water recycling

One of the projects that really stuck in my head after reading my first book on permaculture was creating reed beds for recycling grey water (any waste water from the house except sewage from the toilet).

After a good deal of time spent researching and reading around the topic the time finally came to make it a reality. Luckily there is a builders depo at the end of my street who sell gravel and my friend Morgan was on hand to help me put it all together.

For an average household you need 1m² of reed bed to recycle each persons grey water and you need four reeds per square metre. As I already had two used bath tubs to hand which came to just over 2m² and the three of us who live at 33b don’t use that much water I decided to go with that even if it was a little below the recommended area.

Ten reed plants were bought from Reeds from Seeds who can be found here – http://www.brynpolyn.co.uk/ – The total costwas £27.60 most of which was the delivery cost to London from Wales. They were very helpful people indeed explaining that late April or early May were the best time to plant.

A depth of about a metre seems to be the order of the day from a couple of diagrams I saw. The bath tubs took a maximum of about 80cm so I went with that, filling them with a layer of fine gravel on top of a layer of coarse gravel, about 50/50 of each.

It was decided after some debate to run the water into the bottom of each bath tub with water exiting out of the top. This way it has to pass up through the whole reed bed and cannot flow straight through as some designs seem to indicate. Pipes were fixed in the bottom with bricks and slate to keep them from being crushed by the weight of the gravel and to stop them from coming out. You can see that the first ‘metal tub’ reed bed is above the height of the other ‘mighty white’ tub so the water passes from the house into the bottom of the upper tub, rising through the bed to a pipe which feeds it into the bottom of the lower tub before it overflows through the bath’s original overflow into either the pond or the adjacent bed.

The metal tub was lined with a plastic sheet as it had many holes in the bottom from a previous life as a planter. Making the right sized hole for the pipe fixture was a challenge finally managed with a drill, some elbow grease and a bit of love, hence the three photos!

A lot of designs have settlement tanks and other features. I decided not to go for these yet but allowed space further back upstream to retro fit a settlement tank if needed. Whilst the reeds establish themselves I only plan to put bath and shower water into them and to use only natural grooming and cleaning products in the bathroom so there shouldn’t be anything too nasty for them to have to deal with and not too much by way of solid matter as the plug hole catches all the hairs!

Here are a few other pages of interest -

http://web.onetel.net.uk/~johndecarteret/water%20treatment.htm

http://www.green-water.org/projects.html

Gravel and a sunk bath tub

Gravel and a sunk bath tub

Morgan planting reeds into the gravel-filled bath tub

Morgan planting reeds into the gravel-filled bath tub

Plastic fitting detail shot

Plastic fitting detail shot

Plastic fitting detail shot

Plastic fitting detail shot

Plastic fitting detail shot

Plastic fitting detail shot

Lining the metal tub

Lining the metal tub

Two tier reed beds for recycling grey water

Two tier reed beds for recycling grey water



Capital growth grant

A little while ago we filled in a form applying for a capital growth grant.

Capital Growth is a scheme to support the start up of 2012 new growing spaces in London by 2012, something to do with the major and some of those politicians no doubt.

After a few phone chats and a visit from the delightful Eloise, a lovely pack containing various goodies and a cheque arrived… and I didn’t even hear or need to use the word ‘legacy’ once.

I love that they just put ‘farleigh road’ on the certificate… I kinda feel obliged to garden the whole street now!

Capital growth welcome pack

Capital Growth welcome pack

Hurrah, a certificate...

Hurrah, a certificate...

... and a plaque!

... and a plaque!



The front garden
April 24, 2009, 3:58 pm
Filed under: Doing | Tags: , , , ,

We have been plotting and scheming for a while about what to do with the front garden, previously an ugly useless bit of concrete. Seemed about time to make something so Dean came over and we played with tools and heavy stuff to make a raised bed…

We now have raspberries, tomatoes, borage, rocket, lettuce, marigolds, radishes and loads of wild mint and lemon balm.

Breaking up the front patio back in december 08

Breaking up the front patio back in december 08

Front garden with path and soil

Front garden with path and soil

Building a raised bed onto the mulched front garden

Building a raised bed onto the mulched front garden

Front garden with soft fruit bed at back, raised bed in middle, and small herb bed at front

Front garden with soft fruit bed at back, raised bed in middle, and small herb bed at front



Making a bag garden
April 23, 2009, 10:12 am
Filed under: Learning | Tags: , ,


A beautiful short piece on making a garden in a bag