Food revolution

Two videos have come to me today and inspired me. They are both about food.

The first one it by Britta Riley "Garden in my Appartment".  Britta Riley wanted to grow her own food (in her tiny apartment). So she and her friends developed a system for growing plants in discarded plastic bottles -- researching, testing and tweaking the system using social media, trying many variations at once and quickly arriving at the optimal system. The method follows open source development and the network now connects 18,000 people around the world.
 
The second one is by Jamie Oliver, who won the TED prize 2012. His lecture is titled: Teach every child about food.  My daughter has been cooking from a Jamie Oliver cookbook for some time now and she could get the meal together (with a little bit of help) in less than 1 hour. Tasty food and easy to make.

I admireJamie Oliver's drive for advancing the food revolution and find it inspiring. Just have my doubts whether Americans can be inspired with the word revolution at all right now.

A lot of things came together and motivated my own household to eat less in general but especially less sugar, fat and wheat; and  a lot more veggies and lettuce from the garden that self seeded from last years's crop.

The ad on toxic fats that rocked our state recently has been quite useful too. It makes you think and helped shift habits and priorities. It's not hard to change your eating habits and there is no excuse. I am writing this while my barley is cooking on the stove.

Wheat creates toxidity in the body and  toxins are an issue as the body has dofficulties to deal with them. I will make more effort at avoiding eating it. A recent study in China has confirmed: The most important food toxins are cereal grains (especially wheat), omega-6-rich vegetable oils, and fructose from sugar and corn syrup. Rice is actually the only non-toxic cereal grain and one of our “safe starches.”

Here is a chart of the percentage obese people (by countries), defined as having an average body mass index (BMI) above 30:

The BMI estimates fat in your body by comparing your weight and height. It is calculated by dividing your weight  (in kilos) by the square of your height (in metres). It's easy to calculate your BMI online, just use one of the many websites available free of charge. Being myself at the upper limit of a healthy weight towards overweight, I vow to change that before the rich Christmas period comes up. 

I also vow to protect my lettuce patch from the tree lobbers who are coming tomorrow to make more space in our garden for food production and  especially more fruit trees. Only the big ficus in the middle of the garden is allowed to stay, but the top will be lobbed off too. Make sure the tree lobbers leave the mulch in place.

There is hope and a lot of motivation too. Better check on my barley now!

Chicken in the backyard?!

Chickens are a major link in a permaculture garden and I have been thinking about getting a chook coop for a while now. I have been admiring various constructions and found great blog posts such as these ones:

• Raw Earth Living
• 10 steps to an organic permaculture garden - by Anne Goddard
• Permaculture step by step #3 - by Josh Byrne

Special fascination for me have the mobile chicken co-ops and the genuine creativity people put in place when building such houses using what they have or find with the help of friends, verge collections or through initiatives such as freecycle. A great example of a mobile chicken coop is this one, using an old water tank on wheels.



Curious chicken at my mother's place

My garden is big enough, the right spot has been identified and cleared of jungle; and I even got some poles and chicken wire already organised. But so far I have been waiting to make the move and get the pen set up. The time is not quite right yet.

Also I have been turned off by the usual small size of chicken tractors, which is the name given to mobile chicken houses that people place on top of their garden beds to ensure the chickens eat pest, like slaters and snails, and leave their goodies as compost.

Today I saw a post on facebook that intrigued me and I am closer to devising what the final chook coop will look like. Check out this genuinely creative and sustainable construction by Matt Pike, described in the Farmer Pal's Forum.

Yesterday we went to the open day at the Lockridge Community Garden and a visit inspired us even more, especially an opportunity to look into the backyard of permaculture gardens in private hands in the vicinity of the relatively community garden.

Keep it up guys. And everybody who would like to get involved should check out PermacultureWest! Well worth connecting with.

Food and Health

My good friend Annemarie sent me a picture this morning. It's too good to keep for myself:

I checked out their website, but could not easily spot this picture on it, check it out yourself if you like. This statement is probably not true at face value, as the importance of food gets more and more recognised. So I would replace the word 'no' with  'not very much'. But pointing out the lack of interaction between food and health industry is a very valid point which needs to be raised.

Finally the rainy season has started in Perth. We got a wooping 54mm on 28 April!  It poured down, a welcome breathing space for plants and soil biodiversity. I noticed that due to the humidity in the garden the sound levels especially at night time have risen significantly, lots of crickets and frogs. A real pleasure to watch and listen.

Despite a broken foot I have prepared pots for planting and sowed lettuces and herbs.  I pulled out huge stalks of sun flowers and will get the garden bed ready for beans. I also pruned some bougainvilleas and will have another go at propagating them, as the last attempt was unsuccessful. I noticed small roots starting already to grow out of some stems close to a leave. This season might be better.

Getting my hands dirty, turning the compost, emptying the worm farm and preparing the garden beds feels go good and right. I can't wait to go out in my garden again.

Diversity in potatoes

I was intrigued by this photo showing potatoe varieties from Peru on a facebook group. I traced back the origin of the photo. It goes back to the CIP, the International Potatoe Centre  http://www.isgtw.org/feature/conserving-bio-diversity-perus-cip in Peru which seeks to ensure the genetic diversity of this staple food crop.

The picture comes with the following subtitle:

A few of the many varieties of potatoes. CIP maintains the world’s largest genetic bank of potatoes, including 1500 samples of 100 wild species collected in eight Latin American countries, as well as samples of 3800 traditional Andean cultivated potatoes. The collection is maintained under the auspices of the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organization, and is available to plant breeders worldwide free upon request.

Here are more pretty pictures about potatoes. Unfortunately in Western Australia the marketing of potatoes is limited through the Marketing Potatoes Act 1946. But the limitations in what kind of potatoes you can grow and sell in WA only apply to commercial producers. These are people who grow more than 100 square meters of potatoes. Luckily this is a lot bigger than my garden. Sadly the problem remains how to get the potatoes through quarantine. Also the Perth weather would probably not be suitable to grow any of these successfully anyway.

But they are so pretty!

From http://www.livescience.com/16539-plant-genomes-buell-sl-nsf.html

From http://www.oired.vt.edu/sanremcrsp/public/news/2008/fighting-poverty-with-potatoes-and-paintings.php

Preparing for autumn planting

New moon is tomorrow and the weather is already cooling down a bit especially at night time. Yesterday the daytime temperature was still 35 degrees, but I feel that autumn is around the corner. It's officially to start on 1 March here in Australia.

I have prepared three big pots for autumn planting and will check my local list of vegetable to grow. Am thinking about spring onions and leek, also am longing for a zucchini.

Currently there are only a few sunflowers that attract many bees. The beds are deserted apart from a few capsicums and tomatoes.

From a facebook list I got a good link to many recipes for canning fruit and vegetables. Looks very promising and makes the mouth water in the hope for a good winter harvest. the website contains recipes for jams, jellies and spreads, including some fruit butters and sauces referenced in the main alphabetical list below:

• 100 Jams, Jellies & Marmalades
• 20 Freezer Jams
• 10 Pie Fillings
• Making Relish

I will check it out, especially the relish.

I will have a vegetarian friend come over for lunch today. Just turned the breadmaker on to make me some nice pizza dough. On the menue is Pizza Bianca and some simple salads, including my Croatian inspired coleslaw.

My dough recipe is simple:

• 1 cup water
• 1/2 cup milk
• 2 cups plain flour
• 1 cup wholemeal flour
• 1 teaspoon yeast and some salt

The breadmaker does the work and I sit back and I have time to do other things, eg writing this blog. Once the dough is ready I roll it out into three pizzas and let them rise for another hour of so.
My Pizza Bianca only has olive oil, mixed herbs, garlic, salt, mozarella and parmesan on it. One pizza is for lunch and the other two will be tonight's dinner. I will prebake their bases when I bake the lunch pizza and finish the pizzas up tonight. 

If you want to make it from scratch, this video helps. However, I rather use some wholemeal flour. Give it a go, it is as easy as it looks here:

Growing potatoes on top of lawn

Perth's climate is dry and hot in summer, but we have been getting good winter rains. The average rainfall in 2011 even topped the average rainfall mark by a few mm.

I am intrigued by this simple method of growing potatoes above ground, just on top of the lawn. I put it into my bucket list of methods to try.

Gardening changes the world