Written by We have recently changed our formats for the Monday night meeting, and it is now the Guest Speaker night for our group. We want to help educate our members about the different aspects of permaculture.
Aaron Mears is a permaculture teacher and consultant on the sunshine Coast. His talk was both entertaining and informative. I will endeavour to share some of this information in this blog post.
Soil is the digestive system for the plant kingdom – the stomach. We don’t actually grow anything; we are stewards of the soil. We put the plant in, and the soil does all the hard work.
A couple of key Permaculture Principles were discussed:
- Use and value renewable resources, which Aaron describes as “Plant your own soil building plants”. For example: arrowroot comfrey and pigeon pea are a few.
- Produce no waste – “See the waste of one component as the food for another part.” Manue from the chickens goes into the compost and garden. Kitchen waste into compost or worms.
- Integrate rather than segregate – “Chain of input and outputs” Stack the functions of multiple components in one space to build soil.
It’s all about building soil. Soil Vs Dirt. Soil contains life, sequesters carbon, has minerals and trace elements. It is full of beneficial microbes and mycelium fungus and humates. It improves water retention, and it is aerobic. Dirt on the other hand is dead, it releases carbon, it is inert with very little water retention and is anaerobic as it is devoid of healthy microbial life.
When we see deficiencies in the plants, we think we have a pest problem, however we most likely have a mineral deficiency. Pests are attracted to these sick plants and the insects that come to feast on these are the clean-up crew of mother nature.
Using a refractometer, you can measure the natural sugar content – this is called the BRIX measurement. If it’s high, it’s usually an indication of high mineral content. If the line is clear, the calcium is good. A blurred line means calcium is not good. Calcium is an indicator that it’s getting enough of the other minerals. You measure the juice of vegetables or fruits, or the leaf on grasses or plants. You can read a little more about them or buy one here https://biostim.com.au/shop/brix-meter/?msclkid=1cb83f5882b110fca98a58a049fa5daf Fruit and vegetables with a high brix, will have a longer shelf life and more nutritional value.
We just need to know about minerals, if we get the soil food web right, they know what minerals the plant needs and supplies them. A lot of Australia is calcium deficient and this is indicated by some of the weeds we have – they are calcium miners and are there to do a job. To regenerate the soil. If you would like to do a soil test, contact Nutritech Solutions and they will let you know what to do.
The Soil Food Web are all the critters in the soil that help build soil and provide food and minerals for plants. The plant provides them with sugars. They decompose the litter above the soil and create organic matter in the soil. Earth worms, fungi and bacteria are just some of these hard working critters.
Every time we spray or till, we kill these guys.
A question was asked about Rats Tail Grass – Aaron’s response was that it doesn’t like fungally dominated soil, so plant trees. Weeds are a successional plant and killing them stops the process of the land regenerating.
Make a rice fungi mix – this can be used as a fungi spray for grass or in the compost pile. Par cook some rice and place in a bamboo steamer. Take it out and leave it in the forest. Wait 5-7 days and it will be covered in white fungi. Mix this with brown sugar to store. Dilute with water and spray out.
How do we create healthy soil? By making good compost. There’s different ways to make compost.
1. The slow, throw in your scraps each day, method, and when the bin is full, leave to compost. It will take a long time unless you stir it often.
2. The quicker way is to build a pile in one go and turn it every few days – more on this below.
3. Leaf mould is another form of compost. If you have trees that drop a lot of leaves. Place a basket under the tree and periodically collect the leaves and eventually you will have a basket of leaves that can turn into compost if left long enough.
Food waste is best to be fed to worms. Aaron gave a suggestion on how to build a large worm farm:
IBC Worm Farm (an IBC is a large 1000L plastic pod)
- unscrew or cut off the top of the metal frame
- cut the lid off at the first horizontal bar of the frame
- drill holes in the plastic top to make a false bottom – put cement bricks in the bottom to lift it above the base of the pod and then place the plastic top on the bricks
- There is already a tap and this enables you to get the worm tea out, so make sure the pod is placed so that you can access the worm tea.
Build a compost pile
- Brown is the carbon materials – dead, brown and crunchy materials like straw and paper. Softer materials are better, eg shredded paper, and loose straw.
- Green are the living green plants that are cut to use – arrowroot, comfrey, lawn clippings, coffee grinds, tree leaves, lucerne, moringa, stinging nettle, yarrow, dandelion, weeds.
- Ratio of green to brown material is 1:3
- Water – rainwater is best so if you only have access to town water, it’s important to de-chlorinate it by putting water in large barrels, stir it and leave for a while and the chlorine will gas off.
- Oxygen – flip it every 2-3 days – a thermometer is useful to measure the pile and when it gets to 65c, stir it and then it’ll cool down and warm up again.
- This should take 4-5 weeks if stirred often.
- If it’s too cold, add more green and if it gets too hot, add more brown.
The following Dirty Thirty are ingredients that can be added to improve the compost. These are optional so use what you can of these to optimise your compost pile.
| Plants to include: | Powders: | Liquids: |
| comfrey (N) | Coffee Grinds | Rain water |
| Aloe Vera (Sa) | Basalt Dust * (CEC, ELF) | Water Soluble Calcium *** |
| Seaweed (Gib) | Humates (humic and fulvic acid) ** | Lactobacillus **** |
| Dandelion (Ca) | Ground eggshells (use an old blender) | Fish Amino Acids |
| Leucaena (Pro) | Biochar (C) | IMO |
| Moringa (Min) | Bone char (Ca/Phos) | Seawater 1:40 (80 elements) |
| Yarrow (Sulf) | Finished compost (inoculant) | Molasses |
| Nettle (Sil) | Diatomaceous Earth (Sil) | Liquid Kelp |
| Weeds (Ca) | Clay (neg) | Urine |
| Manure | Whey |
*Basalt Dust – this is crusher dust and the best one to get is from Moy Pocket. You can also use this as a liquid fertiliser in the garden by Putting the crusher dust in a cloth or hessian bag and placing it in a bucket of water – you get milky water and this is now biologically available to the plants. It’s good for the Cation Exchange Capacity (CEC) in the soil.
**Humates are a by-product of the mining industry – the bit before coal.
***Water Soluble Calcium is made from eggshells. Egg shells are full of calcium that isn’t easy for plants to absorb so when we make it water soluble, the plants can absorb it instantly through their roots.
- clean and crush eggshells – rinse the eggshells well and let them dry. Then crush tehm into small pieces with a spoon, rolling pin or old blender.
- cook the shells (thermal decomposition) – cooking the shells decomposes the structure of the shells and loosens the calcium molecules.
- Add vinegar (acetic acid wash) – put the cooked shells into a glass jar. Pour white vinegar over them until fully covered. You’ll notice bubbling – this means that its working. The vinegar is stripping the calcium form the shells.
- Wait and Stir – cover the jar with a breathable lid (like cheesecloth) so gases can escape. stir gently every day. Let the mixture sit for 7-14 days. The bubbling will slow as the reaction finishes.
- Strain and store – once the bubbles stop, strain out the solids. This liquid is water soluble calcium. Store in a glass bottle with a cap, away from direct sunlight.
- To Use: Dilute about 1 tablespoon of this liquid per litre of water and spray on leaves or around roots. Use it especially when plants are flowering or fruiting. Use in the compost pile building process.
****Lactobacillus is an amazing microorganism that breaks down organic matter, improves soil health, protects from disease, improves digestion, odour control and food fermentation. The Process:
- starch water – Wash some rice and collect the starch water in a jar. Place the jar with a breathable lid in a warm dark cupboard for several days.
- Lactose – take the starch water and mix it 1:5 with regular milk to feed your colony
- Whey – once the LAB has separated your milk into a curd and whey waster, use a sieve to separate the curd and whey. The curd can be used to create cheese later.
- Brown sugar – weigh the whey water and mix 1;1 with brown sugar (not raw sugar). This puts your colony to sleep in Osmotic Pressure.
- Use – Mix 1:20 with rainwater and use in garden, foliar sprays, liquid fertiliser, compost, compost toilets, biochar, smelly clothes, smelly animals, stables, coops and barn cleaning. Cleaning kitchens and bathrooms and in the septic tanks.
Aaron described a way to make bio char using a 44 gallon drum and a galvanised rubbish bin with a lid.
- take the top off a 44 and put some small holes in it down low. Place it on a cement pad or cleared area.
- place the rubbish bin in the 44 filled with small wood that will become the biochar. The bin also needs a few small holes in it
- place wood on and around the rubbish bin and light.
- leave this to burn and when cold, the rubbish bin should be full of charcoal. Activate this with urine, worm tea, lactobacillus or other inoculant and then it becomes biochar.
Aaron conducts private consultations, Permaculture Design Courses and workshops. He can be contacted:
