Phillip Richards's Blog
Posted by Phillip Richards
A new seed catalogue from an organic seedsman has just arrived and I have been sitting trying to decide just which to order. There is too much choice
I wrote an article about personal and community responsibility. One aspect of responsibility I did not touch on was the question of seed saving. Seed savers and seed saving clubs around the world are doing a wonderful service of preserving old forms of seeds. These are sometimes known as heritage varieties. If you look at on old seed catalogue you see many many different types of beans. You will see much the same in a catalogue from a seed saving source or from an organic seedsman.
These varieties are open pollinated which means the farmer can decide which variety grows best on his land and then save the seeds from year to year.
The new hybrid plants do not have seeds that grow true and in fact are designed not to be saved.
This of course means that the few large seed firms have control over the sale of seeds. The farmer once he gives up his heritage seeds and chooses the hybrid will have to pay for new seeds always.
With seed patenting it is illegal to save some seeds even though they will grow true to type.
Certified organic growers grow only these open pollinated “old” type of seeds.
Look at the seed rack in a supermarket – the same few types of beans - a small choice.
But look here at my new catalogue, pages of different beans. How to pick? How to choose…
Posted by Phillip Richards
How do you know if what you are buying is truly organic? In some places organic certificates are voluntary and in others not well policed. Basically, we should be able to see a logo from one of the certifying bodies on the packaging. If the product, say carrots are being sold loose the seller / producer should be able to show a certificate with a number. The validity of the certifier can be checked out on web sites.
National governments take responsibility of issuing licences to bodies or individual inspectors to certify organic producers. Usually this works well. In Australia, the AQIS the quarantine service has oversight and issues licences. The licences in Australia go to Growers groups which zealously guard their reputations for reliability and honesty. Certification of potential organic producers is an exhaustive process with the philosophy and practice of the grower thoroughly scrutinised. The farm is visited and there are annual audits. Producers must send samples of produce and soil to be tested for residues.
Things may be a little mixed in the USA where there is disquiet about the USDA openness to lobbying from interest groups. An example is the push to allow non-organic hops in organic beer. This would give a great advantage to the large commercial brewers at the expense of the small fry who do source their hops from organic sources.
Posted by Phillip Richards
There have been more and more research evidence to demonstrate that organic fruit and vegetables have more goodness in them than conventionally farmed supermarket sold items. A look at www.ofa.au will give a plethora of information.
However, I saw something that persuaded me. It is not scientific and perhaps it could not be repeated but this is what happened.
Each morning tea break at the school the kitchen staff put out a couple of plastic washing baskets with fruit. Typically, there was one of apples and one of oranges. The fruit was good-looking standard commercial apple and oranges.
One morning a few boys and I went down to our orchard of apple trees. These were very young trees and we picked about a washing basket full and took them up to the school where I left them outside the kitchen door. I was thinking how to persuade the cook into using them fro apple pies for the school (quite a bit of trouble as usually, I guess, the fruit cam from a caterer’s can).
The apples were not perfect. Even a bit spotty and grotty. They were of different sizes and had a slight smattering of a grey mildew over the surface. This could be rubbed off easily and the apples brought up to a shine. Perhaps I thought I should wash and polish them to make them attractive to the boys.
While I sat thinking, the bell went and the boys wandered out from class. The first boy went up to the shop apples but then saw the new picked apples and took one of them. Every boy, and they came in ones and twos, dribs and drabs, walked past the shiny splendid shop apples and took a school grown one.
No one had announced that these were in any way special or the first of the crop. The boys eight years to twelve years old self selected the more delicious and I believe more nutritious piece of fruit.
Posted by Phillip Richards
The tall tree beside the river seemed suddenly to turn red and brown. Within a week the leaves dropped and the tree was dead. Over the next month limbs fell dry and weak until only, known gaunt spikes pierce the canopy. Around it are many other trees including, just back from the bank a few large old mangos, all in good condition.
So, it is a mystery why the great tree died. Dead, though it left us a problem - what to do about it?
Our concern was that it should topple into the river and by doing so block the river, create a dam for the weed (water hyacinth) to stick to and make canoeing difficult. Because there have been no substantial storms to create enough run in the river to flush away water weeds, the river has been filling with the encroaching weeds, we thought that one more problem – a large fallen tree – might create a serious coke point.
So the tree expert came. We shuddered at what it might cost to have the tree removed.
He did not take it down though. He suggested that it should stay where it was, that it was part of nature’s cycle and that the birds would be grateful for the perching sites. Lizards would hunt the insects that burrowed beneath its bark and carpet pythons too would predate there.
As more branches fall, hollows will open up for nesting sites for birds and possums. “But,” I said, “what if it falls into the river?”
It is part of nature; the tree in the river will create new aquatic habitats, protecting helping feed fish.
Organic gardening is moving beyond simply growing flowers and vegetable sin a more eco-friendly fashion to considering the totality of the ecology contained within the gardener’s purview.
Posted by Phillip Richards
When we grew and sold organic vegetables we would usually pack them into boxes, take them to the depot which would then ship in refrigerated trucks our boxes along with conventional produce 300 km to the wholesale markets. From here the fruit and vegetables were moved, again in refrigerated vehicles all over Queensland. In the case of our organic vegetables throughout much of Australia.
One day, having spare produce to sell we took it to the town 100 km north only to find that the Health food store already had had a delivery of "excellent quality patty pan squash". We asked to see the box to compare our quality and , yep, it was our squash. By now it was getting slightly the worse for wear after a round trip of al least 700 km.
It occurred to us that although we were doing something environmentally worthwhile by using organic growing methods, we were not helping in the wider sense of reducing transportation costs.
We sold some of our produce at local markets and determined that that was the most sensible way to go. Selling in local markets or roadside stalls has a drawback - while selling one is not growing so we had to work out a sensible balance.
My recommendation? Support organic growers but support them through local farmers markets if possible.
Posted by Phillip Richards
Once we were known as the TIP PEOPLE because we got up early each day and went to the local tip where we collected a Ute / truck load of green matter to take back to the farm where we shredded it and made compost.
Our soil was completely barren: the expert doing our soil analysis suggested that we make a beach resort! Compost and adding tons of organic matter was the only was we could see to develop an organic garden. We tried to be judicious as to what we collected so that we were not bringing in herbicides and pesticides and this seemed to work as our soil and plants were tested regularly.
We made compost in large piles but never turned them as we didn’t have suitable machinery and did not have time to do it physically.. It did not seem to matter.
The main trouble was simply that it was hard to keep the piles moist because of an on-going drought.
Posted by Phillip Richards
A concept much mentioned in permaculture literature is that of the herb spiral. It is a fine idea fun to do and useful.
The first idea behind a herb spiral is that culinary herbs really should be in the inner most zoned - as close as possible to the kitchen door - so that the cook can pop out and grab a handful of rosemary or thyme.
A spiral or a mound is one way of saving space so that a variety of herbs may be grown together and be accessible but not over crowded. An herb spiral is comparatively low maintenance needs little attention – just a little watering and poking in new seedlings every so often.. Some culinary herbs need more water than others do. Some herbs relish rather dry conditions. In a garden, this differentiation is hard to manage but is possible in the spiral.
Put plants that like wet toes on the bottom and those most tolerant of dry conditions go on top.
The spiral is a gently curving ramp that makes a 360 degree turn. Use rocks, bricks, concrete blocks or short planks held in place by stakes to hold and define the spiral.
Bill Mollison in “Permaculture Two” has a diagram suggesting the following succession going from a little pond at the bottom to the drier top: watercress, mint, marigold, parsley violet chamomile chives, thyme, tarragon, sage oregano and a crown of rosemary.
Posted by Phillip Richards
The first garden that we established on our far was a mandala garden. We established this next to the house on a patch of roughly cleared land.The garden was a no-dig and twelve metres square in each side.
We were unpacking the house and as the house was set - in true Queensland style - high on posts we threw the empty cardboard boxes out the window as we unpacked. We flattened all of these and covered the area to suppress weeds. We bought in hay from the feed store and filter-ash from the local sugar mill. This garden became our most productive basic vegetable garden and supplied most of our food as well as often feeding the poultry and pigs.
A mandala garden is round so in the corners of the square we planted fruit trees - paw-paw and Malabar chestnut.
In the centre was a pit into which we threw household food scraps. Around the pit were paw paws (papaya). The pit never filled the land or the paw paws just swallowed the scraps.
Circling this was a path with paths radiating to the middle of each side. There were also paths that went from the central ring towards the four corners. These stopped about half way and had a large circle at the end.
In the middle of each of the four arms main arms and on both sides we built "keyholes". A keyhole is a short path into the bed with a circle at the end - like a turning circle on a closed road. The effect of this was that most parts of the garden we could reach most parts of the garden easily.
The mandala looked wonderful from an upstairs window from where we could admire the circular patters with radiating spokes and the incursions of the keyholes.
Within the garden, we had zones; fast growing greens ran in straights and arcs following the basic shape of the beds. Then there were the bigger vegetables that we went to less and beyond them longer term planting such as potatoes.
At first, we could reach into the garden from the outside of the original square but gradually this became built-in or grown-in with trellises for vine crops over walkways and plantings of lemon grass to make weed barriers.
We had a lot of lemon grass tea.
Posted by Phillip Richards
When I first went to work on an organic farm – actually a commune – in 1970, organic growing was in its infancy. I had not heard of it before I began farming, but it sounded like a good idea.
At that time there was little information, most of it came from the Rodale Press from the USA and the magazines were slow in arriving and quite old by the time I got to read them. At least a real farmer taught me, a man who had learnt his craft in Devon (England) and for whom organic growing was simply the way things were done.
We sold anything that we produced and, yes, it was spotty and perhaps grotty. There was no such thing as certification and we sold to a fruiterer in Ryde (A western suburb of Sydney Australia) and were paid a fair price.
Each day the paper reported the prices of fruit and vegetables in that morning’s wholesale market. We were paid these prices. If ordinary commercial growers were getting 20 cents a pound for green beans - that was what we received.
Any thing was grist to the mill, a couple of pumpkins growing wild in the compost heap, and lemons growing near a deserted farmhouse across the way as well as our small crops.
By 1995 when I began an organic farm, everything had changed; probably for the better. To be able to sell our produce as organic we needed to be certified. Certification protects the buyer as well as the industry as a whole and we were proud to be able to gain certification quickly.
To be certified we had to have our soil tested as well as send off some examples of vegetables to be tested for non-allowable inputs and residues. Most importantly, an inspector, a member of the certifying body and himself a grower came to check us out. He spent part of the day with us looking at what we had done, what we were doing now, and asking probing questions about our philosophy and practical methods.
The down side is that this is an expensive process and certification – in Australia at least – for the small almost subsistence grower – the cost of certification becomes a major expense. By 2000 when we were selling our organically grown chilli peppers on the conventional market, it became too much.
We grew chilli peppers quite early but found that: our organic outlet in Brisbane could not sell them, did not want them; an organic outlet in Sydney was keen and gave us a great price $12 a kilo but only wanted 2 kilos a week. We had a ton of them. A conventional agent in Melbourne offered $5 a box.
I was quite happy to sell my organic vegetables on the conventional market, my costs were low my inputs few and my profit margin satisfactory.
Posted by Phillip Richards
Some families have a “wee-bucket”. A 20 liter (5 gallon) bucket is suitable for collecting a little each day. This is – as with other liquid manures- diluted. It provides a great tonic for individual plants.
We use a wee-bucket for urinating during the day. It is outside and convenient. It saves water (flushes) and saves the composting loo from getting too wet. I have to say it is not something that we tend to mention to visitors.
We use this on a different tree or shrub each day and it takes us a long time to get right around. It is not a good idea to use it constantly on one plant – too much of a good thing becomes toxic.
Liquid manures are useful because they provide a homemade, cheap, organic fertiliser that is in a form that can be used immediately and beneficially by garden plants. It can be used to revivify a flower garden in mid-season.
Posted by Phillip Richards
Hens have been called chicken tractors because of their ability to work the soil. A popular and workable idea is to have two runs to a poultry shed. The hens are in one while vegetables and flowers grow in the other after harvest the runs are swapped over and the hens eat the up the greenery left and any residual insects. A new garden is made in the hen matured well worked soil of the original run.
It is not quite as easy as it seems in practice. Firstly the hens poked their heads through the fence and ate the new vegetables. The other problem was more difficult. We found that it was hard to arrive at the just right ratio of hens to space. If too few hens and strongly growing weeds would fill the run. If too many they would glean everything before we had time to harvest the other.
Another version of the idea is demonstrated by a group of children at a local school who have made a movable “ark” It is shaped like a triangular prism with a nesting section in the back and wire-netting for about two thirds of its length.
The ark can be moved daily to avoid the chicken tractor effect and to give the chickens fresh grass daily. The situation can be reversed so that the chickens remain in situ until the all the area under the ark is scratched up and ready for working.
Fruit trees overhanging the run can add shade and fallen fruit for the chickens.
Posted by Phillip Richards
We used to keep and rear a pair of piglets. Each pair would be brought from friends who were beginning a organic meat enterprise and their piglets were always gentle and not frightened. They lived in a good sized run of about 30 meters by 15 meters. Roughly in the centre was a shelter made of bales of straw or cheap hay wrapped in chicken wire – to stop them eating it all at one and with a roof of corrugated iron held on with more bales. The shelter was water proof – though I can’t recall it raining much and the run gave plenty of space for running and rooting around and all the things pigs enjoy.
We decided to use a system similar to the chicken tractor and have alternate runs so that when were finished with one – the baconers had”er” moved on – the next couple would go into a new run. This would, we though, reduce infection and supply the young pigs with fresh grass and other things that we would plant.
In the unused run we decided that we would plant sorghum or cabbages or a root crop (not potatoes) that could be used to help feed the pigs or that could be left for them to get for themselves.
It worked and it didn’t work. The pigs certainly ploughed the area up. They left their pen a barren moonscape. The trouble was that the soil tended to go very hard so that it was hard to plant in the alternate pen and.
In the end we tended to grow just a corner of so and let weeds and grasses reestablish ready for the next inhabitants.
Posted by Phillip Richards
Today is the day to get out an make another batch of liquid manure. I make this just from green material. At present I am using an old wheelie-bin and I will fill this about 1/3rd full of greens leaves and grasses add water and let it bubble, froth and ferment for a months or so.
It is very unscientific but it works for me. I tested a batch once by spraying a defined square metre of lawn. Yes, this little patch was lushed and greener than the rest.
My secret is in variety. I go about the block picking a bit of this and a bit of that trying to collect the lushest, strongest, and deepest greens I can find.
I have a small patch of borage and include some leave of that plant otherwise it is a mix of grasses (clovers and paspalum) weeds (dock, nettles, dandelions), things I do not know the names of leaves and prunings.
A good sign is if rat-tailed maggots are in it after a month or so. When it has a good rich aroma (hence the maggots), ladle it out and use it as a tonic / pick-me-up for your plants.
Put a little in a bucket or watering can and add water to make it like a weak tea – avoid making it too strong. Don’t water onto plants you will soon harvest.
Do wear gloves the stuff will make your hands and arms smell and no amount of washing seems to clean them.
An excellent use for liquid manure is as an activator – stick it over you mulch or kick-start the compost heap. Magical
Posted by Phillip Richards
Today I am going down the road to collect a trailer load of horse manure. When a little dry – not too wet and fresh but not desiccated - this is the perfect blend of Nitrogen and Carbon for mulch. I am going to layer it around my bananas. Following the cyclone in Northern Queensland earlier this year the banana industry up there was virtually wiped-out and bananas became very expensive. We were lucky to have bunches to harvest, eat and pass around to friends.
The stands have been growing for years without much in the way of help or encouragement so this year they get a good feeding. The layer of mulch, too, will suppress the weeds and save me the task of cleaning up.
Each morning I watch a Lewin honey eater picking the nectar from the banana flower bell – after I chop the bell off (so that the goodness goes into the bananas), he is still there but turns his attention to the green bananas. He does not mark them but is picking busily away so I presume he is getting insects.
However, I have to watch him – when the first bananas begin to yellow, he will change his diet again.
He’s had his fair share: it’s time to cover the bunch with an old feedbag.
Posted by Phillip Richards
I read a letter in a small local paper the other day detailing what one observant person noticed about a flowering bottlebrush in her front garden. A bottlebrush is sweet smelling and full of nectar.
Firstly the bees would visit from dawn for one to two hours. Yes we want to encourage bees into our garden to ensure fertilization of fruit.
Once the bees had departed a little red capped robin would move in to eat the smaller insects. These little birds are the ones for whom we should provide shelter.
The honeyeaters and friarbirds would arrive.
In this microcosm I see many of the flower, shrub/bush/tree/, insect, bird interactions that occur in a busy bio-diverse garden. Bushes bring birds and bees and probably, less desirable insects. These birds, though, will work your garden reducing the impact of pest insects. It is also possible that, in the above instance, the native tree will draw insects away from the valuable flowers, fruits and vegetables of the garden.
Posted by Phillip Richards
We were confused! Our garden suddenly seemed to lose all fertility and the vegetables their vigor
We had brought in what seemed to be beautiful, organic compost – rich smelling and dark to put over the top of new no-dig, raised bed gardens we had made.
During the first season, all went well and we had beautiful silver beets and aubergines and a good crop of snake beans. Then it all went wrong – even though we had added some compost.
All the plants were stunted or weedy or a paler green than they should have been.
It was the “beautiful” compost. It has been made by grinding down wood chips to a small particle size and mixing this with the composted material. The result was that the nitrogen in the mix was used up in the first season and then in the subsequent season the micro flora and fauna attacking the wood needed nitrogen to do their part and pulled it all from the garden, depleting it and leaving nothing for the plants.
This is a typical case of nitrogen draw-down.
This will have to be redressed with applications of blood and bone. We have had to pull back this layer and lay the new nitrogenous material underneath it – it would be wasted on top.
We tend not to use stable manure much anymore because of this. The bags on sale locally of stable manure come mixed with a lot of sawdust and needs careful composting. Adding directly as mulch could (not necessarily) cause the difficulty we experienced
Posted by Phillip Richards
We were confused! Our garden suddenly seemed to lose all fertility and the vegetables their vigor
We had brought in what seemed to be beautiful, organic compost – rich smelling and dark to put over the top of new no-dig, raised bed gardens we had made.
During the first season, all went well and we had beautiful silver beets and aubergines and a good crop of snake beans. Then it all went wrong – even though we had added some compost.
All the plants were stunted or weedy or a paler green than they should have been.
It was the “beautiful” compost. It has been made by grinding down wood chips to a small particle size and mixing this with the composted material. The result was that the nitrogen in the mix was used up in the first season and then in the subsequent season the micro flora and fauna attacking the wood needed nitrogen to do their part and pulled it all from the garden, depleting it and leaving nothing for the plants.
This is a typical case of nitrogen draw-down.
This will have to be redressed with applications of blood and bone. We have had to pull back this layer and lay the new nitrogenous material underneath it – it would be wasted on top.
We tend not to use stable manure much anymore because of this. The stable manure available locally comes mixed with a lot of sawdust and needs careful composting. Adding directly as mulch could (not necessarily) cause the difficulty we experienced
Posted by Phillip Richards
For the first few seasons after we moved onto our bush block – 100 acres sand – we had very few problems with insects. They hadn’t discovered us and our only problems were actually getting things to grow so that we could firstly have something to show the organic inspection people and secondly enough to sell.
Once this was achieved and we had a small green oasis around the home site with a buffer (we thought) of bush and scrub around that, insects started to arrive. Not many we were lucky, but some.
For a short while fruit fly in the guavas was a problem. I found that the insects are very slow moving and that they gathered in the evening on the underneath of the leaves of gourds that we had on a trellis. It was easy each evening to use a little hand-held spray to give them a dose of pyrethrum.
Another scheme we used was simple and cheap – we physically removed caterpillars, bugs, and grasshoppers as we found them.
Best of all, the ducks and hens in the orchard kept this under control. Ducks are marvels at snapping flies out of the air and the hens eat up the fallen rubbish.
In our new place, we have to be more alert and use principles of Integrated Pest Management (see article). See too Weeds and Insects.
Posted by Phillip Richards
It is very encouraging to see organic growers being recognised.
In Toronto Canada, the Canadian Organic Growers (COG) formally recognised "heroes” who have advanced the cause of organic sustainable farming in Canada.
Four categories of winners were declared:
- An organic organisation hero
- An organic supporter hero
- The best restaurant serving Organic food
- Organic media hero
The executive director of COG (Laura Telford) and Chair of COG's Toronto chapter (Tanmayo Krupanszky ) presented the awards at a ceremony held in downtown Toronto at the St Lawrence Farmers Market
Laura Telford said
"Thanks to the dedication and hard work of our first ever organic heroes, more and more people are beginning to understand why organic agriculture is so important...These heroes are building a better food system for Canada"
Those named as organic heroes were:
- Ann Slater - Organic Organisation Hero
- Karen Burson and Kevin MacKay for the Bread and Roses Cafe in Hamilton
- Michael Statlander is the Organic Supporter Hero
- Jill Eisen developer of the CBC series "Organic Goes Mainstream" won the Organic Media Award section.
It is splendid to see that the worldwide organic movement is gaining such momentum. My first forays into organics were as part of a farming commune way back in 1970 - the spotty and grotty brigade. Now organic farming is nudging its way into the consciousness of more and more people as they wake up to the realities of environmental degradation .There is a long way to go before it can be said to be fully mainstream.
It was good, too, to see that the awards were held at a Farmers’ market – these markets, I believe are the backbone of the movement.
Posted by Phillip Richards
These are star shaped in cross section and are crisp and juicy and perhaps a little like a nashi pear.
What is the exciting thing though, is not the fruit but the fact that they are fruit fly free. Fruit flies love them. Last year we had to cut the grubs out of most fruits then boil the offending parts to kill the larvae before putting them into the compost. This meant that there were only really bits and pieces to eat – so we stewed them.
This year I went on a campaign to cut the fruit fly population so that we could get tomatoes and other fruits.
I set out bait traps at the rate of four to the hectare (I guess that is about 1 per acre) and set them on the east side of the chosen tree and about 4 feet from the ground.
Fantastic result, the traps were full of flies and the fruit were not.
I used plastic peanut butter jars as the traps because they have a yellow lid, which attracts the insects. Inside I used liquid organic (purchased) bait - worth every penny.
I am even eating the little red guavas from a tree that is usually fruit fly hotel: not one fruit has been stung.
Because so much fruit has been grown commercially in the district and so mach spray has been used the fruit fly seems to have grown to plague proportions so much so that I thought we would never win by refusing to use the commercial poisons.