Garden log 13.06.09

My reputation as a gardener who never grows anything is taking a dent lately . Whether it is due to my dabbling is permaculture or the abundant water from our greywater system or the sligh amount of soap that manages to get through the filtration system or the early onset of summer or all the above , it cannot be denied that the garden is blooming . The zucchini is going great guns , huge blooms and a lot of flowers . Today we harvested the sixth zucchini . Though there is some white powdery stuff on the leaves that is a bit disturbing . The tomatoes give me no reason to complain but still a way to go , beans we manage to get a handful every second day and some basil and rocket . But the pride and joy is definitely the melons , a nice decent sized melon , a small one and a few on the way .
The greywater system is giving me a bit of worry though . The water is down to a trickle and needs to be coaxed through . I suspect the sand layer ,since it was not protected with a geotechnic cloth has managed to find its way to the gravel and is creating a sludge which is pretty difficult for the water to get through. I have a taken out a bit of this sludge and gravel but the solution might lie in a reed bed that actively breaks down the soap and aerates the water . Next stage .
For the moment though we are enjoying watching the garden grow . If I had my way , I would've taken a chair and watched it all day long .
All the phots were taken by Ben . Going over the photos I remembered the pomegranate .

Planting log 090408

Photos of the garden, everything looking very much not there but the tank for the greywater system is in place , there is tons of organic stuff in the beds , had to do a lot of digging to take out stones and concrete from the soil but from now on it is going to be a no dig garden with organic mulch .

The Pomegranate


The strawberries along with chickpea

Herbs

Lemon

Almonds

Beds with mulch and the greywater filter

The Plum tree hasn't shown any inclination to acknowledge it is spring.

Greywater system update

The greywater system is up and running. The water goes to the first tank and once the water crosses a point , the pump kicks in and pumps up the water to the filter cum tank . We had a very water intensive day today with a few loads of washing and kids in the bath but from what it appears we might have more water than what we need !! Next stage is to connect the water to the drip system .
Visually the water seems ok , no turbidity , a bit of soap coming through , a few days more till the biological filter or schmutzdecke kicks in.

The removal of contaminants in slow sand filters occurs mainly in the colmation layer or schmutzdecke - a biologically active layer consisting of algae, bacteria, diatoms and zooplankton. A ripening period of 6 - 8 weeks is required for this layer to form, during which time filter performance is sub-optimal.

From here
The amount of water makes me think that maybe we are underutilising the greywater system and should have integrated it with the flush water . But maybe I will just earn some 'brownie points' by offering to water my neighbours patch .

Food

For the last couple of months I have been reading voraciously about food , organic , backyard , the ills of industrial monocultures , Fukuoka , Geoff Lawton , the broken nutrient cycles , Monsanto , the Future of food , Permaculture , Bill Mollison, Emilia Hazelip and more . It is quite clear that my mind is made up , industrial production of food is bad for me and my family and the environment . So time to take the plunge seriously into growing my own food or part of it and at the same time utilize wastes that we create in a manner that is not only non destructive but also adds to the immediate environment . Not that this is the first time I am trying to do so , I have at least two seasons of growing but not producing anything with my blessed black thumb but I believe I have reached a point where I have enough know how to do it better . We will be using greywater from our bath , composting all our kitchen and yard wastes and using a lot of mulch .

Greywater system

Today we finalised the greywater system that we are going to install . It is a very basic setup , greywater from the bath and the washing machine goes in a subterranean tank with a submersible pump which pumps it up to the terrace . The contractor is going to do the job of pumping up the terrace and I will make the rest of the filtration system which is essentially going to be a trench with gravel . The water will be released into a subsurface drip system . Schematically it is going to be like this .
If the water pump is 0.5 kw and takes even as much as half an hour everyday to pump up the water , the monthly consumption of electricity will be 15 Kwh which at 0.50 shekels/Kwh works out to 7.50 shekels a month or less than 2$ a month . The water saved will definitely offset the cost of running the pump .