Friday, February 26, 2010

My Three Bed Rotation Plan

 Okay so it's not perfect.  I've only got room for three beds to do a rotation so this is my plan.


BED 1 WHAT


Now Legum Bed peas/beans


2010 Autum Legum Bed peas/beans


Wint Brassica cab/broc/warrigal greens


Spring Brassica cab/broc/warrigal greens


Sum Root Crop carrots/parsnips/potatoe onions


2011 Autum Root Crop onions/beets/sweded


Wint Legume Bed peas/beans


Spring Legume Bed peas/beans


Sum Brassica cab/broc/warrigal greens


Brassica cab/broc/warrigal greens









BED 2WHAT
Nothing

Root Cropcarrots
Root Croponions/beets/sweded
Root Crop

Legume Bed

Legume Bed

Brassica

Brassica

Root Crop
Root Crop



BED 3
lettuce
lettuce
Legume Bed
Legume Bed
Brassica
Brassica
Root Crop
Root Crop




Essentially I have a bed with cabbage and peas/beans at the moment (BED 1).  Once the beans and peas are dont late winter I am guessing, I will take advantage of the nitrogen the beans and peas have pumped INTO the soil and plant more brassicas (cabbage and broc etc).  The beans and peas will then move to Bed 3 which at the moment is not really being used but for some lettuce at times.  Bed 2 is my root bed.  I have sown carrots, swedes, leaks and some garlic bulbs and they have already sprouted.  I'll also plant Onions in there in winter.  When the current Bed2 is harvested the peas and beans will move in and so the cycle goes.

I'll probably invest in an extra bed at some point but walk before run I say....

Bed 1 is looking pretty good.  Planted and sown late Jan I already have beans!




Bed 2 Was sown about 2 weeks ago and the root veges have sprouted already:

Bed 3 - well maybe another time :P

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Heat Tube Solar Hot Water System

I had my new SHW system installed yesterday.  It was done under the QLD gov scheme (three days before the fedral gov annouced they were reducing the rebate which the qld gov scheme relied on but looks like i'm in the clear and will get the full rebate).  Anyway, the system is a 30 tube evacuated tube split system.  It replaces my aged electric system.  It still worked fine but probably would need replacing in the next 5 years so now was a good time to jump to it.  Out of pocket it cost be about $900 i think.  The full system cost was somewhere in the $3000+ range.  Here some before and after shots:

The old tank:



The new tank:

 For the amount of pipework and cabling etc, i thought it looked pretty clean.  I need to pretty up the electrical cabling a little with some conduit as it's too exposed for my liking.  I've also had to put some barriers up as the dog chewed up some bits and pieces of the old one when we first moved in.  Dont want that happening again.

Some before and after shots of the collectors:

The roof area
 

The frame and manifold:
 

 

The heat pipes installed:


The heat pipes are sealed and simply plug into the manifold.  The tubes are made of something like Pyrex glass.  Are evacuated and inside there is another tube that has the heat transfer liquid or gas.  There's two sensors; one in the bottom of the tank and one on the collectors.  If the water needs heating, the controller checks if the collectors are 6 deg C above the tank temp and starts pumping the water through the manifold.  If not then it uses the mains booster to heat it.  We currently have the night rate tariff (12am to 7am) so it will only boost between those times.  I have a remote boost switch in the laundry which allows me to turn off the boost completely and that's how it will be a much as possible.  There is also an airvent on the outlet of the manifold that is supposed to reduce any gurgling from the system.

At about 3:30pm on install day the roof sensor read 140 deg C.  At 8:30am the next day it was 120 deg C

We had no hot water obviously the night of install and I left the boost switch on to boost overnight.  I got up at 3:30am to put the cat away and saw the boost light was not on.  My first thought was a wiring problem.  I checked the meter box and the night rate controller was in the ON position, but I found the HW mains breaker was still OFF.  The installers had unfortunately forgotten to switch it back on when leaving.  The few hours from then to waking up did the trick and we have hot water.

Some close ups of the plumbing and the controller:


EDIT:  15 March 2010 - After weeks of rain and a few sunny days I discovered the system was not actually working properly.  Two sunny days in a row would see roof temps of 150 deg C and inlet and return pipes that were cool to the touch.  The problem was that the pump was in backwards.  Strange that there were no direction arrows on the pump but at least it was an easy fix.  A colleague loaned me some temp sensor loggers and after the fix here is the data log.  BLUE is the solar water return from the collector and the RED is the feed from the inlet to the roof.

Saturday, February 20, 2010

Solar Lights - Nice

So my local bunnings (hardware store) had a great deal on a set of 10 solar garden light for $20.  Even the nicad AA batts are more than $2 a unit to buy so this was a great deal.  And whats more they look great.  So i went and bought 2 more boxes and 1 for my mum in law.  Taking a picture at night is not so easy but here ya go...





I bought a set of 12v dc halogen spike lights late last year but so far have not really got them here i want them or usuable.

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Veges by Chance

The previous owner of our house had some vege plants growing at some point I believe because out of no where came this bean plant back in Dec 2004.



Beans tasted great.  Nothing like eating some fresh raw beans.  I knew nothing about vege growing back then.  I didn't know about legumes and nitrogen and all that.  I do now and I've sown a few dwarf beans that have come up. I'm looking forward to eating them.

Friday, February 5, 2010

The Story So Far....

The point of this blog is to chronicle my learnings in getting my backyard in order and the ulitmate decision to build a productive vege garden.  If someone out there gets some useful information out of it or has some to share with me via comments then all the better.  The yard has been through a few iterations since 2004 so there is some history that I want to share.  'Tis a long story, so best if you go make a cuppa, settle in and read on...

The Beginning....
In 2004, we bought our new house.  It is an ex-display home in the Logan (southern Brisbane area) suburb of Underwood.  It is a big low set house on a relatively small block.  Our backyard is best described as a medium to large size courtyard.  It's sheltered by a fence-line of tall Jasmine, a 3 metre rock retaining wall and the house itself.  It gets summer sun but in the winter the sun is too low behind the hedge.  The front yard slope quite sharply and unless I terrace it (which I will one day), it is not that usable or manageable.









Hedge your bets
One of the features that attracted me to the house were the beautiful hedges.  For what landscaping the front had, they looked good.  Out the back it was hedge heaven.  When we bought the house the owner had done some nice work to the back yard area and it looked great.  With an inground irrigation system it was even going to be easy to look after and I was going to get some good workouts on the hedge trimmer.



Drought
If you are from eastern Australia you'll know that from about 2005 to 2009 we had water severe water shortages and restrictions such that you could not water outside.  In those years the state government subsidised the installation of rainwater tanks.  Though I missed out on the rebates I have two 3000 litre tanks and a 1000 litre tank in my back yard.  I removed some hedges near the house to do this and changed the planned position of the tanks many times (but that's another post).



Anyway those years of drought and a 35kg German Shepherd traipsing all over the backyard, and it was clearly becoming more or less a dust bowl out there.  In winter part of the grass doesn't get enough sun and other areas the clay soil was so compacted aerating was almost impossible even after the rains.  I tried various things including sowing lawn seed etc but they results were only temporary.  It was just not working out.  We wanted a nice backyard we could sit and enjoy or as it turned out, have it producing for us.



The Solution
Trying to grow grass all year round is pretty much pointless so i decided firstly to put in a raised sleeper bed along the rock wall.  What i would plant i didn't know...but i knew I wanted to get rid of the bare dusty soil.  Here how it looked before planting out:



From this point I planted out the bed and got some good fruit off it.  As my interest in this grew I decided to establish two more beds on the other areas were grass would not grow.  This is a work in progress and pretty much brings us to the present day and I'll cover all that in more detail in other posts.