Green Dreaming

What will the coastline look like in the future?

2012-11-13T20:58:00.002+10:00

Many highly populated areas are now directly adjacent to the coastline or in very close proximity to the coast. This is lovely for those that get to live with lovely views of the ocean or live there because of proximity to trade routes or similar.

However, with climate change and sea level rise there are likely to be significant consequences for all those people that live near the coast. Not only are people going to be directly affected with houses being inundated, but much of our society's infrastructure is located in close proximity to these areas and will likely have significant challenges because of these environmental issues.

(Source: The Guardian)

In light of these significant impacts that will be faced by millions of people, I cannot see anything but gloom for coastal environments and coastal processes that remain intact nearby these large human populations.

Do you think governments will stand by the ecological value of the community of mangroves or salt marshes when the people that live behind them face imminent inundation and furthermore the government could take the easy option for these people through the construction of a seawall or similar?

I feel so pessimistic about this. My professional world is immersed in this reality based economic development sector and I can't see the broader community supporting the retreat of communities (and protecting the coastal environments) over the "easier" solution of building walls and providing coastal engineering solutions (due to the externalities associated with these strategies).

I would love to hear your opinion about this and perhaps lift my mood about this. Perhaps you have some of the picture that I have forgotten to consider in the first place.

Salesman's worse nightmare

2012-11-11T14:53:00.005+10:00

I am in the market for a new fridge/freezer and a chest freezer. We have had the main house fridge/freezer for about 10 years and it is still kicking along quite nicely with the exception of the seal but with the improvements in technology I see a lot of merit in upgrading our refrigeration situation.

Benefits primarily relate to the improved electrical efficiencies that the new model refrigerators have experienced in recent years, which will in turn help out my hip pocket (cheaper electricity bills)!

So after some research on the government's efficient efficiency appliance website, calculation on size requirements, preparation of my list of possibilities, cut out a size guide for some of the larger items I plan on storing in the fridge/freezer, I have started to visit some of the shops that sell these appliances.

Since I started this process a couple of weeks ago, all I can say is that I am highly disappointed with the attitude of sale persons and the stocked range of fridge/freezers (brands) that the I have experienced so far.

It must be said that I haven't visited some of the bigger chains yet, as where I live these two stores are currently in sales/moving mode and I can't bear to think of going to these places with a whole bunch of sale driven customers added into the mix.

But nevertheless, the stores that I have been to so far either:

showed me products that weren't in my list because they aren't energy efficient, but was told by the salesperson that I would love them because of the technological features they supported (I mentioned that one of my criteria was that it had to be energy efficient) - ice dispensers in the door and a tricky little door that opened so that I could get the milk out of the door without opening the entire door; or
considered me a bit of a disappointment as a potential customer (well that was the impression I got) and was just told the star ratings had change several times over the years and the kWh give you an idea of how much the fridge would cost me to run per year. After thinking about this for a little bit, I just think I was a disappointment because he wouldn't be able to upsell some random product or feature to me.

As you my expect from this post, I haven't bought any of my required appliances yet, but at least have ruled out two stores in my purchase process.

The thing that surprises me most about this process is the number of brands and models that are being sold by appliance stores that aren't energy efficient and sales peoples' attitude/lack of information to be able to respond to queries about energy efficient appliances and the amount of personal effort I have to go to to know the energy efficient models and time to go to the variety of appliance stores to even find the models. Hope this all changes in the future and these energy efficient appliances are easy to come by and sales people become well armed with the "right" information!

Turmeric

2012-07-21T20:32:00.001+10:00

Some time last year a friend of mine from my permaculture group gave me a couple of tubers of turmeric. She had grown this in her garden and had a bountiful year and plenty to share. Prior to this, I had no experience with this plant and as such said I would give it a go but in a confined space so that it couldn't get out of control and establish in my garden without my explicit permission.

My next question to my friend was, what do I do with it? Then, how does it grow and what special things do I need to do to keep it alive? The answers were, it's simple, put it in the ground and watch it grow, you harvest it once the plant dies back next winter.

Well, that doesn't sound very hard!

So my trial is now complete, I placed my two tubers in the ground. I had a 'orange' and 'normal' turmeric tuber and placed each in a separate styro-foam box with potting mix, then covered the soil with hay. A few weeks on and I was cooking with gas, well actually I finally had a sprout poking its little snout out of the soil. Then a few weeks later some leaves and eventually a leafy green plant that didn't have to be watered more than fell out of the sky! How simple.

Here are a couple of in progress photos.

About a month ago the plants started to die back. Remembering the conversation about harvesting once this started to happen, I wondered how difficult this harvest and processing would be. Turns out, the harvesting process is just as simple as growing these things. I snapped off the plant or remnants of and dug around in the soil with my hands for the tubers and voila a whole bucket load of turmeric for my greatest cooking delight (I think).

I think I got about 1.5kgs of tubers from the two small nodes that I planted last year.

I reckon the hardest part to this whole plant is knowing what to do with once you harvest it. From my internet reading I understand that you can use it just as you would do ginger in Asian cooking.

Considering the amount of turmeric I have, I have already planted a nodule of each of the two types of turmeric back into a styro-foam box for next year's harvest. I also have plans to share some of my produce with the permaculture group next month.

If you have any recipes that use turmeric that you'd care to share I'll happily try them out, so that I can use up some of this turmeric.

Climate Science and Environment should be in the Queensland education system

2012-07-19T19:25:00.002+10:00

(Source: Australian Geographic)

According to the change.org website, the LNP has passed a motion in the Queensland Parliament to remove 'environmental education' and 'climate science' from the Queensland education system. Oh my goodness, is all that I can say!

This is ridiculous and as one science education commentator said this week this means that climate change denial is rife in the LNP and they are treating this scientific information as a 'belief system'.

Please feel free to join science educators and supporters, in their action to ignore this governmental policy and bring scientific understanding and investigation back to the classroom, by signing the petition at change.org.

Chicken update

2012-07-15T20:39:00.003+10:00

We have had the chickens two weeks now and they have changed so much in this short period of time. They have almost overwhelmed their small inside cage and have been happily testing out their chicken tractor during the day out on the front deck. They enjoy short bouts of weed pecking and scratching around this bigger space. The space also means that they aren't inundating their water with sawdust within seconds of it being replaced.

I am starting to wonder whether Cheeky might be a rooster. She/he has always had a larger comb than the other two and is certainly larger than the other two. We will just have to wait and see. At the opposite end of the spectrum, Socks is the smallest of the group, but seems to be coping well.

Hope the chickens are enjoying their time with us as much as we are enjoying their company.

How to let your neighbours know you're a greenie?

2012-07-12T20:09:00.003+10:00

Over the last 12 months there has been a lot of talk about no-dig gardens. What trips me up is the need to source all the materials to make a no-dig garden. No-dig gardens just seem to have so many ingredients, when you can just call up a compost or landscaping place and they will dump a whole bunch of 'soil' at your front door. Convenience strikes again!

I haven't given up completely on the idea of creating my 'perfect' veggie patch through a no dig process and due to a number of recent random events in my life I am starting to think it might even be possible. However, the no-dig garden still needs all of those ingredients and perhaps the biggest sticking point is the current lack of compost in my life! Now compost doesn't just appear over night, you have to work at it, love it, feed it......and maybe, just maybe you might be rewarded with some 'black gold'.

When we moved in to our new place, I did rush out and buy the biggest and nastiest black compost bin I could find at our local green & red hardware store. I put it in a place I thought would be accessible and convenient, with the idea that I would be making buckets loads of compost by the time I was thinking about building the veggie patches. Well, 12 months on and I have decided that the bin is in the completely wrong spot and its location doesn't allow me to turn the ingredients to aerate them. Also, I think perhaps the type of bin I bought (a flat pack square one) is probably not strong enough to take a good turning.

Anyway, I will continue with my bin choice, but I have moved it and its current ingredients to a new location. The move brought ingredient aeration and some realisation that I don't have enough green materials (nitrogen) going into my compost bin (because the worm farm is hogging them). So this is where my neighbours find out that they have a hippie in their midst!

With the amount of green waste being utilised in my worm farm and the lack of established veggie patch to "feed" the compost bin, where am I to get this green material from? Work colleagues seem to be a little "special" when it comes to separating suitable lunch scraps and don't actually seem to have that many (or least not placed appropriately into the designated bucket in the lunch room).

So, where am I to get this stuff from? My greenie and recycling streak re-surfaced and I came up with a grand plan. Through a little initiative of mine, I am hoping my neighbours will be the source of all my required 'green materials'. How is this going to happen? Well, I have put together a flyer, that I have so far dropped into 50% of my street's letterboxes, requesting my neighbours be so kind as to drop their kitchen green scraps into a "bin" that I have conveniently placed at my front gate.

(Source: World Changing Seattle)

I wonder if this plan will be successful? Once the rain eases I will do the rest of my neighbourhood letterbox drop and see whether this strategy reaps any rewards!

Queensland University of Technology food seasonality/growing survey

2012-07-11T20:22:00.003+10:00

I just received the Northey Street community garden email newsletter and within it there was a request to participate in a short survey for a QUT organised research program. If you have less than 10 mins to spare and you have an interest in growing your own food or knowing about what fresh food is in season, take the time to participate in this survey. The survey is at: http://tinyurl.com/SeasonalitySurvey.

If you'd like more information about the research and/or the researchers here is some basic information from the Northey Street newsletter and contact details of the principal researcher.

"SURVEY: Your Experience with growing and harvesting food
As part of ongoing research at QUT, Peter Lyle (a Northey Street volunteer) and his supervisors Dr Jaz Choi and Assoc Prof Marcus Foth are investigating ways of designing technology to provide useful and engaging information on the seasonality of food. We would really appreciate it if you could take the time to fill in this 15 minute survey about your experience with growing and harvesting food, and any information you have access to through IT that may have helped proven helpful. For more information on the project please go to http://www.urbaninformatics.net/projects/food/ or contact Peter Lyle at p.lyle@qut.edu.au".

The chaos I came home to!

2012-07-09T20:34:00.004+10:00

Hi ho hi ho its off to work I go and by the time I got home this afternoon the house seemed to have regressed into some sort of chaotic parallel universe!

I returned home after nine hours at work and find that my driveway is almost completely blocked with a massive pile of palm tree mulch. Sure I should be happy about this a gigantic pile of mulch (as tall as me and probably three standard car lengths long) but the access into our carport is nearly blocked. Not such a big deal one might say but the other half spent did spend about forty-five minutes this afternoon clearing out a flat enough section in the mulch pile so that he could four-wheel drive over it to get his car out from behind this pile. All this drama just because the dumper of the mulch was too slack to listen to instructions, which required them to open a gate and then dump the excessive amount of palm mulch next to an existing pile of mulch in a location that wouldn't create such inconvenience.

So this is my first 'shock'! The next was the realisation that this large pile of mulch was smothering my just fruiting snow peas! Now this nearly floored me and certainly I had to restrain myself from screaming down the pathway to my other half to explain or justify why I shouldn't be strangling someone. This fabulous pile of much was soon to be killing off my fine, organic, locally obtained snow peas grown from seed, in a newly cleaned out garden bed, with the newly grown fruit easily accessible to my food-fussy toddler (who will eat these off the bush) and I am not very impressed!

I managed to restrain myself from screaming like a banshee about this, but the next thing that struck me was my withered and chewed brightly blooming grafted Eucalypt ($50). As I struggled through the front gate whilst trying not to step on my bottom lip, the tree appeared to have either been attacked by a lawn mower or a more likely explanation a dog's mouth. From the damage, I certainly suspect it was one of my dogs! Basically they have chewed off the top of the tree in frustration probably whilst feeling frustrated at my other half ignoring their barking whilst he over at the neighbours' negotiating a bargain on the large pile of palm mulch that now is residing in my driveway!

This palm mulch had better be the best damn weed-suppressing mulch ever - that's all I've got to say!

(Source: Backyard Poultry)

Chickens have arrived

2012-07-08T07:42:00.001+10:00

Last weekend I went to a local produce barn to buy some dog food and like a kid in a candy store was so excited to see the chickens they had. They sell a lot of 'point of lay' chickens, which are chickens that you basically buy and once they have settled into their new 'digs' they will start to lay. However, this produce barn also sells 'day old' chickens that are 80% guaranteed to be females and therefore egg producers and not wake the neighbours in the morning. And last weekend they seemed to be teeming with baby chicks and true to form being so adorable (sucked me in)!

I was with my toddler and my other half was at a conference. So being like a possessed person I rapidly sent off a text message stating that the produce store was about to close and if he approved could I buy some of these day old chicks now, otherwise he would have to wait until Monday to get some. I mean, it wasn't like we had spoken over breakfast and mentioned that I would be getting chickens that day, nor discussed it during the week to make sure we had all the right facilities to have these new chicks. No. Their cuteness took over and I needed them.

The approval came back and I purchased three Australorp chickens. Why Australorps you might say, as Rhode Island Reds are quite a common purchase for backyard egg producers? Cuteness once again. I love the Australorps, I think they are a very attractive bird even as an adult - they are all black with bright red contrasting combs. Beautiful.....so once again, decision was only skin (or should I say feather) deep.

Anyway, got the three chicks home with some additional paraphernalia, such sawdust, chook food and some water dispensers and set them up in an old cage that I had from my wildlife caring days. I then madly sent off another text message to the other half again and insisted he get a heat lamp on the way home and voila three baby chicks growing rapidly at our house.

We have had them a week now and they have been named by my toddler, with some assistance. We have 'Cheeky', 'Peckish' and 'Socks'. They certainly have grown over the week and I have noted a significant change in food consumption, even within the first twenty four hours.

I am also amazed at the innate behaviour that they demonstrate. We have taken them outside a couple of times to enrich their environment and let them experience dirt and weeds (which I will be getting them to work on when they are a little older) and they just instantaneously starting scratching in the bark and pecking at weeds, etc. They also happily consumed three worms between them the first time they were outside. It was hilarious to watch them with these worms, it was just like a Three Stooges skit.

One week on, no regrets and our three little chicks are starting to show signs of their egg-producing adult selves, with little tail feather shafts being now visible and wing feathers being quite prominent. They haven't lost their cuteness yet and we are hoping that we aren't smothering them with love.

What an adventure this is for a city girl and I'm loving it.

Countries with carbon taxes around the world

2012-07-02T07:22:00.004+10:00

(Source: Indian Link)

I just found there are far more countries around the world that already have carbon taxes in place than I realised. It is absolutely astounding the number of countries that have such schemes/legislation already in place and to hear our politicans (particularly opposition) and large companies whinging about how our carbon tax will be detrimental to our economy is astounding when most of the countries with their schemes in place certainly not blaming their carbon tax for any economic woes.

Have a look at the SBS website (scroll down to the bottom of the article) showing the countries that have "carbon tax schemes" already in place.

Carbon Tax starts tomorrow

2012-06-30T18:16:00.004+10:00

The world will continue with the carbon tax, my strawberry farmer neighbour and his sign "families can not afford the carbon tax" will continue to farm and the sign to rust into the ground (yipppeeee) and I will be happy to see a price on carbon. Sure this will see an increase in prices and greedy businesses passing this tax on to their consumers, but there will be a recognition for the environment in the economics of business and we may start to make some realistic decisions about what we should and should not invest in.

The environment should not be an externality but something that is costed within prices and this is what the carbon price is about.

I enjoyed reading "Greening of Gavin" blog's post on this topic. Go and have a read and maybe you might also see some light at the end of the tunnel too!

Changes to QLD Feed-in tariff

2012-06-27T20:39:00.002+10:00

The Queensland State Government has announced that they will be reducing the feed-in tariff rate for solar energy produced from residential houses from 44 cents per kilowatt hour (kwh) to 8 c/kwh. This change to the tariff will occur after the 9 July 2012, but those already receiving the 44c/kwh feed-in tariff will continue as long as you still meet the relevant eligibility criteria.

A State Government factsheet is available at: http://www.cleanenergy.qld.gov.au/demand-side/solar-bonus-scheme.htm

This change will have a significant impact on the amount of income that a house can potentially generate in the future and also reduce the incentives for families to invest in this technology. Hopefully the investment that the residential sector has generated over the last few years will have brought the cost of solar panels to reasonable level and still provide enough incentive for families to continue to think of this renewable source of power as a reasonable alternative to traditional non-renewable sources of power.

Commonwealth Marine Park Estate

2012-06-26T21:04:00.001+10:00

The Labour government has just this month promised to increase Australia's marine protected area estate. This initiative will see the Commonwealth marine parks increase from 27 to 60 throughout national waters and represents 3.1 million square kilometres. Can you even imagine?

The national marine park estate will include:

parts of the Coral Sea;
the south-west marine region extending from the western end of Kangaroo Island in South Australia to Shark Bay in Western Australia;
the temperate east marine region running between the southern end of the Great Barrier Reef to Bermagui in New South Wales and includes Lord Howe and Norfolk Islands' marine areas;
the north marine region including the Commonwealth waters of Gulf of Carpentaria, Arafaru Sea and Timor Sea up to the border between the Northern Territory and Western Australia; and
the north-west marine area proposed to stretch from the Western Australia/Northern Territory Border down to Kalbarri, south of Shark Bay.

This represents a massive milestone in terms of environmental protection for Commonwealth marine waters. Detailed information about these marine reserves areas, including mapping and regulatory proposals can be found on the Department of Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities website.

The final push on this government policy will soon be available with the government seeking public comment on whether this proposal should or should not go ahead. Presently, their website just states this comment will be sought in the near future. If you want to keep tabs on when this public comment period is available keep an eye on the following website: http://www.environment.gov.au/coasts/mbp/reserves/comments.html .

Save electricity

2012-06-24T14:37:00.003+10:00

Turn your microwave off at the wall.

Sure you won't have the clock function but did you know that your microwave will actually use more energy to run the clock than the energy used to cook or defrost the food. I'm sure this is dependent on how much you actually use your microwave, but I would assume most of us don't use our microwaves to cook every meal and as such believe that it is likely that this statement is probably true.

Google view can go anywhere

2012-06-20T21:03:00.003+10:00

On Treehugger's website there is an article about the Google group now having the capability to capture "Street View" in areas that don't have roads. Now you can check out all sorts of places from the comfort of your own lounge chair.

I'm not sure this is a step forward for the human species. In the future I fear there will be no exploration available for one to undertake in their own life and imagination will be a thing of the past.

Have a look at the full article at: http://www.treehugger.com/clean-technology/google-trekker.html

Here is my possum drey

2012-06-15T21:25:00.001+10:00

After my post on how to make a ringtail possum nest I thought I would give it a go. Went to my local hardware store and picked up two hanging baskets for less than $10 (this included the coconut fibre inserts). I then connected these together using zip toes, cut a hole in the fibre in the bottom section of the basket to allow an entrance and removed one of the hanging chains. All this in less than half an hour.

I have now hung this in a tree in my front yard and hope to have some new tenants in the near future.

One thing I think I will modify in the near future is to add an additional smallish hole on the opposite side to the existing entrance. This will allow any inhabitants to escape any unwanted guests, such as an interested snake.

This is such an easy way to create additional fauna habitat in your very own backyard!

Human-induced climate change

2012-06-13T20:45:00.002+10:00

I just bumped into an interesting article on the Skeptical Science website entitled "10 indicators of a human fingerprint on climate change".

I think the last paragraph is great and provides a bit of perspective for non-scientists about science and climate modelling. I thought I would share it with you all.

"Science isn't a house of cards, ready to topple if you remove one line of evidence. Instead, it's like a jigsaw puzzle. As the body of evidence builds, we get a clearer picture of what's driving our climate. We now have many lines of evidence all pointing to a single, consistent answer - the main driver of global warming is rising carbon dioxide levels from our fossil fuel burning."

Food for thought.

Ringtail possum nest

2012-06-10T20:39:00.004+10:00

I was just looking at the Hollow Log Home (HLH) web page because I would like to invest in some nest boxes to put around our property to encourage some new wildlife opportunities. There are currently no significant hollows in any of the trees on our property and having roosting and nesting opportunities for native wildlife would be excellent.

On the HLH page they have some great suggestions for creating nesting/roosting opportunities out of regular household items for some of our more common native wildlife. Have a look at the first link page on the following webpage: http://hollowloghomes.com/DOCS.html. The link is a pdf document and explains how you can create nesting opportunities for brush-tail and ringtail possums and microbats out of regular gardening/household objects. What a great idea!

The one I thought I could easily create, and I have done so in my days as a wildlife carer, is the ringtail possum "drey", which can be made out of two wire hanging baskets. I will have to compare the costings of these items at my local hardware store to those of purchasing a "proper" nest box for these creatures from somewhere such as HLH.

(Source: My Growing Passion)

Great initiative and some suggestions that we could all follow.

Breadmaker!

2012-06-09T19:18:00.000+10:00

I had my birthday this week and got a fabulous present...a breadmaker! How exciting to be able to wake up to fresh bread each morning. My new present is a programmable version, which can make all manner of bread types, including white, wholemeal, seeded, rye and brioche. It is even capable of making jams, compotes and some cakes.

I have made one loaf of white bread so far, which was delicious and consumed in just 24 hours! I will be a little more adventurous later this week, once the family has consumed all of the store bought bread in the house! Don't want to be wasteful now.

I would also like to try and get some sourdough yeast, instead of the dry packet yeast, but I think this will have to wait until I am a little more confident with the bread cooking process. Let the experimenting begin!

World Environment Day

2012-06-06T21:23:00.002+10:00

Yesterday was World Environment Day and I'm sorry that I didn't get a chance to write before or on the day, but I am interested to hear what you got up to.

The theme this year was 'greening your local economy', and in the consumptive phase that our communities seem to be obsessed with at the moment, this is a great one to attract the more mainstream community to join in and become more aware of the environment and the impact each of us have upon it.

To celebrate this day, and particularly the theme, I decided I would encourage a bit of a socialisation in my office and hold a tea-tasting event. You may wonder what this has to do with either World Environment Day or the green economy theme. Well, all teas I purchased for the day were teas produced or owned by companies in my local area. In addition to this, I asked participants for a gold coin donation, with the proceeds to be donated to a local wildlife caring group run by volunteers and which my work requests assistance from occasionally.

Great way to get together over a cup of herbal tea and chat about the environment!

Solar hot water system...bit of boosting!

2012-05-31T18:33:00.002+10:00

Late last year we installed an evacuated tube solar hot water system. I have found the system we installed awesome to date!

Site-specific features of our system include:

having the system mounted on a north-facing rack. This ensures the system works to its maximum potential, particularly during the winter months.
a booster when the system doesn't achieve adequate heat through the roof mounted system. For our system we chose to have a mains electricity booster.
having my booster attached to an overnight tariff.

The last couple of weeks have brought me some awareness to weather conditions that will challenge the solar component of my system. In the last two weeks we have had overcast weather, with occasional showers. In addition to this inclement weather, we are now entering winter where the sun is positioned further in the north in the sky during the day. All of these factors contribute to lower efficiency in all solar systems, when compared to these systems' performance during prime summer sun positions and certainly has resulted in some diminished performance of my system.

As a result of this cooler, wetter and gloomier weather the water tank that stores my hot water did not maintain a temperature much over 23 degrees. As a result, morning showers were a little cooler than one would consider comfortable and a little shorter than usual (good though for the water level in our rain water tank). But thanks to the boosting system, we flicked the switch and by the time we woke up the next morning we were back to a stable hot water tank temperature of 65 degrees.

This one night of boosting was adequate and the next day I turned the booster off and the roof mounted tubes managed to kick into doing their job for the rest of the week due to some sunny weather.

Another cool book club

2012-05-29T19:53:00.003+10:00

I have just bumped into the very technological savvy Royal Institution of Australia. This seems to be a powerful source of useful scientific information available to the general public and includes many fantastic resources, with many of them being online.

One of their fantastic initiatives is their book club. Unfortunately, I don't think this is online, but for those in Adelaide you can regularly go along to the Science Exchange to participate in these book club sessions. For those of us not in Adelaide, the RIAus website (past events) lists the books to be discussed each session and this provides us all an opportunity to seek out some great science reads.

Quote from Jim Hightower - a way forward

2012-05-28T20:24:00.004+10:00

I just listened to an interview with Jim Hightower, a fomer Texan (USA) politician, and found some of his principles very interesting. Some of political positions would traditionally be considered opposed to my current political views. However, Jim proposes many sensible ideas and considers bringing people together by linking them with issues of commonality.

Here is one of Jim's quotes from the interview describing his political position.

"...fairness, justice and opportunity...."

I certainly believe if all of our politicians framed their policies in this manner our communities and businesses would all be better off and there might be some holistic consideration of our environment.

I say, bring forth sensible people in politics and positions of power.

More weeds in the yard!

2012-05-27T20:41:00.005+10:00

Since we have been in our place nearly a year it was time to tackle some of the larger tasks we have been putting off. Chainsaw in hand, a number of umbrella trees and African Tulip trees were in our sights. These two species are weeds here in south-east Queensland. They are quickly spread throughout the environment by our lovely native birds, which eat their seeds and fly elsewhere poop out the seed and voila a new tree sprouts! Basically, these species have the ability to out-compete our native tree species, through quick establishment, prolific seeders and lots of helpful native birds assisting their movement.

We removed three semi-mature African tulip trees and about five umbrella trees from the bottom of one of our paddocks. All we did was chop them off at the base and pile the top half of these trees in a big pile (will chip later). We will then monitor these stumps for re-growth and if required undertake some additional treatment (maybe salt).

Here are some piccies of these two offending weeds.

African Tulip Tree

Umbrella Tree

In addition, to chain-sawing the trees out, I choose to remove a small patch (about 5m x 1.5m) of broad-leaf paspalum. This is a shade-tolerant, non-native, hardy grass species, which out-competes many of our native grasses. I employed the assistance of a fork and just loosened the soil around the base of each individual outcrop and removed them to the domestic waste bin once out of the ground. I did this action about three weeks ago and so far no new outcrops of this grass have sprung up in the area of 'treatment'.

Broad-leaf Paspalum

Hope these treatment options hold and with my revegetation money I will look to establish a bit of a native cover crop/midstorey to replace these weed species and provide some additional protection for my overstorey eucalypts.

Success!

2012-05-25T19:14:00.002+10:00

Recently I applied for funding to my local council as part of their Landholder Environment Grant initiative. The Council received hundreds of application and awarded over $300,000 in grants. The big activities in my proposal were weed management works and revegetation activities.

Due to the number of applicants most proposals were not fully funded, which was the case for my application. However, I was successful in securing $650! Woo hoo! Council has specified this money is to be spent on 250 native species tubestock and 50 bales of straw mulch, as outlined in my proposal.

250 native tubestock won't go far in revegetating the southern paddock on my property, but I certainly consider that all contributions will go a long way to making things happen.

Last night, I have forwarded a species list to my local Bushcare nursery to request a stocking rate estimation for each of the species I have proposed and request what sort of timeframe they could supply these tubestock to me. Once this information is in hand, I will be able to plan my planting day!

So exciting! So as they say, you've got to be in it to win it and let the fun begin!

I will post photos as we go through the process and hopefully it will inspire you to either apply for a grant to undertake something you've been meaning to do at your place or alternatively just think about what native plantings would suit your block.