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Nutrient Flow and Chicken Coops
Siting your Chicken Coop in your backyard may be no big deal, but to place it at the highest point of your garden – well isn’t that usually reserved for your house as the premier spot? Not necessarily so if you talk with Permaculture teacher Geoff Lawton. The Problem Recently whilst filming the Urban Permaculture DVD we came across a home with already an established garden and a chicken coop on the highest point of the slope. The chicken coop was positioned higher than the main house. The garden separated the gap between the home...
read moreGoing Vertical with Aquaponics
If you decide to get into Aquaponics, sooner or later you are going to realize that your grow beds that you originally thought were too big to go into that tiny confined courtyard space have now made a liar of you. The plants are taking over the place and you are slowly running out of valuable space! They call it “the madness” in Aquaponics – when you suddenly realize that your need more and more space to grow more and more fish and plants because Aquaponics by its nature is Rampant! Plants go berserk once they they...
read moreDo Fish Feel Pain?
Recently while moving some smaller Jade Perch into a larger tank stocked with a few bigger Barramundi, I noticed one of the larger Barramundi swallow the smaller Jade Perch so only the head was sticking out of it’s jaws. The Barramundi wasn’t large enough to eat the smaller fish but kept him wedged snugly in his mouth for some time. Eventually the barramundi released the smaller fish. The smaller Jade was found dead on the bottom of the tank the next day. A careful examination revealed that the fish was healthy despite a tiny...
read moreThe Chicken Tunnel Man
While filming a segment on backyard chickens, we came across a novel approach to improving your garden beds when we visited the garden of Bruce Morgan in Nambour, Queensland. Bruce has been doing Permaculture now for many years and has even taught the “pros” a thing or two over the years. A builder by trade, Bruce has managed to build an impressive terraced garden with a little ingenuity. You see, Bruce has created a modular system where he links a series of wired chicken “tunnels” together to direct his chickens to...
read moreSchool Gardens – Tidy or Rampant?
For most school principals its a daunting task to allow a Permaculture Garden Designer into the school yard – let alone let them redesign the school backyard along with the crazy ideas of Primary School kids calling the shots and taking an active role in the design process! Schools need to function efficiently after all without all that clutter. School fields should be easy to mow and maintenance should be minimal. That’s the theory. So if you remember what traditional school grounds look like when you were a kid, its a good...
read moreBattery Backup in Aquaponics
One thing most people don’t take into account when running an aquaponics system is – power failure. It often strikes when people least expect it. Many experienced aquaponics people will tell you the following tale. Their system was running perfectly for over a year. The fish were ready to harvest. Around Christmas, relatives came to visit and over the course of the day, the kids were looking at the fish and one of the children pulled the power cord out of the mains that was supplying the main pump in the aquaponics system. No one...
read moreFrank Fekonia
Very sad to hear yesterday the passing of a true legend and active member of Permaculture Noosa – Frank Fekonia. Husband to Elisabeth, Frank was a true maverick character who told me how he escaped from communist Slovania in the early 1960’s by stealing a canoe and paddling night and day for the shores of Italy. Exhausted by the journey, he was picked up by Italian fisherman when he tumbled into the water off the Adriatic Coast. Eventually as a refugee he made it to Australia. A frustrated musician and trumpet player who was more...
read moreSydney Discovers Aquaponics!
Get ready Sydney as Aquaponics is about to rock your town! One Day only! The one day workshop with Dr Wilson Lennard, one of the world’s leading scientific experts on Aquaponics will be flanked by SBS-TV Gardening Guru Costa Georgiadis and our own Murray Hallam. You all know Murray Hallam of course, an experienced Aquaponics Kit manufacturer and presenter of all those great Aquaponics DVDs that we make at Ecofilms. This rare event is scheduled to be held on Sunday 17th April at the CASULA POWERHOUSE Liverpool, Sydney from 8am till 5pm....
read moreDIY Aquaponics DVD Now Shipping
Just ripped open the first box of Murray Hallam’s DIY Aquaponics DVD carton box and I just wanted to inform everyone who has pre-ordered their copy (and the response has been phenomenal) that your orders will now commence shipping over the next few days! People in Australia will get their orders first followed by the US in the next few weeks or so. We’ve encoded this DVD in NTSC so it will play fine on your TV DVD players both here in Australia and the US. Its become apparent to me that people really want to know how to do this AP...
read moreAre you supplying enough Nutrients?
Getting lush green growth from your Aquaponics system should be easy. In most home systems it is, but how do you know that your plants are getting all the nutrients they need from the things you add into your aquaponics system? The plants may look okay but how can you tell for sure that they are getting everything they need? Some people will tell you that they don’t add anything other than fish pellets into a system. But are fish pellets enough to grow healthy fish and thriving plants? Well according to Dr Jim Rakocy a leading...
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