Now seeing as my neighbour at home is one of those lovely old ladies who likes to sweep her concrete front yard, backyard and path with a hose, she manages to sweep a load of sediment through onto my side of the fence (thanks!) this combines with the chookpoo from my chook run and chooktractor to flow down into one of my veg beds but I would rather it didn’t quite so directly… “Bing!” (sound of lightbulb inside my head) how about using a “sediment or silt sock” to trap the soil and sand and plant some comfrey in there to harvest the nutrients from it?

Here are some of the key things I like about this concept:

• It gets no love – I don’t water it it gets by on overflows alone
• It captures what I once lost: nutrients and sediment/soil
• It helps protect waterways
• You can move it when you need to
• You don’t have to worry about getting comfrey where you don’t want it as the roots go deeeep! (Which is why comfrey can we awesome but not if you don’t want that)
• When you want to divide up the roots just open the bag – no digging required!
• Harvest whenever you need to make some tea or just chop and drop
• Look at the list, you can plant other things if you want – give it a go and tell us all in the comments how you go

First I tried using an old coffee sack but frankly it was more hassle than I was prepared to get into (especially considering it would rot before the summer was out) so instead I wandered down to the local hardware store where I discovered they were selling the small ones for about $2.75 each. If you want you could make them out of geotextile fabric – I don’t have easy access to a sewing machine so handstitching the off the shelf model it is! You could even use an old green shopping bag as anything that isn’t waterproof that won’t rot too quickly will work.

You will need:

• a sediment sock from your hardware store (or geotextile fabric if you are making your own)
• a sack needle which you will find at a sewing or craft shop
• polyester thread
• sharp scissors
• old potting mix/dirt/gravel/sand remember this is to fill the bag hold it in place don’t waste $ on good soil
• root pieces of comfrey or your chosen accumulator
• Optional: a short length of plastic trellis to act as barrier to grazing animals and also makes for a great handle

Assuming you have opted for an off-the-shelf sediment sock:

Step 1: mark where you want the holes. I made 2 slots for ease of stitching but you could make circles or whatever
Step 2: A quick bit of needlework to create a couple of sealed holes

Choose where you want your plants and make the holes accordingly then sew to prevent fraying.

Step 3: filling. I used old used potting mix with some scraped up sand from the neighbour and poked the plants in as I went. Once you have filled it just use the ties to tie it all off. Don’t overfill as you want a decent length to tie and carry the item once complete

If using plants rather than roots, it’s easiest to stand the sock up and insert the plant material as you get to the right level. Make sure you leave enough space to tie off the end!

Step 4: Cage. This is optional. As I had hungry chooks, they were very happy to have fresh comfrey salad as part of their diet. This didn’t suit the experiment so I just put some plastic trellis around it – this kept them away and also makes for a handy carry handle.

If you are making your own using geotextile bag you are only limited by your imagination and can create something that will fit into whatever space you have where you have nutrient and sediment runoff. Ie. Triangle for a corner.

The before and after pics of an accumulator sock at Timbah Rooftop Garden. Gets maybe an hour sunlight in height of summer

It’s been about 10 months since I deployed my socks and they are doing pretty well and I’d have to say it’s one of my better ideas. As I’ve said you can plant anything you want especially of you have an automatic irrigation system that tends to cause a runoff… So go forth and harvest that escaping goodness!

Really good track from Timbah, a young producer from Sheffield.  “With producers like Sheffield’s Timbah around, no R&B vocals are safe” // XLR8R

I’ve been waiting until I got that Party Mix done to start recording some fresh mixes.. Today I’m extremely bummed out by the sad passing of MCA from the Beastie Boys, so I figured I’d start off with a slightly melancholy, chilled out sort of a mix.

So, this one starts of kind of gentle, synthy & vocal, builds a bit with some percussive tracks, and generally gains momentum until Current Value’s remix of Bjork blasts the cobwebs away.. After that, it winds down again, finishing off with some lush ambience from Desolate & FSOL.

Hopefully you’ll enjoy it – come back soon for something more upfront & dancefloor orientated.

Stream on Mixcloud here

Download from Mediafire here

Tracklisting / Info:

00:00 Chromatics – There’s a Light Out On the Horizon

06:58 Alpines – Tremors (feat. Dark Sky)

12:37 Little Jinder – Keep On Dreaming – The Living Graham Bond Remix

15:22 Lazer Sword – Better From U

18:37 Pearson Sound – Untitled

24:43 West Norwood Cassette Library – Flashlight (Original Mix)

28:19 Tessela – Let Up

32:10 SBTRKT – Laika

36:13 Zomby – Rumours & Revelations

38:40 Hensen – Boss Mei

41:46 Timbah – Cuckoo Clock

45:44 Duct – Blackheath (Fybe:One Remix)

48:34 Benga – 01 I Will Never Change

51:33 iTAL tEK – Phantom

54:22 Photek & Pinch – Acid Reign (Pinchs Dubplate Version)

56:01 Kryptic Minds – The Talisman

58:13 DJG – Here Come The Dark Lights

1:01:18 Kromestar – Outer Limit VIP (feat. Team Starfleet)

1:06:49 Bjork and Current Value – Solstice (Current Value Remix)

1:08:07 Ryat – Howl

1:14:34 Kwes – klee

1:17:18 Gravenhurst – Islands

1:18:24 Desolate – Exclusion Of Light

1:28:00 The Future Sound Of London – The Wheel of Life

As ever, you can access a full archive of my mixes, all for free download from HERE

The first bottle off the production line!

I love worm farms – they illustrate so much of what permaculture is about, or the permaculture principles if you will. In accordance with this, we are using empty bottles from the wine bar and just placing a label over the existing one and replacing the cap – gotta love these newfangled caps!

There were a number of goals I had in mind for this product:

I intend to raise awareness of the garden above Timbah as it is not really talked about much by its owners.

It will also help them to see the value of the garden, the worms, and be able to “obtain a yield” that will help them pay me

In addition, I want this worm wee to have a certain appeal and to make it ‘attractive’- to try and remove some of the stigma that is associated with worm farms and gardening in general. “It’s all natural folks, worms are our friends, they’re not icky!”

A close up of the label. I had fun with the copy as you may be able to tell!

Furthermore, by putting a price on it I am making a statement:

This stuff has value! Almost everyone that eats most likely throws this stuff out. Why not recycle it? If you want to throw it away then you can buy some of this at a premium. We must learn to put a value on nutrients and real food.

The ‘cost of cheap’ and the race to the bottom is going to bite us all on the ass real, hard real soon.

“…nutrient cycling refers to the biodiversity within community food web systems that loop organic nutrients or water supplies back into production.” Wikipedia

You may be familiar with Moby’s track from a few years back titled: “We are all made of stars” which I believe to be a reference to Carl Sagan’s quote:

“The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of star stuff.” 
― Carl Sagan

This brings me back to day one of my recently completed Permaculture Design Certificate course when Nick told us: “There’s no such thing as waste in nature”. As you can see from Sagan above, nature recycles EVERYTHING.

Something else I learned on the PDC was a little less cool and very disturbing. As we humans charge along burning up fossils, mining minerals and metals to achieve our human greatness and “progress” it’s not just oil that has peaked. There are several other valuable minerals vital to our wellbeing that we are using up as fast as we can extract them. We are looking down the barrel of peak minerals such as  phosphorous. It’s not exactly light and happy reading but the takeaway is “make the most of what we have and recycle as much of it as we can.”

The good news is that recycling most of this stuff is easy. You’ve heard of composting, right?

With all this in mind hopefully you can see why Urban GreenSpace is all about nutrient cycling and helping to remind people of the value of natural resources.

When Urban GreenSpace start a new job, we look at the client’s business or home to see what we can do to stem the flow of nutrients and close the loops as best we can. Granted we won’t be able to fully “close the loop” as we realise the shortage of space, the fact people “eat and leave” and that harvesting wee and composting poop isn’t really an option in a commercial food premise or inner city apartment block (although the wee thing is quite doable if you’re a bloke

What we can do is design systems that capture the easy stuff such as food prep waste, coffee grounds, waste paper and compost it.

Another benefit from reducing waste is that it can reduce your garbage bills significantly.

I have previously mentioned yet another good reason to cycle nutrients is that rotting organic waste in landfill produces methane, which is a potent greenhouse gas then there’s the transportation costs and emissions to consider as well as the nutrient loss.

OK enough about the whys, let’s get to the hows and look at an example.

Timbah on a quiet night. Image courtesy of Timeout Sydney

Timbah is a busy wine bar in Glebe. Lately they were recognised as being one of the Top 10 Sydney Bars With Food. Setting up a nutrient cycling system for such a place relies on relationships and systems.

Personally I think that setting up a system like this cannot be done without the head chef being in on the act because their rule is law in the kitchen and they say what comes in and goes out. The boss can say what they like but it’s the head chef that puts everything into place. I have worked hard to build my relationship with head chef, Daphne. She gets what I am aiming for and I really respect her vision as a chef. Together we have worked out a system that works pretty well.

A simplified illustration of the Timbah nutrient cycle. Worms do the hard yards upstairs on the rooftop garden and the chicken picks up the slack.

Nutrient cycling method:

Primary: worms

Secondary: Arrabella the chicken

It comprises of:

3 worm farms

6 worm towers in wicking planters

a chicken

a stick blender

some small buckets with lids

a rubbish bin

helpful and cooperative staff

What it needs to be:

Simple

Systematic

Anything that is an added responsibility for someone in a restaurant (or place of work) needs to be very simple and easy. If it isn’t it won’t stick.

Here is the bucket-in-a-bucket system in situ. Lisa the cook is easily able to channel prep scraps easily into the smaller bucket.

For this system we have decided that it is easiest to capture food prep waste as the primary nutrient cyclers are worms. It’s far easier to sort the right things into the right bin in the quieter mornings in their raw state than it is in the later busy service times when it’s cooked and co-mingled.

When designing your system, consider:

• What organism/s will be doing the heavy lifting (or eating). If you are thinking about black soldier flies as a primary cycler, remember that during winter they are practically dormant so make sure you have a stand-in cycler at the ready

• Food safety. At each stage, the scraps are transferred to a different bucket to avoid cross contamination

• Busy times versus quieter times. When starting out and whilst staff are learning what can and can’t go into the system, it’s far easier to keep it simple and slow. As everyone gets up to speed you can try and process more like plate scrapings for critters other than worms

• Explore offsite options. Is there a regular customer who gardens? Coffee grounds are great for the garden, maybe they have a compost bin or a chicken? Can you fit them into your system? One of my other clients has all of their organic waste (food scraps, napkins, toothpicks etc) taken out to a farm. It wasn’t easy to find a farmer that would accept it all but he found one in the end. (More on this later)

• The outputs: the three worm farms at Timbah produce an immense amount of worm wee. I am currently working with the owners to bottle and sell it as a way of raising awareness of the project and offsetting some of the costs. As it is a winebar there are loads of empty bottles floating around so it makes sense to repurpose them, right? Don’t forget you will be producing worms too so perhaps there are customers who would be happy to buy them as opposed to paying for them in a big box retailer when they’ve been on the shelf for ages. If you choose black soldier flies as a means of nutrient cycling, (through the warmer months) you will have a high quality live protein source that chickens, fish, dogs and cats love to eat and will be able to process high volumes of waste.

Arrabella is Timbah’s fall back nutrient cycler. She gives the chef’s family fresh free-range eggs and manure

In my kitchen-handing days I developed the “bucket-in-a-bucket” system of placing a small bin inside the larger bin so that it was easy to divert food scraps, this system is still in effect. When the scrap bucket is full it is emptied into a sealed bucket that is kept in the cool room. Once or twice a week I come in and take the bucket upstairs where I tip it into another bucket, add some water then blend it with a stick blender before giving it to the worms.

Kitchen scrap “bucket-in-a-bucket”

Why blend the scraps?

This comes back to “considering the organism”. When I explain this step people always say “Isn’t that a bit excessive?” but when they realise how much food waste comes out of a commercial kitchen and that it’s being handled by a bunch of worms, it becomes clear why I would do this.

Worms don’t have teeth. They feed on the bacteria on the food not the food itself. Therefore if you expose more surface area of the food it will break down faster.

Once I have fed the worms the blended veg scraps (plus coffee grounds from the bar) and before I put their insulation blanket on top, I grab a handful of shredded newspaper (some of the more expensive bottles of wine come packed with this) and place that over the top of the worms’ smorgasbord so that oxygen can get at it and start the decomposition.

Over time, the worm farms produce “worm wee” which isn’t actually wee as worms don’t have bladders. It is technically leachate and this stuff is great for plants. It’s basically a kind of plant tonic/food with loads of nutrients that are now ready for plants to absorb.

In addition to leachate, the worm farms produce worm castings, (called “worm poo”) a wonderful soil additive as it contains nutrients and beneficial microorganisms necessary for happy plants.

You will recall mention of a chicken. Chef Daphne has a chicken (Arrabella) at home which is basically the family pet. Arrabella helps process some of the overflow of waste when it is more than the worms can handle or if I haven’t been able to get there. Sometimes if the system is firing well, we divert some of the cooked service scraps to Arrabella as she is better equipped to process these (being an omnivore.) Daphne and her family get the benefits of fresh free-range eggs and highly nutrient laden chicken manure in their garden. Much as I would love to get the chicken manure back, I think it’s a big ask to bring chicken poo to work and we lack the facilities to process it here.

This system isn’t perfect. I would like to be able to process all of the organic waste but to achieve this requires key staff to be as passionate about waste reduction and nutrient cycling as I am. It also requires more space to house composting facilities. At one point in time there was a friend of the bar who lived nearby and took a bucket of scraps a week, this had the system processing close to 100% of the organic waste. I hope we can find another neighbour willing to take some nutrients. It’s a win/win offer!

A modest early spring harvest from the rooftop garden. Nutrients cycled from the kitchen come back in the form of highly nutritious and flavourful organic herbs and vegies

I think it’s really important that we all realise how important it is to cycle nutrients. Nature does it best and we would be well served to learn from her.

As previously blogged I am using wicking beds for this job because regular watering will be a challenge for the busy staff and budget is tight (ruling out automatic irrigation.)

So making a S.I.P. out of a concrete container. No worries, easy right? Remember for a S.I.P. you need a drainage hole at the level just below the soil. And also remember this is a concrete basin… Now seeing as I like to do things the easy way I decided to use the sink hole as the drainage and not have to drill through concrete – but how to make it drain from the level just below the soil at the top of the reservoir? You guessed it, whack a tube over the sinkhole!

What you will need:

• 1 concrete basin (make sure it’s nice and clean and free of dust and dirt)
• A couple of days (to allow adhesive to set fully)
• A couple of mates
• Some beers or suitable barter currency for your mates (see above)
• 1 shipping pallet or a strong platform for the basin to sit on so water will drain away freely
• Some wood offcuts (or something to level the basin if it doesn’t sit level on the pallet/platform)
• 1 PVC drainpipe per sinkhole – wide enough to cover the sinkhole (for this one I needed two drainpipes)
• Electric drill + 6mm drill bit for drainpipe (can be bigger hole if you don’t have 6mm) and 3 mm for reservoir containers if recycling containers
• 1 file/rasp to shape the end of the tube to match the area around the sinkhole
• Adhesive (suitable for fixing PVC to concrete – See step 9)
• 1 sheet of light to medium grain sandpaper
• Reservoir filling materials. For this build I used milk bottles, a soda bottle, vinegar container (all with lods of holes drilled in them to allow evaporation to pass up through into the soil) and grey metal/gravel
• Separation material: I used shade cloth
• 1 marker pen
• Scissors for cutting the separation material
• Growing media: I used potting mix, a layer of shredded newspaper and compost with lucerne for mulch but you can use what you feel is best here and of course will depend on what you are growing

Here’s how I did it:

Step 1

Position your base for the tub. I used a shipping pallet to accommodate the uneven base of the tub.  Use your favourite search engine to look up who sells used ones in your area or just find one that someone has left lying about someplace.

Step 2

Call a couple of mates to help you lift the heavy tub into place.

Step 3

Position the tub on your chosen surface ensuring it will drain from the base freely

Step 4

Cut a couple of lengths of PVC drainpipe. They need to be a diameter wide enough to cover the sinkhole.

Step 5

Shape the end of the tube that will cover the sinkhole so that when you look down the tube, there isn’t much light coming in at the base. (Don’t worry about making it perfect as you can just add more glue at the glue step.)

Step 6

Sand the area of the tube that will come into contact with the adhesive (or if you want, spend the money they suggest and buy the PVC primer and apply it – I didn’t bother)

Step 7

Figure out the depth of your reservoir layer then mark just below that level on your tube/s and drill several holes around the tube/s.

Step 8

Make sure you have swept the area around the sinkhole so no particles of dust or dirt remain. I brushed it thoroughly then flushed it with water before I began so it would have time to dry.

Step 9

Apply the glue around the sinkhole. I used Sikaflex f11, an adhesive suitable for potable water that works on concrete and most other surfaces. Remember you want to not only stick the tubes securely but also seal the sinkhole so no water drains out. Again look down the inside of the tube to see if any light is coming in. Use a cloth or paper towel to smooth the glue around the tube and ensure a complete seal.

The double concrete basin in position with drain pipes drilled and glued

Step 10

Prepare the watering tube/s. I didn’t actually use any for this tank as you will see from the pics but if you want to add them, now is the time. Cut them the desired length (same as the other pipes), drill a few holes near the bottom then place them in the tub. Depending on the type of adhesive, you will need to leave it to set. I left mine for a few days as I had other stuff to do.

A closer look at the drainage tube in place with a drain hole visible. Note the use of adhesive to act as sealant and adhesive

Step 11

Assemble the reservoir using your chosen media. I used a collection of waste items from the restaurant (mainly milk bottles) and then some gravel to top it off but you could use gravel on its own, sand, expanded terracotta beads (which are good as they are round so create space between the beads for the water) or basically whatever will hold the weight of the soil layer up out of the reservoir layer. Level it all off.

The reservoir: note use of restaurant waste (cleaned) milk bottles, vinegar container and a soda bottle

The reservoir levelled with gravel

Step 12

Add the separation layer. I used shade cloth but again as previously mentioned in this blog, you could use hessian sack, straw or anything porous, some choose not to use a separation layer at all. The function of this layer is to separate (probably why it’s called the separation layer) the water reservoir from the growth media so the plants don’t get soggy feet and end up with root rot). Layer the material over the tubs and trace the area you will need to cut and mark where the drain pipes are. Cut an “X” to accommodate the tubes and cover the drain holes with the flaps you made with the “X”.

Shade cloth used to separate soil from reservoir. Note the flaps from the incision cover the drain hole

After adding potting mix, I added a layer of shredded newspaper (a waste item from the business) then more potting mix, compost, manure and then mulch

Step 13

Add your growing media. I started with potting mix, then a layer of shredded newspaper, then potting mix again, then compost, cow manure then lucerne mulch.

Newly planted double concrete basin. Chocolate mint, winter mint, apple mint, common mint with some "Good Bug" mix seeds sown for good measure

Now plant it out and make yourself a cuppa then stand there looking at it with a sense of satisfaction and achievement. Ahhh!

As this design is within eyesight of many neighbours and visited by some of the building’s residents, my client Tim has opted for wine barrels – eleven of them.

Having decided on the style of planter (a wicking bed or Sub-Irrigated Planter) the hard part starts. I have to construct 11 wine barrel planters, so on a beautifully clear July morning I got to work.

Step 1: Scrub out all of the wine residues in the barrels with a heavy brush.

Step 2: Prepare the watering pipe by cutting PVC downpipe (any diameter from 15-50mm) the same height as rim of barrel (so it will be a little higher than the level of the mulch), drilling a few holes in it at the bottom then wrapping it with a sock to prevent it getting clogged up with organic matter.

Watering tube with holes and then covered with sock to prevent clogging

Step 3: Next, the reservoir: Before filling the reservoir with material, you want to determine the depth of the reservoir and drill a hole for drainage slightly under that level (say a 1-1.5 cm).

Step 4: Place the watering tube in its desired location. (I put mine on the edge so it’s easy to see and fill.) This will allow you to determine whether the planter needs water as you can look and see or if it’s a narrow tube, just get yourself some doweling and use it as a dipstick.

Step 5: Fill the reservoir with your chosen media. The first barrel I used crushed gravel (grey metal), some seed raising trays and a few bits of polystyrene. The function of these materials is to create space for water to collect and hold the soil above the water. Over the course of stage one I used a variety of materials including takeaway containers and PET bottles all with many holes drilled into them to allow the water to seep in and evaporate up. There is some debate as to whether sand or gravel or containers is best here. I have really mixed it up over the course of this job so it will be interesting to track it.

Some of the many different reservoirs for the wicking wine barrel planters

Step 6: Once you have the volume of material required, level it off and cover it with a layer of shade cloth. (Again, some recommend hessian or sacking, some don’t bother with anything, especially if using sand as the reservoir media.) You can lay this over the top of the container and mark the cloth with a marker pen (remembering to mark a place for the water spout too.) I allow for a ‘bleed’ or extra margin around the edges so as to not get soil in the reservoir. Cut to shape and lay over the reservoir and watering spout.

Wicking wine barrel with watering tube and reservoir divider cloth

Step 7: Cover the shade cloth with a layer of potting mix to seal the reservoir in.

Step 8: Time for growing media. Over the course of this job I have opted for a variety of different layers and media. I have tried straight potting mix with some excellent compost mixed in (teeming with worms thanks to Gavin Smith at The Addison Road Centre), layered with shredded newspaper, cardboard and also a no-dig recipe too.

You can use cardboard and newspaper instead of straw, go for unbleached paper and not domestic laser printed paper as the inks can contain some waxes and unfriendly chemicals

As I have mentioned I am trying to incorporate as many waste items from my client’s businesses as I can in my builds so instead of straw and lucerne in the layering I mostly used shredded newspaper and cardboard. This will break down nicely and retain moisture in the soil plus food for the worms. You can use cardboard and newspaper as mulch too (but I knew this wouldn’t be aesthetically pleasing to the neighbours.)

Step 9: Add the worm tower. You can add this around half way through adding the growth media. You will need a short length of PVC tube at least wide enough the get your hand in but preferably wider (this is so you can clear the tube without disturbing it once it’s in.) It’s up to you how wide you make the tube, just remember it will be taking up valuable surface area. Make it about 30cm long. You will need to drill some holes to allow worms to wriggle in and out of the tower. I made the holes my initial tower a little too low, so make sure you have holes close to the surface as well as down deeper. You want the little tackers to come in and out freely to do their job of fertilising the planter.

After you have a base layer of soil down you can insert the worm tower. This one has doesn't have holes high enough up the tower, make sure there are some holes near the surface

As an aside, an idea mentioned by Milkwood Permaculture intern, Adam Kennedy (and wicking bed guru) is to use a portable tray with holes at the bottom like a worm farm and move that around your beds as a ‘worm tractor’. If you have a garden bed that needs aeration and reinvigorating, you can move a tray of a worm farm around your garden beds much like you move a chicken tractor around fresh pastures.

For the first barrel I planted a range of Italian herbs that I had sprouted mostly from seed and cuttings.

The first completed wicking wine barrel with worm tower planted with Italian herbs including thyme, sage, parsley and rosemary

A month later the growth was very encouraging.

Strong spring growth is apparent! (Note, I did replace the rosemary cutting with a healthier 'gorza' specimen)

Timbah’s head chef, Daphne has really taken to the project. More on that later…

Head Chef Daph checks on the garden

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A nice bit of free 'word of mouth' marketing. Tim (on the right) talks with a local about where the barrels are headed.

As the barrels were a bit of a first for me, I researched some options and decided that wicking beds or S.I.P.’s (Self Irrigating Planter) as they are called in the U.S. were probably going to be the best way forward due to the garden being located in (Permaculture terms) zone 3 and for being able to make use of waste items like polystyrene and plastic, PET and milk bottles. I don’t know if there will be adequate care given to the planters at this stage so something low maintenance is the best way forward. As it’s a bit of trial and error approach, I have decided to mix up the planter styles, their reservoir contents, growth media and wicking vs ‘no dig’ to see which performs the best in these conditions. Each barrel is labelled and I am tracking what is planted and when in a Google doc spread sheet so I can update from my phone when on the job. The plan is to learn from year one and roll out changes in year two based on findings. As each barrel has different plantings it will of course be difficult to get empirical data but hey, I’m no scientist. Wicking beds are a great concept – especially in a climate like Australia with hot hot sun and dry conditions for much of the year. As the name implies, the plants wick or draw moisture up from their reservoir. As herbs are deep rooting, they are especially suited to this style of planter but so too are veggies. The added bonus is you lose very little water to evaporation compared to top down watering. Evaporation from the top can damage plants and leads to a loss of nutrients. I like the Milkwood idea of incorporating worm farms (or worm towers) into the wicking beds too as it will supplement the existing worm farms and help process more organic waste.

Organic waste:

Organic waste from the restaurant business is huge and to my knowledge there is very little being done to try and deal with it. It goes to landfill which is a huge loss of nutrients. Organic waste breaks down and produces methane once it gets to landfill and that’s all bad because it is one of the worst greenhouse gases – way worse than CO2.

I’m not going to be so crazy/ambitious/naive as to think we can cycle all organic waste. It’s a busy bar and to capture everything at this stage is not feasible (and not everyone is as concerned with waste as much as me either J). I decided to start small and look at setting up a couple of systems.

Worm farms:

Before I could make suggestions, Tim had bought a couple of Worm Cafes. The packaging alone is worth buying these. Simply hilarious!

Yes, a "gourmet" worm farm with sexy and sophisticated chopstick-wielding, lipstick-wearing worms in tiaras! Image courtesy of Julia from ourbeginnings.wordpress.com

The idea with these is to process the raw prep waste from the kitchen. Eventually the worm castings will help produce soil for phase 3 garden beds as well as worm wee for fertiliser. These worm farms will be supplemented by the micro worm farms I build into the barrels but more on that later.

Off site processing:

Daph the chef has a chicken at home so each week I give her a bucket of food scraps to take home – this will take care of some of the plate scrapings and hopefully give the chicken a bit of variety in her diet.

In addition to the worm farms and Daph’s chicken, I have built a black soldier fly “biopod” which I have at home to help process more waste. As a product of this composting method, there is a yield of self-harvesting fly larvae which I also give to Daph for her chicken (she apparently goes nuts for them!) More on “BSF” later.

Timbah is a winebar in Glebe that opened its doors in January, 2011. It is the hospitality arm of Glebe Liquor, a family owned business run by Tim and Louise Smith.

Glebe Liquor (or as some call it, “The Little Bottleshop in Glebe” or even “The Black Bottle Shop”) is a proudly independent (and very quirky) little bottle shop that doesn’t stock mainstream commercial wines, rather they stock a large variety of wines from small and boutique vineyards from Australia and beyond. Their selection of ‘clean’, biodynamic and organic wines, beers and ciders is better than any I’ve come across anywhere (although I don’t get out much and am incredibly biased.)

Here’s a couple of pics of some of their merchandising:

Glebe Liquor's unique labelling system

This one always gets a chuckle!

Timbah is a tapas winebar with a character that reflects it’s owners and it’s Chilean head chef, Daph.

For a while I lived across the road and was able to see a sundrenched upstairs courtyard above the wine bar. I looked in envy – even though our balcony was sunny in the afternoons, this had all day sun and very little of the wind that we copped on the 7^th floor (it made mincemeat of my potatoes and tomatoes!) An idea worked its way into my head.

View of Timbah garden site (prior to build) from our 7th floor balcony

After being retrenched in October and with nothing doing on the job front in January, I decided to hit Tim up for a job in the kitchen at Timbah. He agreed to give me a go as a kitchen hand.

One night we both went up onto the courtyard and had a chat. We sat down and Tim talked about having seen Food Inc and buying the DVD for his kids to watch. I told him about going to see Joel Salatin talk a few weeks prior. We talked about Permaculture, worm farming, aquaponics, food security and the lunacy of desalination.  Then I hinted at my idea.

“You know, this place would make a great herb garden for the restaurant…”

From there the idea took hold and we discussed how it might happen and what it might look like. Tim had a great idea to use wine barrels from family friends in SA.

The more I thought about it, the more the concept of a business formed in my mind. Use the organic waste from the restaurant to feed the garden, use some of the other waste to build it and divert it away from landfill. I told Tim I could design and build the garden. He agreed to let me do it.

It was a whirlwind- but I have a few new favourite places I thought I would let you know about! Wine bars first….

Looking forward to doing some work with Vice Wine Bar in Balmain. Owner Glen Fox has been a great supporter of Oliver’s Taranga wines- especially the Grenache. Watch this space, as we are in talks for an Oliver’s Taranga special event at Vice in the next month!!

Then there is the very cool Timbah in Glebe. Owned by wine fanatic Tim- who also owns the great independent bottle shop Glebe Liquor- has set up this very cool wine bar- great food and interesting selection of wines by the glass. Our 11 Fiano may be there soon!

Another ubercool wine bar with a bit of a Melbourne feel is 10 William Street. Owned by the guys from Fratelli Paradiso, this tiny bar is massive on wines with interest, especially natural and Italian wines. Great food to share, and more likely than not, a few winemakers hanging out as well!

Of course, another a favourite hang-out of winemakers is Fix St. James in the CBD. We have a Sips in the City event coming up there, and Stuart Knox is the go to man if you need some awesome wines and great food without any fuss!

One of the best places to taste interesting Australian wines, without having to open loads of bottles and spend heaps of coin is Wine Odyssey in The Rocks. They have around 44 wines on tasting with very flash state-of-the-art Italian Enomatic Wine Preservation and Pouring System- which means that you can taste anything from a glass of Penfolds Grange, to a crazy McLaren Vale Fiano!

Will continue my recommendations in Part 2…..