Four Sources of Water

Permaculture theory (as stated by Rosemary Morrow in her book, "Earth User's Guide to Permaculture, yes you're going to hear a lot about this book over the next little while) states that you should always have at least 2 sources of water, just in case one is lost or contaminated. This can be any combination of tanks, bores, dams, or town water. If your only water source is tank water for example, you should have two smaller tanks rather than one large one etc. Well, our new 5000L water tank arrived yesterday afternoon, bringing us up to 4 water sources - 3 tanks and town water backup. I've mentioned before that though we have a mains water connection, we intend to only use it in an emergency. Since we moved, mains water has only ever been used to top up the new house connected tank when it was first installed (via the automatic top up that was installed, and was turned off as soon as handover was completed). We now have over 50,000L in water storage, and after the recent rains, both main tanks are at half and three quarters full. Another good rain, and they'll be full.

That's where this new tank comes in. We'll pump into it regularly (it's not connected to a downpipe) when the tanks are nearing capacity, giving us some extra storage space. It will be used entirely for watering the front garden, and will save a lot of carting buckets back and forth. I'm hoping to set up some drip watering systems to make watering even easier (and more water efficient).

As you can also see in the photo, the front garden is starting to take shape. Besides the tank, you can see the black compost bin in the bottom right corner, that is about 1/4 full now, with a pile of grass next to it for covering food scraps with. it's hard to see, but the climbing peas are about 18 inches tall now, and starting to flower. I'm hoping we'll get a harvest in before it gets too hot for them. Weeds abound in the rest of the front yard, but in the next few weeks they will all be mown down then smothered with lots of mulch. Then I'll be able to get started, albeit a little late, on my spring planting.

On a good gardening note though, the strawberry harvests just keep getting bigger and bigger! I need to pick them more often, as you can probably see, some of them are getting rotten spots where they're lying on the damp ground too long. I had to chuck about a dozen really rotten ones to the chooks, but most of these were salvageable, and have now been frozen for the next batch of strawberry jam. Organic and homegrown this time!