Angelika Maier

pollinator
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since Jan 16, 2013
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Biography
I love gardening, grow a lot of food herbs and fruit. I have chicken and ducks and run a small plant nursery - how blessed am I!
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cool climate, Blue Mountains, Australia
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Recent posts by Angelika Maier

There is no such thing as a breathable house. Some materials can take up water and give it back if that is what you mean with breathable. Or do you mean drafty?? Sawdust is not a good insulator because it settles down over time and then the lower half is compacted (and insulates way less) and the upper half is not insulated at all. I personally would go for the good old rockwool because it stays put.
2 weeks ago
I had a look at the flow through systems and that is what we plan to do.
2 weeks ago
In some countries they have outside kitchens. Really cooking in a tiny house is smelly, at least cook outside in summer!
2 weeks ago
thanks for the replies! I will have a look at the Johnson Su “B.EA.M”  method. We already planted the area but after three years the trees are still small. We planted acacias in the permie fashion which suffered in the first two years but now its getting dryer and most of them are about three meters high.
For feeding the worms I would ask at a local restaurant, we don't produce high quality compost because all it gets is the two meter high grasses we dig out and the grass we can mow we need for mulching. We get coffee grinds also.
3 weeks ago
We own a pretty good chipper which is used mainly for gardening clients. It is expensive to run. It costs petrol and the blades are expensive also. That is why we are not using it so much.
3 weeks ago
I am pondering weather or not I should give wormfarming a shot. It would be mainly for our big garden which is very heavy clay with no to little drainage. In drought it's like concrete and in flood the water table is at the soil surface. The whole garden is on a slope 1:10.
I have two goals with it:
1) Improve the clay soil
2) Use the castings for my potting mix (we have a small nursery and selling perennial edible plants), I think it would improve the mix greatly.
I would like to start it in a way that is big enough for the nursery and our 3/4 acre plot.

What are your experiences with worms and clay soil? Does it help or is it just another pet to look after?
3 weeks ago
We are in Australia and we needed to get complete netting over our fruit trees anyway so we built and enclosure. Sides go in the ground. I wrote a description on our old website how to do it: chooks
3 weeks ago
I also wonder weather I should start a wormfarm or not. We are in zone 10. We have a little garden at our house which is nearly pure sand and a bigger one which is a terrible clay and in rain it's waterlogged. I am mostly interested to turn the clay around, because that is the bigger piece of land.
I really liked Jan's method. Also there is the problem to feed the worms. We have loads of big coarse weeds but we don't have loads of kitchen scraps. What else do they eat? Coffee grounds?
I would probably need heaps of feeding material for our 3/4 acre. I might have to ask in a restaurant. Does worm compost do anything about the clay?
3 weeks ago
I wanted to harvest some seeds but never could find them. I had some but not many flowers. Is it possible that they flower but don't set seeds or do the seeds fall down easily?
1 month ago
Yes I did. I wonder if they even survive there! I would prefer something tree or shrub because of the work involved we're so busy with the nursery. For daikon I would have to prepare a nice seedbed.
7 months ago