Jonie Hill

I do like the idea of oats, I could maybe get a milky oat harvest out of it as well.  I wasn't really thinking about a cover crop as such but makes sense to sow something like that as well as other more long term groundcovers...

Do you get New Zealand flax there at all?  Some varieties are quite tall, they are very stately, have beautiful reddish tall flower spikes, and are used to weave into baskets etc.

In terms of comfrey's supposed negative effects on the liver, I for one have decided that theory is misinformation.  Considering there are no actual reports of people being harmed by it, you'd have to eat a truckload of the leaves to ingest the amount of the substance they're saying is toxic, and I've read about people whose families have eaten vast quantities of leaves every day without harm & instead seeming to thrive on it, plus the other animals that have been fed large quantities.  I believe it is such an amazing plant for our health that the powers that be don't want us using it.
In Australia we are encouraged to wage war on a lot of the amazing medicinal plants and I can't help thinking this is purposefully so that we don't consider using, or, (if we do succeed in wiping them out) have the ability to treat ourselves with these plants which have been used by humans for centuries if not thousands of years.  Call me a conspiracy theorist, I don't care. In the past indigenous people didn't encounter new plants & say it wasn't here before now so we must eradicate it.  If they found it to be useful, they used it.  Makes sense to me.

Thanks for replying anne, jen, lauren & jay - I hadn't gotten any notification that anyone had replied!
I guess really what I'm looking for is suggestions of any reasonably hardy groundcovers & up to 5m high plants, particularly those that are easy to grow from cuttings or are very successful being direct seeded.  
The mound I'm talking about is actually 113m long so yeah a fair space to plant out & money is definitely an issue.

Anne - I wouldn't take the fact that I'm in Australia much into consideration, just happy to hear whatever suggestions might come to your mind!  Plenty of european & north american species do well here.  We generally don't have extremes of temperature either way, although we are considered cold by Australian standards in Tasmania we are actually in the milder part of the island.  (Quite different from where Geoff Lawton is though Jay!  But I shall look at the video you mention.  One thing I should probably plant for starters at least is tagasaste as it does great here, is fast to establish & will create some shelter for anything else planted)
Jen - Well, perhaps I overstated things a bit.  Plants, once you get them in the ground (and yes do some initial watering, at least in summer), mostly seem to thrive.  It's just being in pots, I think, when they're so challenged, when you get a warm, windy day (it does get fairly windy here, though less so on the mound I'm talking about as it is near the lowest part of the property and most of it is sheltered from the west, where the predominant winds come from, with a thick Cypress wind shelter on our neighbours boundary).  We don't have many, sometimes any, days at or over 30C/86 F even in summer and we're near the ocean.  
Lauren - I know it's ideal to do as much local species as you can, however the information on local plants in terms of edibility/medicinal qualities is very scant.  I have tried looking into it.  The indigenous people here were almost entirely wiped out very early on in the European settlement of the area so that knowledge is hard to come by.  We do know of a lot of edible plants but they are generally not things that would provide much of your food, certainly meat/seafood must have been the predominant food source here (plants provide mostly just a bit of flavouring & Vit C), and many are slow growing.  Also many are quite flammable, which I don't find desirable!!  So while I certainly don't rule out natives I definitely want to look further afield than native species.
Our property is intended to be wallaby proofed, also, for most of it (they will be able to enter the riparian area & dam), as they would make grazing other animals pretty difficult if they weren't excluded as they can quickly reach plague proportions and eat the grass very short (of course that could be considered a resource too, however that is illegal...).  

Just did some earthworks & no unfortunately I didn't plan ahead.  I want it to be a dappled shady garden area, where there's already a Amelanchier canadensis (Serviceberry), and I'll be planting a few citrus, a crampbark, maybe a white mulberry which will be heavily pruned or coppiced every once in awhile if more sun is needed.   Currently while the bushes/trees are young the area gets full sun, at least in summer, perhaps in winter the nearby shed might throw some shade in the afternoon.  
Just looking for suggestions for quickly germinating & growing groundcovers?  Currently it's the middle of summer but presumably they'll only be up to a month more of dry warm weather before autumn rains and a bit of a drop in temperatures.  
Preference is for edible/medicinal or otherwise useful plants but anything that provides cover & colour and is not easy to remove down the track when I'm planting more would be great.  

I'll put down Some bought topsoil and/or compost (though it's not scraped down to nothing, there is some variation in the amount of topsoil left over the site) I think and heavily mulch most of it as well, maybe lightly with woodchip & somewhat heavy with hay as that's what I have freely available (I know, I'll be weeding out grass etc because of that, unfortunate, but my veg garden has still certainly done a hell of a lot better with the hay thickly mulched over it than the 2 years previously when I didn't mulch) I guess leaving some spots open where I'll scatter the seeds...

(I used to want to do a whole permaculture design for my property....the last few years my mind has been completely scattered as to what to do about pretty much everything really, so I haven't done it, & I don't know if I will be in the right headspace anytime soon to do one either!  I need small manageable projects these days that don't seem too big)

I have a reasonably gentle slope (not too taxing to walk up, unless, perhaps, you have chronic fatigue like me! - sorry don't know the exact slope) with a gravel driveway running basically south-north, and a large (almost 6.5 feet wide on top) mound next to it on the east side (southern hemisphere).  It's roughly 5 m from the side of the driveway to the other side of the mound.  This area gets late shade, more so in winter & near the bottom of the hill.
Yearly rainfall is > 39 inches/year but with at least a couple dry months in summer.  Soil's got clay, not too much. Well draining.  Sun is quite hot in summer & some trees struggle with it (at least when young in pots!)  

I'm trying to think of appropriate trees or shrubs to plant here, either on the mound or slightly off on the side away from the driveway.  Or lower things that would spread well on the mound but aren't going to be a hassle spreading into the pasture where I don't want it.  
Would weeping willows planted 5m away from the gravel driveway cause any root issues in 20 or more years time?!  Wouldn't mind putting a couple of those near the bottom of the slope, where the mound curves around and there may be a damp spot in winter.  It's unlikely there will be any irrigation other than the occasional hand watering.  
For the most part I probably want to stick to 5m or lower so the other side of the driveway isn't shaded too long in the morning, as that also gets shade in the afternoon....

First time duck owner here, I've had them about a year, and 2 of the more trusting ones have become broody.  They should be hatching any day now.  
Just wondering, I mean a lot of chick/duckling care information is usually what you do with them if they don't have their mother present, because you incubated or purchased them....if they Do have their mother to bring them up, what are the important things we need to provide for them?  

- Protection from predators at night and preferably during the day too (I'm not sure how we're going to provide continuous daytime protection if allowing them to learn to forage with their mother....is it best just to keep them enclosed so you don't lose them? I was thinking of trying to let them out hopefully for a limited time supervised walk around then put them back in)
- How much space should they have?  
- If the fenced off space keeps them in but isn't high enough for the mother, will she leave to forage etc & come back or just stay with them the whole time? (We've just cobbled together some very low chicken wire we had surrounding a - what we call a ute but in America I think you call a 'truck' canopy, if you know what that is, a low thing with windows that open)
- Some (how much?) duckling appropriate feed
- A shallow pool during the day time (should that be all day or supervised swims then taken away because they can get too cold or drown sometimes?)

TIA for your advice :)

Thomas Michael said
All: I saw this years ago in a winterize your home diy article. They were building home made double pain windows. They all got moisture between the panes.  Their solution was 1/16" holes every foot or so across the bottom of the frame.  Cold outside air would dry the space between the widows. For a clear view.  
tom
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It's been a few years since I've been on a plane, but don't they have a couple of tiny holes at the bottom of their windows??

Hi everyone.  Is Gene Logsden's book on small scale grain growing worth getting, has anyone found a book they felt was more informative than that one?  (Or can I learn everything I need to know right here? :)
Just going to start browsing the threads.  I'm interested mainly in growing smallish amounts for supplemental poultry feed, though wouldn't mind the occasional oats ourselves, or corn though.  My first attempt at corn last year was very lacklustre, but I did pick the colourful glass gem variety or whatever it is, and my pump broke in late summer so I wasn't watering enough, but it was already showing quite a marked variability in growth.  Oats seems to do fairly well here and I enjoyed making a milky oat tincture the other year....

Still after reading this, I'm considering tethering a couple of young goats.  I am looking for dog harnesses to use which I figure will be safer.  I will try to get them used to it around Zone 1 so I can keep an eye on them, but at some point we'll have to put them in the edge of the tree'd area further away, where there's plenty of blackberry for them to eat.  Predators shouldn't be any problem where I am...