Anthropogenic Global Warming & the Garden!

Last year was pretty much a disaster, & this year has started in the same vein. The leaves of vegies burning in the sun, losing much of our fruit due to a warm winter, then the drought & running low on water & then the threat of bushfires. So, we have been making changes in the garden. We know that anthropogenic global warming is going to get worse, so we are preparing for the present & hopefully the future. Our grandchildren may not survive global warming, but hopefully we can help them survive teotwawki.

One of our galvo water tanks up at the cottage was leaking, so I cut it into three sections & made three raised garden beds. Whilst cleaning up the cottage garden area one of my sons decided to get rid of the old water tanks being used to store firewood, so that has produced another three raised garden beds. A small tank that I was thinking of repairing also got converted into two more smaller raised garden beds because we decided to install two more new 1000 gallon water tanks for the garden. We used to pump water from the big dam for the gardens at the cottage & the main house, but for the first time in 30 odd years, this dam became almost dry. We decided to preserve what was left for the local wildlife & for fire fighting if needs be. Fortunately though the fires were all around us & we were enveloped in heavy smoke for weeks, the fires never reached our forest.

Five tank raised garden beds & the sand pit for our grandchildren.

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The first raised garden bed I made from old roofing iron & four posts.

​My second design for a raised garden bed using pallets cut in half & old roofing iron.

​The latest raised garden bed additions, smaller but still useful. The advantages of these raised garden beds is that I think they will retain moisture better, they are easier to shade, easier to weed if needed, the bed is better secured & can not spread onto the paths, & it keeps the ducks out!!!

​Well it's a bird bath right? And I am a bird right?

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​One new water tank on the left installed, we are still waiting on the second one to arrive. Since the drought everyone has been ordering more water tanks.

Keith.

New Water Pump.

I decided that as we have so much excess solar power I would be better off with an electric water pump to pump water from our lower collection 5000 gallon cement water tank to our upper house feed tank than the petrol fire pump we have been using. Survival wise we will probably always have 240 volt solar power, but we may not always have fuel!
So I purchased an electric water pump with what fittings I needed, & my wife came up with the idea of using a storage container to keep it in.

Power lead goes a short distance underground through some spare water pipe that I had & up into the power shed.

Living Off Grid. Rainwater Collection & Storage.

We have 4 rainwater tanks for the main house (Linstock), the main house garden & the main house outside laundry. The same 5000 gallon tank that feeds the outside laundry also feeds Elm Cottage via a 12 volt pump under the cottage. Both houses are solar powered.
 The lower cement 5000 gallon water tank is fed from the roof of the main house via down pipes from both the front & the rear of the house. The water from this lower tank is then pumped up to the higher tank which gravity feeds the main house.

 This pump is also a fire pump, it draws water from the stop cock on the side of the lower tank & pumps it up to the higher tank via a pipe that runs underground.

 This image shows the two "first flush" pipes on the lower tank. Any dirt on the roof or in the gutters is washed into these two pipes. When full, a ball float in the pipe rises to the top closing off these tow pipes & allows the rest of the water to flow into the tank. Over time, the water in these pipes is supposed to slowly run out via the hoses at the bottom, but invariably the small hole blocks with dirt, so every now & then I remove the bottom of the pipes, drain & wash out the filters.
 

The garden tank was placed on higher ground to the level of the garden so it would gravity feed better, but this meant that it was too far away from the house to use an overhead down pipe to fill it from the roof at the end of the house. So I run the down pipe underground then back up into the top of the tank.

This is the new 5000 gallon poly tank that feeds the outside laundry, & Elm Cottage. This tank is fed from the roof of Elm Cottage, but the ground close to the cottage was too soft to provide a firm base for the tank, so we placed it on higher ground. Again this meant that the tank was too far away to use overhead down pipes, so again the pipe to the tank from the cottage roof was placed underground then back up & into the top of the tank. The other pipe you can see is an overflow pipe which I have run into a water butt.

Cattail Pond is actually a dam we had put in to collect & store more water from the header stream in Butterfly Valley. It also enables us to keep fish for food. Cattail Pond feeds the gardens at both houses via another fire pump at the side of the dam.
Keith.