The biggest (by far) mistake that I see beginner food gardeners make is underestimating the payoff you get for soil building. Water, sun, the right plant for the season, heritage varieties, pest predators – they are all important, but nothing gives you more harvest for effort than building soil.
One of the very pleasant surprises of living in suburbia is just how abundant sources of organic matter for turning into soil are. One of the very pleasant surprises of living in suburbia is just how abundant sources of organic matter for turning into soil are. Maybe that will change as the need for food security accelerates, but for the moment, nobody else seems to be chasing kitchen scraps, greengrocer…
Watching chooks in a dustbath is a bit like watching geese in a dam – they enjoy it so much.
If you have only a tiny area (or a tiny window of time) for gardening, every one of the first dozen plants I’d go for would be herbs. In pots or courtyard, herb spiral or window boxes, balcony garden or flower bed, these are the 12 plants I’d plant first. In no particular order (choosing just a dozen was hard enough!):
Hugelkultur is not a solution for every site. Nor are raised beds, or hardwood edging, or anything really. Permaculture is all about intelligently, creatively, sensitively responding to the nature of a site and the creatures, human and animal, that inhabit it. But hugelkultur has worked here.
Lead paint was commonly used up till the late 1970’s. Up until 1965 paint was often 50% lead. Houses, and sheds dating from before that often had a history of being scraped and sanded and repainted, and the lead paint flakes and dust settled as a ring around the building.
Usually I leave the slugs to the bluetongue. I’d hate to starve him (or her) into deciding to live somewhere else. But he’s a bit too well fed, and I’m not. A cup with an inch of beer, buried so the rim is at the soil surface, overnight collected all these. The chooks will feast on beer marinated slugs.