Abdallah House - Redesigning a Home

'Wicked Sleeper' beds replace the Whiteheads garden (Dec 2024) On the 8th of January 2024 we had another a flood event that had a big impact on Seymour and our Whiteheads Creek garden beds across the road at my neighbours place - see image below. What you see in the image above is the finished concrete sleeper wicking beds that I designed and my neighbour financed and built (with help). The wicking bed internal design is based on the Very Edible Garden system  and uses their DIY kit, custom made to size. The Whiteheads Creek Garden after the flood (Jan 2024) I was contemplating giving up on growing food after the previous flood just 15 months earlier, when this one wiped out the garden again. My neighbour, Jim, was keen for me to continue and offered to build a raised bed from concrete sleepers. The sleepers were 2m long, and about 200mm high, 100mm thick. Initially I wasn't interested, thinking that a giant raised bed near eucalypts would soon be filled with roots fr...

I haven't managed to keep up with my blog posts, but what I did get stuck into is posting images fairly regularly on Instagram @abdallahhouse . If you go right back to the first entries you can get a pretty good idea of what we've been up to.  2023 Report Kunie and the boys headed to Japan for about a month early in the year, which gave me a chance to get a 2nd hand extractor fan installed in the kitchen. It extracted the gas fumes from our 1960's cooker out through the top of the cool cupboard , and out through the flue. It was a good opportunity to revarnish the floor, chairs, table and repaint the cupboards and doors.   The other big job I got started was the long awaited rebuild of what I have been calling 'the shed', which was actually the original outhouse (toilet) and laundry/bathroom. The last remaining part of the original building. The building was identified by David Holmgren as a "prime candidate for retrofitting as a studio space" (page 92) o...

Whiteheads creek garden harvest in Feb 2022 Another very unusual year, but for very different reasons than the previous COVID years. With the easing of restrictions we were gradually given more opportunities to engage with the rest of society - but for those of us who chose not to get inoculated there were still many barriers in place. There wasn't much that we could do outside of our home during the Lock-Out period - refused entry to pubs, cafés, restaurants, library, pool etc for months into the new year. Whiteheads Creek But we made the most of the freedoms that we had, building relationships with our local neighbours was one of them. We'd been invited to make use of the land across the road from us, which I'd play footy and soccer on with our kids - Kai and Sen. I noticed an overgrown garden bed smothered in 1m high of grass that I enquired about. I was offered the space to make use of - including access to water and a small shed to store tools. The space is about 150...

  2021 pear harvest, a mix of nashi, cooking pears and sweet pears - grafted on the same tree Another tough year of the pandemic, but fruitful in the garden. There's always something productive to do in our backyard - with great rewards for effort. Production was down on the previous couple of years, with 470kg of produce in total on our 580m² block with a Garden Farming area of 387m² (land size, less roof area). This equates to a yield of 1.21kg/m² in a year that we recorded 712 mm of rain, significantly higher than the long term average (560mm).  We also harvested a couple of roosters and 251 eggs, down from 807 last year, as a fox outwitted us and decimated our flock in May. I choose not to get more chooks for a while, to see what sort of apple harvest we would get and find out what life is like without them. Apples will be harvested in 2022. Wooly aphids have infected one tree in particular, I haven't sprayed to see if the ladybird population would take care of them - not ...

Principle 3: Obtain a yield   Abundant cherry plum harvest, turned into wine and drinks   We produced over 600kg of food in 2020, which was a significant improvement in our harvest from 2019 of 532kg.  This was harvested from a Garden Farming area of 387m² (land size, less roof area) in a year that we recorded 807 mm of rain, significantly higher than the long term average. This equates to a yield of 1.37kg/m². The increase in overall yield was due to the higher rainfall, huge pumpkin harvest and big increase in fruit harvest > 315kg vs 176kg last year. Having such a large fruit harvest is becoming quite problematic, as lots of work is required to preserve the yield - and there is only so much fruit you can eat. Another increasing problem is fruitfly. Proper fruitfly netting has helped increase yield and reduce preserving work significantly.  Our vegetable production was lower 233kg vs 310kg last year. I believe that my problems growing tomatoes is primarily caus...

2020 Grape Trellis Harvest Richard standing in front of the grape trellis covering the northern deck. Back of rocket oven on left. Photo: Sen Yoshimoto.  NB. This post was mostly written in Feb 2020. The 2019/2020 summer was the most unusual that I can remember. Starting off with snow in the mountains, followed by heatwaves and an unprecedented fire season that incinerated 1.2 million hectares in eastern Victoria in a week. Then we got huge hailstorms in SE Australia that destroyed the CSIRO research centre greenhouses in Canberra. Next we got the flooding rains on the east coast. We've been fortunate in Seymour, avoiding the fires, hail and flooding rains. We've measured 110mm so far for the first 43 days of 2020. As a comparison we got 21mm over the same period in 2019, with 344.5mm for the year. But, this unseasonal weather of welcomed rain comes with it's downsides, with grapes splitting and mouldy. As an home education exercise for Sen (main photographer, ag...