Our Hills Hoistarium

The Hills Hoist is an amazing piece of old technology using three natural energy sources to dry clothes:
Sun, Wind and Centrifical Force.  Below the traditional clothes hoist is a little patch of under-utilised ground.
In fact, the area is tricky to maintain and ideal to convert into an easily accessed, intensive, productive, circular food garden.
It often has a path straight to it, and plenty of sun every day. On very hot days it can enjoy the shade and drips from your clothes.

A friend named our little garden patch the Hills Hoistarium. It was made using our No-dig Garden method, requiring only edging bricks, cardboard, straw (or aged grass clippings) and seeds. We put small thorny branches on top to discourage birds and we did have to trap and remove snails in the early months, feeding them to our chickens in their mansion. After 8 months we had food! There were Tomatoes, Rocket, Parsley, Rosemary, Pineapple plants, and Amaranth. Amazingly, there were no weeds
probably because the bed was so full by spring there was no room left for weeds.

starting out feb 2010	Slow winter, snails and chickens attack	Protection against chickens and Wonga pigeon by use of thorny branches. Use of beer in snail trap, We fed snails to chickens.	Spring growth emerging
Fresh herbs Dec 2010	Herbs, Vegies, tomatoes and flowers in less than a year. The clothes offer shade and moisture to the plants.	Tomatoes, Feverfew, Parsley, Rocket, Rosemary	washing days with lunch supplied
The path to the washing line is shaded for comfort of workers