As the weather heats up, the bees get busy. We’re all hoping for a great season. But the hotter weather also brings with it possible bee pests including small hive beetle, especially if you’re beekeeping in wam-temperate Australia. Here’s some tips for dealing with small hive beetle, naturally. All about Small Hive Beetle Small hive beetle was…
For anyone wanting to start natural cheesemaking at home, sourcing raw milk can be tricky, if not impossible. So to the rescue comes Milk Kefir – breaker of chains, un-pasteurizer of milk, restorer of worlds and all-round kitchen hero. No really, I mean it. Milk kefir grains are a Symbiotic Community of Bacteria and Yeasts (SCOBY) –…
At Melliodora, the goat forage system is designed to support this permaculture smallholding in numerous ways, while closing the loop, keeping happy goats and making tasty cheese. Every morning, Pip and Willow make their way up to the milking shed in readiness for their morning milking. When it’s my turn to milk in the morning,…
It’s 2 years since we started transforming a bare patch of city rooftop into an award-winning, thriving community garden space. Now seems like a good time to look back at what worked, what didn’t and what’s growing now. The 107 rooftop garden, incase you haven’t seen it, is a 140m2 patch of rooftop in inner Sydney. It’s lined…
Rarely have two books landed on our kitchen table at once that have been so different, yet so similar! The Art of Frugal Hedonism + Grown and Gathered encompass deep urban frugalism (for hedonists) to dreamy-yet-muddy farm life+kitchen. With pictures. In a current climate where lots of folks are wanting to downsize, downshift, simplify radically, barter + trade, go no waste,…
Learning how to establish a profitable urban farm takes a LOT of planning and thinking – it’s certainly not just about land access and good seedlings. So we’re very happy that Curtis Stone, author of The Urban Farmer, has launched this excellent online course. Some of you may have seen + learned from Curtis when we…
Morel mushrooms are not something I was expecting to find often in the Australian bush. Infact, we’d only heard rumours about them existing at all. Until we came across Morchella australiana. When I think of Morels (Morchella species), I think of the Pacific North-West of North America, with it’s lush deciduous early-spring forests and salmon berries…
Scoring a patch of dirt to start an urban farm in Sydney is no mean feat. But Pocket City Farms have done it, thanks to their passion, green fingers and ability to adapt. Just the skills you need for farming. Perfect. Pocket City Farms is a small group of normal folks with a big dream – to grow good clean…
If you live in a cold or temperate climate, Spring can be a bit slow when it comes to starting seedlings. Here’s how to make DIY Glass Cloches for Early Spring Plants. When I look at all my little seedlings, slowly putting out their first leaves in my greenhouse, all I can see right now is…
Spring is a good time for starting a mushroom garden – the weather is mild, and there’s usually a good bit of rain about. Perfect conditions for getting your mycellium running, and establishing a patch for future Autumn harvests. There’s many different ways you can get mushrooms growing where you live, and which method works best for…
Greywater is a fabulous, though often underused, household resource that should be used wherever possible. Here’s a home made 3 bathtub greywater system that’s simple but effective. If you live in an area where water is precious at certain times of year (and when is it not?) then catching, storing and using every drop you…
Eat your foraged greens, wherever they may be. Anyone for a seaside sandwich? Sea lettuce is easy to find and forage, and it’s packed with goodness. In NSW (the regulations in other states vary slightly), sea lettuce is the one and only seaweed that normal folks may forage and harvest in it’s live form, straight…
Enokitake are a delicious wild mushroom that’s a great addition to any food growing system, so we were excited to find them growing unannounced in the black currant patch at Melliodora. Time to encourage and cultivate! Talk about stacking functions. So David was taking Nick through the process of pruning the black currant patch recently,…
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