Biodiversity in any garden whether it’s small or large is super important. Ensuring it comes from a variety of different methods is the key and an easy one to begin with is with your pollinators. Native bees, solitary bees, and other local beneficial bugs are all to be encouraged. So what’s the best way to…
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This Pickled Fennel Agrodolche is an excellent small-batch vinegar pickle recipe for whatever vegetables you’ve got a bit too much of. You know the kind of situation I’m talking about. In our veggie patch, it is time to plant the climbing tomatoes against the fence. And this means the end of the winter fennel crop must…
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So you’ve got your bag/jar of spawn, and you’re ready to turn it into many bags (or buckets) of mushrooms. Here’s a simple + effective way to go about that process. Firstly, take your bag or jar of spawn that you’ve either cultivated yourself, or bought from a mushroom supplier. Break up the spawn (easier to…
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Given how locked-up our city real estate is, many new farmers are thinking between the spaces. Is farming on small-plot, rented land possible in an urban context? Today we’re talking to Canadian micro-farmer Curtis Stone, otherwise known as ‘The Urban Farmer’, about how to do just that. Curtis runs his growing enterprise Green City Acres…
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Recently we held a Biointensive Growing course with Jodi Roebuck at Buena Vista Farm in Gerringong. It was a big learning experience for everyone involved! The Biointensive Method is one that focusses on growing vegetables with maximum productivity from minimal space, in as immediate a timeframe as possible. This means there’s lots of energy that needs…
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One way to obtain yourself a healthy honeybee colony to put in your hive is to catch a swarm. While this might sound daunting, catching a swarm is entirely doable, and there’s many ways to go about it. Swarming is an optimistic act, and usually an indication that the colony has outgrown its hive space due to…
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Dark Emu is not a large book, but it packs a punch well above its weight. Prepare to have your understanding of Australia’s agricultural heritage re-wired completely. We’re definitely adding this to the required reading list for all our Permaculture + regenerative farming + growing courses. Bruce Pascoe, the author of Dark Emu, has with this…
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Worms. The very essence of every flourishing garden. They are great for improving soil quality, turn your kitchen scraps into a valuable, incredibly rich fertiliser, and also make for an undemanding household pet. With a block of coir, some newspaper and handful of worms ready to go, setting up a simple worm farm couldn’t be…
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Microbats are worth encouraging into your garden. Not only are they delightful to watch on dusk – they gobble thousands of mosquitoes, moths and other garden pests each and every night. A single microbat can eat up to 1,200 mosquitoes and small insects in an hour – which has earned them the well deserved reputation…
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Cascara is a drink made from the outer berry of a coffee bean – a byproduct of the coffee harvest, and a tasty drink unto itself, as we’ve recently learned. Coffee trees are an unlikely but awesome backyard plant that can be found in many community gardens in Sydney these days, including the 107 Rooftop Garden in…
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Are you ready to take the plunge and get seriously skilled up in Permaculture Design? Join some of Australia’s best Permaculture educators this Summer for our Sydney PDC. We pride ourselves on the quality of our Permaculture Design Certificate, which we run 3 times a year. Drawing on best-practice, student outcome based learning and the…
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Time to de-turf and complete our garden beds! Once we’d made our garden beds from scrap timber, the next step was to get the soil dug and planted. Grass Off This part was not as hard as we were expecting – probably because we’re on sandy soil, so the solid cover of buffalo and kikuyu…
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It was threatening to rain, and the wind was a-blowing. What a perfect day to ramble along the Coast Walk between Kiama and Gerringong! Hmm. Though actually, it all worked out quite well. Getting little people outside and adventuring on a non-conventionally-pleasant day comes down to clothing, mostly. At least in our house. So Ashar…
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