Honeybees build comb. It’s part of what they do. It’s part of who they are. And being, as it is, actually exuded from glands on the undersides of their bodies, the honeycomb that bees build is literally part of them. Comb is literally part of the super organism that is a honeybee colony. It’s a…
DetailsThis year in the market garden Michael has sown lots of silverbeet and rainbow chard, because it’s such a versatile and hardy green. However silverbeet are poly-embryonic, which means that multiple plants will sprout from the one seed. So to prevent crowding and to be able to regulate the final size of the plant, silverbeet…
DetailsOur criteria for building the greywater system for the tinyhouse was pretty simple: cheap, made from readily available materials, and effective. We also wanted to use the outputs to irrigate a grove of important fruit trees, as water is very precious here, especially in a dry year. After many, many hours of research on systems…
DetailsHow to make the most of the late brassica harvest? Sauerkraut! Fermented cabbage is a hard thing not to love. It’s spicy and it’s sour and it looks beautiful too, especially made with your own red cabbages. The cabbage harvest was not what we’d hoped for, with lots of half-headed cabbages that were obviously perfect…
DetailsCharlie has been busy in Sydney making beautiful and functional aquaponics systems far and wide of late, of which he’ll be sharing the designs and process during our Backyard Aquaponics Workshop happening in Sydney next weekend on the 20-21 October 2012. While he’s still making lots of bathtub aquaponics systems, Charlie’s also find that a…
DetailsWhile worm farms are pretty normal to find nowadays in many yards, their capacity to cycle essential nutrients and make nutrient dense soil additives available to you, for free, can’t be understated. Worm farms rock, seriously. Our bathtub wormfarm next to the kitchen garden, with it’s built in vertigation (direct worm juice injection into the…
DetailsNick just finished up co-teaching a Permaculture Teacher Training course with Rowe Morrow on Sunday, which was by all accounts an enlightening 7 days of how the heck to communicate core design concepts to a wide range of different types of learners. Amongst the varied and wonderful students present was Jasmine Whyte from communicatecreative, who…
DetailsRecently we had 24 folks come to Milkwood Farm to learn the basics of market gardening under the stewardship of Michael Hewins, Milkwood’s resident market gardener. It was a great weekend of learning and digging and doing. Michael’s been a market gardener for some years up north, and it’s been great to have him arrive…
DetailsYes, you heard that right. Croissants made on sourdough starter (ie no yeast), using white spelt flour. It’s possible! And what is more, they’re ridiculously delish. Rose made these at Milkwood Farm during a quiet week recently, and they were all things that croissants should be, but better. Especially with plum jam… home-made heaven.
DetailsA quick shout-out that we’ve extended the earlybird price deadline for this darn fine course until Sunday night: Permaculture Design Certificate: 11-24 Nov 2012, Milkwood Farm Milkwood PDC’s frequently produce motivated folks ready to take on and transform their communities. We place huge emphasis on ensuring excellent student outcomes and we see permaculture design skills…
DetailsEdible, native and delicious. Will’s been growing these beauties in his home mushroom cultivation setup on blocks of grain spawn. Like many other mushrooms, once you know how, these beautiful fungi can be cloned and propagated at home (if you have a reliable source). After which point you can re-produce them indefinitely.
DetailsSo most of our spring seedlings are now out of their soil blocks and getting planted into the ground. But being Mudgee, there’s still plenty of frosts, which doesn’t sit well with spring veggies – time for spring row covers! Row covers are pretty invaluable in a small setup like ours – we dont have…
DetailsLast week Milkwood Permaculture was the proud winner of the 2012 Green Lifestyles Awards in the Garden Company category. We won it for being “a company whose products are consistently amazing, who are the pinnacle of sustainability behind the scenes, & who are working to green our food culture”. Wow. And I even got to…
DetailsThe Milkwood newsletter is an occasional publication that’s a treasure trove of writings, free DIY guides, gardening tips, permaculture hacks, special newsletter-only posts and giveaways, and lots, lots more…