Last weekend Michael, Zag and Stephen packed the ute with seeds, mulch and tools, and went to Sydney to teach a Serious Backyard Veggies workshop with special guest Costa Georgiadis. Planting, planning what goes where and what goes in next, natural pest management and all the ‘how to grow great tomatoes/eggplant/celery/carrots etc’ tips that could…
DetailsThe deal with Rose the permachef returning to Milkwood Farm this Spring is this: apon her return (which is imminent) she will move into the completed (ok nearly) earthbag dome, ensuring her personal seclusion and wood-fired comfort for the coming season. The earthbag dome, while awesome, has been somewhat of a side-project since the first…
Details‘You have to come to the Allsun farm open day’ said my scythe-mad friend Nikki. ‘They’re a microfarm and they do market gardening and all this amazing stuff there with integrated animal systems and they’re just brilliant’. Hmm, we thought. That sounds kinda interesting. So we side-tracked our road trip to Gundaroo for the Allsun…
DetailsWe just got our copy of the 2013 Permaculture Calendar, which is, once again, 12 months of beautiful pictures of permaculture in practice from around the world, on recycled paper stock with a great textural feel. It will be a pleasure to have in the woolshed, and in the tinyhouse too. Any calendar that gives…
DetailsSo we have these great fuzzy caterpillars in the forest garden who occasionally get together and go journeying in a long, fuzzy line. We happened to be in the forest garden during one such sojourn, and Nick decided to do a bit of caterpillar-wrangling…
DetailsIn response to requests, here’s a couple of pics of the outside of our recently moved-into tinyhouse at Milkwood Farm. The outside is not quite as finished as the inside just yet, in true owner-builder style. But let’s focus on what IS there, and there is lots. A safe temporary fence to prevent our little…
DetailsThe ‘Gundaroo Tiller’ is an Australian adaptation the traditional European broadfork, and an essential tool for our small market garden. It may look like just a big clunky fork-thing, but it is actually a finely tuned instrument of permaculture soil conditioning goodness. Truly. Famously, when Allan Yeomans‘ saw his first Gundaroo Tiller, he called it…
DetailsRecently Harris (who heads the Forest Garden projects at Milkwood), has been in Chile teaching, designing and implementing forest garden systems. We thought you’d like to take a peek at some Chilean permaculture action? Given our Gondwana connection, there are many correlations between Chile and Australia in terms of plant species (similar nitrogen fixers, for…
DetailsWe love growing coriander for its many benefits and its flavor, but in our climate it just bolts so quickly, it’s a blink-and-you’ll miss it affair. Fortunately the fabulous Meg McGowan showed up at last weekend’s Aquaponics Workshop with a simple, doable solution to breeding slow to bolt coriander for any climate…
In just over a month we’ll be hosting an Intro to Organic Market Gardening course smack-bang in the middle of the Milkwood market garden. This will be 2 hands-on days of crop planning, garden design and as much planting, growing and harvesting knowledge as we can squeeze in. This course is designed for people interested…
DetailsThis winter I was determined, nay, rabid, about finally purchasing all the apple trees we would need to have a steady supply of appley goodness in 4 years time at Milkwood Farm. We’ll have heaps of time to plant them all out to their vaguely appointed destinations before bud-burst, I thought. However, what with moving…
DetailsAnyone wanting to grow a wall of summer (literally) should try scarlet runner beans. Just thinking about them makes me smile. They are incredibly enthusiastic climbers and grow up, up, up, blooming bright red flowers ever which way. Then they bear heavily, with bean pods you can eat whole when young (green bean pods with…
DetailsThis spring we’re extending the market garden, and that means more rabbit-proof fencing, and more ‘breaking ground’. In permaculture, we try not to break (both literally and figuratively) ground wherever possible, but one exception to that rule is when cultivating annual vegetables en-masse. Before we started this market garden, I thought that maybe we could…
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…