The best way to enjoy nature is to let it do the work by working with it to grow things you like that love your place. Start by walking around your back yard, your nature strip, your local area. Identify the plants that you like that like growing where you live and the places where they grow best. Collect seeds, take cuttings, or dig out young plants growing under adults. You can grow them in pots, or put them in the ground where other plants are growing happily. We call this 86 – Getting fed without giving a fig.
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Spinach galore
Popeye traditionally got his hit of power packed spinach from a can, but I prefer mine fresh. Unfortunately, in sub-tropical Australia the summers are simply too hot for spinach, silverbeet (chard) and most other leafy greens. Enter the sprawling, scrambling and climbing leafy greens that get used like spinach around the world. We have spent…
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Two and a half years
Two and a half years later: here’s what it looks like now. Here is a set of photographs of the community garden that started out as a rectangle of lawn and is fast turning into a food forest.
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Making the most of Malabar spinach
This preparation of Malabar Spinach for Palak Paneer works just as well for any of the sub-tropical plants discussed in Spinach galore. You can pick the individual leaves from the plant, but I generally just use the garden shears or secateurs to cut off a large section of the plant and separate the leaves from…
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Loving Lentils
Growing lettuce and tomatoes are satisfying but challenging in many climates at many times of the year. Wouldn’t it be great to grow the food we eat every day? Pigeon peas are also known as Toor Daal. Lentils, and pulses in general are the staple food of around one third of the globe’s human population.…
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94. Pestilence! Fungus as disease
Pestilence hit our community garden. We had to destroy an entire paw paw crop. There I was, extolling the virtues of fungus in helping us break grass clippings down to soil and, now this. “It’s a disease!” Asperisporium caricae specifically affects paw paw; especially after rainy periods. We have had rain all summer and autumn,…
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Tuber time as Autumn collides with Spring
Mid-winter in sub-tropical Brisbane is glorious. Warm and dry instead of hot and wet, our summer norm. European plants grow, the insect count is low and I am harvesting, feeding the soil and planting as Spring collides with late Autumn in mid-Winter. The air is a crisp 17 degrees at 7am and a warm sun…
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Reality checks relieve despair
Doomscrolling is depressing but wilful ignorance is dangerous. Individual action seems pointless: so where does a weary climate warrior turn? I regularly sing the praises of my community garden but not all my neighbours are converts. “With gourmet tomatoes at $3.99 a kilo, why would I battle the possums, pests and beating sun to grow…
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From grass to garden?
Sounds like a dream, but no dig gardening is possible without much fuss at all. We call it … Don’t give a fig gardening Tip 86 in Your Life Your Planet, Getting fed without giving a fig, is all about different approaches to getting food without a horticulture degree or a whole lot of digging…
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Turkeys
Weeds and pests are the bane of a gardener’s life. It is fun to grow things but the excitement turns to disappointment when some pesky beast gets to your hard earned food before you do. Long time ZedHead and friend of EcoRadio, Beth Incognito recently posted before and after photos of her carefully prepared garden…
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Harvesting rewards
Avoid disappointment – harvest your crop before the pests get it. (Listen to the podcast) Summer is harvest time and lots of gardeners celebrate their harvest on social media. What we don’t see is the failures: the cucumbers eaten by rats, the tomatoes that split in the rain, the pumpkins that rotted where they touched…