If you want protein-rich pigeon peas by the bucketful, grow them in drought. And plant pigeon peas for food, shade, shelter, forage and bees. Grow them in a school food garden to discover which species of native bee live in the vicinity. Use this food plant as a school science project!
Category: Food Security
Use Grey Water For Gardening? Then Use Green Cleaners For Cleaning.
If you’re watering plants with grey water, the type of detergent you use really makes a difference to both their health and the health of the soil.
Tomatillo Salsa Verde Recipe
“Salsa verde, chilled and freshly made from home grown tomatillos (Physalis philadelphica), is great on a hot day. An excuse for not cooking on (another) one of those sticky subtropical summer days”.
Thuan the Market Gardener
Thuan’s market garden: 1,500 sq m of alluvial, sandy loam in a flood plain of the Perfume River catchment, Hue, Vietnam. Fruit, vegetables, herbs, spices, flowers, poultry – and incense – in a prolifically productive, wet, inland subtropical climate.
Protecting Pawpaw Plants Against Black Spot Disease
If you live in south eastern Queensland and grow pawpaw, it’s worth a quick health check right now. Mild, calm, showery, humid winter weather is perfect for observing outbreaks of pawpaw black spot disease. But how best to manage this common problem?
‘Putting sustainable food production into context’; Jerry Coleby-Williams, Patron, National Toxics Network Inc.
We ignore the following key aspects of sustainable food production at our peril:
* A culture of forgetting – we forget our horticultural history;
* Declining crop diversity, both in the range of species grown and in the genetic diversity within each crop;
* The oversimplification and impoverishment of systems of food production;
* A reluctance to apply the precautionary principle where using the least toxic solution in crop protection comes first;
A Taste of Vietnam in my Garden / Hương vị Việt Nam trong vườn nhà tôi
I’m waiting for the summer wet season to start. Until the rain arrives, there is little cloud to filter the hot sunlight. Thank goodness for old net curtains and shadecloth! I thought I would check my crops against those commonly grown in Vietnam. Despite the average weather, I have 114 different crops growing in my 300…
Oil, Rust and Global Crises. Ten Years On…
Ten years ago British Petroleum closed Prudhoe Bay, the largest oilfield in the USA. Rusted, leaking oil pipes heavily polluted a region already suffering from accelerating global warming. At the same time, melting permafrost had started to cause forests, roads and homes to start sinking into mud. Methane gas, once frozen under the ice, started…
Spring Follows Winter. But Can You Set Your Calendar By That?
“This gardener wonders if the Carnival of Flowers date will alter in order to keep up with changing climate?
Meet Brigalow, a national Treasure.
Meet Brigalow, a National Treasure.
Rice Growing in Vietnam, From Paddy to Plate
The Vietnamese depend on rice (Oryza sativa) for food security. There’s a long list of ways rice can be served, this staple grain is routinely eaten three times a day – rice noodles for breakfast, either rice noodles or rice for lunch, and rice for dinner. Growing this staple in Vietnam’s fertile soils and wet tropical climate…
In Production Today: My Subtropical Harvest Festival, May 2015
With 100 square metres of good soil you can feed a person all year round. That’s what my ‘Dig for Victory’ grandparents taught me when I was a teenager in London. Here in sunny subtropical Brisbane you also need a minimum of 7,000 litres of stored water, ideally 10,000 litres, to sustain that production through…
Jerry Coleby-Williams 