Yams are warm climate, winter herbaceous, perennial vines. The swollen, starch-rich tuber is their food store, and this is what most people grow them for – they use them as a potato alternative, baked, boiled, mashed or as chips.
Category: Productive
‘Bellis’ – A Model 21st Century Garden
‘Bellis’, Brisbane’s award winning sustainable house and garden, is now seven years old. Last October this place won a national Save Water! Award in the Built Environment category. Since its inception, this 810 square metre property has collected over 7 megalitres of rainwater and recycled over 3 megalitres of sewage water. In the ornamental subtropical…
Review ‘Eat Your Garden’, By Leonie Shanahan
Review: ‘Eat your garden’, by Leonie Shanahan; Publisher: PI Productions Photography; ISBN 9780975217764; 2010. “If they (children) grow it, they will eat it”. Schools are where Australia’s gardening culture is most rapidly developing, and this is thanks to children. Why? They are generally more keenly aware of 21st century global environmental issues than many adults…
Catalyst – Informing Growers And Conservationists About Climate Change
Gardeners, farmers, conservationists and planners should watch this recent segment produced by ABC’s ‘Catalyst’ show on how climate change is affecting the health of our harvests. Rising CO2 levels will mean:
Pretty Edible
I had a vacant vegetable bed last summer and decided to plant it with decorative edible plants just to show how good food can also be decorative. On the blue bamboo frame I sowed luffa, beside the frame I planted golden sweetpotato ‘Marguerite’. The central plantings consisted of Amaranthus tricolor ‘Joseph’s Coat’, and near the…
The First Digger Was A Great Guerilla Gardener
360 years ago on April Fools Day, Gerrard Winstanley, became a very influential guerrilla gardener when he planted vegetables on an English hillside. The repercussions live on.
Growing And Cooking Plantains (and other green bananas)
Plantains are big bananas. While they may be unfamiliar in Australian home gardens and restaurants, plantains and dessert bananas are important foods in tropical and subtropical regions. Their starch has a low glycaemic index (low GI) and also gluten free, so they are a source of sustained energy for physically active gardeners as well as…
What Can I Grow As Stock Feed In SE Queensland?
Question We live on 1 acre of land at Boonah, Qld approx same temperature as Ipswich, Qld, in black soil country. We run our own poultry and a pig and are working towards a reasonable self-sufficiency with substantial vegetable garden, orchard, plus a food forest. What I am wishing to do is try to cut…
Book Review: Outdoor Classrooms
‘Outdoor Classrooms, a handbook for school gardens’, by Carolyn Nuttall & Janet Millington. Publisher: PI Productions Photography. ISBN: 978-0-9752177-3-3 (pbk.), 2008. The sharply rising interest in school food gardens is being driven by children, who are generally more keenly aware of 21st century global environmental issues than many adults realise. So if you’re a parent…
Book Launch: ‘Love, Mary’ – A Thinking Person’s Christmas Gift
The official Book Launch of ‘Love, Mary’ will be held in West End, Brisbane at ‘The Avid Reader’ bookshop on the 4th of December. I’ll be introducing the LNP’s David Gibson, MP for Gympie, and Greens MP Ronan Lee as they launch the book. The Mary River now has its own book to share its…
The First Day Of Crematoria
The first koel of summer has called, the first mosquito has bitten and the first dust storm has sprinkled Brisbane red ochre. While I’m out there watering, counting every drop as it falls onto the crisped ground, thunderstorm clouds are full of promise yet lacking in rain. It’s the first day of crematoria, south east Queensland’s flexible new season, that bridges that rigid, neat European concept of spring and summer.
Agrochemical Farming – A System In Crisis
John Vidal reports that “Fertiliser prices have mostly doubled and in some cases risen by 500% in 15 months as US farmers have rushed to plant more biofuel crop”… ”There have been fertiliser riots or demonstrations in Vietnam, India, Kenya, Nepal, Nigeria, Egypt, Pakistan and Taiwan in the last few months. Last week one man…
Jerry Coleby-Williams 