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:
Category: Weather
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…
Lood Mitigation For Southeast Queensland Starts Here
Today Tamworth is cut into two by floodwaters from falls of over 150mm rain. Storms are predicted for southeast Queensland and the Northern Rivers of NSW, and southeast Queensland continues to mop up and count the cost of flood damage caused by two nights of rain. NSW State Emergency service’s Namoi division controller Kathleen Caine…
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.
Using Every Drop More Than Once
The last thing we want is for any water to go down the drain. By mid-morning today, heavy showers filled our 21,000 litre rainwater tank. It’s starting to overflow into our network of drainage pipes, which soak the soil deeply from 70 cm down and below. When this network has done its job the subsoil…
Autumn Harvest And Wild Weather
We’ve just enjoyed a good picking of autumn crops from the garden On Friday I planted out the mangelwurzel seedlings in their final positions. We ate the tender, leafy thinnings which taste like silverbeet in a stir fry. Damo provided sugar syrup for the honeybees, which aren’t foraging in this wild weather. The native honeybee…
Gardening In ‘New Summer’
October 2007 is the month that Tim Flannery, Australian of the Year, advised that in 2005 the concentration of CO2 equivalent in the atmosphere passed 450 ppm. Also this month a German study revealed that we passed Peak Oil in 2006. I can think of few more momentous happenings for human civilisation. Certainly for human…
A Close Shave With Frost During Ongoing Drought: Winter 2007
“What a lot of weather we’re having,” was something my Great Aunt Florence, a one-time Land Army girl, and someone as softly spoken as Lady Bracknell (of ‘The Importance of Being Ernest’) used to say. And we have had a lot of interesting, weather-related events. In the Murray-Darling, irrigated horticulture usually provides 40% of Australia’s fresh…
Hail Delivers, Wind Claws Back
The bureau of meteorology’s radar view showed the large black mass of an intense storm sweeping our way. We switched off the computer and disconnected all powerpoints…While I was shutting windows, putting batteries in the radio and getting ready for what might follow, Damo took snaps of the storm front. At his call I went…
Jerry Coleby-Williams 