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…

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Hive Society! A Bee And Wasp Gallery

Gardens are full of surprises if you keep your eyes open – and have a camera handy. This autumn, flowering Pigeon peas proved irresistible to six different native bee species. What’s going on in your garden?

Is Duncan Street’s Nature Strip Now Safe?

Bayside residents have vowed to stop council plans to eliminate this nature strip. Subsequent media coverage by ABC Radio and Channel Ten TV on Tuesday 27th May 2008, it now appears that Brisbane City Council are willing to discuss ways to retain and improve this community asset! Here’s the original story

“Queensland Gardeners Too Dumb To Grow” – Minister

In a recent guide, ‘Waterwise Queensland: Gardening with greywater’*, published on 26th April 2008, Queensland minister for Natural Resources and Water, the Honourable Craig Wallace hopes to popularise grey water in home gardens. During the ongoing drought in SE Qld, home gardeners have grabbed their buckets and answered government calls to reduce their mains water…

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Native Bee Day

On Saturday I became the proud owner of a hive of native stingless bees, Trigona carbonaria. A little web-searching found that Dr Tim Heard, a CSIRO entomologist and native bee specialist, supplies colonies and his brother, Frank, makes specially designed hives for them. Stingless bees and honeybees happily co-exist. Happily Brisbane provides an ideal climate…

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Honey Flora Report – May

We’re members of the Bayside Beekeepers Association, and every month they release a Honey Flora Report listing significant flowering local native plants useful for honey production. Our hives are busy harvesting pollen and nectar from the urban forest and garden plants as well, so we’ve decided to add them to the BBA report.

Queensland Minister ‘Greys’ Grey Water

Here’s an open letter I wrote to the Hon. Craig Wallace, Qld Minister for Water: Dear Minister, Re: Media Release: ‘Greywater guide gives green tips for Queensland Gardeners’, 26.4.08. A copy of your media release was forwarded to me from the office of Queensland Conservation. I urge you to withdraw this publication before you mislead…

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Ontario Joins Quebec In Pesticide Ban

“Canadian province to ban garden pesticides. Canada’s Ontario province says it will ban the sale and general use of pesticides in what the province says will be among the toughest such environmental laws in North America. Canada’s most populous province said the new legislation, expected to take effect next spring, would outlaw homeowners’ use of…

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Real Carbon Capture And Sequestration

While Australian governments state and federal, past and present, throw vast amounts of money at unproven ‘clean coal’ technology they are ignoring a proven method of pulling CO2 out of the atmosphere and storing it. A thirty year scientific trial by the Rodale Institute in Pennsylvania (USA) placed conventional, industrial farming systems and organic systems…

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Bellis Gin

In autumn we make our own special liqueur which we’ve named ‘Bellis gin’. The recipe is adapted from the traditional English Sloe Gin recipe, which uses the fruit of the Sloe bush, Prunus spinosa. The Sloe is a prickly, deciduous, small-leaved, native shrub that’s related to plum. Occasionally farmed, the fruit ripen in autumn and…

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