Raised vegetable garden beds have long been used in agriculture as a method of enhancing productivity and managing food growing space. This is often done simply by mounding of rows up to a maximum height of 20cm or where extremes of slope demand hard borders to create level growing areas, for example, hillside rice paddies
Enhancing observation skills in your food growing spaces has a powerful effect on how productive and healthy your patch is and how your experience in the garden improves your well being. I want to share some of the practices I work with in my food growing spaces that lead to enhancing my observation skills.
Urban farm plot at 12 months has produced great results. I want to share the outcomes and reflections with you after it started as a grassy patch 12 months ago and is now a highly productive space creating healthy bio dynamically grown organic food. It is also a teaching space for our workshops and courses.
Self sufficiency is a common question I get when people see my vegetable garden. They ask, do I need to buy any vegetables and herbs with that much growing? You may be surprised to know that I always answer yes. There are some things I like to eat regularly that I can’t grow in our...
Urban agriculture catalyst is a subject that is drawing much attention globally. How do we work with it to get more from less whilst aiding food security, reducing CO2 from food production, developing a stronger food culture, building more resilient cities, aiding ecology and biodiversity and creating new economic pathways? All big picture questions where...
Biodynamic vs organic methods of food growing, is there a difference or are they pretty much different names for the same thing? The organic method is ecologically oriented. It tries to replace an overly complex, laboratory-oriented approach with a common sense approach which the ordinary gardener and farmer can relate to. In many cases, the...
Our small urban farm plot of about 250m2 gross area and 160m2 bed area started just under 6 months ago in December 2018. Its now early June 2019, start of winter in our sub tropical climate. The organic and biodynamic methods we use to manage the garden and its design have all contributed to its
Growing strawberries organically is one of my favourite activities in the food garden. Strawberries are a wonderfully nutritious and sweet tasting fruiting vegetable. I enhance organic methods with biodynamic soil and plant preparations. One of my previous food gardens about 5 years ago had about 1000 strawberry plants. I am incorporating strawberries into our new...
Organic garden design principles tend to relate to physical aspects of the garden such as: layout, size, orientation, drainage, materials used and how it is managed with a strong orientation to eliminating the chemicals of industrial agriculture. When the deeper meaning of beauty, goodness and truth permeate design and operation of the garden, you will...
Urban agriculture economic aspects are an evolving area of thought and practice where much innovation is occurring globally. I had the good fortune in February 2019 to attend an international biodynamic agriculture conference at the Goetheanum in Switzerland. The conference subject was the economic aspects of agriculture. It focused on agricultural examples from around the...