Establishing a small urban farm is a challenging and exciting task. We recently moved house to a bush land property only 35 minutes from Brisbane CBD. The 20 hec land is bordered by a creek and we live on a portion of the property. Our goal was to create a small urban farm that: Fitted...
Regenerative urban agriculture works with regenerative agriculture principles within an urban and peri-urban context. Those principles are more commonly discussed around how to regenerate farming land and communities severely degraded by chemical farming and animal stocking rates totally unsuited to the land qualities. Regenerative agriculture principles are deceptively simple, using natures processes, guided by our...
Inner gardening is a pathway to improving your well being and one of the best places to start this journey is in your food garden. Successful food growing in urban environments is a juggling act. There are so many factors to manage and its easy to think that growing food is purely about the materials...
Vegetable garden paths are essential in your food garden. If designed correctly, they make the space more functional, beautiful, aid soil fertility and improve drainage. Getting the right vegetable garden paths is not as simple as it seems. My blog this month gives a number of suggestions and I think you will be surprised at...
Sheet mulching is a common practice recommended in permaculture. It uses cardboard and paper to smother the earth from growing weeds and grass whilst you attempt to build healthy soil on top of the cardboard and paper. My blog this month examines alternatives to sheet mulching which I feel are much more efficient and truly...
Organic gardening without chemicals. sounds pretty logical, but in our desire to be pure in this pursuit, many fuzzy lines exist. Let me demonstrate this fuzziness with two examples of common inputs for organic gardeners, chicken manure and newspapers. When I say without chemicals, I do mean without harmful and mostly synthetic chemicals, as...
Farm individuality is an important principle in biodynamic food growing. Individuality can also be applied in urban food growing spaces of any scale, but there are some changes needed in how to work with individuality, some new perspectives. I had the pleasure of running a workshop recently at the global centre for biodynamics in Dornach...
The biodynamic agriculture conference for 2018, held at the Goetheanum, Switzerland, was a wonderful experience for me. I wanted to share some reflections of my journey as I have just returned to Australia. The conference, run by the Section for Agriculture at the Goetheanum was attended by 900 people from 40 countries. These people were...
Making good compost is a key goal of any serious organic gardener. I have found that biodynamic methods used to enhance the quality of the organic composting process greatly increase the potential for making good compost. Here are my insights. Firstly, it would be easy to think that making good compost for your vegetable garden...
Keeping backyard chickens around your food gardens is an important part of widening the living system that supports your soil fertility process. Its very possible in urban environments to have chickens and for the most part, they are a pleasure to be part of the “garden family”. But I have to say that in keeping...