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. I’ve […]
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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. […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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Four fold nature is a very helpful conceptual framework for looking at the make up of your organic garden or urban farm and how to optimise its quality. Being conscious of the integrated system forming the four main components of a successful organic garden or farm (its four fold nature) creates an essential platform for […]
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Spring experience in a sub tropical organic garden is quite a unique one compared to more temperate climates. There is so much beauty in this transition of seasons, as well as opportunity to use plants in finishing state whilst bringing in new warmer season crops. I will explain the experience through my own food gardens […]
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