Category 12

In The Garden: November- February

map of aussie

• November: Basil, beans, beetroot, cabbage, capsicum, carrot, cauliflower, chives, coriander, cucumber, lemongrass, marjoram, mint, oregano, parsley, rosemary, tarragon, and thyme, English spinach, kohlrabi, leek, lettuce, onion, parsnip, pumpkin, radish, silverbeet, swede, sweet corn, tomato, turnip, zucchini.

• December: Lettuce, rocket, Asian greens, carrot, beetroot, celery, silverbeet, more leek and tomato, salad onion, sweet corn, zucchini, cucumber, pumpkin, parsnip, celery, celeriac, Brussels sprouts, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower and potato (such as Kennebec).

• January: Carrot, beetroot, radish, turnip, lettuce, Asian greens (e.g. rocket, mizuna, mibuna, mustard, cress), silverbeet, spring onions, bush beans. If you live in a warm spot, try seedlings of late zucchini, cucumber, small pumpkins like Golden Nuggets, sweet corn and even more tomato.

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Homemade Crackers

crackers

When we’re doing our best to make everything from scratch with the most wholesome ingredients and to avoid processed food and all the plastic trappings it brings, there is one food that can be our undoing. It’s that ultimate versatile snack food—crackers.

Wheat crackers, rice crackers, rice cakes, gluten free crackers— they all come in a plastic packet and are most likely made through an extrusion process in a factory that renders them highly indigestible. But still, they sure taste good. They are convenient, kids love them, and we can somehow convince ourselves that they’re just a vessel for the healthy toppings or dips we eat them with.

Is there a solution to this cracker dilemma? Yes there is. It might mean spending a bit more time in the kitchen to make these wholesome crackers from scratch but you won’t be disappointed. Your family will love them.

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The Tropical Permaculture Guidebook

We are very conscious that climate change will hit the tropics, and especially the most vulnerable, very hard. The aim of the Tropical Permaculture Guidebook (TPGB) is to be part of simultaneously creating lifestyles that contribute to environmental regeneration rather than climate change and degradation and provide resilience and proactive adaptability in facing current challenges.

The TPGB is helping people all over the world have more food, cleaner water, better livelihoods, be more resilient, more sustainable and live in healthier and more stable communities. It creates the framework pattern of permaculture design from a typical tropical community perspective, then provides the details of how to actually achieve it, with step-by-step technical knowledge explained both in words and images.

The guidebook is the result of a collaboration from East Timorese NGO Permatil (Permaculture Timor-Leste), xpand Foundation (an Australian social enterprise working predominantly in Timor-Leste), Disruptive Media (design and strategic communications for social change) and a huge band of supporters.

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Save your seeds: Onion

onion

BOTANICAL NAME: Allium cepa. In Latin, allium means garlic and cepa means onion.

ORIGIN:

Onion is a hardy biennial from the southern parts of Russia and Iran. It was disseminated by the Indo-European hordes in their numerous migrations.

Very ancient forms of onions are still for sale in Middle Eastern markets. Onions were considered sacred and were eaten in copious quantities by the Egyptians who honoured them in some of their monuments.

In recent times, UN officials have found old varieties in Iran that show resistance to thrips and this has greatly benefited the industry. Thrips are slender insects with stout, coneshaped mouth parts with which they scrape the onion stems and suck out the sap, causing yellowing of the leaves.

DESCRIPTION:

Onions have many close relatives, such as A. cepa var. aggregatum (French shallot, potato onion and multiplier

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Eat your weeds: Yellow Dock

BOTANICAL NAME: Rumex crispus (Yellow Dock, Curly Dock, Narrow-leaved Dock)

FAMILY NAME: Polygonaceae (that’s the buckwheat family)

DESCRIPTION:

Yellow Dock is an abundant weed that commonly grows in disturbed damp soils. It is easily found in pastures, waterways, wetlands, riparian vegetation, roadsides and waste areas in temperate and sub-tropical regions. Remember, most roadside weeds are typically sprayed with herbicides, so avoid collecting there.

This plant has a lot to offer as a nutritious food, potent medicine, natural dye or unique cut flower.

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Charlie Mgee

Performing

In his career Charlie Mgee has performed to a crowd of 10,000 ‘doof heads’, to five-year-olds in a kindergarten class, to Vandana Shiva at a Seed Freedom conference. His music has even been played at a UN official ceremony. How did he end up playing songs to such diverse audiences?

Charlie first leapt to fame in the permaculture world with the release of the album Permaculture: A Rhymers Manual. It was made with his band Formidable Vegetable Sound System, which currently consists of musicians Mal Web and Kylie Morrigan and also features a range of musicians from around the world.

This was an album of songs based around the permaculture principles. Sounds nerdy? You might think so, but it is a stomping good album with ‘radish beats’ and a very funky sound.

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Reading Landscape With David Holmgren

landscape

Permaculture invites us to slow down and really take stock of what is happening in a place before we go about changing or developing it. Whether a garden, farm or something else, we start by asking what is unique about this place and how did it get to be the way it is now? Finding answers to these questions is not always easy and is a once-strong skill modern humans have mostly lost.

Permaculture co-originator David Holmgren has a name for this skill. He calls it ‘reading landscape’, and after decades of practice he’s become really good at honing in on the unique character of a place through direct observation.

This article shares some of the things David does as he reads landscape. Even though these observations are based on David’s experiences of reading large rural properties, they are equally applicable in your backyard or any place you’d like to get better acquainted with.

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Urban Farming: Spoke & Spade

plants

Simeon Hanscamp finished his university degree and was searching for meaningful work. He took a short business course, worked on a market garden, studied online with Curtis Stone (the urban farmer, not the celebrity chef), watched a bit of YouTube, and decided he would have a crack at setting up an urban farm.

‘Opportunity comes from initiative,’ says Simeon. His business Spoke & Spade in Melbourne’s urban north-east was born from compromise; balancing his partner’s desire to travel, finances and family. Simeon runs his business across three sites in Heidelberg, Ivanhoe and Heidelberg West. He lives in one, and on the other two he exchanges vegetables and water bill money for free use of the land.

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Permaculture animal: Guinea Pig

guinea-pig

Guinea pigs (cavies) are a useful permaculture animal because they can be a zero-input, multi-functioning addition to rooftop, backyard and homestead gardens.

They keep grass down, provide manure, recycle your food scraps and don’t need much space or make any noise, unlike our clucky friends the chickens. They also make great pets for kids. Guinea pigs are social animals and can also form close bonds with their carers.

Feed

Guinea pigs are voracious eating machines! They eat grass, weeds, vegetables and also mixed grains. Avoiding grains is completely possible and doesn’t seem to have any negative consequences. Food waste in the form of vegetable and fruit scraps mean another fertility cycling opportunity (that waste could be from a local cafe or restaurant). 15 guinea pigs will convert 20 kgs a week into hundreds of fertiliser pellets—a lovely landfill reduction for your local community, and fertility for your landscape!

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Waste-Free Celebrations

decorations

Celebrations often carry their own set of rituals and expectations. Many of these rituals can be unsustainable in terms of the increase in consumption and waste which is often inherent to them. Here are some tips to help you rethink your celebrations in order to reduce waste without reducing joy.

BUY ONLY WHAT YOU NEED

Food purchases go up by approximately 80% over the Christmas period. The sad thing is that not all of this food is actually consumed and much of it ends up in landfill. While everyone enjoys having delicious and ‘sometimes’ special food during celebrations, try to think about how much you actually need, and also where this food is coming from.

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