Category Grow

Vegetables, fruits and grains are a major source of vital nutrients, but generations of intensive agriculture have depleted our soils to historical lows. As a result, the broccoli you eat today may have less than half the vitamins and minerals it would have had less than a century ago. We can grow our own vegetables using lots of compost and avoiding chemicals, but how do we really know our soil has enough of the appropriate minerals in the right balance to grow truly nutrient dense food?

Nutrient dense food has its full complement of minerals and is the best kind of food to keep you healthy. For food to be nutrient dense, it must be grown in soil that has an abundant and balanced supply of minerals. If key plant nutrients in the soil are lacking or way out of proportion, then the food produced in this soil will not be nutrient dense.

There is also a biological side to it that is equally important to plant health and ultimate food quality. However you first need to bring the minerals into proper balance, then the soil food web (worms, nematodes, algae, amoeba, fungi, bacteria) comes into healthy balance too. When it comes to micro-life, there is rarely a need to import them. When the soil is favourable to the proper organisms, they will predominate, appearing as if from nowhere. Soil biology can greatly assist the plants in assimilating nutrients, but only after the minerals have been brought into balance.

The humble carrot may be easy and cheap to buy, but the absolute pleasure of picking a few fresh carrots to crunch on straight from your garden and the taste sensation you will receive are well worth the investment of your time.

With a bit of good planning, it’s possible to have a supply of carrots from your garden nearly year round, and what a food to have on hand—this versatile vegetable is an absolute powerhouse of nutrition. Raw, steamed, baked or juiced, carrots are packed with vitamins any way you eat them. And the humble carrot has a beautiful secret that only carrot growers will get to discover.

Learning how to grow mushrooms from scratch is a little bit like learning a magic trick. And yet once you have the basic skills and principles sorted out, it’s really very doable.

Cultivating mushrooms is an excellent way to vastly increase both the diversity and the nutrition of your homegrown produce. And conveniently, mushrooms can be grown in disused areas with little light, so they slot into a home food system without competing for the same space as your other growing projects.

Blue oysters, garden giants, enokitake, pink oysters, turkey tail, shiitake, reishi, pioppini—a whole world of mushrooms can be grown down the side of your house, the place where not much else grows, as well as in buckets in the empty space under the porch, under your stairs, or even under your couch. Don’t have much light? Mushrooms don’t mind. If they have a stable temperature to grow in and can be moved to a humid environment to fruit in, they’re happy.

As we tread upon our soil, plant into it and harvest from it, it’s hard to imagine the myriad of creatures that live within it. Teeming with life, the sheer number and diversity of creatures in our soil is mind-boggling, and these creatures are crucial to the health and vitality of our soil. This interdependent circle of life is known as the soil food web.

The soil food web is the living component of our soil, a living ecosystem which is closely linked to the health of the plants that grow in the soil. If the soil biology is healthy, the plants we grow and eat will be healthy, and if the plants are healthy, then we humans can be healthy. We are more connected to and reliant on our soil than we think.

When it comes to growing tomatoes, there are so many varieties to choose from and it can be hard to know where to start. Our deep love of the tomato, coupled with the tomato’s ability to mutate readily, has led to it being carefully selected and saved to create well over 3000 different varieties. Whether you are bottling, value-adding, selling or eating fresh, there are a vast selection of colours, shapes, and flavours to choose from. This is our guide to help you choose the best variety for your home garden, balcony or farm.

HERITAGE VS HYBRID

Heritage tomatoes

Heritage tomato varieties, including some modern varieties, are bred to be true to type. This means you can consistently save their seeds for a potentially endless supply of tomatoes, year after year. Some are bred for their colour, shape or size, some for their ability to make good tomato paste and some for their resilience to drought. Some come with a story handed down through generations of home growers and some come with a taste unlike any other.

Do you feel like you’re constantly battling pests in your garden for your fair share of the harvest? Do you wonder what you can possibly do to grow more food? As strange as it may sound, a ‘do-nothing’ approach to pest management might just be what you are looking for.

Don’t be mistaken; do nothing pest management is not about being idle or lazy. Rather, it is a carefully considered and interconnected way of thinking and gardening that respects natural cycles, the principles of ecology and the power of diversity. This is a permaculture approach to pest management; a thoughtful whole systems design.

Manure is an amazing waste product that can transform the health and vitality of your garden. There is a lot of information out there about using manures in the garden, but it can be confusing. Which type should you use for what, do you need to compost it, where can you find it?

Let’s cut the crap: manures are faeces, the end result of different animals’ culinary consumption. Which animal, what they eat and how they process their food is what makes the difference. All manures are beneficial, but practically speaking, the best manure is the one that’s easiest and/or cheapest for you to access.

This article is not discussing human, dog or cat faeces. Although these can be valuable waste products when safely composted, they need special attention and should not be used directly on edible plants. Using manure from chickens, horses, sheep, cows, rabbits, alpacas and pigs however can yield great results in the garden.

Too often, we get caught up in our busy lives. We become overwhelmed and never quite catch up with all the tasks we’ve set ourselves. Becoming more aware of our surroundings through mindfulness is one way to reset ourselves and improve our wellbeing.

Observation is an important part of permaculture, but being conscious of how we observe makes a huge difference in how we relate to our properties. It’s too easy to walk through your garden and notice only the things that you have to do. Sometimes, it can be energising, but often it is overwhelming and exhausting.

Moving from a quarter acre, to seven and a half fertile, sunny acres was a dream come true. Yet, with four established orchards and two huge vegetable patches already in place, we quickly fell into a pattern of stress and panic; forever playing catch-up on chores that we didn’t fully understand. When I looked out at our paddocks and orchards and garden beds, I seemed to see only what was waiting to be done. I saw only flaring weeds, too-long grass, beds that needed tending and trees that needed pruning.

Despite their strange sounding name, brassicas are easily recognisable vegetables from the mustard family of plants, otherwise known as Brassicaceae. Vegies that belong to this family are broccoli, cauliflower, kale, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, radish, turnips, and even rocket.

A common attribute among brassicas are the seed pods they produce once they have flowered. Another is that they are cold and frost hardy, making them natural winter crops.

Brassicas were also dominant in European cuisine before the introduction of vegetables from the new world. I have highlighted three types of brassicas that are delicious in wintry meals—even more so when freshly picked from your own garden.