Issue 33 Flipbook

Issue 33 Ipad

The soil is beginning to warm up, spring it on its way and Issue 33 of Pip is packed full of inspiration information to prepare you for the season ahead.

As well as an in-depth guide to growing a bumper crop of beans and a deep dive into giving your seedlings the best start, we look to the rising trend of plant-based milks and find out which ones are the most sustainable to produce as well as the ones which offering is the most nutrition.

You’ll learn delicious ways to ferment the last of your winter harvest, take a tour through a low-tox home built with recycled materials, and meet a woman who’s spent the best part of decade setting up Australia’s first 100 percent natural burial ground.

As well as learning that patience and observation are key in designing your dream garden, we’ll introduce you to an enterprise growing futures as well as food, give you some tools to reconnect with joy, nature and community, as well as a stack of practical advice around irrigation, saving seeds and how to incorporate habitat into your garden.

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HOW TO GROW BEANS – Everything you need to know

beans

Beans are an easy-to-grow garden staple that can be eaten fresh or dried. Here’s everything you need to know for a successful crop of beans in your upcoming summer garden.

Beans are a garden favourite grown for their delicious pods and dried seeds and are high in protein. While the common green bean might be the first to spring to mind, beans come in an array of colours and growing habits and many can be eaten fresh straight from the vine or left to mature and dry. Whatever the variety, they yield a prolific harvest in relatively little space making them a valuable addition to your warm-weather patch.

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SEEDLING SUCCESS – Top tips to jumpstart your growing season

seedling

Whether you’re starting seedlings off yourself or acquiring them already raised, there’s some things to know and do to ensure your small plants get the best start so that your garden produces high yields.

We’ve all been there. We have seed packets ready to start in trays and the best intentions, but somehow the weeks fly by and before we know it, spring is upon us and we just need to get some vegies in the ground. Purchasing seedlings is not only a quicker and more practical way to get your patch established in these scenarios, it’s also a great way to start successional planting. Bear in mind though, it can also set you up for disappointment if your newly purchased or grown seedlings fail to thrive or they bolt to seed. Minimising the disappointment and maximising healthy harvests comes down to a bit of know-how from selecting the best seedlings, giving them the best start and supporting them on their journey to maturity.

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PLANT-BASED MILKS – Which is the most sustainable?

milks

The popularity of plant-based milk is rising, but which one is the most sustainable?

There are many factors to consider and each have their pros and cons, as well as many variables. As well as their nutrient content, we need to take into account the environmental impacts of the growing, harvesting, production and distribution of each.

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FERMENTATION – The sustainable and nutritious way to preserve winter vegetables

cabbage

A sustainable, low-tech way of preserving your homegrown winter produce that comes with wonderful health benefits.

There are plenty of ways to preserve the vegies you’re still pulling out of your winter garden, but none can really match the enormous health benefits of fermentation, more specifically lacto-fermentation.

In simple terms lacto-fermentation is a natural process where bacteria convert sugars into lactic acid. Called predigestion, the beneficial organisms break down the stuff our bodies can find difficult to digest, which is why gluten-intolerant people can eat sourdough and why lactose-intolerant people are generally fine consuming yoghurt.

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RECONNECTING – How joy, nature and community foster connection

nature

The role of joy, nature and community is deeply woven into human experience. But in the past few hundred years, how we organise, work and inhabit places has changed so dramatically that we’ve gradually moved away from experiencing connection to these fundamental human needs.

It requires an intentional desire to find even the threads of these three vital parts of being human. Community can be elusive in busy, urban neighbourhoods, as can nature. Joy is hard to find when basic needs like housing, work and healthcare are under threat. Practising creative first aid gives us a little path towards these things. They are there, and always have been. They are sometimes obscured. We might need some binoculars and some good hiking boots, but this adventure is absolutely worth taking.

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IRRIGATION SYSTEMS – How to set up an automated watering system

irrigation

A well-thought-out irrigation system can save you water and time, and help you get the most from your garden.

Hand watering is one of life’s pleasures for a gardener. It allows you time to connect with nature, observe your patch and gather your thoughts in a pocket of calm in an otherwise hectic world. But because watering can provide so much enjoyment, you don’t want it to become yet another chore we need to find time for and, in turn feel guilty about if it doesn’t happen at the optimum time of the day or duration.

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