Making A Mushroom Garden

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…

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Grow Your Own Carrots

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…

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An Unusual Retrofit

You won’t find many homes in the inner city that have intentionally shrunk to make way for a larger garden, but that’s what happened behind a bright red door in Northcote, Melbourne.

Alistair Tuffnell and Christine Baro live with their cat Peppino in a two bedroom…

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Food Traditions: Sharing A Love Of Food

Food traditions are vital in binding us together as families and as communities. From our very first mouthful, food deeply connects us to other humans. It connects us to our parents and grandparents, connects us to our friends, and can connect us to our children…

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Recipes For The Apple Harvest

It’s apple season again! Apples eaten in season and fresh are definitely the best for flavour, crunch and vitality. If you have a healthy apple tree at home, you may well be wondering what to do with them all. Never fear, there are lots of…

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The Buzz On E-Bikes

Our cities are becoming more spread out and also more congested. A revolution is needed to help people reach their destinations quickly, sustainably, enjoyably and affordably.

Electric bikes (e-bikes) may be the solution with their energy efficiency, the ease they offer in urban environments by eliminating…

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Designing The Good Life

We bought our old house and quarter acre block in urban Hobart in late 2012. The only reason we could afford to buy it was because of its ‘interesting’ and limited access—just a steep old 100 m concrete staircase from the road. And while we…

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Make Your Own Natural Cleaning Products

The green clean movement is big business these days, with microfibre ‘wonder’ cloths (often made of plastic and biocidal silver) peddled as an eco-solution to harmful cleaning chemicals while requiring virtually no effort.

When looking for sustainable alternatives, rags are a great way to use up…

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Pedal Powered Businesses

Deano Goodbrew has been selling kombucha for over ten years. While his Brunswick-based business The Good Brew Company ship their products Australia-wide, Deano regularly jumps on his bike to deliver to the inner-north in the most environmentally friendly way possible. When he’s not zooming around…

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Healing Honey

Honey is one of the most ubiquitous products in Australian homes. Most households have a jar of honey on the shelf, whether it be for eating or medicinal use, but lately we are realising that not all honeys are the same.

There has been a focus…

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The True Cost Of Clothing

Unless we are going to get really primitive and go back to not wearing clothes, clothing ourselves is something we all have in common. Yet doing that in a way that isn’t causing harm either to the people making our clothes or the planet is…

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Build Your Own Meat Safe

Making your own preserved meats such as salami, chorizo and prosciutto has been a tradition among Italian communities for a long time. With a growing interest in good quality homemade food, the tradition is gaining popularity here in Australia too.

An important part of the creation…

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Permaculture Around The World

Zanzibar is an archipelago 25 kilometres off the coast of Tanzania, a semi-autonomous region on the East Coast of Africa otherwise known as the Spice Islands. Permaculture Zanzibar is a school to teach practical livelihood skills using the permaculture approach. It is run by a…

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Pip Picks: Things We Like

The Social Outfit are an independently-accredited, ethical trading social enterprise that provides employment and training in the fashion industry to people from refugee and new migrant communities in clothing production, retail, design and marketing. They make and sell quality products that help financially empower people…

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Noticeboard

Big things are afoot at Permaculture Tasmania as a new energy is flowing in and has given a boost to the organisation recently. Workshops as diverse as building with bamboo, cob building, bee-keeping, pruning and grafting, fermentation, and basic cheesemaking, as well as Permaculture Intro…

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Pip Brains Trust

The method of preserving food with vinegar has only been around since industrialisation. It came in as a quick and easy way to keep food shelf stable so it would be saleable for longer. A much healthier way to preserve your food is through the…

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Kids’ Patch

We love to see our Pip kids out in the garden growing food and we would love to see some pics of what you are getting up to. We’re looking for photos of little kids, big kids, school groups and community groups. So if you…

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Letters To The Editor

Email your letters and photos to editorial@pipmagazine. com.au. We’d love to hear what you think of Pip and if you’ve embarked on any projects as a result of our articles. Each issue, one published entrant will receive a limited- edition Pip magazine art print, printed…

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Permaculture plant: Broad Bean

Broad beans (Vicia faba) are prized as much for their fleshy beans as they are for their potential use as a nitrogen-fixing cover crop. This ancient food of early Mediterranean civilisations is still widely cultivated across the world today. Sometimes known as ‘fava beans’ (fava…

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Permaculture animal: Native Bee

Mention bees and people invariably think of the European honey bee, Apis mellifera. However, this species is only one of 20 000 species of bees worldwide. Australia is home to about 2000 species of native bees and most of them are very important plant pollinators.

Native…

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Eat your weeds: Oxalis

Oxalis is of the Oxalidaceae family which has over 850 different species worldwide, with about 30 species in Australia, seven of these native. A number of species are grown as ornamental plants. Oxalis is from the Greek oksos meaning sour, referring to the taste of…

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Save your seeds: Basil

BOTANICAL NAME: Ocimum basilicum, O. gratissimum, O. sanctum and O. canum.

ORIGIN:

There are several species of basil, all of them native to either Africa or Asia.

DESCRIPTION:

There are both perennial and annual basils, and their shape and size range from almost prostrate to mighty bushes two metres…

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In The Garden: March – June

March: Brussels sprouts (seedling tray), broad beans, beetroot, broccoli (seedling tray), cabbage (seedling tray), carrot, chives, coriander, daikon, endive, fennel, kale, kohlrabi, leeks, lettuce, mizuna, mustard greens, pak choy/ bok choy, radish, rocket, shallots (plant bulbs), silverbeet, turnips.

April: Brussels sprouts, broad beans, beetroot, broccoli, cabbage,…

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Editorial

Thank you for picking up Pip.

We are now into our sixth year of publishing, and you know what, I feel pretty proud of that. For those that don’t know, Pip is an independently owned and operated publication running out of the small coastal town of…

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Book Reviews

As we continue to become a more urbanised society, the question of how we can live and eat well in our cities has never been more critical. This collection of real stories explores past histories of urban food production in Australia, plus we hear from…

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