As superfood fads go, the movement towards eating insects has a lot of hype, but is less commonly adopted. An untapped source of protein, high in amino acids, wildly abundant, easy to grow, with a tiny ecological footprint—the sales pitch sounds great to most of us until we’re presented with a dish of mealworms.
Much is being made of hemp as a superfood, and its sibling, medicinal cannabis. But little is known about the health benefits of buildings constructed with hempcrete.
There is a simple way to make your own renewable energy at home and use it for cooking, heating and lighting. It’s called Biogas, and the concept is – add your kitchen scraps or animal manures to a large tank called a ‘digester’ and the anaerobic bacteria that live in the tank will breakdown or ‘digest’ these wastes and convert them to methane gas.
Milkwood have done it again. Everything they do has equal parts style and substance and this book has both in spades (excuse the pun). Rather than trying to do what a lot of gardening/ permaculture books do and try to cover everything in one book, Kirsten and Nick have chosen a few areas of expertise and explored them in-depth.
We use and value diversity in our gardens, farms, national parks and nature reserves. Yet do we use and value the diversity in our bodies, in that vast collection of unseen communities we call our microbiome?
We love to see our little Pip fans and we’d like big kids to be in Pip magazine too. So if there are big kids out there doing great things in the garden (come on tweens and teens!), get out your selfie sticks and show us what you’re up to.
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 earth we walk on is made up of a world of bacteria and other microscopic life, most of which are invisible to the naked eye, but without them we have nothing. It is this complex soil food web that makes our soil alive and able to give life to all things. The more fungi, bacteria and other microbes we have in our soil, the more nutrients can be taken up by the plants we grow and the food we eat, which in turn adds to the good microbes and bacteria in our bodies, building our health and nutrition.
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.
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...
