Here comes Spring! I can feel it in my bones. No matter that last night was -1.4º at Milkwood Farm… The blossoms as in bud all around. And that means it’s ground-prep time! Bring on the no-dig gardens and the sheet mulching…
Sheet mulching and no-dig gardens have a fair bit of cross-over, and it depends what school of gardening you’re from as to what your preference is, coupled with your conditions. Read More
Putting the soil where we want it...
During the Spring Permaculture Design Certificate here at Milkwood, a funny thing happened to our basecamp garden. Somehow, it quadrupled in size. It was the most un-anticipated permablitz i have ever been a part of, and this time (for the first time) it was at our house! Or our woolshed, to be precise.
Rosemary Morrow, the lead teacher of this PDC, had come up to me the day before and asked (in her marvelous, quiet way) if the student’s could extend our basecamp garden a bit. Of course, Rowe, I said. Read More
Lovely lettuce seedlings. Soon to be in LoveGrub sandwiches!
Around the corner from the community center where we run our Sydney courses is a funky and friendly little cafe called LoveGrub. Down the side of LoveGrub lies a little strip of dirt which the cafe have claimed as their garden. One day LoveGrub asked us “erm, don’t suppose you could turn our little garden into a happening thing, could you?”
So we said “Yes! Of course!” – and with the help of our fabulous Milkwood interns David, Andrew, Adam and Alexe, we did. We used the opportunity of a weekend Urban Permaculture course we were running to completely re-design and renovate LoveGrub’s little strip into a functional permaculture kitchen garden to supplement the cafe’s menu with uber-local, naturally grown, seasonal greens and herbs. Read More
Milkwood basecamp with *new* no-dig herb garden, mulched path and puppydog
Vegetable gardens are the ultimate in complex, layered systems which have implications that flow through every corner of your daily life. And, no, I’m not being dramatic – I really believe this to be so… even more now that we’ve had to take a couple of major backward steps in order to move forwards with one of the basics of life… growing food to eat.
In Nick + my usual style, we appoached the Milkwood kitchen garden (Mark I) with much gusto. We chose a large area close to the studio site, sculpted beds, re-sculpted beds, planned the ultimate vegetable manifesto and then set about bringing it to life… and, also in our usual style, bit off more than we could chew. Read More
