Earth Garden

Dear readers, Welcome to the Spring issue of Earth Garden. As I write, half the Australian population is in lockdown, and the depths of winter are making their impact felt too. It’s not an easy time to be thinking about a natural lifestyle, the outdo

The World Wide Fund for Nature-Australia recently announced an investment of over $1 million into innovative projects designed to help wildlife survive and recover from bushfires. The nine innovative projects range from a koala location tag, powered

Email your letters, messages and snaps to editorial@earthgarden.com.au or post to PO Box 1318 Broome, WA, 6725. Dear Earth Garden, I am a 74 year old woman, I live in Bellingen, New South Wales, and I’ve been an enthusiastic reader of your magazine

A GEOGRAPHIC community – could being exclusive ever be more inclusive? I gave a TEDx Perth talk in 2013 about the incredible geographic community of Hulbert Street, in South Fremantle. Imagine a street so connected that 30 households organised a Sust

THERE was just something special about this place. I stood up on the hill. At that moment I felt I was meant to find this place and that this challenge is definitely one I needed to accept. As I approached the biggest of the wild blackberry bushes on

PERFUME of drastically overgrown jasmine overwhelms my senses yet I can’t bring myself to trim back any vines. The unruly formation they have chosen, wrapping intricately around the verandah posts, reminds me perfection is not natural. Beneficial pol

QUILTING has a long zero waste, thrifty history. Piecing together small strips of worn out clothing to make a warm blanket is breathtakingly practical, and the reminders of the clothes once worn add toasty warm memories to the cosiness of the quilt.

UNTIL recent years, I had a standard Australian zoologist-conservationist view on feeding wildlife. It’s bad. Don’t do it. It’s not good for the wild beasties. Stop it. But people do it. And of course, sometimes I did it. The possum sitting cutely on

THERE’S nothing quite like a lovely old village hall. In recent years, there’s been a resurgence of interest in reviving these once vital community spaces. One such hall is in the rural town of Pearces Creek, not far from our farm in the Northern Riv

WHEN YOU evacuate, you learn what matters most, none of which you can easily pack into a suitcase. Many people lost their jobs in the 2019-20 bushfires: orchards, shops, cafés, offices and their business records burnt, sometimes tragically because th

FINDING that balance of healthy happy chooks that are safe and practically housed and suit your situation and space available can be tricky, so, let’s have look at some of the options. Chickens that have a free run of an entire backyard can wreak hav

GREY CLOUDS have set in, with fat raindrops sitting atop perfectly plump red cabbage leaves, stuck like garden jewels. Anywhere else a day like this might be a little dreary. A little well, grey. Here though? The rain just seems to highlight the colo

HOORAY for the arrival of Spring! The sun is beginning to warm the days and soil a little more so there is new life bursting everywhere in the garden. I just love the potential of the garden in Spring. For us in Perth it means the start of our best g

THE POWER went off at 7:45pm on Wednesday 9 June 2021. There’d been a strong wind warning on the TV weather forecast, and a rather ominous low pressure formation to our North. What happened over the next five days until the power was finally restored

WE LOVE to connect with WWOOFers (Volunteers) and hosts, who use organic, biodynamic, permaculture, aquaponics, syntropic and regenerative practices and techniques. So we thought we would spend our 40-year celebration by hitting the road and catching

WHEN I earned my trade certificate, it was through recognition of prior learning . . . and my prior learning was pretty old school. I was a latecomer to the internet. I am from the ‘not a digital native’ generation. Everything I learned about plants

“WULDN’T IT be great to have heirloom tomatoes on a manageable plant,” said one gardener to another in an online chat one day in 2005. The idea led to Patrina Nuske-Small breeding 40 new Australian tomato varieties and co-founding the Dwarf Tomato Pr

EMPATHY can be learned, right? It’s my mother’s 100th birthday today. When the rain eases off we can pop some flowers on her grave. Meanwhile, I serve the gathered family members sausage rolls in her memory, with a bottle of our homemade Nana’s Sauce

Q Is it okay to give chooks the barley from brewing beer? They love it but I’m unsure whether I should? A Brewer’s waste, also known as brewer’s grain or spent grain, is a byproduct of the brewing process. What’s left behind after all the processing

ON MY QUEST to grow interesting and unusual vegetables I stumbled across the tomatillo and what a wonderful little plant this is. It has little papery and delicate, Chinese lantern-like encasings with a green or yellowish tomato-like fruit protected

“WE GATHERED some blossoms of the drooping tea-tree, which were full of honey, and when soaked, imparted a very agreeable sweetness to the water. We frequently observed great quantities of washed blossoms of this tree in the deserted camps of the nat

WHILST Melbourne might have four seasons in a day, Canberra truly enjoys four clearly distinct seasons. Canberra is a cool mountain climate zone with sometimes very hot summers and diurnal variation. Spring in Canberra is a beautiful song that falls

THERE is a tree on our farm that is magic. That’s according to the grandchildren, with a bit of encouragement from me. Around the base of the magic tree are lots of tunnel entrances and it seems that the magic tree, which stands alone in the middle o

WHAT an amazing thing is sunshine. It makes plants grow, creates clouds and rain, is a natural disinfectant against viruses and bacteria, moulds, and yeasts, and it gives us the vitamin D we need to stay healthy. But things are changing. Half a centu

DYNAMIC head, flow, tank, speed, suction lift and dry run: sounds more like a marathon race at that time of month than professional pumping terms. But that’s what they are — all terms to do with various pumps. When I needed a pump, I didn’t let the ‘

Judith has been the co-publisher and book review editor of Earth Garden for 30 years. She lives with her husband Alan and children on a solar-powered ‘urban farm’ at Cable Beach in Western Australia. Judith is an accomplished artist, art teacher, and

by Wendy Cooper Large format, Hard cover, full colour 318 pages Published by National Library of Australia publishing $65.00 inc GST William and Wendy Cooper, what a team! Author Wendy is a highly regarded botanist,and William was a world-renowned a

For many people like Carol Johansen, living on a budget is a fact of life. The public housing resident meticulously plans her weekly budget. “I’m having to be very strict and know where every cent goes with my budget, so I write it all down,” she sai

Dromanabooks now sells Earth Garden books including Back Yard Farmer and recent back issues of Earth Garden magazine. Online since 2002, we also stock new and used books on a range of interesting topics. Prompt, personalised service – posts daily, tr

DEEP CREEEK NEAR GYMPIE. 3 bedroom, 1 bathroom, 2 hectares. Sit back and relax while watching the rich colours of a western sunset filtering through your property on the sought-after side of Gympie. This property is good to go for horses or the just