My mate Gavin has a post over at the Simple, Green, Frugal Co-Op about how he “thinks differently” from most of the people he knows. I can certainly relate to that!

Me, I can’t help thinking about all the unused bits of land I see when I drive around.

I see a park, and think “why don’t [...]

A few weeks ago I attended another Sustainable Illawarra workshop – “Starting a Backyard Veggie Patch” at Jamberoo Primary School. Megan then attended the repeat of the workshop a week later. It was great that we were both able to do effectively the same workshop without need to organise child care!

The workshop was delivered by [...]

What a great turnout we had at yesterday’s Jamberoo Community Growers meeting!

Don Cairns, former resident of Kiama and Kangaroo Valley and now living in Nowra, gave an excellent talk about growing food through the season.

Don has been gardening for many years, and understands our climate and weather patterns very well. His tips and local knowledge [...]

I always wanted one of those fancy tumbling compost bins, but they cost a fortune – well over $300. Making compost shouldn’t cost that sort of money! There had to be a DIY option.

Quite a while ago (like, 8 years ago!), I was buying some lucerne for the garden at the feed store at Albion [...]

On Sunday I drove up to the Wollongong Wholesale Nursery at Albion Park Rail to buy some fruit trees with my Sustainable Illawarra Super Challenge vouchers. The staff there were really helpful, and gave me some good ideas for the types of trees that would suit our needs for the front yard.

I pretty much already [...]

You’ve probably seen those mushroom kits you can buy from stores like Bunnings. Well, they’re a total ripoff. I’ve never met anyone who got a good yield from them. Here’s a much cheaper way to grow your own mushrooms…

Every once in a while I take my trailer up to the mushroom farm. They sell bags [...]

When we did our house extensions about 5 years ago, we didn’t really do much with the front yard. We always meant to come back to it someday, but never quite got around to it. We never bothered to plant much in the way of trees and shrubs either, since we didn’t want them to [...]

Lunar planting, or lunar gardening, does not involve nude gardening at night by the light of the moon!

It is all about timing your gardening activities to coincide with certain phases of the moon.

Here’s an example of how much difference some people claim lunar planting can make to your gardening success.

I’ve read various explanations of the [...]

On Saturday, I took our two youngest girls to the Glengarry Cottage Gala Day.

They had talks and tours running throughout the day on stuff like permaculture gardening, composting, worm farming, etc. There were also some stalls, selling/displaying things like compost bins, worm farms, bags of compost, seedlings, etc. Sustainable Illawarra had a stall there as [...]

Yesterday we had our Sydney Water “Love Your Garden” session. For $33, a qualified horticulturalist comes and inspects your garden and gives you advice on its watering needs.

Our horticulturalist (let’s call her Linda) arrived bang on time. She was very friendly and knowledgeable, and understood right away where we were coming from. I explained about [...]