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 [...]

Soil blockers are a great way to start seeds for your garden, but some of the recipes you’ll find around the web aren’t exactly sustainable – including things like peat moss and artificial nutrients.

I’ve tried to take the general ideas from other recipes, and make a more environmentally-friendly soil blocker mix. The main change is [...]

A couple of years ago I bought a soil blocker from Peddler’s Wagon with some birthday money.

Incidentally, it was way cheaper to get it sent from the US than to buy it in Australia – something like 40% cheaper for exactly the same product made by the same manufacturer. It seems the manufacturer or distributor [...]

Earlier this year, Megan and I worked with some other local families to start a gardening club called the Jamberoo Family Growers. Unlike traditional garden clubs, this group will have a focus on helping people to grow fruit and vegetables at home, using healthy natural methods and tapping into local knowledge and experience. It will [...]

I was recently interviewed for another gardening article in the Illawarra Mercury. My last interview was back in March, on the subject of lunar planting. Unfortunately they don’t put these articles online, so you’ll have to make do with this dodgy scan – click on the image to make it bigger (be warned, it’s a [...]

The “Kev’s Patch” campaign is gaining momentum! I’ve teamed up with a couple of other bloggers (Gavin from The Greening of Gavin and Julie from Go Greener Australia) to set up a new site promoting the initiative – the Kev’s Patch blog.

I love that header image above that Julie did for us!

If you think it’s [...]

Have you heard about the organic kitchen garden that the Obamas have set up on the White House lawn in the US?

Wouldn’t it be great if our Prime Minister did something similar?

Peter Cundall and Stephanie Alexander think so, and have both called for Mr Rudd to start a vegie patch. So far nothing is happening, [...]

60 Minutes recently ran a story titled Backyard Revolution, about the growing (pardon the pun!) movement towards backyard vegie patches. Finally TV stations are joining us in the 21st century, so if you missed it you can watch the story here.

The story featured one of Australia’s most-loved TV gardening presenters, Peter Cundall, talking about the [...]

A green manure crop is really just anything you grow for a short while and then slash or dig into your soil before it gets a chance to set seed or fruit.

Why would you do that? Lots of reasons! It helps by:

increasing organic matter in your soil (increasing nutrient content, aeration and water retention) adding nitrogen [...]

Have a read of the current water restrictions rules from Sydney Water.

Kids can run under sprinklers any time of the day, you can hose windows and walls any time, and you can wash your car at any time. You can also leave your hose running unattended to top up pools or fill containers, and you [...]