Tag Archives: Permaculture

Joe and his partner Jo are the cogs behind Urbavore Micro Farm. They sell veggies, quail eggs and mushrooms from their suburban Springwood block.

Gabriel Foxx, a participant in the first Permaculture course run by the Pluriversity at the Lithgow Transformation Hub, recalls his experience.

  In March this year, Japanese journalist Harumi Hayakawa wrote a piece for the Japanese publication Asahi Weekly in which she explained why the terrifying Australian fires of December 2019 actually made her like the Blue Mountains even more.     In her article she described the many ways the community came together during and after the fires and how, …

The Blue Mountains Pluriversity and its Permaculture Institute are offering free permaculture classes for young people (aged 16-24) in Lithgow.

As soon as you solve one problem in gardening, you’ll undoubtedly come up against another. Last week we were really excited because we read on the Gardening Australia website that land cress is poisonous to the Cabbage White Butterfly caterpillar. We were thrilled, as something had started to eat our tiny kale at Blackheath Community Farm and this seemed like …

To grow a long-term productive and abundant veggie garden you need to make sure your soil is rich and alive and continually fed and replenished. This supports plant growth and allows for repeated cropping within a healthy ecosystem. One way to do this is to encourage more worms to be part of that system. Charles Darwin said: “It may be …

  There’s an excitement and a lovely crunch as you run your finger down the side of a dried bean pod and split it open to collect the seed. If you haven’t done so already, now’s the time to collect your bean seeds to ensure a crop for next summer and potentially also meals over this winter. Some dried beans, …

  Winter is a wonderful time for growing greens and brassicas in Blackheath. On Sunday at Blackheath Community Farm we harvested cauliflower, kale, land cress, rocket, radish greens, a variety of lettuces and silverbeet. As well as being delicious raw, they can all be cooked as well.   Check out our recipe for Orechiette with cauliflower and walnut brown-butter pesto …

While we have onion seedlings on the way in the Blackheath Community Farm Greenhouse, ever since our first day at the Farm we’ve had green onions or scallions growing in our allium bed. We always cut them off and leave the root in the soil and, without fail, they  just keep coming back and growing more. If you’d like to …

  If you’d like a steady supply of homegrown food fast, whatever you do, grow radishes! Now is a great time to plant them because in summer they tend to bolt. You can use radishes to define rows between slower growing vegetables like beetroot and broccoli to remind you where you planted them, and, because they’re the fastest growing vegetable, …