Bill, the sustainability apprentice

Bill, who loves coffee and works at Toby’s Estate in City Road, Chippendale, has begun his sustainability apprenticeship. Bill, along with the whole of the Toby’s Estate lot are going to reduce the waste, energy, water and other resource uses of the business. Starting with the coffee-making and cafe business in City Road, Bill and his fellow workmates will garden, compost, gather data and work out where the business can save on resources and avoidable costs. He’s... Read More

Youth food cyclists coming to Chippo

On Saturday 15 October the Youth Food Movement cyclists will have a bicycle ride on lunch.  They’ll have a tour of the house here and then of the road gardens. Jessica Mobbs will give the cyclists two short tours of the house, one from 1130 to 1200, the second from 1210 to 1240. The cyclists will pause in Peace Park and make smoothies with a bike. Paul and Bob will show the cyclists the road gardens, including the vertical garden in Pine Street. The cyclists are running... Read More

Talk at Powerhouse Museum

On Wednesday this week I’m giving a talk at the NSW Powerhouse Museum; details are here: www.powerhousemuseum.com… See you there, Michael  Read More

Vertical garden in an hour at $nil cost

Vertical garden with soil exposed Timber pallet vertical garden with soil in sacks Tafe Outreach students built this couple of vertical gardens in my back yard. It took a couple of hours to do the first one but it had to lie down flat for four weeks while the plants took in the soil. The other one was built and lifted up and the top planting done in about an hour; by containing all the soil in the sacks and cutting a notch in the sacks to insert the plants we greatly speeded up... Read More

Can I use treated pine in a raised bed garden?

I asked this question of a soil expert, Phil Mulvey, Chief Executive Officer of Environmental Earth Sciences and Phil’s advice is: In regard to CCA treated timber, there has been a lot of research with CCA treated logs and vegetables.  Slow leaching of metals does occur and impacts the soil in contact with the logs (50 mm).  Little uptake does occur to the vegetables but the same issue occurs with roots crops in close proximity to the logs as it does for lead.  The root... Read More

Dystopian but terrific writing

One of the people I read each week is James Kunstler.  Firstly, because of the writing, and secondly, because his ideas and ‘take’ on things is so interesting. Dystopean, yes.  Boring, no. His books have a more measured and very well researched richness to them. There’s a link on his blog (www.kunstler.com…) to a recent article in Orion Magazine, Back to the Future A road map for tomorrow’s cities and you can read it, here: www.orionmagazine.org… And... Read More

How to make a country unsustainable

The New York Times this week ran an opinion piece by Patricia McArdle (19 June) about how the US has gutted and is ending one of Earth’s most sustainable food systems. Where would they do such a thing? In a place where they mean to do ‘good’;  Afghanistan. Read this  and try not to open your mouth with amazement: www.nytimes.com… As some counterpoint, however, trivial by comparison, there’s this: www.abc.net… “And so we beat on, boats... Read More

Our new shed arrives

This Friday our new garden shed arrives. It will be in the yard of the Pine Street Creative Centre near the western boundary fence. Any gardener will have access to it. Now anyone will be able to get garden gear and garden at any time that suits them. The Council officer who has made this happen, Russ Grayson, will get a lock for it and we can give the combination code to any gardener so they may gain access. The manager of Pine Street, Jane Hooper, is getting one of the Centre’s... Read More

Loving a man’s spirit

Now, if I love a man’s spirit, it is at least Wendell Berry’s, poet and farmer. If you love words, ideas and guts this is your man. Anyway, try this on your heart: it’s Wendell this week reading at  George Washington Uni, Washington DC: click away and open up your heart, me hearties: brtom.typepad.com… M  Read More

Learn how to make a vertical garden from a timber pallet

Gardeners Tomorrow when we garden from 9 til 11 am most of the time it’ll be in the ‘temporary shed’ – my back yard. We’ll make a vertical garden from a timber pallet in my back yard. Cost? $Nil – everthing will either be recycled at no cost to us or grown by us:  as follows - -        timber pallet (carried back from building site on City Road by Gardener Thais) -        hessian backing (free from Tobys Estate) -       ... Read More