So many things growing like crazy and so much colour :)
Protea flower thinking about opening
This past week the protea flowers started to open and will soon be showing us it's lovely fluffy insides, which I can't help but stroke on the way past!
Unfortunately, I have no idea what species of Protea this is, so if anyone knows, please let me know :)
Here's a great BBC documentary made by Rebecca Hosking and Tim Green in 2009, which shows how peak oil will affect farming and food distribution.
Rebecca and Tim look at how a return to local food production, diversification in crops, organic methods and regenerative agriculture will help us cope.
For those of you who live in or around Sydney and are interested in Permaculture, do yourself a favour and book in for the next Permaculture Design Certificate course run by the guys at Milkwood.
These courses are not cheap, so you really need to be sure that you're choosing one where you will get real value for money: where you will be learning from those with tried and tested PRACTICAL Permaculture experience.
If you attend a Milkwood course, then you can be guaranteed that you are learning from some of the best.
Nick Ritar in particular actually has a background in systems architecture, which enables him to translate the more difficult to understand elements of Permaculture design into a language that the layman can understand.
Here is Nick at the TEDx Event in Canberra last year:
Oh, and here's a great video from Milkwood that shows you what can be expected on the course! :)
Mike Grenville of the Transition Network has let me know that their new paper, The Transition Free Press, will be available online!
Note that those, like me, who jump the gun will discover that the link in that article doesn't work yet... The first copy should be made available online from lunchtime, UK time, today :)
Ohh...and for those looking for the Rob Hopkins book, The Transition Companion, and not managing to find it locally, it can be ordered from either Green Books, or if you live outside the UK, can be purchased with no postage costs from the fantastic Book Depository.
The ANPSA is a great online resource for those with an interest in native Australian plants, regardless of level of knowledge.
However, for a novice gardener or internet user, it can be a bit bewildering trying to find your way around, so I thought it might be worthwhile highlighting some of the key resources that are worth checking out.
I wrote about green manure about a year ago I think, but as I've done some bits and pieces on organic matter lately I thought it might be worth a revisit.
In the simplest terms, a green manure is an annual, leafy plant, that is cut down and dug into the soil at a certain stage in it's growth.
Fertilisers are something that most of you will have a strong opinion on, whether you're in favour or against, however it's a term that can cause some confusion.
The first thing I want to clear up is that a fertiliser is anything that you add to the soil specifically to provide one or more nutrients essential to plant growth. It can be an organic or an inorganic compound and can be natural or synthetic in origin.
For those of you in Yarra Shire, and the Dandenongs in particular, who have been toying with the idea of building a frog pond - now is the best time to do it.
Between Autumn and Winter, the soil will be softer and easier to dig due to all that lovely rain, and the rain itself will fill your pond with lovely, fresh water :)
It also means you will get your pond ready for those frogs that commence the breeding season from Spring. You might even be lucky and have other species, such as the Eastern Common Froglet, who breed all year round turn up fairly quickly!
Soil quality is the capacity of a soil to accept, store and recycle water, minerals and energy for optimum growth and it's ability to preserve a healthy environment.
The capacity of each soil differs depending on the processes which formed the soil, the weathering etc it has been subjected to since and of course any agricultural practices etc that have taken place on it. The texture, structure, chemical properties and organic matter content of a soil all of an affect on it's quality.
