Written in 2021 for Australian Geographic, Your Life Your Planet uses every day language to discuss the 101 most common sustainability tips, with an accurate analysis of the impact they have (and don’t have) on the environment./
- This is a Blue Java banana also known as the Icecream or the Vanilla Icecream banana. One name comes from the colour of the unripe bananas, which in some plants is very blue indeed. The other name comes from the sweet, creamy flesh of the ripe bananas. Unlike many “Lady Fingers” the flesh is very… Read […]
- The overwhelming conclusion from the research involved in writing Your Life Your Planet was twofold. We cannot consume our way out of an environmental crisis and food is our biggest challenge. This article explains why and how we address both problems. The aim of this research was to compare the average Australian household to the… Read […]
- Popeye traditionally got his hit of power packed spinach from a can, but I prefer mine fresh. Unfortunately, in sub-tropical Australia the summers are simply too hot for spinach, silverbeet (chard) and most other leafy greens. Enter the sprawling, scrambling and climbing leafy greens that get used like spinach around the world. We have spent… Read […]
- We grow lots of basil in our community garden. Most of it is Sweet Basil, aka Royal Basil, or Ocimum basilicum because of the rich tasty leaves that make the perfect pesto. We plant that all spring long but in the full heat of summer it’s white flowers go to seed very quickly. Whenever we… Read […]
- Two and a half years later: here’s what it looks like now. Here is a set of photographs of the community garden that started out as a rectangle of lawn and is fast turning into a food forest.
- Green Agenda has just published my article on the failure of the Australian Government to heed the call from health, education, and welfare advocates to place food at the centre of a positive and preventative program of wellbeing. Of 188 submissions to the Standing Committee on Agriculture’s Inquiry into Food Security, two dozen emphasised the… Read […]
- This preparation of Malabar Spinach for Palak Paneer works just as well for any of the sub-tropical plants discussed in Spinach galore. You can pick the individual leaves from the plant, but I generally just use the garden shears or secateurs to cut off a large section of the plant and separate the leaves from… Read […]
- Beer and bread are not the only fermented food fit for humans. Fermentation a traditional method of preserving fresh food to feed us when there is nothing in the garden or on the grocery shelves. When I have a good crop of cabbage my neighbours have a good crop of cabbage. You literally can’t give… Read […]
- Growing lettuce and tomatoes are satisfying but challenging in many climates at many times of the year. Wouldn’t it be great to grow the food we eat every day? Pigeon peas are also known as Toor Daal. Lentils, and pulses in general are the staple food of around one third of the globe’s human population.… Read […]
- Pestilence hit our community garden. We had to destroy an entire paw paw crop. There I was, extolling the virtues of fungus in helping us break grass clippings down to soil and, now this. “It’s a disease!” Asperisporium caricae specifically affects paw paw; especially after rainy periods. We have had rain all summer and autumn,… Read […]