Articles & Blogs

Latest Blogs

What to do in April

Leafy Greens

April brings a noticable change in season in many parts of Australia. With winter closing in, JUSTIN RUSSELL offers some ideas on what to plant, harvest and tend during mid-autumn.

In your patch - April 2013

Our readers are making the most of the last of the summer sunshine.

This luscious produce was grown in the garden of Vicki from Victoria, while in NSW, Roxana has set up a balcony garden using recycled materials.

See their photos, and find out more…

Rainbow Connection

Rainbow Chard

JUSTIN RUSSELL tells the story of the heirloom vegie poster boy, Rainbow Chard.

Best of botanical art

Australia’s world-renowned botanical artists are putting on a show, SIMON WEBSTER reports.

Outlaw Plants

Elderberry

JUSTIN RUSSELL challenges the notion that all weeds are pests, and makes cordial with one of his favourite outlaw plants.

Autumn Salads

Rouge d'Hiver lettuce

Autumn is the perfect time of year to plant salad crops and JUSTIN RUSSELL explains the finer points of sowing lettuces.

Latest Articles

Cross-breed hatcheries

In the latest issue of Organic Gardener, MEGG MILLER recommends resilient, adaptable pure breeds when choosing chooks for the back-yard.

Cross-breed poultry are also available from a variety of hatcheries, in most states.

Tomato Tactics

In the November-December 2012 issue of Organic Gardener, JUSTIN RUSSELL looks at natural strategies to deal with common tomato problems.

Additional notes about root knot nematodes and blossom end rot can be found in this article.

A berry good year

PETER CUNDALL provides a quick guide to growing juicy berryfruit.

“Here are the methods I use to grow great crops of different types of hardy berryfruit - raspberries, loganberries, jostaberries, blackcurrants and strawberries, to name a few.”

Build your own compost bays

PHIL DUDMAN shows how 
to build a simple three-bay 
compost system from 
recycled materials.

Compost is the foundation to successful organic gardening, so it pays 
to make plenty of it.

Meet the three veg

PETER CUNDALL serves up some old-school staples. What he calls his “top three survival foods” - potatoes, beans and carrots.

“Of all the vegeatbles grown throughout the temperate climates of the Western world, three of my favourites stand out as the most popular, easily grown and particularly nourishing.”

Save our Seeds

Seeds are disappearing. In the century leading up to the year 2000, the world lost 75 per cent of the genetic diversity of its agricultural crops, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) estimates.

SIMON WEBSTER reports on how industrial agriculture has led to a dramatic erosion of the world’s seed diversity and how we can fight back.

In their own skins

After having some absolute bumper harvests, I've been scratching my head and seeking out ever more diverse meal ideas featuring our surplus apples, tomatoes, carrots and potatoes. I've also been pondering how to keep excess produce long-term using low-energy technologies. Most importantly, my efforts need to elicit more yums than yuks from the family when it comes to dinner time.

Backyard beekeeping

It was a climactic moment when I strapped a beehive to the back of the ute and brought home 60,000 micro livestock. I almost felt like a real farmer. It was climactic because for years I've been reading books, watching DVDs and attending field days in anticipation of exactly this moment. Nevertheless, I felt woefully inexperienced to take on backyard beekeeping.