Pip Magazine Issue 7

We are Australia’s most popular garden magazine and our club has more members than our leading AFL club. Our members are inspired by visiting three of Australia’s finest summer gardens with espalier orchards and sub-tropical food borders full of heirloom produce. We trial and grow more food plants and summer perennials than any other supplier in Australia. We can show you how to grow heirloom vegetables, space saving dwarf fruit trees, and rare herbs like capers and wasabi, all delicious varieties, full of fibre and free of nasty chemicals. If your garden looks dull and drab in summer we can help you create a garden you will be proud of. Eight magazines a year Innovative, informative and provocative ideas about how to be self-suficient in a tiny mini-plot space or country orchard, whether…

KAT LAVERS Kat Lavers is a passionate gardener, permaculture designer and trainer. Her award-winning house and garden, The Plummery, is a 1/14th acre urban permaculture system that produces almost all the vegies, herbs, fruit and eggs consumed (more than 350kg in 2016!), as well as recycling all organic waste on site. Kat is a volunteer coordinator of Permablitz Melbourne, currently manages the My Smart Garden sustainable gardening education program for Hobsons Bay City Council, and is a sought - a fter freelance presenter. http://www.instagram.com/kat.lavers TABITHA BILANIWSKYJ-ZARINS Tabitha is a horticulturist with a passion for botany, chickens & wool. Tabitha has bred, shown and judged poultry for nearly forty years. She runs sixty geese and eighty-odd chickens in her permaculture garden, her ‘farmy army’. She lives on a mixed small farm in Candelo NSW…

We as humans have included chickens as part of household life for thousands of years. The earliest evidence of domestication is believed to date back to 5400BCE in China and evidence has been found dating back thousands of years across the world, in Iran, Pakistan, India, Africa, North and South America. All chickens have descended from the red jungle fowl of South-East Asia and from there have been traded and transported across the globe and been embedded in civilisations throughout history. Around 800BCE ancient Egyptians were artificially incubating eggs and at the same time, Romans were experimenting with dishes such as omelettes and stuffed chickens and using farming practices to fatten birds for eating. What has caused the humble chicken to be so ubiquitous throughout time? It hasn’t always been for their meat…

www.our-permaculture-life.blogspot.com GOURMET FARMS ON CITY STREETS Sole Food Street Farms, Vancouver Canada http://solefoodfarms.com In one of the worst slums in North America, Sole Food Street Farms is showing how growing food and connecting people to land and community provides a pathway to recovery – nourishing others as a way to heal our world and ourselves. Sole Food Street Farms has been growing in Vancouver for over seven years. The project, led by the Cultivate Canada Society, is another initiative of pioneering urban agriculturalist, Michael Ableman who recently released a book about it called Street Farm: Growing Food, Jobs, and Hope on the Urban Frontier. He has also written a great 15-point urban food manifesto. These street farms are growing vast quantities of artisanal organic food right in the middle of the city. The produce is sold…

TESLA POWERWALL 2 The next generation of Tesla’s home battery system has just become available in Australia with limited numbers available as of February 2017. It has double the storage capacity and a lower cost. The Powerwall 2.0 is a complete lithium battery storage system with its own built-in inverter and the ability to hold up to 13.5kWh of energy. Power output is 7kW peak and 5kW continuous. It can be installed in an off-grid or grid-connected solar system and provide backup power in the case of a grid failure. You can also charge from the mains grid via lower-priced off-peak power. You can monitor your solar electricity use from your computer or hand-held device. 10 year warranty. Priced at $8400 plus installation starting at $2100. www.tesla.com/en_AU/powerwall TUMUT MILLET BROOMS Handmade millet brooms have been…

13TH INTERNATIONAL PERMACULTURE CONVERGENCE (IPC), INDIA The next IPC will be held from 25 November to 2 December 2017 in India. The Conference, on 25–26 November, will be held at Prof. Jayashankar Telangana State Agriculture University, Hyderabad. The Convergence, on 27 November to 2 December, will be held at Polam Farm, Medak District. The theme of IPC India is ‘Towards Healthy Societies’, with six strands of activity: 1. Women as agents of change 2. Sustainable water resource management 3. Revitalising and preserving traditional farming practices 4. Permaculture as a social responsibility 5. Grassroots permaculture in action 6. Permaculture and climate change adaptations Keynote speakers are: Dr Vandana Shiva – author, scientist, environmentalist, social activist (India) David Holmgren – co-originator of permaculture (Australia) Robyn Francis – award-winning international permaculture pioneer (Australia) Andy Goldring – Permaculture Association (UK). The two invigorating days of conference will be packed…