The leaves and flowers make a great tea – recommended I hear to help treat depression. It is also a great nerve-calming tea you can drink when stressed or if you want to have a good night’s sleep. Or just some tea to enjoy after dinner. Harvest the flowers and simply put in a pot. You can dry them too.

Both flowers and leaves can be added into salads and cocktails. Pineapple sage is excellent for making all types of drinks whether hot or cold. The nectar is really tasty too right from the base of the flower! My kids love it, so do I!

Aesthetically, it is a beautiful plant to have in your garden. The flowers of pineapple sage are such a bright red.

Another thing I love about welcoming Pineapple Sage into my garden is that is a great habitat that attracts bees and butterflies. around. Birds love it, too. Even a top choice for hummingbirds (although not here in my Australian garden!). 

Check out my youtube video below about Pineapple Sage. I talk about the many uses of pineapple sage and also how to propagate it which is really EASY to do.

What is permaculture?

To learn more about permaculture subscribe to my newsletter and take a look at Our Permaculture Life youtube channel where I have uploaded over 100 films I have made in my permaculture garden and in conversation with others.  Dive deeper into this blog too and you will find over 400 permaculture articles.

Now is such a great time to learn more about permaculture and make permaculture your way of life and perhaps livelihood too. Join my online permaculture courses.

The post How to grow and use Pineapple Sage appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.

I have planted my Acerola on the main path to my house so I notice when it is fruiting and I can get ready to harvest. It’s good to keep them close because it only takes 2-3 weeks from flower to fruit.

I made a little youtube clip, you can watch it here.

Why Acerola?

Also known as the Barbados cherry or West Indian cherry, Acerola (Malpighia emarginata) is a fabulous small tree – great for urban backyards, nestled into your food forest and even suitable in pots. It’s a vibrantly red little fruit with an impressive nutritional profile, full of vitamin C, antioxidants and other essential nutrients. It’s abundant, hardy, tasty, versatile and healthy.

Growing Acerola

Acerola is easy to grow with very little pest issue (except you need to harvest before the birds!). It likes a sunny spot with well-drained soil. I always suggest you add a good amount of compost in the hole when you are planting, create a water retention basin around the plant, give it a good deep soak, then cover the soil around with thick mulch.

You can easily take cuttings to make new plants from your existing tree – a great way to save money and create fantastic gifts too. Just takea cutting from a healthy growing tip (about 25 cms long). Trim off the lower leaves and plant directly into compost prepared soil or a pot. Keep it moist until roots develop.  You can also just plant the seeds directly when you eat them (plant them before they dry out).

Acerola Delights: Recipes for Your Harvest

There are lots of ways to integrate these tasty fruits into your day. Here’s 3 …

Fresh from the tree

Acerola Smoothie

• Ingredients:
  • 1 cup fresh Acerola berries (remove seeds)
  • 1 banana
  • 1/2 cup pineapple chunks
  • 1 cup coconut water
  • A handful of mint leaves

Blend these ingredients until smooth for a refreshing, vitamin-packed treat!

Acerola Bliss Balls

• Ingredients:
  • 1 cup dried dates
  • 1/2 cup almonds
  • 1/4 cup desiccated coconut
  • 1/4 cup fresh Acerola juice

Combine in a food processor, roll into balls, and coat with extra coconut. These make for a delightful and nutritious snack.

When Acerola is fruiting there is an abundance. Make the most of it and experiment.

Happy gardening – and eating!

Permaculture Courses

Join Morag’s online permaculture courses in permaculture gardening, design and teaching.

• Introduction to Permaculture – The Incredible Edible Garden (new price $97 – save $200!)
• Permaculture Design Certificate Course
• Permaculture Educators Program (all inclusive – Permaculture Design Certificate and Permaculture Teacher Certificate

The post Acerola: a permaculture delight appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.

Yacon (Smallanthus sonchifolius) is a perennial herbaceous plant native to the Andes. I grow it around my garden and dig it up when the tops die back in winter.

Slice and dry it at 50-60 degrees for a simple and delicious dried apple alternative. Eat it raw, juiced, cooked or dried. How do you prepare yours? Each day I’ve been sharing a simple plastic free July tip. One more week – what suggestions do you have?

To learn more about growing a permaculture gardening simply and easily, check out our course The Incredible Edible Garden and learn how to design your own permaculture landscape in our Permaculture Design Course.

Hi! Welcome back into my garden, it’s Morag Gamble from Our Permaculture Life and the Permaculture Education Institute and as part of plastic-free July. 

Every day around about four o’clock I’ve been either in my home or in the garden. Talking about something that we can do, to actually help get rid of the single-use plastics that are not only clogging up our own homes, but the planet too and the oceans. So today, I wanted to talk about something in the garden and it’s something that we can grow and make. That can help us to reduce a lot of the packaging for treats and things, because this plant here underneath the ground is the source of amazing treat. So this is the remnants of the Yacon plant, and once it starts to die back like this, and looks like it’s pretty much finished. That means it’s time to actually dig down below here. So come down and have a look down here. So what you do is, you pull back the mulch and scratch away and you can kind of see that the whole ground is sort of lifted up here. And then just start to pull away bits and pieces. Look here, there’s one that I’m going to try and get out. So this is what we’re looking for, it’s the roots, the tubers, here we go. So that’s what we’re looking for. So I’m just going to rinse off the dirt off this. Now each plant of these would have maybe, 10 or so of these roots underneath at least. And so what you can do is, you can just skin as you can. See, I’ve already started to peel that off. You can scrape that off or peel it off if you like. But it’s actually fine just to wash the dirt off, and use it like that. Now there’s so many things that you can do with this. So you can just slice it, and eat it raw. You can juice it, you can cook it up and add it to anything like stir fries. Or probably, I wouldn’t add it to soups because then you lose it. It’s like a crunchy flavor, it’s really nice like a water chestnut in a stir fry. That’s probably one of my favorite ways to use it, cooked. But the other way to do it that I wanted to talk about today is actually drying it. Because another name of this is Peruvian Ground Apple.

There’s a sweetness to this, that when you eat it raw I’m just going to see if I can. When you eat it raw, it’s like eating crunchy apples. It’s really delicious! If you pull it out of the ground, and leave it for a couple of weeks.

I’m just sweetening it up, even gets more sweet. But what I’m going to do with this is, chop it into sections pretty roughly like that. And then put it onto a drying tray and at 50 to 60 degrees for several hours until these kind of dehydrate. And get sort of dry and rubbery a little bit, like dried apple that’s what it tastes like. It’s absolutely delicious! 

So you can have all of these growing all the way around in your garden, and you’ve got your own particularly here in the subtropics. Where we don’t have Apricots, we can’t grow apples or pears, or all those lovely things that make dried fruits from. But you can, with this. So that’s a wonderful thing to do. So I think,  if you have it just reasonably thick like this and if you dry it not too hot. So just fit. So I’m still eating, I’ll just finish chewing. If you do it too thin and too hot, you lose all the nutritional value. If you chop them nice and thickly and do it slower at 50 or 60 degrees over a longer time. Then you’re going to keep actually much of the nutritional value of that even as a dried product. And then, you can store them for ages in and on your shelf. I found some at the back of the shelf that I’d obviously missed that were over 12 months old and started eating them, and they’re absolutely delicious. So then you can use that either in cooking or just as a snack, or as a lunchbox treat. Now the thing too, about the sugars of this is a different type of sugar. It’s insulin, which is actually a type of sugar that doesn’t get absorbed into our body and it gets processed much more slowly. So it’s really good for diabetics as well. So that is a wonderful lovely treat that you can grow underground in your garden, and it’s so easy. All you need to do is, get a little section of the plant. Let me see, if I can find it here you want to come down again and see. Let’s see if I can get a section, there we go! Just a little bit of the crown like that. You can see how it’s got a little bit of a growing shoot there. You just plant that in the ground next year, and then you’ll get another whole lot. So on this, I’ve probably got well over a hundred starts. So what I can do is go, and just plug these around the garden where I want them. And then next year when it’s time, when I notice they’re all dead again, I can harvest them again. It’s one of the absolute, easiest pest-free low-maintenance, abundant plants you can grow and it’s great! Like I said for sweets, and for raw juices. And also for cooking in stir-fries.

So join me again tomorrow, for another live back in the garden or in my house. There’s only another week of lives until plastic free July ended. I hope you’ve enjoyed this series. You can go back through either my facebook page, or either onto my youtube channel. And see all the ones that I’ve been doing since the 1st of July if you want to catch up, and have a look. So if you’ve got any suggestions for things you’d like me to cover in the last week of plastic free July, please drop a line down below or other recipes that you may have for. 

The post Dried Yacon as a sweet treat appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.

To learn more about growing a permaculture garden simply and easily, check out our course The Incredible Edible Garden and learn how to design your own permaculture landscape in our Permaculture Design Course.

Hi! It’s Morag Gamble from our Permaculture Life and the Permaculture Education Institute, and welcome back it’s plastic free July. And every day I go live at around four o’clock, to talk about something you can do to help get rid of some of the single-use plastics. That kind of filled up our lives and looked at different ways that we can use our garden as well to make a difference for that.

So one of the things that often gets wrapped in plastic, are things like salads, and sprouts, and all that kind of stuff. So it’s so simple to get some things happening in your garden. And even if you don’t have a garden, I wanted to show you something. That you can do today, that’s so simple. That you can easily get fabulous, super nutritious greens within the space of a week. So many of you, I’m sure, know about chia. Now chia is this tiny little seed, and you can buy it in most stores now. So you probably even have some in your cupboard, great things to sprinkle on cereals, or to grind up into baking goods. Or you can add them into smoothies, or mix them with coconut milk. To make chia pods, all that kind of stuff is really fantastic protein. Now did you also know that you could plant them so you can plant them. And then very quickly they turn into sprouts really quickly, and then you can get little microgreens. You can just snip them off, and eat those as a salad green. Or you can let them come up a little bit bigger and just be plucking off the leaves. I often sprinkle them around the garden too, and then wait until they get really big. And then have the little, get the seeds off them as well. So I just wanted to show you a very quick thing. So even if you don’t have a garden, or you have even a tiny balcony and you’ve got a windowsill you can grow them. So I went sort of searching around bins down at the community, looking for some of these tetra pack type of things. So you can chop them down, put some soil inside, and then just sprinkle the seeds across the top quite thickly. It’s really good. I don’t know if you can see that, and then get a little bit of extra soil. Sprinkle that over the top to cover it over, there we go! Can’t see the seeds anymore, and then a little bit of water, to water that all in. So if you just give them water, maybe twice a day, depends if it’s in a sunny spot.

You might want to water them a little bit more, if it’s kind of just semi shade you don’t want to sort of drown them in that. So just use your common sense to how much you water them. Generally I sort of, if the water’s coming out the bottom that’s a good sign. So what I’ve done with this tub here, is I’ve actually put a hole. I don’t know if you can see, I’ll just get rid of that extra water. So you can see, there’s a little hole here to make sure that things don’t get flooded. You might want to actually have a tray that’s got a little bit bigger size than the one I’ve got here. And then, that can just be on your windowsill and literally within a few days. You’ll see them coming up, and then they’ll probably be this big within a week and you can be starting to harvest them if you want to actually spread these out into other pots. You can use this as your sort of your seed raising, then grab clumps of that, and then take that. And put them into different pots, and then they can get bigger and bigger. So you can do that, or just keep them small like this anyway. It’s a really simple idea, using something that’s kind of a waste product from and also chia seeds. Which are really easy to access, and you can just have that growing in and around your home. And also, helping to prevent your need to bring in plastics from having really good salad greens.

All right I hope that’s useful. Catch me again tomorrow, for another quick tip on how you can get rid of plastics this plastic-free July.

The post Grow Salad Greens from Chia Seeds with Morag Gamble appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.

But don’t worry, here are three easy fixes to this problem

• Swap to loose leaf, use a tea ball, teapot or plunger.
• Buy loose tea in bulk from a zero-waste store or with friends.
• Or, why not swap to homegrown teas. They are simple to grow – even in pots on a balcony or windowsill and you don’t need much space.

Some of my favourites that I grow just near my kitchen are lemonbalm, lemon myrtle, mints, pineapple sage and tulsi. To make the tea, you just grab a handful like that, stick it into a teapot, let it seep for a few minutes, and then drink. I also love adding fresh turmeric, mint and ginger too, if you’d like to add an extra zing of flavour.

When you grow your own tea leaves, it means you are able to mess around with the flavours a bit, you know, blend different sorts of teas and come up with new combinations.

Watch my video on all these great combinations

If you don’t have the means or can’t wait to grow your own tea, you can still make an improvement by buying bulk. Find your local bulk foods markets and bring your own jar to fill with loose tea leaves. Many places will have a nice selection available.

To learn more about growing a permaculture garden simply and easily, check out our course The Incredible Edible Garden and learn how to design your own permaculture landscape in our Permaculture Design Course.

What is your favourite homegrown tea combination?

The post Grow a Tea Garden appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.

I think this focus on going towards being plastic-free gives us a chance to rethink so many things, and to reconsider daily decisions. It is a wonderful portal to explore ways of living that contribute to the wellbeing of people and the planet. Through these clips, we explore a selection of things that can be practised in any month of any year and I’d love to hear your ideas for practical positive change too!

Our first clip is about growing salads. For one, this helps reduce us move away from bagged salad. Also right now, the cost of fresh food is rapidly rising so growing a permaculture garden can help us access fresh good plastic-freed food.

Join me and my daughter Maia in our permaculture home and garden for our first July clip.

To learn more about growing a permaculture gardening simply and easily, check out our course The Incredible Edible Garden and learn how to design your own permaculture landscape in our Permaculture Design Course.

TRANSCRIPT:

Hi and welcome back into my garden. My name is Morag Gamble from the permaculture education Institute and our permaculture life. And I’m joined today by my daughter who is one of the cofounders of the global permayouth.

We are going to be exploring different ways that through your permaculture way of life. You can actually look to reduce the amount of single-use plastic that’s in the world. We’re not going to be focusing on this as a single issue, because one of the key things that I’ve found by exploring plastic-free July’s is that once you start to explore that it starts to lift the lid. It’s a bit of a portal to explore so many different things so you know where your foods.

The impact of the food we grow

From how it’s grown, how it’s packaged, to how its transported – the impact that food is having and really looking at how we can create well-being for people and the planet. So each day during July, we went out into the garden or did something in the house to explore some simple tips. These are the kinds of practical permaculture tips that you can use in your everyday life to help improve sustainability in your life. It’s not a small thing that we’re doing, there over 250 million people in a hundred and seventy-seven countries who participate in plastic-free July every year.

The first tip that we wanted to talk about is actually how you can get rid of using plastic in your salad. You know when you go buy salads in the stores they typically come in little bags either as the mixes or as you know like even this the whole salads come in plastic. So in your garden, there are so many different things that you can have as summer green. Maia’s got a little bouquet of greens here that we just harvested. So as well as the lettuce leaves which is really good right.

Doing the planting and pulling the whole lettuce.

You can have just the open-hearted lettuces and you can keep them going for a very long time. Harvest things like the leaves of broad beans so the leaves of that make a really good salad and also the flowers to that Maia just harvested there. You might have some snow peas growing in your garden and so the tendrils and the leaves of that make a really good salad green. Then there’s all the kind of these lovely spicy things that could be Mizuna or rockets and lovely mustardy flavoured greens. So you can have those and then there are all the edible flowers too.

We also have a mustard green and this is a different sort of Brassica and so we just you know come along and pluck those off and toss those into the salad too. As well as you know any kind of herbs and parsley and basil and different sorts of weeds we can find around the garden. So, thinking differently about how we can create beautiful fresh salads that are taking the snips off the wonderful fresh plants that you have in your garden today or around your neighbourhood. And if you haven’t got a salad garden maybe think about how you can create a little pot even if it’s on your brand or a little patch of the garden right next close to your house every meal you can come out and pluck some fresh greens.

The post Grow a Salad Garden with Morag Gamble appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.

Today I want to share with you the best ways to use oregano in your kitchen and medicine cabinet, how to propagate it, and where to plant it

Oregano in medicine

Did you know that Oregano has been used as far back as 3000 BC? The Assyrians actually used Oregano as the main herb for health and medicinal purposes. So did the Greeks and the Romans.

These days most of us only use oregano for food and flavour, but it also makes great medicine.

Oregano is

• antibacterial,
• anti-fungal,
• a great cough and asthma treatment
• a great lung strengthener, and
• a decongestant.

Having oregano accessible in your garden is so handy for when you want to get on top of a cough or cold.

Use it as soon you get that itch on your throat. Just put a bunch of the leaves in a bowl, and add hot water then use this as a steam inhalation. This really helps to break up phlegm and allow your lungs to clear.

You can also make an infusion – steep the leaves in boiling water and drink it as a tea. This helps with things like persistent coughs, digestion, mouth ulcers and cold symptoms. Or alternatively infuse it in oil and rub this on your abdomen for period pain or on joints with arthritic pain. It can also help to numb the pain of a toothache – rub the oil around the area, or just chew some leaves.

Download my free Oregano Medicine Guide.

How to Propagate Oregano

It’s very easy to propagate oregano. If you don’t have it in your garden yet, now’s the time.

1. Talk to your neighbours, friends or family to find someone who has an Oregano plant.
2. Snip off a section at the side where it has roots attached. Keep the roots in some water until you get it home.
3. Plant this section in a hot and dry spot in your garden (it doesn’t like to be moist). Try the edge of a rockery or hanging over a terrace wall.  It also does well in a pot.

In the video below, I will teach you more about how to use and propagate oregano.

What is permaculture?

To learn more about permaculture check out my 4 part permaculture series and take a look at Our Permaculture Life youtube channel where I have uploaded over 100 films I have made in my permaculture garden and in conversation with others.  Dive deeper into this blog too and you will find over 400 permaculture articles.

Now is such a great time to learn more about permaculture and consider making permaculture your way of life and livelihood too. To help with this, I offer two online permaculture courses:

• Permaculture Educators Program – Permaculture Design & Teaching Certificates
• The Incredible Edible Garden – permaculture gardening course

I also encourage you to support free permaculture education programs for women and youth in the global south through our registered permaculture charity, the Ethos Foundation.

The post How To Grow And Use Oregano appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.

Pest management & Medicines

They attract so many bees and provide important protection for little insectivorous birds – plus they are a great method to help you manage ‘pests’.

They are also a wonderful source of culinary and medicinal herbs. Tulsi tea can be expensive! But if you have one in your garden, you’ll be surprised at how easy it is to make the tea from the plant itself. Plus, it will save you loads and will help reduce your household waste.

A great method for attracting bees

Watch the video below to learn more about how to grow, harvest and use these wonderful plants. I also talk you through how these perennials promote habitat and diversity in the environment. With these plants spread out in different parts of your garden, you get to create a healthy environment for plants and insects.

You’ll also get to see the types of hardy perennial basil I grow. Plus, find out which plant my daughter liked to call the “bee bush” when she was younger. One of the best bee-magnets you’ll find!

Give it a watch and let me know below if you have any questions. You can find many more videos like this one on my YouTube.

What is permaculture?

To learn more about permaculture check out my 4 part permaculture series and take a look at Our Permaculture Life youtube channel where I have uploaded over 100 films I have made in my permaculture garden and in conversation with others.  Dive deeper into this blog too and you will find over 400 permaculture articles.

Now is such a great time to learn more about permaculture and consider making permaculture your way of life and livelihood too. To help with this, I offer two online permaculture courses:

• Permaculture Educators Program – Permaculture Design & Teaching Certificates
• The Incredible Edible Garden – permaculture gardening course

I also encourage you to support free permaculture education programs for women and youth in the global south through our registered permaculture charity, the Ethos Foundation.

The post 3 Reasons Your Garden Needs Perennial Basil appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.

While Sorrel is a common perennial herb found in many parts of the world, it is often undervalued within our edible landscapes. Sorrel is one of the everyday greens that I just love having in the middle of my veggie garden. It’s been a valued part of my garden for many years now, and I eat it just as much as any other leafy green.

Sorrel is a hardy plant that actually gets hardier the longer it stays in your garden. It has nice deep roots that grow down deeper, continuously collecting moisture and nutrients from the soil. This makes it a great, long-lasting green that won’t need to be replanted every year.

Cooking with Sorrel

When eaten, Sorrel has a lemony flavour because it contains a bit of oxalic acid. For this reason, I do recommend treating Sorrel more like a spinach and cooking it before eating (just to be safe) rather than consuming it raw.

You can use it in a huge range of sauces and soups or add into stews and egg dishes. There are a lot of meals you can add it into just as you would other leafy greens. My kids also love to rip off a part of the leaves and feed it to the guinea pigs. There are so many ways to use this green, which makes it a wonderful addition to every permaculture garden.

What perennials do you have growing consistently in your edible garden?

What is permaculture?

To learn more about permaculture check out my 4 part permaculture series and take a look at Our Permaculture Life youtube channel where I have uploaded over 100 films I have made in my permaculture garden and in conversation with others.  Dive deeper into this blog too and you will find over 400 permaculture articles.

Now is such a great time to learn more about permaculture and consider making permaculture your way of life and livelihood too. To help with this, I offer two online permaculture courses:

• Permaculture Educators Program – Permaculture Design & Teaching Certificates
• The Incredible Edible Garden – permaculture gardening course

I also encourage you to support free permaculture education programs for women and youth in the global south through our registered permaculture charity, the Ethos Foundation.

The post Here’s why you should plant Sorrel in your kitchen garden appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.

One of mine would have to be Lemon Myrtle which I talked about in the video below.

The Lemon Myrtle (Backhousia citriodora) is an indigenous rainforest margin plant from South East Queensland. It has an amazing scent and I use it just about everyday in cooking and as a tea. Listen to the clip to many of the ways I use it.

Because I use it so often, I am growing it right next to the house as part of my permaculture forest garden. I manage it by keeping it short that way it won’t take its roots too far and so it won’t cast too much shade since my forest garden is a mix of trees, herbs, perennials, fruits, leafy greens, self-seeding annuals, legumes, and edible flowers.

A permaculture garden is like a natural ecological system – growing an abundance and diversity of food naturally in thriving soil in a garden that is home to many species. A garden like this supports a regenerative way of life that creates resilience for your family and community.

What is permaculture?

To learn more about permaculture check out my 4 part permaculture series and take a look at Our Permaculture Life youtube channel where I have uploaded over 100 films I have made in my permaculture garden and in conversation with others.  Dive deeper into this blog too and you will find over 400 permaculture articles.

Now is such a great time to learn more about permaculture and consider making permaculture your way of life and livelihood too. To help with this, I offer two online permaculture courses:

• Permaculture Educators Program – Permaculture Design & Teaching Certificates
• The Incredible Edible Garden – permaculture gardening course

I also encourage you to support free permaculture education programs for women and youth in the global south through our registered permaculture charity, the Ethos Foundation.

The post My Favourite Edible Tree – Lemon Myrtle appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.