You can make them as simple or in-depth as you like. Of course, these activities are not just for the holidays – we love to do these things every week. In fact, they form the basis of many of our home education ‘lessons’.

Rock hopping at the upper Mary River.

You don’t need to know anything about the plants, animals, lizards, insects or weather to step outside and begin exploring. Nature is out your doorstep – all you need is to be open to wandering and wondering.

Silent Spring author, Rachel Carson, wrote another inspirational book, The Sense of Wonder.  In this book, written over three decades ago, she shares an her philosophy about the importance of sharing the wonder of nature with children. She says “wonder …leads to curiosity … leads to information …leads to responsibility … leads to action”.  This simple power of discovery and connection is such an antidote to indifference.   

You don’t even need to know what you are looking for, just some curiosity, patience to sit and watch what is going on around you, and an ability to notice things. Draw and jot down your discoveries. Share your findings with each other, and through apps like Bowerbird (Check out other citizen science sites in my previous post: http://our-permaculture-life.blogspot.com.au/2016/09/raising-earthcarers-1.html).

Bring your questions back inside and do some research – in books, on the internet, or find people who can help can.  People who are passionate about their topic are so keen to share it, particularly with young enthusiasts.

There are great lists out there for nature play activities, for example.

Nature Play: Fun Outdoor Activities for Kids 

Nature Play Passport Missions 

We’re going to have a go at these fun, open-ended activities over the next few weeks…

Become a Naturalist (a person loves to study nature) 

Head out on a field expedition or nature quest at different times of the day, to different places with your family and friends. Be a nature detective – step outside, what do you see, what do you hear, what can you feel, what do your wonder…?  

Make a nature adventure backpack – binoculars, magnifying glass, small field guides, pen knife or scissors (for taking a sample from a plant), notebook, pencil case (pencil, eraser, ballpoint, felt-tipped pen, colour pencils), clips (for holding pages), hat, sunscreen, water. 

Draw what you see – a leaf, a seed, a weed, a flower, a tree, a bird or group of birds, an insect, tracks, scats (animal poo), clouds … Make a note of what insect calls, bird calls, other animal sounds you can hear. 

You could go into your backyard, down the street, to your local park, to a local forest, beach or countryside… For a quick expedition perhaps just take a notebook and a pencil.  Make a point of always recording your notes and drawings

(Kids – always make sure someone knows where you are heading).

Bees in the kitchen garden

Become an Astronomer (a person loves to study the stars)

Go outside at night and for some wonderful star gazing. Can you see the milky way? What constellations can you see? Do you know which ones are planets? Can you see a shooting star – why does it do that? How many satellites have you spotted? Do you know how to tell the direction from the stars? Take a picture of the night sky and leave the shutter open for 30 minutes or more (you’ll need a tripod). Learn more about the stars and constellations (get a free app eg: SkyView) 

Night sky at our place by Columbian WWOOFer Alejandro Cappa.

Become a Meteorologist (a person loves to study the sky/weather)

Go cloud watching and look for weather clues.  Learn to read the clouds. What can you tell about the weather by the types of clouds – is wind, rain or a storm coming. Draw the clouds. Research about what the different types are called and what they mean. Get a field guide about weather and clouds – such as Cloudspotter. Use your imagination too – write a cloud poem, tell a story about the pictures you see, can you see an animal, a face…? 

Become a Geologist (a person loves to study rocks)

What kinds of rocks are there in your area? Make a rock collection. Sort them. Find out what they are made of (look in your rock books or online to help with rock ID). What does that tell you about the deep history of your place? Can you find fossils? Can you draw with your rocks? What games can you make up a game with your rock and pebble collection.

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Image: National Film and Sound Archive

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I filmed my talk about Incredible Edibles at the Kitchen Garden Stage of the incredibly popular Queensland Garden Expo on July 10. In this talk, I share my passion for and knowledge about some of my favourite plants and strategies. The plants I talk about here are also very helpful for verge gardeners, small-space gardeners, and community gardeners.

Congratulations and thank you to all the volunteers who set up the WONDERFUL edible demonstration gardens at the Expo with the verge garden theme – a huge effort!! It was great to ramble through it with Costa Georgiadis, Jerry Coleby-Williams and chat with old and new friends.

This recording is 42 mins.

FILMING NOTE: This is the first time I have tried to film my own talk (I usually have a helper) and of course, I forgot about the camera. At one stage I moved too close – oops – half a head.  A few minutes later I realise and move back again – please excuse this!

Take a look at my other short films:

In my award-winning garden, Crystal Waters Permaculture Village.

Film #2: Our Permaculture Life: Community Permaculture Garden (9 mins 30 secs)


At the Yandina Community Gardens – I’ll be teaching a Permaculture course there each Friday from 23 September.

In my award-winning garden, Crystal Waters Permaculture Village

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The wonderful Costa Georgiadis of ABC’s Gardening Australia led a huge group of people through the verge garden with his fabulous commentary of why verge gardens are the bees knees – it’s got me thinking about what more I can do along the street at my place. Always wonderful to see him and get a big beardy cuddle.

Costa espousing the benefits of having a salad garden on the verge.

Gardening extraordinaire, Barbara Wickes, president of the cottage garden group The Perennial Poppies, coordinates the extraordinary effort it takes to get the Giant Kitchen Garden displays ready for the expo each year.

After Costa’s ramble through this amazing demonstration garden, he sent the crowd across to the Kitchen Garden Stage where I talked about my favourite incredible edibles. I had a table full of cuttings from my garden that provide an abundance and resilience in subtropical gardens – a diversity of perennial and self-seeding plants and a selection of common but overlooked edible leaves.  (The video of this will be ready soon.)

Me launching into the Incredible Edibles talk.

The Giant Kitchen Garden is like a meeting of old friends – I caught up with Roman Spur of Spurtopia, the Yandina Community Gardens, Northey Street City Farm, Robin Clayfield, Brisbane Organic Growers and many more… Jerry Coleby Williams also led a great wander through the verge garden.

ABC Gardening Australia’s Jerry Coleby-Williams talking about verge gardens.

Here are some of the people I met along the way and some garden features on display…

I was delighted to hear the latest news from Roman Spur of Spurtopia – new baby girl and new house (bought from savings – no debt).

I caught up with Cath Manuel of Soil to Supper, then saw part of her no-dig garden presentation.

Beautiful kales.

The display garden demonstrated how you could set up a street side stall to share verge garden produce in the community.

These are great to help increase homes from microbats in urban gardens.

Showing the potential for a verge garden – from children’s play spaces, herb, vegetables, flowers, fruits, upcycled pots, interpretive signage, habitat logs …

An interesting pot of strawberries….

Looking down the main street of the verge garden displays.

The bug hotel in the centre of the verge garden roundabout.

The boot flower garden.

The stiletto palette garden!

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In this 33 minute film, I take you on an in-depth guided tour of my edible landscape – the kitchen garden and food forest – sharing design ideas, permaculture strategies, and my low-input garden philosophy. I also show you how I integrate the 55 useful plants listed below into my garden system.

Many thanks to my brother Gregor, who came up from Melbourne to help me start creating films for my blog. This was our first film project together in 10 years and we had a great time making it.

Here’s the link to the film – the first video in my youtube channel where I upload films about our permaculture life each week

If you enjoyed that, take a look at my next short films:

Film #2: Our Permaculture Life: Community Permaculture Garden (9 mins 30 secs)
Film #3: How to Make Comfrey Tea with Morag Gamble (4 mins 52 secs)

Learn about Permaculture Gardening, Design and Teaching

If you want to find out even more about creating a resilient garden that is consciously designed to conserve water, enliven soils, create food forests and abundant kitchen gardens join me in  The Incredible Edible Garden online course.

Take it the next step and become a certified permaculture designer and permaculture teacher in my Permaculture Educators Program – a comprehensive online course.

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Our ‘bee bush’ – the perennial basil.

What’s wrong?

Why are bees so important?

• 1/3 of all food in the world is dependent on pollination
• 3/4 pollination of main crops are pollinated by insects (most efficient are honey bees)
• so many vegetables and fruits require bees for pollination
• other pollinators include birds, bats, mammals and wind
• without bees our food sources would reduce to some grains, a few fruit species and fish. 
• grazing animals rely on clover and other bee pollinated pastures
• the more bees in your garden, the bigger your harvest will be 

.What do bees need?

• range of flowering plants makes them stronger and healthier
• plants flowering throughout the year
• open simple flowers – these are easiest for bees to collect nectar and pollen from – avoid modern hybrids with many petalled, dense flowers 
• access to fresh water
• habitat and protection – logs, hollows and homes 

My vegetable garden infused with flowers to attract beneficial insects and pollinators. Open cosmos are great, so are the fennel landing pads.

• Plant bee-friendly plants
• Avoid bee harming plants and chemicals
• Create habitat for bees and other pollinators

Create homes for native bees which also do a fabulous pollination job.

What plants attract bees?

My garden with flowering comfrey, chives, yarrow, salvia and geranium plus a little source of water for the bees.

• Basil, chives, comfrey, coriander, fennel, lavender, lemon balm, mint, mustard, oregano, parsley, rocket, rosemary, sage, thyme, yarrow,

I love watching the bees come down to land on these yarrow flowers.

• Brassicas, capsicum, chilli, cucumbers, leeks and onions, pumpkins, squash….

Female pumpkin flower

• Alyssum, calendula, cornflower, cosmos, daisies, echinacea, geranium, marigold, roses, salvia, sunflowers, zinnia

At the end of the garden bed is a collection of pollinator attractors – basil, marigold, chives, comfrey.

• Backhousia, Banksia, Brachysome, Callistemon, Eucalyptus, Grevillea, Leptospermum, Melaleuca, Westringia 

What vegies can we grow without bees?

A lettuce just beginning to flower.

Some favourite bee attractors in my permaculture garden

Red salvia is a great bee attractor that flowers for much of the year here.

The abundant flowering spikes of brassicas are so attractive to bees. I always leave lots of mustard spinach and other flowering vegetables in the garden to provide a good source of food for the bees.

Lemon myrtle attracts bees in Autumn to it’s blossoms

For more information:

More about bees, what plants to grow, and how to make an effective bee hotel, I think this resource from Valley Bees is just so useful.  Click here to read and download this fabulous free information sheet from Valley Bees.

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You can eat the young leaves of Yacon anytime while you are waiting for the tubers to form.

Here are a few examples of extra food that I see in my garden:

1. Young pumpkin leaves are edible –  I use these a spinach alternative, stir-fry or lightly steam – the roughness goes. The young shoots and flowers are also edible, and of course the seeds.
2. Sweet potato shoots and young leaves are edible.
3. Beetroot and carrot leaves are very edible in raw.
4. Many perennial leafy ‘greens’ – red hibiscus spinach, sorrell
5. Choko vines – leaves, young shoots and roots are also edible, as well as their edible fruits.
6. The young leaves of yacon – these are edible cooked up as a green
7. Edible canna (Canna edulis) – young shoots as well as the rhizomes.
8. Mustard spinach – as well as the leaves, the young flower stalks, flowers, seeds are edible.

Pumpkin is a self-seeding annual. I eat pumpkin leaves, young shoots and flowers – but I leave the female flowers like this one if I want to get pumpkins later.

It’s quite possible to at least double the food you think you are growing simply by changing our perception of what is food. 

There are so many edible perennials to choose from. In a previous post, INCREDIBLE EDIBLE PERENNIALS, I suggested a list of easy ones to get warm gardens started and how to use them. 

Edible perennials are at the heart of a successful permaculture garden – and are definitely at the core of my garden. These plants live for many years, are abundant, bring diversity and resilience to the garden, and they largely take care of themselves.
Even though I regularly give away big bucket of cuttings at my free community talks, the garden still looks abundant. This is the beauty of edible perennials – they just keep giving and the regular trimming actually keeps them looking good.

Amongst the perennials, I love to grow super-hardy and self-seeding vegetables and herbs. Together with the perennials, they form the structure of my garden. Amongst these plant the more sensitive and short term varieties.

Now that we are coming to the end of the warm season, I am carving out areas in the garden abundance to put in some cooler season plants – using these perennials to build up organic matter in the soil, and to provide protection for the new young plants.

The tuscan kale is still going strong – even after the recent hot weather knocked the silver beet about.  Kale is so tolerant and adaptable. The new shoots that form on the main stalk can be carefully sliced off and planted too.

 

 

Red Hibiscus Spinach is a delightful edible perennial which adds so much vibrant colour and leaf contrast to the garden.

The long green & red chillies keep coming back each year. They grow abundantly without care under the shade of the bananas.

The cassava is growing well in the food forest – in an area nothing much else would grow. I am expecting a good cop this year. Meanwhile I sometimes use the young leaves – I cook them and discard the water first, then add them to whatever dish I am preparing – stir-fry, eggy-bake, soup…

Madagascar bean is an abundant perennial plant that produces large amounts of purple spotted lima-type beans.  I wait until they have gone completely dry and brown on the vine before harvesting. These make a super-hearty protein rich meal.

This weeping rosemary, hanging over my terrace wall, is a favourite herb in my cooking, along with the oregano and thyme planted next to it.

 

There is a density to my garden – lots of food, little space for weeks – huge amounts of food, fibre, fodder, mulch, medicine … Here turmeric, pumpkin, sweet potato, comfrey, taro, bacon and banana are all doing wonderfully well in this food forest terrace – as are the interspersed dwarf citrus

 

Citrus does well at my place – I have limes, lemonades, a variety of mandarins, lemons and oranges, ruby grapefruit, and the Buddha’s hand. The lime tree is full at the moment. I use fresh lime in so many things – salads, stir fries, juices, in soda water. I also rub it on fruit to stop it browning.

 

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Our diversity garden includes flowers, herbs, vegetables, fruits, perennials, self-seeding annuals, natives, water, lots of worm towers, a moveable compost bin, lots of organic matter and thick mulch.

I like to think of it as a peaceful way of gardening – about being mindful and observant in the garden. I don’t do ‘pest management’. I don’t fight pests or disease. Instead I observe and work with nature to create a ‘cultivated ecology’ – an ecological balance in the garden that has resilience. 

I do not use any sprays or traps – natural or chemical.  Even natural sprays can harm beneficial insects which help to pollinate and keep pest insects under control. 

Without any spraying or ‘active’ methods of pest management, the vegetables in my garden look amazingly healthy and unaffected by pests. There is always lots of flowers (mostly seeding vegetables) that attract beneficial and predatory insects into the garden.

Instead I work to create healthy dynamic soil environment that supports healthy robust plants, and I invite many helpers into the garden that will help to keep the balance.

Small Insectiverous birds have declined in the cities. They are vulnerable to predation from the bigger birds that do well in the cities such as currawongs, noisy miners, butcherbirds.   Also in cities, there is less habitat for insects (their food) and often people spray insects (poisioning their food). Image: www.birdsqueensland.org.au

I feel that an important part of this approach is in the way I perceive the garden and the insects, and manage my expectations.  For example:

• I expect that there will be some damage. 
• I accept that various insects come in flushes. 
• I understand that things come back into balance in a healthy system even though there may be times of chaos and uncertainty. 
• I accept diversity and difference and hold a more flexible notion of what is ‘perfect’. Did you know that we waste up 40% of crops at the farm because they do not conform a certain aesthetic. This is beginning to change with the ‘ugly food movement’ – but who is to say it’s ‘ugly’. It is just natural!
• I am also quite certain that ‘holes cook well’.  For example, I cannot tell the slightest difference in taste between a silverbeet leaf with a whole in it and one without.

Holes cook well too!

My ‘do-nothing’ pest management approach is primarily about cultivating residence. My strategy includes:

1. Selecting plants well. By choosing plants that are seasonal, locally adapted and hardy they are more robust and resilient.
2. Planting at the right time. I do not expect plants to flourish in conditions that not conducive to their growth.
3. Keeping plants healthy. Healthy plants are more resilient to pests. I make sure the soil is healthy, that the soil fertility is maintained, the soil temperature kept relatively stable with mulch, and I maintain the organic matter in the soil to hold soil mositure and diminish the water stress of the plants.
4. Building healthy soil. Healthy soil nourishes the plants over time and supports their healthy development. Healthy plants are less prone to pest attack.
5. Watering deeply. As far as possible, I try to rely on rainfall to water the garden- setting up terraces, swales, and adding lots of organic matter and mulching thickly. When things are really dry, I will water but give the soil a big long soak. This encourages the plants to root deeply seeking out that deeply soaked water  – and nutrients. If plants are watered regularly with just a little bit, they form shallower roots. These plants are more vulnerable to heat, dry and pests because they are stressed. 
6. Perennialising plants. Where possible, I encourage plants to keep producing over a long period of time, just harvesting the edge leaves. The deeper and stronger root system they form makes them more resilient. Disturbing the soil less also helps to cultivate good soil structure.
7. Creating habitat for my helpers. Growing a diversity of plants helps to develop a cultivated ecology which provides homes for a range of species that become helpers. An example of this is insectiverous birds (there are many more that I will write about another time). I attract these little feathered helpers into my garden by providing protection from predators. This means cultivating dense bushes and layers of cover – such as native shrubs, sacred basil, dwarf fruit trees and plants like pelargonium. It is also essential to ensure a constant supply of water. Importantly too, is leaving materials and spaces for nests – not cleaning up too much. For more information: http://birds of queensland.org.au

Superb Fairy Wren (Image: www.birdsqueensland.org.au)

As well as supporting the ecological development of your edible landscape system, this approach gives you more time to sit back and relax, and ENJOY your garden.

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I have watched from my verandah, in the rising humidity, as storms have formed then passed, waiting for the rains with great anticipation. A thunderstorm would form, but skirt around us leaving just a disappointingly few drops of rain – nothing to give the soil the good deep soak it needs.

Over the past couple of days, thick clouds have gathered on the hills across the valley and the sunsets have been spectacular.

Finally today, the rain came.  It was a great day for frogs, and ducks, and …. mud-loving kids!

Two enormous green tree frogs were living in the door cavity of our car – an enormous surprise this morning.

“I love muddy puddles!”

The boys were too muddy to get to the bath – they needed to be hosed off first.  Thankfully when it’s wet and muddy here it’s also hot.

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The mysterious tiny baby turtle.

I had just finished emptying the contents of our suitcases on the verandah into various piles – clothes, tennis racket, books, etc … and sat back for a cuppa. All of a sudden Evan and I heard a strange sound – a kind of scratching. We looked over toward the piles and saw something small kicking around near Hugh’s tennis racket. 

At first we thought it was one of those amazing enormous black beetles upside down with it’s feet in the air making a sound rubbing it’s wings – perhaps having dropped down from the ceiling. But then we realised it was this gorgeous little turtle, flailing around trying to right itself. 

I raced over and turned it up the right way – he tucked his long neck and feet in as far as they could go. All the kids came and quietly took a look at it taking care not to frighten it.

Where did it come from?  

• Did it sneak into our bag down in East Gippsland? 
• Did a bird just drop it?  I didn’t see one swoop through just then. 
• Had it crawled up here by itself?  

Not knowing where it came from, we weren’t really sure what to do with it. There is a large dam below our house where we know there are many turtles already living so we thought it would be OK there. Evan and Maia gently carried it down to water’s edge. After a few moments it poked it’s head out and raced toward the water and disappeared under a large protective leaf of a waterlily.

We are all still baffled and curious. I certainly hope it is going to be OK.

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