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.

Have a read of this blog to find out my top tips and tricks for growing, cooking and using Okinawa Spinach in various ways.

How to eat Okinawa Spinach

Okinawa spinach is an extremely versatile leafy green. Actually, all parts of the spinach are edible – the leaves, the stems and the roots.

Every day, I harvest some of the Okinawa Spinach in my garden and use it for all sorts of cooking.

Okinawa Spinach is great in:

• salads,
• steamed,
• soups,
• stir-fries,
• tempura,
• miso soup,
• curries,
• and just about anything that you would normally put spinach in.

It is also delicious in beverages – hot or cold

Okinawa spinach is great when added with other greens into a green juice, or even mixed into a smoothie. The stems and roots can be used to make a tea – just use a strainer as you would with any leaf tea. Enjoy!

My top tip: It is a good idea to add these greens at the end of your cooking – they are best with just a few minutes of cooking. If you overcook it, it tends to become a slimy texture so keep an eye on it.

Makes a great edible ground cover

Okinawa spinach can be used as an edible ground cover or an edible border plant. I recommend using it to make the most of your garden space. This can be done by growing it under taller vegetables like kale, and eggplant and around the edges of fruit trees.

Fun Fact: The Okinawa Spinach is actually considered both a vegetable and a medicinal herb.

Attractive two-tone leaf

It is a very attractive plant to have in a vegetable garden. The shiny leaves have different colours on either side, making them very appealing. The upper side is a deep green and underneath they are purple.

The leaves look great in salad and keep their two-toned look. Unfortunately, they do lose the purple colour when cooked but they still taste great.

Caring for Okinawa Sinach

Once Okinawa Spinach is established, it requires almost no care or attention. I recommend continuing to tip prune the plant, so it creates a lovely large mound of tender edible leaves up to around 70 cms high. Keeping it dense also helps to stop the weeds coming through. Watch the video above to get an idea of what this mound looks like.

Okinawa spinach grows well in full sun and partial shade and is quite heat tolerant, although not very drought tolerant. It does need moisture to thrive and loves a mulched garden. In dry times, it won’t die just stop producing new growth.

Don’t have a garden? Grow it in a Container!

Okinawa spinach grows well in a pot or hanging basket. It can also grow indoors, but be sure it’s put somewhere it has good light – on a windowsill for example.

Thanks for reading! I hope you have found the blog useful. If you have any questions or would like to suggest a topic for me to cover next, please leave a comment below.

The post How to grow & eat Okinawa Spinach appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.

Do you want to know how to grow food with abundance and with ease? In response to the questions so many people have been asking me, I decided to create two online permaculture programs. This week I am welcoming new students to both of them.

LIMITED PLACES. REGISTER NOW

Places are limited to ensure I can give you each personal attention and real support. I answer everyone’s questions and give as much design feedback as I am able. Register today.

THE INCREDIBLE EDIBLE GARDEN  Cost AU$297

Register now for my online permaculture program. I release a new module each week over the next 9 weeks. Work at your own pace. Access these materials forever. Ask questions of me and your fellow students. Join a wonderfully international group. Click the title to visit the program site for more details. The program overview is:

• Module 1. Create Superb Soils
• Module 2. Setting up a Garden
• Module 3. Growing Abundant Food
• Module 4. Setting up a Food Forest
• Module 5. The ‘Super’food Garden
• Module 6. The Medicinal Garden
• Bonus 1: The Beauty Garden
• Bonus 2: The Tea Garden
• Bonus 3: Cooking up a Garden Feast

THE OUR PERMACULTURE LIFE MEMBERSHIP COMMUNITY Cost AU$397

• Do you need support to design and create your permaculture project?
• Let me be your permaculture mentor for a year.
• Register now and receive free access to The Incredible Edible Garden Course. 
• Each week I create new resources – interviews, Q&As, design input, plant review, book reviews, recipes and much more.
• Enjoy ongoing support and discussions with me and fellow students from around Australia and the world.
• Listen to my overview here
• Click here to find out more information and to register

If you have any questions, please just email me on morag@thegoodlifeschool.net

I look forward to working with you.

The post How To Grow Food With Ease and Abundance. appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.

This leafy vegetable, Okinawa Spinach (Gynura bicolor), is a delight to include in my forage circuit, not only because it is such an easy plant to grow in warmer areas, but because how beautiful it looks too.  I use the leaves and shoots in salads, but also in anything that I want a ‘spinach-type’ green – sushi rolls, stir fries, miso soup, curries. In Japan this leaf is popular as tempura too. 

Okinawa spinach is grown in many places as a medicinal vegetable because of it’s nutrient density. It is rich in iron and potassium, calcium, vitamin A and other important nutrients, and has be nicknamed the cholesterol spinach for helping to reduce cholesterol.

Even though this is called Okinawa Spinach, it is actually a native from Indonesia and is grown in many parts of Asia. It is an amazingly easy plant to grow that strikes well from cuttings. It likes both full sun partially shady sites as long as there is enough water and good soil. It grows as a low dense mound of lovely leaves and is a perennial, as long as the area is frost free.

The more you harvest the leafy tips, the more it will keep growing and looking good, this does make a fabulous forage green. This plant is an excellent choice for a hanging basket, verandah pot or even the kitchen windowsill. As always keep it well mulched.

Making our edible landscapes as aesthetically pleasing should be a priority because it encourages us to bring them closer to the house. Attractive landscaping around your home can be entirely edible. The sense of freedom this brings is quite remarkable.

Just think of all the great reasons why having free natural food, herbs, teas, medicines at your fingertips is such an important thing to be doing – for our wellbeing and planetary wellbeing.

It may not feel a necessity to do this (although in many places it is), but for the freshest and most nutrient dense food possible, for resilience, for future proofing, for effortless abundance, for sharing, for cultivating eco-literate children, for even saving money on our good food bill, surrounding ourselves with food is a no-brainer.

What we also need is an expansion of the general perception of what a kitchen garden is – from Beatrix Potter-esque beds of vegies to perennial polycultures that are robust and regenerative, that create a healthy habitat for wildlife, and that provide more food and other resources for the people dwelling in that landscape.

Which plants in your edible landscape do you most appreciate for their beauty and form, perennial nature as well as their productive value?

The post Surround yourself with edible beauty and raw green abundance – Okinawa Spinach. appeared first on Our Permaculture Life.