Although allowing your chickens to free-range a great idea, getting them to just stay on the grass and not destroy your garden is not an easy thing to do. They don’t seem to listen and wander about blissfully digging up your garden, making mounds in your vegetable patch, spraying dirt...

We’ve had a terrific season of growing tomatoes for the last eight or nine months and right through into the Queensland winter. The one vine we had just kept producing massive amount of tomatoes month after month. I must admit being a bit cautious about what the flavour of an...

Crikey! He’s larger than life and into growing fish and vegetables – together! Now he’s jetting off overseas! Australia’s Aquaponics Guru Murray Hallam will be winging his way over to Orlando Florida in September as a special guest speaker at the Aquaponics Association Conference to be held...

When’s the last time you bought a car or a piece of “farm machinery” that doubled and quadrupled in value as it got older? Imagine also if your “farm machinery” did all the work for you – for free? Joel Salatin from Polyface Farms does just that using his...

A year ago we filmed with Elisabeth Fekonia a fantastic little DVD on Home Cheesemaking and All things Dairy. What we didn’t show you on the DVD – is what happens when best intentions don’t necessarily go according to plan. Elisabeth was instructing the camera how to milk a...

Its been a whirlwind trip over the last six months putting the pieces together for what is to become The Urban Permaculture DVD with Geoff Lawton. Nothing goes quite according to script and yet making a video like this is a bit like herding cats. Its chaotic. Like walking into a jungle of...

We thought we’d give a plug to our good friends at Milkwood Permaculture and Regen Agriculture who have brought out to Australia some great innovative thinkers and farmers doing things outside the square – empowering people to independent action and making a success of their...

Years ago there was an old expression applied to computer industry surrounding software programming – “Garbage in – Garbage out!” That expression of what goes around, comes around can equally be applied to aquaponics and the biofiltration mechanism that keeps the whole...

How quickly does time fly? Since building and testing his innovative toteponics system based on CHOP2 technology we caught up with Aquaponics guru Murray Hallam to ask how its all been going? Murray immediately lights up with his usual enthusiasm, “Can you believe it – its 18...

Over the last three months we’ve been trialling a little additive called potassium hydroxide with the regular stuff we’ve been putting into our aquaponics system and – boy has the plant growth taken off! For the most part, feeding your fish just pellets is fine but we always...

Sometimes you see something and you think “Wow! Thats a great idea.” We came across this very simple and easy to build greenhouse at Rosina Buckman’s backyard. Rosina has some terrific tips mentioned previously here and here. Most greenhouse designs are overly complicated...

They say nine out of ten people that ultimately get ducks into their gardens first started off with chickens. So what are the advantages of keeping ducks? The popular perception or myth is that ducks need a large expanse of water; they make a lot of mess; destroy your garden and their eggs...