So I’ve been busy launching and working with my friends Dan, Paul and Nathe on our new business: Very Edible Gardens (VEG).  Dan is the founder of permablitz and Paul has designed more properties for blitzes than anyone else, and Nath has been into permaculture since the early 90s.  We’re running courses, doing consultancies and [...]

Eat the Suburbs: Gardening for the End of the Oil Age
A film by Tanya Curnow, 2006.
EAT THE SUBURBS takes the oil debate from the bowser to the backyard and follows Melbourne’s “permablitzers” as they prepare for the end of the oil age… one garden at a time.

Made 2006 but online for the first time now. [...]

Over at The Age newspaper, feature writer Katherine Kizilos has been writing an excellent series of articles relating to urban food production, with many friends of Eat the Suburbs featured — even myself today, in an article about urban weed foraging. This is a compilation of some of Katherine’s recent great efforts.

Michael Pollan reminds us that, “The inspiration for organic was to find a way to feed ourselves more in keeping with the logic of nature, to build a food system that looked more like an ecosystem that would draw its fertility and energy from the sun. To feed ourselves otherwise was “unsustainable,” a word [...]

We don’t have to scratch so deeply to find concerns about economic, energy and food insecurity these days.

[I'm publishing this 'as is' for comments/corrections. It's a reference document in progress for how much energy/water/greenhouse gas/landfill might be saved by home food gardening. I've been regularly updating the article, the last was to include more embodied water information on 6 December 2007, and new greenhouse emission information added 11 December. -Adam]
How [...]

John Anderson is the former leader of the National Party, Deputy Prime Minister and Federal Minister for Primary Industries and Energy. He’s retiring at the coming election to go back to the farm. As Deputy Prime Minister in 2004 he was one of the first significant politicians globally to acknowledge peak oil. He’s [...]

This article via The Age:
Slice food bill, avoid drought: grow vegiesLucinda Ormonde, John Elder in The AgeSeptember 23, 2007
RIP out your camellias and plant carrots instead.
That’s the advice of the Australian Vegetable and Potato Growers Association, which says growing your own vegetables could help combat rising food prices and a potential shortage of fresh [...]

[ Australia is facing the worst drought in recorded history, and as part of the response the government is targeting home gardeners. Beth Spencer questions if this is really the best place to begin water restrictions. -Adam ]
Dealing with stage 3 water restrictions [...]

Lou Smith of Breakdown Press recently email-interviewed Asha Bee about permablitzes & backyard food production for a zine she's helping put together in response to the coming G20 conference in Melbourne….
What are permablitzes all about? How did they begin? A permablitz is basically a permaculture-inspired backyard makeover where people come together to share [...]