The Karpophoreo Project

A couple of weeks ago I met Steven Hebbard at workday for a new community garden in Austin. Steven heads up The Karpophoreo Project. This Austin based venture works with formerly homeless members of the Austin community and others to grow good food. Karpophoreo means to bear good fruit in every good deed in Greek. The staff and volunteers garden in thirteen locations throughout Austin in places as varied as community garden sites, church land and individual back...

Gardening in Wongonyi

We firmly believe that small-scale agriculture plays a major role in efforts to create a world that supports all of us. Through our gardening business, we have been fortunate to get to know and support hundreds of community gardening and grow-your-own projects. A couple of years ago Noel met Peter and Kathy Wood of Bracebridge, Ontario at the annual Garden Writer’s conference. They have been assisting Ronnie Mwachia Mdawida in his efforts to improve...

Noel’s Raised Bed System

Noel recently gave a presentation on his raised bed gardening system at the University of Wisconsin Medical School. The UW videotaped the presentation and have made it available to the public here. The video is in a cool dual format that shows Noel talking side by side with the images from his slide presentation. The presentation is about an hour long but it is indexed so that you can easily jump to topics of interest. Interesting and inspirational! # Posted By MB...

Spring Parsnips

After enjoying a wonderful dinner of roasted parsnips, mixed with other root vegetables, we’ve decided that it is now our mission, at least for this month’s newsletter, to promote this wonderful vegetable. Roasted Parsnips with Other Root Crops Michael Schael, potter, gardener and friend, stopped by and gave us about a dozen of these roots that he had recently dug from his garden. Since Noel never got around to getting parsnips started last year, we...

Peach Trees and Permaculture Ideas

Two years ago I picked up a copy of Gaia’s Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture, by Toby Hemenway. The author packs the book with intriguing ideas. I am trying to adapt many of them to my yard in Austin, Texas. One idea is that of fruit tree centered “guilds”. Hemenway defines guilds as interdependent communities of plants with synergistic properties. He goes on to lay out some ideas for an apple-tree centered guild. I took a few of these...

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