permaculture

Misc

Grow Your Own Microgreens

3 October 20253 October 2025
by Jessica

Grow Your Own Microgreens

Microgreens are nutrient-packed young greens that can be grown easily at home, even on a windowsill or kitchen bench. They offer a fast, low-cost way to add vitamins and flavour to your diet.

Growing Medium

Use a sterile, moisture-retentive medium like coconut coir, seed-raising mix, or organic potting soil. I like to use Milkwood’s best Ever Seed Raising Mix: 2 parts coir and compost, 1part sand, 1 part worm castings. Avoid regular garden soil, as it may introduce pests or diseases.

Recycled Containers

Plenty of recycled containers can be used—just ensure they are food-safe and clean, with drainage holes:

Takeaway food containers
Plastic salad boxes
Clamshell packaging
Old baking trays
Yoghurt tubs (with holes added)

Best Seeds to Grow

Choose seeds known for reliable microgreen crops (just ensure you’re picking the right seeds for your season):

Peas
Radish
Mustard greens
Broccoli
Sunflower
Buckwheat
Mung beans

Nutritional Benefits

Microgreens often have 3–40 times higher vitamin, mineral, and antioxidant levels than mature greens. They’re rich in potassium, iron, zinc, magnesium, copper, and essential vitamins (A, C, E, some Bs).

Advantages of Growing Microgreens

Ready to harvest in 7–14 days
Require little space or equipment
Provide concentrated nutrition
Add flavour and colour to food
Reduce grocery costs and plastic waste

Best Places to Grow Them

Ideal spots include sunny windowsills, kitchen benches, or any warm, well-lit indoor space. Outdoors in a sheltered spot also works, but avoid locations exposed to harsh weather.

Step-by-Step (Milkwood Method)

Soak seeds (optional for some types) overnight
Fill container with moist growing medium
Sow seeds thickly and evenly
Mist with water; cover with a lid or damp paper until sprouted
Place in a bright spot when shoots appear
Harvest with scissors after first set of true leaves form

Common Mistakes

Overwatering or underwatering—keep medium just moist
Using non-sterile soil
Not providing enough light for strong growth
Overcrowding seeds or failing to cover seeds for germination
Poor airflow, leading to mould growth

Growing microgreens is simple, rewarding, and accessible—bringing fresh nutrition into your home in under two weeks.

Explore this topic in more detail

Milkwood’s free downloadable guide and videos: https://www.milkwood.net/sprouts-microgreens-guide/

Milkwood’s HOW TO: Grow Sprouts and Microgreens, right on your kitchen bench: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPJRtJZLFO8

Milkwood’s microgreens in garden beds: https://www.milkwood.net/2015/11/02/growing-super-microgreens-in-garden-beds/

Common mistakes: https://onthegrow.net/blogs/news/microgreen-growing-mistakes-how-to-avoid

A guide for engineers (or people who like step-by-step photo instructions): https://extension.psu.edu/a-step-by-step-guide-for-growing-microgreens-at-home/

A comprehensive guide to growing from start to finish: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtvuMNVLISo

Nutrients and health benefits: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9864543/; https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2772566921000057

Fantastic written guide to different types of microgreens, germination times, care, soils etc https://www.bootstrapfarmer.com/blogs/microgreens/the-ultimate-microgreen-cheat-sheet

Mistakes to avoid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNvYjh0O5Zc

To soak or not to soak?: https://www.theseedcollection.com.au/blog/Should-You-Soak-Your-Seeds-Before-Sowing

Permaculture

Waterwise and Shade Tolerant Herbs, Flowers and Trees for…

26 August 202526 August 2025
by Jessica

If you’re living in an Australian apartment with small part-shade courtyards, don’t despair. These waterwise herbs, flowers, and trees offer edible fruits or leaves and suit border plantings–and can be perfect for your space.

Waterwise Edible Herbs

Warrigal Greens (Tetragonia tetragonioides): Native, shade-tolerant, edible cooked leaves.
Mint, parsley, coriander, chervil, and lemon balm: All handle part-shade and have culinary uses.
Comfrey and chicory: Edible leaves, tough in dry conditions, with both culinary and medicinal value.

Edible Flowers for Borders

Borage: Star-shaped blue flowers, edible and highly drought-tolerant.
Calendula (English marigold): Edible petals and can handle part-shade spots.
Native Pigface (Carpobrotus glaucescens): Succulent, waterwise, edible fruits and flowers.
Blue Flax Lily (Dianella caerulea): Edible seeds and berries, drought-tolerant, decorative strappy leaves.

Waterwise Edible Trees or Shrubs

Midyim Berry (Austromyrtus dulcis): Part-shade-loving shrub, edible berries like mild blueberries.
Dwarf Fig (Ficus carica): Adaptable to part-shade, drought-tolerant and compact for apartments.
Feijoa/Pineapple Guava (Acca sellowiana): Waterwise, edible fruit, can be grown as a hedge.
Strawberry Guava (Psidium cattleianum): Low-maintenance, hardy, edible berries.

Other Notables for Raised Beds

Queensland Arrowroot (Canna edulis): Edible tubers, large leaves, suitable for dappled shade.
Ginger: edible tubers.
Turmeric: edible tubers.

Tips for Success

Mix varieties for year-round interest and resilience to dry spells.
Select compact or dwarf varieties for tight spaces or pots.
Mulch well and adjust watering for part-shaded, moisture-retaining sites.

By planting these waterwise, edible options, it’s possible to support both beauty and harvest in small, shaded borders of Australian apartment complexes. *Note that my suggestions work best in a temperate environment.

Poetry

The trouble with chickens

15 January 202515 January 2025
by Jessica

The trouble with chickens

A giant storm threatens

In the distance

Rumbles like waves on an angry beach

Thunder strikes

The dog barks

her anxiety unleashed

The chickens cower

I cuddle the canine

But the chickens lower to the ground

I cannot reach them

Human hands mean

Plucking to the air

Unfair restrictions

Awkward touch on feather

Do they feel

An unknown goddess

Thrashes the skies?

Do they feel

An eagle

Big as their dreams

Beats its wings

Over the heavens

Signalling their demise?

I cannot talk sense to them

Cannot say

This is storm

Infinite design of heaven

Sent by the mistress

They flail wildly

This way and that

Under the coop

Through the dust bath area, under stairs

Into their playpen

Filled with uneaten food

the angry goddess thunders

the skies

I cannot tell them

This will pass

Cannot hold them to me

Cannot reason

With unhinged chickens

Another bolt kisses ground

Booms the earth

The dog barks ballistic

The chickens in their

Screech and clamour

Forget to breathe

They squat

As if this giant

Will come and collect them

Obliterate them

And their feathery dream

Of unlimited grains, and greens galore

They cannot

Wipe the slate of the past

To understand this greater goddess

governess of the skies

She unleashes her Being

on the dry Desperate earth

Energising soils like Frankenstein

Only Greater

Across earth

No single monsters for her

Hers is a canvas worth the painting

First she splatters fat drops

Dust plashing

Then rivulets

First blase

Meandering the surface

Finding the cracks

Then

with growing confidence

Water pelts

more insistent

bathing caked soil

insisting

every edge

is filled

brimming

They cannot understand

She is the harbinger of life.

The chickens

Blind with terror cower

Unhinged to the miracle

Of an earth renewed

Permaculture

The necessary nutrients

2 July 20212 July 2021
by Jessica

The chicory plants in our garden have gone mental.

Not that I love chicory, I’m not even sure I really like it that much. But a couple of years ago my local hardware store was closing, and I couldn’t resist the 50-cent plant specials sitting on the table. I knew that if I didn’t buy them on this last day, then the hardware store wouldn’t compost, or donate them, nor put them to any useful purpose. They’d just be added to a massive methane-spewing landfill, one more pollutant among many.

So I bought them thinking, a little chicory would be healthy, we don’t have enough bitter veg in our lives.

But since then, the chicory population in our garden has exploded. Through some miraculous mode of delivery, seed, spawn, alien-love, God-knows, from the back garden to the distant front, they’ve spread. Tiny seedlings soon turn into giant-rooted multi-leaved behemoths. A multitude more than we can ever eat. I keep pulling them up and potting them for any unwary passersby who expresses even the vaguest of interest.

‘What’s that weird thing crawling on that lettuce-looking plant…?’

‘That’s chicory, you want some?’

‘No not the plant, the insect. What’s that insect?’

‘I really think you should take some chicory, it’s really good for you.’

Sometimes I forget about the re-planted chicory, and they die in small pots. Or they seem to die.

Utterly brown and withered, seemingly bereft of life, the small pots sit in a saucer and it rains, and then a miracle occurs. From a dry leafless stump the chicory appears again.

So we’ve adapted.

We’ve learned to like bitter chicory, so long as we mix it up with the sweeter stalks of rainbow chard, and herbs like parsley, and the mundanity of lettuce, it’s fine. Life should be an interesting mix, shouldn’t it? How dull would it otherwise be? And how much less resilient, and less healthy would we be, if we all just ate iceberg lettuce?

That’s my theory about Nature too.

After all these years of working with her, I think that we’ve forgotten her in her pot. She’s wilted and in some places is seemingly dead, but if we give her the right ingredients, my theory is she’ll probably thrive again. Provided we haven’t polluted her beyond her tipping point.

Similarly, I have these questions about society. Could a disconnected society, when brought back to its origins, watered, fed, and reconnected with the right nutrients, thrive again?

I’d really love to know. Let’s look and see what people have done in local settings to achieve these healthier outcomes, and how we might replicate their results on a larger scale.

[An excerpt from my latest project. Do you want to keep reading? If you do, let me know. This could the start of a fabulous new adventure for us.]

Misc

Caught on the wind

19 February 202013 November 2020
by Jess

At the asylum seekers centre garden it’s hard to get people to come along. They can been so traumatised by their experience fleeing, but also by what awaits them when they come here — years of detention, they say it’s like a gradual dying — that they don’t want to go out. If I can convince them to get to the garden, I often see a shift.

I see Mo from the middle east, and wave. He is at the end of his asylum process, awaiting a reprieve from the minister; his last and only hope. He is internalised, caved in on himself. Wrapped in a blanket of his own trauma and pain, he hardly speaks a word. I have to ask him a million questions before he answers one. So I learn not to ask. Sometimes even ‘Do you want to come to the garden?’ is too hard a question. His face screws up, lost in the confusion of his trauma-locked mind.

So I just say, ‘we’re going to the garden’. And sometimes he picks up his backpack and he comes.

Within 10 minutes of having his hands in the soil, cutting dead leaves off a plant, clearing weeds his energy shifts, and the most surprising thing happens: he starts to speak, of the foods that he ate at home, of the plants he grew, of his mother and how she would care for him. And then an even more surprising development: he sings.

The songs sound ancient, and I don’t understand the words, but they speak of journeys. Meandering though sad phrases, uplifting to happy family times. I am quiet in the background, pulling the grass from our veggie beds, entranced.

What more can I do to help him and so many others in this time of crisis? I can write more letters imploring the minister, adding to my ASIO file; already a foot deep. But more tangibly I can stop asking questions and just listen. I can provide a safe place in my garden, and I can revel in the moments where their beautiful voices catch, and for a short time, freely dance on the wind.

Tag: permaculture

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