Tag Archives: Plants

While Blue Mountains residents are all too familiar with the more visible impacts of climate change such as floods, droughts and fires, another lesser known impact of extreme weather is urban forest decline and tree death.

Blue Mountains City Council has been recognised by an internationally renowned Rights of Nature law firm and advocacy group for innovation in Rights of Nature policies.

Blue Mountains waterways are some of the most beautiful, iconic and highly valued in Australia. They also supply drinking water to over five million people. ​​What is Council doing to protect our waterways? Find out here.

  In March this year, Japanese journalist Harumi Hayakawa wrote a piece for the Japanese publication Asahi Weekly in which she explained why the terrifying Australian fires of December 2019 actually made her like the Blue Mountains even more.     In her article she described the many ways the community came together during and after the fires and how, …

To grow a long-term productive and abundant veggie garden you need to make sure your soil is rich and alive and continually fed and replenished. This supports plant growth and allows for repeated cropping within a healthy ecosystem. One way to do this is to encourage more worms to be part of that system. Charles Darwin said: “It may be …

As soon as you solve one problem in gardening, you’ll undoubtedly come up against another. Last week we were really excited because we read on the Gardening Australia website that land cress is poisonous to the Cabbage White Butterfly caterpillar. We were thrilled, as something had started to eat our tiny kale at Blackheath Community Farm and this seemed like …

While we have onion seedlings on the way in the Blackheath Community Farm Greenhouse, ever since our first day at the Farm we’ve had green onions or scallions growing in our allium bed. We always cut them off and leave the root in the soil and, without fail, they  just keep coming back and growing more. If you’d like to …

  Winter is a wonderful time for growing greens and brassicas in Blackheath. On Sunday at Blackheath Community Farm we harvested cauliflower, kale, land cress, rocket, radish greens, a variety of lettuces and silverbeet. As well as being delicious raw, they can all be cooked as well.   Check out our recipe for Orechiette with cauliflower and walnut brown-butter pesto …

  There’s an excitement and a lovely crunch as you run your finger down the side of a dried bean pod and split it open to collect the seed. If you haven’t done so already, now’s the time to collect your bean seeds to ensure a crop for next summer and potentially also meals over this winter. Some dried beans, …

It’s almost five months since the ‘megafire’ burnt through the native section of Blackheath’s Campbell Rhododendron Gardens on the 21st December 2019, leaving Blackheathens with a charred landscape and a charred psyche.     The Fires were followed by flooding rains in early February which removed much of the top soil. Stones were left suspended on tiny sandstone towers … …